Zeitgeist: Addendum

Structure of the documentary:

• Introduction to the sad state of humanity: Krishnamurti.
• Description of the current debt-based monetary system: from the Fed to economic hitmen.
• Technology as the answer to scarcity: the Venus project and the resource-based economy.
• Change of the individual from submissive to ideologies, to active actor in the "emergent", "symbiotic" universe.
• A call to action: stop supporting the system. Boycott the Fed, big corporations including banks, news networks, energy companies, the military, the political system. Use the Internet. Join Zeitgeist.com. Change yourself: become enlightened.

I love Internet culture. To me it is the first real expression of world culture. Although each voice in it is raw and therefore unique, global awareness is always present. And Zeitgeist: Addendum vividly illustrates this awareness. We are no longer fooled by large institutions, ideologies, or established status quos. We can question any system, because we're part of the largest system of them all: the worldwide Internet. Not only this, we created it democratically, so you can't touch it. And now, we're coming to fix your mess.

I do subscribe to these sentiments, with of course a few grains of salt.

• The leading scientists, from Greek antiquity to the present, have always reminded us that they don't know much more than they know. Further, the more we find out, the larger the volume of what we don't know. So right off the bat, it's going to take a long time to have a "perfect" technological system that solves the global system of non-linear equations to maximize the fulfillment of *every human life*. At best, we can only hope to move towards the solution, provided we're confident we do see this solution or parts of it.
• The Internet is young as a system. Its growth has been spectacular, as has been its influence on human behaviour. But for all its benefits, realized and potential, it has also lent itself to large-scale abuses, including spam, cracking, and dubious social behaviour. So the Internet is not good in itself, it just gives us humans more reach to do good, or bad. We need to make it mature and to mature with it.
• There are inherent human weaknesses, jut as there are inherent human strengths. We need to be aware of them if we want to progress. Examples: fear and greed. Their many derivatives include irresponsibility, lust, xenophobia, racism, etc., all the way to pure depravity and evil. Human strengths are countless and lead all the way to superhumanity.
• Once the perfect technology is in place, what will humans do? No one seems to go beyond the obvious generalities like freedom to fulfill oneself or merging with the Oneness. Both are great, but what will happen in detail? And how can we reach this state if we don't know how it looks like?
• Concretely, we need to reverse many global trends if we wish to reach a better human condition. We cannot just shutdown the planet, upload the new software, and turn it on again. So any real solution has to start with the condition today and describe a process to reach the desired state. It reminds me of a science-fiction novel where world nations wanted to choose a global calendar system that all would follow, a Common Era. The problem was to choose the starting date for that calendar. The ingenious answer was to start counting on the day the final consensus among all nations would be signed!
• More concretely still, money cannot just disappear overnight. Right now, inflation is the primary motor of economic growth. That means that resources (raw material, products, human effort) are constantly losing value. In that sense, money is in fact a measure of our inability to produce efficiently. So the idea of reversing that trend would be to keep infusing more value into resources until they cost nothing - or at least until their market value is fixed to their real, productive value. This will need to be developed further :-)
• Bashing religions achieves nothing positive. We cannot substitute faith in Religion with faith in Science. We need to be aware of faith as an essential human ingredient and work with it to reach the more important goal, an evolved humanity we can all agree to. Intolerance of any kind, on the other hand, cannot be tolerated. (This is an uncomputable statement unfortunately.)
• God is not synonymous with religion. God is an absolute value that includes all our aspirations today, and those of all generations of humans to come. If we gave a name to those aspirations, all put together, it might as well be God. Whenever we think we have reached God, we will discover, scientifically, yet another question that will take us further, and beyond it we will find God again. So just submit to this existence and go towards it as you would naturally. But free your mind of needless superstition.

All in all, Zeitgeist: Addendum is a great watch and will put your mind to serious work. And the fact that it is distributed for free only confirms the power and relevance of the Internet.