Zeitgeist Addendum: Steps toward a sustainable future

"Zeitgeist (released on June 18, 2007) and its sequel, Zeitgeist Addendum, were created as not-for-profit expressions to communicate important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of," explains filmmaker Peter Joseph.  Zeitgeist earned the "Artivist Spirit" honors for Best Feature Film at the 2007 Artivist Awards.  Zeitgeist Addendum opened this year's Artivist Film Festival on October 2nd in Hollywood, CA, and won the 2008 Best Feature award. 

Filmmaker Peter Joseph at the 2008 Artivist Film Festival 

Artivist is the first international film festival and awards dedicated to addressing advocacy for human rights, children, the environment and animals.  "Artivist is the premiere venue for advocate filmmakers to screen their cause related films," said Diaky Diaz, President and Cofounder. "It's an opportunity to raise awareness for the interdependence between humanity, animals, and the environment."  The 2008 Artivist Film Festival is touring the world through December 7th.  

While Zeitgeist challenged our perspectives on religion, the attacks of September 11th, and the formation and function of the Federal Reserve Bank, Zeitgeist Addendum dives deeply into our debt-based monetary system.  It also comments on the media, corporations, energy use, consumerism, government, as well as religion.  

More importantly, perhaps, it also offers solutions, featuring speeches by spiritualist Jiddu Krishnamurti and conversations with futurist Jacque Fresco of The Venus Project, with its resource-based economy, smart cities, maglev transportation, intelligent housing, and use of renewable energy.  Where the Venus Project website is bright, exciting, fun and hopeful, the Zeitgeist II film (and website) is dark, foreboding, and dire.  Its appeal will be most effective with the disaffected who recognize the problems and yearn for positive direction.  I loved it; the film resolved my ambivalence over boycotting the vote. 

Zeitgeist II spends the first half of the film explaining the monetary system.  That's a good thing; most of us have no clue how money really works.  My three college econ courses never explained the creation of money through debt.  Nor did they warn of the ramifications of this century-old pyramid scheme that is today collapsing before us.  Dennis Kucinich recently recommended Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated documentary, Money as Debt, for an introduction to our monetary system.  So do I.  Zeitgeist II takes the instruction further, and then moves into an interconnected exposé of corporations and capitalism.   

The film acknowledges the complaints of anti-civilizationists, but differs in its solutions.  Instead of rejecting civilization with anger and destruction, Zeitgeist II rejects today's form of civilization, offering a beautiful vision of what is possible without government, banks and corporations based in a profit-driven monetary system.  It then offers concrete steps toward achieving this vision, transcribed below. 

Zeitgeist II suggests that in order to achieve global sustainability, we need to develop "Weapons of Mass Creation."  The survival of the biosphere depends on "outgrowing" the dominant institutions that rule us through the fictitious creation of a monetary system.  The majority of the world's population comprehends the failure of capitalism, experientially if not intellectually.  Its psychopathic pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all other values is hard to miss.  Capitalism destroys everything it touches – water, air, soil, plants, animals, ecosystems, and landscapes, as well as human lives and cultures. 

 In the last fifteen minutes of the film, the narrator asserts the following suggestions amid images of Rosa Parks and the successful bus boycott that ended seating segregation in 1955: 

"The system itself is based on competition which immediately destroys the possibility of large-scale collaborations for the common good, hence paralyzing any attempt at true global sustainability.  These financial and corporate structures are now obsolete, and they must be outgrown...  Peaceful yet highly strategic action must be taken.  The most powerful course of action is simple: we have to alter our behavior to force the power structure to the will of the people.  We must stop supporting the system.  The only way the establishment will change is by our refusal to participate while continuously acknowledging its endless flaws and corruptions." 

Jacque Fresco then asserts: 

"They're not gonna give up the monetary system because of our designs of what we recommend.  The system has to fail and people have to lose confidence in their elected leaders.  That will be a major turning point if the Venus Project is offered as a possible alternative.  If not, I fear the consequences.  The trends now indicate that our country is going bankrupt.  The probability is our country will move toward a military dictatorship to prevent riots and complete social breakdown." 

The film resumes its narration: 

"As of now, the world financial system is on the brink of collapse due to its own shortcomings...  [T]he fractional reserve based monetary system is reaching its theoretical limits of expansion and the banking failures you are seeing are just the beginning.  This is why inflation is skyrocketing, all debt is at record levels, and the government and Fed are hemorrhaging new money to bail out the corrupt system.  For the only way to keep the banks going is by making more money.  The only way to make more money is to create more debt and inflation.  It is simply a matter of time before the tables turn and there is no one willing to take new loans, while defaults grow as people are unable to afford their current loans.  Then the expansion of money will stop and contraction will begin on a scale never before seen, ending a century-long pyramid scheme...   

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