“It may be thought that we have left out a basic field of analysis – the critique of technology as a prime mover of the globe’s palpable degenerations of live diversity and the life-ground…. [however], the money-sequence program behind the pervasive advances of machine technology is never uncovered. The value logic of ‘development’, ‘investment’, and ‘profit’ in whic technology is always the means, is not itself examined… The regulating principles governing the private and state corporate bodies who plan, produce, implement, and distribute machine technology of every kind are left unexamined. What we are seeing here is a classic case of blaming a tool for what it is being used for.”
Top Ten Reasons Global Revolution WILL Happen
aaron moritz, July 4th 201010. Peak Oil:
Everything plastic or rubber is made of oil. Oil fuels our transport, our trade, our economy. Our entire civilization is based on the use of fossil fuels for both energy and materials.
There are ways to fix these problems, but since we’re barely even attempting to implement them, the problems associate with depleting oil are escalating.
9. Bio Engineering:
We’re learning so much about how our bodies function at such a fast rate, that the applications seem almost science fiction, like the recently developed ‘bionic eye’ for blind people, a small camera either implanted into the eye socket or word on glasses that wirelessly sends a signal to an implant behind your ear, which interfaces with your brain to produce an image (see video here). If we can replace an eye, why not a heart? Or a brain (after transferring the data, of course)?
We are experimenting with being able to switch genes on and off. We are learning to literally grow tissues, or even entire organs in a lab, and implant them. We are learning to reverse the biological processes of aging. We are on the brink of attaining an unprecedented amount of control over our biology and the biology of our descendants. This raises many questions that are unique to our times and deserve a lot of discussion.
8. The Emerging Global Police State:
International Bankers, largely based in and in control of the United States and the other central UN nations are quietly imposing new laws that restrict people’s freedoms ad create an environment of fear, which leads to submission. But people will only accept so much, sometimes all too many of their freedoms to be taken away before being pushed to the brink, but there always is a brink. And the confused, power-hungry, fear mongers are always pushing the limits.
The illusion of freedom and democracy that has enshrouded the western world is dissipating due to many of the other factors listed here.
7. Technological Unemployment:
It started when tractors replaced farm workers. Then the people who built the tractors were replaced by automated factories. So everyone moved to the service industry, but now we have ATM’s and automated restaurants and waiters and vending machines.
The fact, is that in any industry, the more we automate the work (ie; assign it to machines rather than humans), the more efficiently the work is done. Machines are stealing our jobs (and they’re better at them, too)!!!! That’s why we can’t keep people employed. There isn’t enough work for them to do, and since they can’t work, they can’t spend, so companies has to cut costs, fire more people, further diminish the purchasing power of the individual. You see the diminishing returns here. This type of loop cannot be sustained.
We’ve ignored this (shifted people to new industries) for almost 80 years, and it’s finally starting to catch up to us (there really isn’t much work left for us to do).
6. Between 10% and 20% of the World’s Population is Starving:
and the global wealth gap is widening, which will only increase this number. As Citibank stated in their leaked internal memo, while they have successfully achieved the accumulation of power through monetary means, government, unfortunately still remains a one person one vote power structure. This clearly shows the mindset of the super-wealthy, who could easily afford to feed everyone on the planet, but choose, instead, due to their conditioning, to allow people to starve, tacitly allowing millions of deaths every day.
I wonder how far they think they can push it, before people start to say enough is enough. I know I’m already saying it. And so are a lot of other people.
5. AI:
Many parts of the brain have been modeled. Neural networks have been simulated. We don’t yet have all the processing power and neural models available to ‘build a brain’, but the pieces are falling together, if you pay attention to the news in that area. Ray Kurzweil projects we will have human level machine intelligence by 2029.
If a robot has the ability to react, discuss, argue that it is conscious and can feel, who would we be to say that it doesn’t? What if it has had the memories of a loved one transferred into it? The philosophical and intellectual debate this poses over what it means to be ‘alive’ or ‘conscious’ has the ability to fundamentally alter our perspectives on what it means to be a human. If that’s not revolutionary I don’t know what is.
4. Environmental Crisis:
Whether global warming is man made or not, we need to take care of our planet and our environment holistically. Failure to do this will inevitably result in environmental catastrophe. When this happens, something big is going to need to change.
3. The Flopping Global Economy:
The world-wide debt balloon is bursting. There are signs of it everywhere, world leaders are meeting to discuss it, and coming up with no real answers, just empty targets that won’t be met, and wouldn’t help even if they were met. A market economy is based on growth, but we only have one planet. It and the amount of resources on it are not growing, so we can’t keep using them at an accelerated rate.
The fact is that we live in a global Ponzi scheme, an upsidedown pyramid that is about to tip one way or the other. We need an ‘economic’ system that is based on the holistic management of the entire earth, it’s life, and it’s resources.
2. Nanotechnology:
Nanotechnology brings the promise of being able to manipulate matter at the level of molecules. In Eric Drexler’s Engine’s of Creation, a seminal book on Nanotech, he describes nano-scale assemblers that would have the ability to arrange matter in any way (ie; make apple pie from thin air, simply by re arranging the molecules). How is the economy going to work when everyone can have any material possessions they want at only the cost of raw materials?
Nanotechnology also carries with it the promise of being able to upgrade our human bodies. More efficient neurons, better red blood cells, better internal defense systems for healing cuts and bruises.
Nanotechnology takes it’s cue from our own molecular machinery (cells and the like), yet allows us to manipulate and improve upon it. It will likely also function as a catalyst for both AI, and is intermingled with Bio Engineering, in my opinion.
1. The Internet, ie: The Freedom and Spread of Information:
Hey guess what everyone? The United States and every member of it’s empire and most of the rest of the world is living in a Police State (see #8). We are not free, not in action, not in the choice of our governments or money masters.
But we all know that. We haven’t all been tricked, and we’re telling each other about what’s happening. We’re working right in front of their faces to remove them from power. Until about ten years ago, they were very effective at controlling public opinion. We all thought what the TV told us to, we all thought what was on TV was real. Now we know it’s just reality television, a drama played out for our amusement and distraction.
How do we know? Because we’re making our own videos, we’re learning how to think from each other, rather than from a single source, and that is unfortunate for anyone who wants things to stay the same. The printing press caused a revolution due to it’s ability to spread information. The internet does this on a scale many orders of magnitude larger, so should we expect that the resulting revolution will also be on a scale many orders of magnitutde larger?
Any one of these things has the potential to start a monumental revolution, either of the mind, or of our external environment. The fact that they are all happening at the same time is why I feel confident in saying that something big is coming.
What should we do about it? Well, if you ask me, I like the direction of the Zeitgeist Movement. To me it seems like the most reasonable option we have left.
discipline
aaron moritz, June 11th 2010you know, sometimes you’re reading a message board post that’s so great you feel it’s an injustice that it’s just buried on some message board somewhere.
i decided i’d bury it on some blog somewhere too.
from the zeitgeist movement forums, obviously on the subject of child abuse / discipline. Â link to thread:
IDMclean wrote:
My question for you and any other person who sees a distinction between discipline and abuse, what is the distinction? Where is the line drawn? I draw it at the application of mental, physical, and social violence. Which excludes the majority of types of discipline commonly cited. In my experience as a nomadic child, living between two different parents in different places with different schools, discipline is synonymous with abuse as you can see by reading through this thread.
If you take punitive measures, you are behaving abusively. When you yell at a kid, you teach them yelling at people to get what they want is okay. If you hit a kid, you teach them hitting people to get what they want is okay. If you hold their possessions hostage, you teach them that holding the possessions of others hostage is okay. In many cases, the ancestor generations discuss what amounts to techniques of social and psychological terrorism forgetting that the use of such techniques teach the child that such techniques are okay to use.
This isn’t to say that I’m saying you can’t structure your child’s life and correct behaviors. If discipline is to be held as separate from abuse then discipline is the correction of dysfunctional behavior by example and restraint both yours and theirs. You can not correct dysfunctional behavior with dysfunctional behavior. Additionally, you can not correct dysfunctional behavior in another if you, yourself, are engaging in that dysfunctional behavior regularly; especially, if you are engaging in the behavior in practicing discipline. To do so, exacerbates the behavior and creates a double standard.
One thing to consider is that most often when a person is behaving poorly it is because that person needs or wants something. In many cases, it is because they want attention and can not get positive attention. It is a simple truth that people seek to avoid the absence of stimulation preferring positive or negative stimulation, pleasure or pain, over nothing.
If you watch the Zeitgeist Movement videos, it is a common theme that the dysfunctional behavior of the society itself comes about due to its dysfunctional structure. Remove the impetus for dysfunctional behavior, and the dysfunctional behavior itself should abate.
This principle is extensively discussed in the writings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Specifically, it is addressed in Three Ways of Meeting Oppression. Additionally, you can find more about the application of Satyagraha here.
iI really have nothing to add I just thought that was fantastically put. wish I’d wrote it.
Imprisonment pt.2: Bigger Cages / Longer Chains
aaron moritz, May 12th 2010Jobs, Schools, Media, National Borders, what other names can we think of for prisons?
Relevent links:
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com
http://thevenusproject.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/Tzmsocial… –great resource for Venus Project technical info!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheLeftLi… -Big inspiration for both this video and my last, maybe even to the point of a bit of word-borrowing. Hope you don’t mind, friend.
http://www.youtube.com/user/cveitch – Again, huge inspiration in my life over the last few months, and in both my videos. Thanks Charlie (and Danny!!! I miss you.).
Music:
1. Couer de Pirate – Comme Les Enfants
2. The Wire (Closing Credits)
3. eDit – Ashtray
4. Nine Inch Nails – A Warm Place
Video made with Adobe Premiere and After Effects (you can see me trying out some animation stuff of my own on here). Again, youtube and google image were my two major sources of video.
venus project getting a lot of press lately.
aaron moritz, May 5th 2010Well, not in the US, but in placees like Russia, and New Zealand, where the media isn’t as controlled as it is here.
The man is 94 years old, still trying to spread his ideas of a better future. That’s dedication. The Zeitgeist Movement has brought a lot of attention (well, I use the term ‘a lot’ relatively) to The Venus Project, and they are kicking off their first world tour, which is exciting.
They’re coming to Calgary in October. I know I’ll be there. Probably be my last chance to see him before he dies.
my youtube cherry– officially popped.
aaron moritz, March 20th 2010I’ve mentioned a few times what an inspiration youtube has been to me. There is tons of great stuff on there, buried beneath cats doing tricks and people pranking their little brothers. I’ve been tossing around some ideas of my own to put some video’s together, but it’s a lot of work, and nothing has come out of it yet.
However I did put together a quick response video to some guy who ‘challenged’ the Zeigeist Movement and Venus Project. It has no production value, just me correcting some misconceptions, being a bit cheeky, giving the other side.
ZDAY 2010
aaron moritz, March 13th 2010Today is Zeitgeist Day 2010, worldwide day for Zeitgeist Movement awareness.
Watch the main event LIVE HERE:
Streaming .TV shows by Ustream
or find your local event and attend in PERSON.
our problems
aaron moritz, February 24th 2010The way I see it, our modern problems can be traced back to about 10,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution. This is, basically, when human’s gained the power to fuck with the natural balance. When we were still hunter/gatherers, there were only as many people as the environment could handle. You had too many kids, they died. It’s harsh, but it kept things in balance.
Since then we’ve been inventing things and gobbling up resources as fast as humanly possible. Why not? The earth seemed infinite in size and no matter what we used, there was always more where that came from. Well, now there isn’t always more. Rather than some millions, we now have 7 billion and growing. We’ve mapped out every corner of the earth. There are no new frontiers, and suddenly, our infinite supply of resources has become almost startlingly finite.
Luckily for us, we hace become self-aware. We (well, some of us) realize what we are doing, and know that it has to change. If we don’t change, things will change for us, and not in a pretty way.
So who is managing our resources? Who is making sure that we use them wisely, sustainably, renewably. I think we all know the answer… no one. We let ‘market forces’ take care of that. Well, the problem is that market forces only care about profit, not sustainability. Market forces are extremely short sighted. We need to adopt a systems approach. All this means, is developing a world-wide system to intelligently manage the earths resources. We can’t just keep using whatever we want, however we want, cause it won’t last. We’ll kill ourselves. We need intelligent management of the earth’s resources. We need to know exactly what we have, and we need to know exactly how we are going to use, and re-use it. We need to align ourselves with nature.
So yeah, this means getting rid of infinite growth economies. It means getting rid of the profit motive. It means eliminating artificial scarcity.
We humans have become self-aware. We know what we are doing, and we can change.
why did Joseph Andrew Stack fly a plane into an IRS building?
aaron moritz, February 18th 2010well, in his own words,
“I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”
“Nothing changes unless there is a body count.”
you can read his entire 8 page suicide letter (in an effort to marginalize what this guy is saying, the media is already referring to it as a manifesto). if the link dies, just google Joseph Stack manifesto. this letter clearly shows that this guy isn’t crazy, or stupid, he’s just fed up. the letter is wonderfully written.
When I first heard about this ‘terrorist attack’, I figured the Muslims had got us again (or the US government… whoever). But this attack actually makes sense. This guy just wanted to live his life — he did everything right, and still got screwed, over and over. This type of behaviour is WHAT OUR SYSTEM PRODUCES. We CANNOT blame this guy, our society made him this way.
I guess I’ll pause here and say (I hope, unnecessarily) that what this guy did is fucking terrible. I think he killed a couple people. I don’t support wasting buildings (even one’s used for such insidious purposes as the IRS) or killing people (even IRS workers). Just because they work for the beast of corporatocracy does not mean they aren’t beautiful unique human beings. And just because this guy is a murderer does not mean that he isn’t, either.
Joseph Andrew Stack knew what was going on. He lived it. He did everything right, and he got fucked. He exemplifies the failures of capitalism. Everything that motivated this person comes from the monetary system. This man wanted to become an engineer, he was an engineer, but he couldn’t find work because of CIRCUMSTANCES. That’s it. He had the brains, but the system would not allow it.
The monetary system crushes people who want to help.
The worst thing is now what he said will be pushed to the side. Nobody will take the time to learn why he did it. He’ll be reduced to a few minute news-bite for a couple of days, week or two tops. What he did was near pointless, because his message will be lost in the weight of how terrible his act was.
…and to exemplify my own complete selfishness, I’m mostly worried about how this will affect my flight down to Florida in two weeks (increased security BS, etc).