Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

In a decaying society, Art

if it is truthful, must also reflect decay.

And unless it wants to break faith with its social function

Art must show the world as changeable.

And help to change it.

- Ernst Fischer

Deadly riots over the government's

plan to avoid defaulting on its loans...

is that the unemployment keeps

rising and it has to keep rising

just because we have an excess supply of goods...

this is all borrowed money...

and that debt is owned by banks in other countries...

M-O-N-E-Y, in the form of a convenient personal loan...

...filter cigarette that delivers the taste...

45 malt liquor... Are You Hot?!...

is the US planning to bomb Iran?...

...America is sponsoring terror attacks in Iran...

Now, my grandmother was a wonderful person.

She taught me how to play the game Monopoly.

She understood that the name of the game is to acquire.

She would accumulate everything she could and

eventually, she became the master of the board.

And then she would always say the same thing to me.

She would look at me and she would say:

"One day, you'll learn to play the game."

One summer I played Monopoly almost every day, all day long

and that summer, I learned to play the game.

I came to understand that the only way to win

is to make a total commitment to acquisition.

I came to understand that money and possessions...

that's the way that you keep score.

And by the end of that summer

I was more ruthless than my grandmother.

I was ready to bend the rules if I had to, to win that game...

and I sat down with her to play that fall.

I took everything she had. I watched her

give her last dollar and quit in utter defeat.

And then she had one more thing to teach me.

Then she said:

Now it all goes back in the box.

All those houses and hotels.

All the railroads and utility companies...

All that property and all that wonderful money...

Now it all goes back in the box.

None of it was really yours.

You got all heated up about it for a while.

But it was around a long time before you sat down at the board

and it will be here after you're gone - players come - players go.

Houses and cars...

Titles and clothes...

Even your body.

Because the fact is that everything I clutch and consume and hoard

is going to go back in the box and I'm going to lose it all.

So you have to ask yourself

when you finally get the ultimate promotion

when you have made the ultimate purchase

when you buy the ultimate home

when you have stored up financial security

and climbed the ladder of success to the

highest rung you can possibly climb it...

and the thrill wears off

- And it will wear off -

Then what?

How far do you have to walk down that road

before you see where it leads?

Surely you understand

it will never be enough.

So you have to ask yourself the question:

What matters?

They're Hot!

They're Rich!

And They're Spoiled!

America's # 1 Show is Back!

Gentle Machine Productions Presents

A Peter Joseph Film

When I was a young man

growing up in New York City

I refused to pledge allegiance to the flag.

Of course I was sent to the principal's office.

And he asked me 'Why don't you want to Pledge Allegiance?

Everybody does!'

I said, 'Everybody once believed the earth was flat

but that doesn't make it so. '

I explained that America owed everything it has

to other cultures

and other nations

and that I would rather pledge allegiance

to the earth

and everyone on it.

Needless to say, it wasn't long

before I left school entirely

and I set up a lab in my bedroom.

There I began to learn about science

and nature.

I realized then

that the universe is governed by laws

and that the human being

along with society itself

was not exempt from these laws.

Then came the crash of 1929.

Which began what we now call

"The Great Depression"...

I found it difficult to understand why millions

were out of work, homeless, starving

while all the factories were sitting there.

The resources were unchanged.

It was then that I realized

that the rules of the economic game

were inherently invalid.

Shortly after came World War II

where various nations took turns

systematically destroying each other.

I later calculated that all the destruction

and wasted resources

spent on that war

could have easily provided for every

human need on the planet.

Since that time I have watched humanity

set the stage for its own extinction.

I have watched as the precious finite resources

are perpetually wasted and destroyed

in the name of profit and free-markets.

I have watched the social values of society be reduced

into a base artificiality of materialism

and mindless consumption.

And I have watched as the monetary powers

control the political structure

of supposedly free societies.

I'm 94 years old now.

And I'm afraid my disposition

is the same as it was

75 years ago.

This sh*t's got to go.

[ZEITGEIST]

[MOVING FORWARD]

[Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful

committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead]

Part 1:
Human Nature

So you're a scientist

and somewhere along the way, hammered into your head

is the inevitable "nature versus nurture"

and that's at least up there with Coke versus Pepsi

or Greeks versus Trojans.

So, nature versus nurture: This, by now

utterly over-simplifying view of

where influences are

influences how a cell deals with

an energy crisis up to

what makes us who we are on the most individualistic

levels of personality.

And what you've got is this complete false dichotomy

built around nature as deterministic

at the very bottom of all the causality.

Life is DNA and the code of codes

and the Holy Grail, and everything is driven by it...

At the other end is a much more

social science perspective which is

We are 'social organisms'

and biology is for slime molds.

Humans are free of biology

and obviously both views are nonsense.

What you see instead is that

it is virtually impossible to understand

how biology works

outside of the context of environment.

[It's Genetic]

One of the most crazy making

yet widespread and

potentially dangerous notions is:

Oh, that behavior is "genetic"...

Now what does that mean?

It means all sorts of subtle stuff if you

know modern biology, but for most people

out there, what it winds-up meaning is:

a deterministic view of life;

one rooted in biology and genetics;

genes equal things that cannot be changed;

genes equal things that are

inevitable and you might as well not

waste resources trying to fix;

might as well not put societal energies into trying

to improve because it's inevitable and it's unchangeable...

and that is sheer nonsense.

[Disease]

It is widely thought that conditions like

ADHD are genetically programmed

That conditions like schizophrenia are genetically programmed.

The truth is the opposite.

Nothing is genetically programmed.

There are very rare diseases

a small handful

extremely sparsely represented in the population

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