Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist

[Mac98]

Sorry, this may not be the right place to post this, but I don't wanna' be trashed on the GB or DRL, so I came to you guys .

I wanted to know how many of you have seen Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist documentaries, how many of you have never heard of it and your views on it.

Personally, I get as giddy as a school girl when I hear how different the world could be. I'm a huge supporter, but am open to those who aren't (only if you can provide a good argument). I'm just curious to know how many are for and how many against it...

 

[JohnMBrowning]

First, religions making mystical cosmological claims collapse at the least application of epistemological rigor. This applies to both traditional "revealed" religions and "new-age" ones.

Conspiracy theories are actually a subset of Hayek's "fatal conceit," the notion that central planners can ever assemble enough of the knowledge that is dispersed throughout society to organize or run an economy better than market processes. Similar contraints would prevent a broad and sustained conspiracy.

Less high-falutin, I never believed in conspiracy theories because they require me to accept the existance of people who aren't just smarter than me, but are smarter by orders of magnitude (like the mythical central planner who actually can assemble inhuman quantities of a society's dispersed knowledge). I don't believe them for another even more basic reason: People are blabbermouths. Conspiracy theories contradict that basic fact of human nature.

~~~~

In our post-Christian society many people are seeking something to believe in, and many of the substitutes they find are just as epistemologically-flawed as those old time religions. I'll stick to reason and epistemological rigor.

 

[Mac98]

Conspiracy theories contradict that basic fact of human nature.

But what if there is no such thing as human nature? What if we're just products of our environment.

Besides, Zeitgeist doesn't promote conspiracy theories and isn't a conspiracy theory itself. If you've watched both, you'd understand that it's main message is that we're insisting on maintaining a system that is long since outdated. Technology and human evolution is far more advanced than the living conditions we see today.

I understand, however, your skepticism and point of view (unless I've misinterpreted what you meant... after all, you did force me to crack open a dictionary). But the way I see it is: We live in a world that, let's be honest here, is completely fucked, promotes selfishness, consumption, pollution, greed, power and hostility. Now we have 2 options: Either we keep living in such a world... or seek change. Imho, I think Zeitgeist offers a way out.

But that's my personal opinion.

 

[CherryBomb24]

honestly - i've never even heard of it.
But i see from posts its based on religion so that is probably why.
Im not much of a religious person so i dont really research religions.
Sorry you asked how many havent heard of it - i'm being honest
Sad as it may be to lots of people - i've never even read the bible.

 

[JohnMBrowning]

But what if there is no such thing as human nature? What if we're just products of our environment.

Besides, Zeitgeist doesn't promote conspiracy theories and isn't a conspiracy theory itself. If you've watched both, you'd understand that it's main message is that we're insisting on maintaining a system that is long since outdated. Technology and human evolution is far more advanced than the living conditions we see today.

I understand, however, your skepticism and point of view (unless I've misinterpreted what you meant... after all, you did force me to crack open a dictionary). But the way I see it is: We live in a world that, let's be honest here, is completely fucked, promotes selfishness, consumption, pollution, greed, power and hostility. Now we have 2 options: Either we keep living in such a world... or seek change. Imho, I think Zeitgeist offers a way out.

But that's my personal opinion.

". . . a world that promotes selfishness, consumption, pollution, greed, power and hostility."

There, my friend, is human nature and some of its products. Not that I think man is evil. Other products of this world we've created include computers and the internet, central heating, abundant food and leisure, modern medicine and many more wonderful things one should not take for granted.

Instead, man is a mix of evil and good, and weak, too. We are what we are and that can't be changed. Instead, we have to work with it, including the constraints and opportunities it suggests. The U.S. founders understood this: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." They sought to put such internal controls in place. Adam Smith understood how under the right economic and social system self-love and the desire of individuals to get ahead in the world could be harnessed to benefit society.

People understandably get frustrated with all that, and seek out social or economic magic bullets, or a "man on a white horse," or a new religion, or something to fix it right now. Not gonna happen. Those things always screw everything up and force us back one step for every 1.5 steps forward.

But consider this - we're a young species, and this new way of life we've discovered (and really like) is really new - it's only been around for a couple hundred years, since the start of the industrial revolution. Give us a few hundred more years, or maybe a couple thousand, and I'll bet we get really good at this stuff. But we won't get there by chasing rainbows or shortcuts that evade or deny reality.

 

[sugaredwalls]

I've seen enough of Zeitgeist to say the stuff about religion makes sense. The whole Jesus thing could simply be a a cautionary tale. The idea that Christianity was ripped off from paganism is not a new idea, I learned about it in History of The Church at my Catholic high school. Of course they taught it as hearsay but were they there? IMO, the bible is simply a code of ethics, stories for people to emulate good behavior. Even the most ardent Catholic does not take all of the bible literally, as most xtianity religions don't, save the for the extreme ones.

Zeitgeist lost me on their conspiracy that 9/11 was hatched as a way to justify the war on terror. Sorry, but I have to put that conspiracy with the grassy knoll and the moon landing was faked ones. Osama Bin Laden himself explicitly said why 9/11 happened. He referred back to the Beirut bombings in the 80's, stating we had it coming to us for meddling in Muslim affairs. The war on terror was one hatched by the neocons, as a way to protect our interests and to make a U.S. presence in the Middle East, where before Iraq, we had none. Of course the Bush administration completely lied in order to sell people on invading Iraq but that's a completely different can of worms. The real reason for the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq can be found online at Project For A New American Century. Look at the mission statements and then the people who signed it, very telling. 9/11 was a handy excuse, while our government certainly did not perpetrate an attack like that as a way to scare people, they certainly did use it for that purpose, to scare people in to believing invading a country preemptively was the right thing to do.

It's been a couple of years since that was circulating online and I saw some of it but those were the main points of it I remember.

 

[emap]

Yes well if you want to have a better world there are a couple things you can do. Easiest method is to simply reinstate the gladiator games of Rome, not like the show I'm talking full on killing and all that, put people into a smallish area with starving animals and no weapons, pit slightly armored people with a knife against others until one dies or all but one dies. It's amazing how fast people turn law abiding and nice when they can watch others be slaughtered. Ask the romans on that one, they conquered an area and simply built a coliseum and well dang if the population didn't go hey this is nice.

The harder method, and I'm talking really hard because it creates two societies and choosing who goes where is tough. But basically, you kill off 98% of the population and provide for the food of most of the remaining population in return for them killing each other.

Course you could also just kill off 98% of the population and hope it can manage to recover. Though not really likely unless you don't mind backsliding a good distance, there are only two ways to do that, nuclear war and biological warfare, neither are good at saving the smart ones.

 

[JohnMBrowning]

Yes well if you want to have a better world there are a couple things you can do. Easiest method is to simply reinstate the gladiator games of Rome, not like the show I'm talking full on killing and all that, put people into a smallish area with starving animals and no weapons, pit slightly armored people with a knife against others until one dies or all but one dies. It's amazing how fast people turn law abiding and nice when they can watch others be slaughtered. Ask the romans on that one, they conquered an area and simply built a coliseum and well dang if the population didn't go hey this is nice.

The harder method, and I'm talking really hard because it creates two societies and choosing who goes where is tough. But basically, you kill off 98% of the population and provide for the food of most of the remaining population in return for them killing each other.

Course you could also just kill off 98% of the population and hope it can manage to recover. Though not really likely unless you don't mind backsliding a good distance, there are only two ways to do that, nuclear war and biological warfare, neither are good at saving the smart ones.

Oh, messy! messy! I'll bet you don't let your house become so messy.

Interestingly, for all the hand wringing about violence, the world really is becoming a kinder and gentler place. "Humans have become less violent, not more, Steven Pinker contends. “Something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.” NYT, 7/15/1009

So perhaps Mac's angst is misplaced; if we just stay on track it all evenutally will become Mr. Rogers neighborhood.

 

[Mac98]

honestly - i've never even heard of it.
But i see from posts its based on religion so that is probably why.
Im not much of a religious person so i dont really research religions.
Sorry you asked how many havent heard of it - i'm being honest
Sad as it may be to lots of people - i've never even read the bible.

Zeitgeist isn't on religion at all. The only "religious" part about it is that it "debunks" the christian faith (and others too)... there are 2 documentaries in total (totaling 4 hours) and treats religion for about 40 minutes. And don't worry, I never read the bible either. Hell, I wasn't even baptized... though I still know pretty much all the *important* or more popular stories in the bible.


and JMB: I guess that's where most people are turned off by Zeitgeist. The age-old debate over human-nature and human conditioning. Out of all the psychological testing, all the experiments and studying of man, nothing proves human nature is real. Actually, one important experiment (which I forget the name of like an IDIOT! Sorry...) revealed that humans resolve to crime as a means to survive... or poorer, less educated parts of the world have higher crime rates. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that the more you take away from a person, the less options you give him, the more likely he is to steal, rob, murder, deal (drugs, weapons, etc.) as a means of making money to survive. All this goes to show, there is nothing that says some humans are BORN evil.

Besides, if I were to play devils advocate, here, what IS evil? Who are we to judge right from wrong? Hitler is considered one of the evilest persons to walk the Earth in the history of mankind... though when you stop and think about it, creating a superior race of man is nothing evil. It's just like speeding up natural evolution... though I don't condone what he did and I'm thankful his remains are rotting and being eaten by fat maggots.


sugaredwalls: I don't claim to know what happened on 9/11, but there's enough proof to say Bin Laden's tape was dubbed. Bin Laden was trained by american CIA, was given money to buy WMDs and has been on the most wanted list since 1998 (and you're going to tell me the CIA had never been able to catch him in 3 years before 9/11... yeah... sure...). And is it not a coin-ki-dink that Bush was having dinner with Bin Laden's brother not long before the attacks?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't buy into conspiracies that have zero proof. But there is way too much overwhelming evidence pointing to a "Possible" government setup. Though I don't believe any of the "no planes on 9/11" theories... which are just that... theories. Besides, whether it was a set up or not, the Bush administration manipulated and lied to the people to get what he wanted... is it normal that after 8 years since the attacks we're still fighting? I think, if it were all about vengence, we'd have proven our point by now.


And since I'm here, I'll ask this too: How many have seen *both* Zeitgeist documentaries?

 

[Mac98]

Interestingly, for all the hand wringing about violence, the world really is becoming a kinder and gentler place. "Humans have become less violent, not more, Steven Pinker contends. “Something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”

Tell that to the soldiers overseas or the kids without parents, food or shelter in the Middle East. Tell that to the families in Africa fearing each day that militias or gangs won't come slaughter them...

 

[JohnMBrowning]

Tell that to the soldiers overseas or the kids without parents, food or shelter in the Middle East. Tell that to the families in Africa fearing each day that militias or gangs won't come slaughter them...

The point? That there's no difference between a 15-60 percent chance of dying by violence and a less than 1 percent chance? That there is a difference is just as obvious as the fact that it doesn't matter if you happen to be one of the unfortunate less-than-1 percents. It's pretty darned important for how we all live our lives, however.

 

[Mac98]

Your last comment confused me... :S lol

 

[JohnMBrowning]

Sorry I wasn't clear. You responded to the interesting fact that the amount of violence in human societies has declined with modernity with a bit of harmless but slightly irritating moral posturing, and I attempted to puncture it. How's this:

For the relatively tiny handful of individuals who die by violence in the current era compared to past ones, the overall decline in the frequency of such deaths is meaningless - Duh.

For society as a whole, and for the lives of every individual in it, the fact that death by violence appears to be orders of magnitude less today than in past eras is tremendously meaningful - Cool.

 

[CherryBomb24]

do you know how many people die in other countries or are you basing your ideals on just one?
Go to chicago - the normal is 9 people murdered a day.

 

[Mac98]

JMB: In Europe, in the middle ages, we used to chop a thieves hands... although no one practices this method today in America, there are countries that still do. Also, there are people being killed in gruesome deaths all over the world all the time... Genocides are still going on, only they're silent because the media would rather talk about Brangelina and the latest fashions.

I refuse to believe death by violence has gone down. In America, maybe, but not globaly.

 

[emap]

Actually in a way he is right. No seriously think about it, when was the last time you heard about a skirmish on the borders between two countries or two areas of the same country? When was the last time a country went to war?

Course that actually is the reason behind colisuems and how they calm the population. If they see death on a weekly basis they tend to not want to see more or cause more. Course part of that lays in the fact that criminals generally ended up being part of the entertainment, when it's a fatally painful entertainment breaking laws tends to be a very last resort if you are not mentally driven to it.

In another way he actually is likely wrong, organized killing is way down, unorganized killing on the other hand there isn't much actual data on past era's to know. There are stories of killers in the past, Jack the Ripper, so on so forth, but there is little to no actual data on the entire world as a whole and murders or rapes. Heck rape as a law is something of a more recent development anyway. Which kinda points to needing something of a fatally violent nature doesn't it.

 

[sugaredwalls]

sugaredwalls: I don't claim to know what happened on 9/11, but there's enough proof to say Bin Laden's tape was dubbed. Bin Laden was trained by american CIA, was given money to buy WMDs and has been on the most wanted list since 1998 (and you're going to tell me the CIA had never been able to catch him in 3 years before 9/11... yeah... sure...). And is it not a coin-ki-dink that Bush was having dinner with Bin Laden's brother not long before the attacks?

But you're forgetting why Bin Laden was given weapons by the U.S. They were fighting the Russians, who at that time were our enemy. Had they known what the future would hold, they obviously would not of helped him. We also helped Saddam because Iran was (and still is) our enemy.

The Bush administration was very good at using fear to manipulate Americans but it's a stretch to say they took out a couple of thousand people to do it.

JohnMbrowning made a good point in a prev post saying people talk and that pokes holes in most conspiracy theories. Something of that magnitude, the 9/11 attacks, orchestrated by our own government because we helped Bin Laden launch the attack? That has holes in it the size of Texas.

 

[Mac98]

If they see death on a weekly basis they tend to not want to see more or cause more.

On the other hand, perhaps someone who's never, EVER been exposed to any type of violence won't have the impulse to be violent or want to see violence...

 

[JohnMBrowning]

I refuse to believe death by violence has gone down. In America, maybe, but not globaly.

Well, I provided a link to a New York Times article citing empirical data examined by one of the most eminent anthropooligists of our era - you can read if for yourself. Maybe a reluctance to accept empirical data and epistemological rigor is related to an attraction to fanciful theories divorced from those things.

 

[Mac98]

...You provided a link where? :S sorry, I looked for it and didn't find it... though I haven't slept much, I may just be very tired...

 

[JohnMBrowning]

NYT, 7/15/1009
"Humans have become less violent, not more, Steven Pinker contends. “Something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”

 

[Mac98]

NYT, 7/15/1009
"Humans have become less violent, not more, Steven Pinker contends. “Something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”

Sorry, I didn't think the NYT, 7/15/1009 was a link... my bad. But I would still like to know what studies or experiments they conducted that brought them to this conclusion... it'd be interesting to know...

But say I accept defeat on this one... could we not say, still, that perhaps violence has just been replaced with corruption and disregard to other human lives. For instance, instead of the canadian government (or US for that matter) going out and killing all aboriginals, they take away every liberty and all their land, give them low income jobs in poor parts of the country where education and activities are kept to a strict minimum.. the end result is: Highest rate of suicide in american history. Kids as young as 8 years old (yes, 8 years old) are taking their lives... so technically, they weren't murdered, they weren't killed by the hands of someone else... but...

And that's my argument for the sake of the debate...

 

[JohnMBrowning]

Sorry, I didn't think the NYT, 7/15/1009 was a link... my bad. But I would still like to know what studies or experiments they conducted that brought them to this conclusion... it'd be interesting to know...

But say I accept defeat on this one... could we not say, still, that perhaps violence has just been replaced with corruption and disregard to other human lives. For instance, instead of the canadian government (or US for that matter) going out and killing all aboriginals, they take away every liberty and all their land, give them low income jobs in poor parts of the country where education and activities are kept to a strict minimum.. the end result is: Highest rate of suicide in american history. Kids as young as 8 years old (yes, 8 years old) are taking their lives... so technically, they weren't murdered, they weren't killed by the hands of someone else... but...

And that's my argument for the sake of the debate...

Alright, but lets not lose our perspective on this. Corruption and injustice are part and parcel of the human condition - "if men were angels" resonates because they are decidedly not - but a good case can be made that like the extent of violent death, the depth and magnitude of these has diminished by orders of magnitude.

In China and central Eurasia during the 13th century Genghis Khan killed every man, woman, child, dog, cat and parakeet in cities he conquered, and the news would have hardly generated more than a "tsk tsk" anywhere in the world at that time, because such barbarity was considered "normal." Today we still have our occassional Rwanda and Bosnia, but everywhere they are considered beyond-the-pale outrages. Again, not much help if you're one of the unfortunate Rwandans, Bosnians (or Polish Jews in 1939-45), but any person's chances of being the victim of such barbarity is far, far less today than in past eras.

 

[Mac98]

Alright, but lets not lose our perspective on this. Corruption and injustice are part and parcel of the human condition - "if men were angels" resonates because they are decidedly not - but a good case can be made that like the extent of violent death, the depth and magnitude of these has diminished by orders of magnitude.

In China and central Eurasia during the 13th century Genghis Khan killed every man, woman, child, dog, cat and parakeet in cities he conquered, and the news would have hardly generated more than a "tsk tsk" anywhere in the world at that time, because such barbarity was considered "normal." Today we still have our occassional Rwanda and Bosnia, but everywhere they are considered beyond-the-pale outrages. Again, not much help if you're one of the unfortunate Rwandans, Bosnians (or Polish Jews in 1939-45), but any person's chances of being the victim of such barbarity is far, far less today than in past eras.

tbh, when you watch the news and here about a little girl getting raped and murdered, or you see movies like Hotel Rwanda, the usual reaction will be "tsk tsk"... or "this is an outrage"... before going back to our little lives as if nothing happened.

Also, the point I was trying to make was that today, we/they may not slaughter people physically, no... but they still have tactics of getting rid of what's unwanted. Besides, it's easy to say violence has gone down when we live in american suburbs (which, I know, is a huge assumption on my part), but I'm not sure we'd have the same opinion if we were to live in darfur or Iraq... Our reality is much different from the global reality.

This is why I'd be curious to know what experiments or studies they did to come to the conclusion that violence is going down...

 

[CherryBomb24]

never mind.
if i say anything or even continue to read these posts i'm just going to get annoyed.