The Zeitgeist Movement

The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) is not interested in the poetic, subjective and arbitrary notions of “a fair society”, ”guaranteed freedom”, “world peace”, or “making a better world” simply because it sounds “right”, “humane” or “good”. Without a technical framework that has a direct physical referent to such terms, such moral relativism

serves little to no long-term purpose. Rather, TZM is interested in scientific application, as applied to societal sustainability, both physical and cultural. (page 32)

TZM's advocated train of thought sources advancements in human studies. It finds, for example, that social stratification, which is inherent to the capitalist/market model, to actually be a form of indirect violence against the vast majority as a result of the evolutionary psychology we humans naturally posses. It generates an unnecessary form of human suffering on many levels, which is destabilizing and, by implication, technically unsustainable.

Another example is TZM's interest in removing universal property and setting up a system of “shared access”. This is often quickly condemned to the Marxist idea of “abolishing private property”. However, generally speaking, the Marxist logic relates the existence of private property to the perpetuation of the “bourgeois” and their ongoing exploitation of the “proletariat”. He states in the Manifesto: “The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.” TZM's advocated logic, on the other hand, relates the fact that the practice of universal, individual ownership of goods is environmentally inefficient, wasteful and ultimately unsustainable as a practice. This supports a restrictive system behaviour and a great deal of unnecessary deprivation, and hence crime is common in societies with an unequal distribution of resources. (page 33)

Another look at Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist's come a long way in the last few years. It's a far more mature, complete and clearly defined system than it was last time I looked at it deeply. The main problem I had with it was that seemed to be "anti-spiritual". In the first version of the doco they dedicated a full third of it to debunking religions as myths that damage society and hinder positive progress for society. It seemed to be so intense in this aspect as to be almost anti-spiritual.

He still has this same perspective now, but he now articulates his meaning far better and I understand and agree with it. What he's basically saying is that sustainability is more fundamental and assessable than ethics (even the golden rule), and that having a sustainability-based bottom line will inherently include an ethical bottom line anyway.

I agree with all this, I think a resource-based economy is the only real sustainable way to go, and that a free market just cannot avoid plunder since it's a concept that's only applicable within the context of scarcity, which doesn't resolve the economic bottom-line problem and leads to the separation of the population into economic classes and many other problems.

Peter Joseph debates Stefan Moleneaux

I felt really sorry for Peter Joseph in this interview. Stefan reveals that he actually has an extremely simplistic view about how an ideal society could work, believing that a free market could effectively solve everything, and the state is responsible for all the problems in society. Peter tries to explain that it's actually the problem of the scarcity of money that's the real problem, and that there really isn't any possibility of voluntary exchange since it can only occur within a context which itself leads to selfish and violent outcomes. Stefan just can't understand Peter's perspective, and in fact it appears that he's not actually comprehending Peter's sentences, he even at one point accused Peter of not presenting an argument but rather just giving him a "word salad". Actually that "word salad" was explaining clearly the fundamental problems with Stefan's argument but he totally missed it, repeatedly falling back to his superficial and simplistic arguments.

Here's Peter Joseph apologising for getting angry with Stefan and explaining more clearly (i.e. trying to avoid any "word salads") his arguments in the interview.

Official sites & resources

• The Zeitgeist Movement Defined - official PDF of the current state of the Zeitgeist system
• The main website and hub - for TZM related actions/events/updates
• Global Chapters Hub - this is the main global hub for chapter information and materials, including maps, a chapter’s tool kit and more
• Global Blog - the blog which allows submissions of editorial style essays
• Global Forum - the forum for members to discuss projects and share ideas from across the world
• Zeitgeist Media Project - hosts and links to various audio/visual/literary expressions create by TZM members
• ZeitNews - a news style service that contains articles relating to socially relevant advancements in science and Technology
• Zeitgeist Day (“ZDay”) Global - this site becomes active annually to facilitate our “Zday” global event, which occurs in March of each year
• Zeitgeist Media Festival - this site becomes active annually to facilitate our “Zeitgeist Media Festival”, which occurs in autumn of each year
• Global Redesign Institute - a virtual graphic interface “think tank” project
• TZM Global on Twitter
• TZM Global on Facebook
• TZM Global Youtube

See also

• Alignment
• Self governance
• Problems