Posts
Source: vimeo.com
Social Pathology | The Zeitgeist Movement | NYC 2010 ZDAY -Lecture by Peter Joseph *Some audio had to be replaced due to static problems. >Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Social Pathology | The Zeitgeist Movement | NYC 2010
ZDAY
by peter
joseph
The social order, as we know it, is created out of ideas,
either directly or as a systemic consequence.
In other words, somebody somewhere did something which generated a group interest,
which then led to the implementation of a specific social component,
either in a physical form, philosophical form, or both.
Once a given set of ideas are intrusted by a large enough group of people,
it becomes an institution.
And once that institution is made dominant in some way,
while existing for a certain period of time,
that institution can then be considered an establishment.
Institutional establishments are simply social traditions giving the illusion of permanence.
In turn, the more established they become,
the more cultural influence they tend to have on us,
including our values and hence our identities and perspectives.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the established institutions
governing a person's environment is no less than a conditioning platform
to program, if you will,
that person with a specific set of values required to maintain the establishment.
Hence, we are going to call these 'established value programs.'
I have found the analogy of computer programming to be a great way to frame this point.
While there is always a debate about genetics, an environmental influence which,
by the way, as I mentioned Roxanne Meadows will go into at length, later in the program,
it's very easy to understand in the context of values,
meaning what you think is important and not important,
that information influences or conditioning is coming from the world around you.
Make no mistake,
every intellectual concept, which each one of us finds merit with,
is the result of a cultural information influence, one way or another.
The environment is a self-perpetuating programming process,
and just like designing a software program for your computer,
each human being is, advertently and inadvertently, programmed into their world view.
To continue the analogy,
the human brain is a piece of hardware
and the environment around you constitutes the programming team
which creates the values and perspective.
Every word you know has been taught to you one way or another,
and thus, every concept and belief you have is a result of this same influence.
Jacque Fresco once asked me, 'How much of you is you?'
The answer, of course, is kind of a paradox,
for either nothing is me, or everything is me,
when it comes to the information I understand and act upon.
Information is a serial process,
meaning the only way that a human being can come up with any idea
is through taking independent information that allows that idea to be realized.
We appear to be culturally programmed from the moment we are coming to this world
to the moment we die.
And I'm not gonna' drill in it much more than that.
However, consequently, the cultural attributes we maintain as important values
are most often the ones that are reinforced by the external culture.
I'm gonna' say that again.
The most dominant cultural attributes maintained
are the ones that are reinforced by your environment.
If you are born into a society which rewards competition over collaboration,
then you most likely will adopt those values in order to survive.
The point is, we are essentially bio-chemical machines.
And while the integrity of our machine processing power
and memory is contingent, in part, on genetics,
the source of our actions come fundamentally
from the ideas and experiences installed on our mental hardware by the world around us.
However, our biological computer, the human mind,
has an evolutionarily installed operating system, if you will,
with some seemingly difficult tendencies built in
which tends to limit our objectivity and, hence, our rational thought process.
This comes in the form of emotional inclinations.
Contrary to popular belief, evidence now shows that our early human ancestors,
which predate the Neolithic Revolution,
really didn't live in a state of perpetual conflict and extreme scarcity
as many anthropologists early on had assumed.
In fact, hunter-gatherer societies were a very unique arrangement
immersed in both a restrictive yet self-regulating environmental paradigm.
Before the advent of agriculture, there was very little control over what was available.
You didn't have agriculture, you couldn't control the environment.
So, what happened is a natural balance was in order.
And the societies themselves seemed to reflect this balance by having, in fact,
non-hierarchical, noncompetitive, leaderless social structures.
In fact, it has been found that their value systems, their social values,
were essentially based on equality, altruism and sharing.
And they literally forbid upstart-ism, dominance and aggression, and egoism.
We know this today because of anthropological research done
on remaining hunter-gatherer societies around the world
such as the Piraha, which is how is pronunciated, out of Brazil.
Amazingly it appears that well over
- it is important point, for anyone that tells you that the current system is natural -
for well over 90% of the human beings' existence; human species' existence,
on this planet as we know it,
we were within social organizations that did not use money, that did not have hierarchy,
and even had 'counter-dominance strategies,'
where the majority would work together to shut down
any individual that was trying to gain power and control.
Pretty much the reverse of what we have today.
The Neolithic Revolution changed all of that.
It provided human beings with an ability to control their environment more intently.
The sustenance of life could now be cultivated essentially at will.
Now, while this advent would appear as a profound benefit to all,
it also introduced some pesky social problems
as a result of conditioning attributes which we still deal with today.
In the view of anthropologist and Professor of Neurology at Stanford University, Dr. Robert Sapolsky,
'Hunter-Gatherers have thousands of wild sources of food to subsist on.
Agriculture changed all of that,
generating an overwhelming reliance on a few dozen food sources.
Agriculture allowed for the stockpiling of surplus resources and thus, inevitably,
the unequal stockpiling of them,
stratification of society and the invention of classes.
Thus, it has allowed for the invention of poverty.'
Since this dramatic change in the structure of human society, the creation of imbalances has continued
and social stratification and income inequality are now staples of the modern world as we all know.
In fact, many who are unfamiliar with human history
would probably consider these attributes again to be part of some 'natural human order;'
it's so pervasive today.
We have gone from food cultivation, to commodity bartering, to gold exchange,
to metal-backed certificate exchange, to fiat currency.
We went from a system with values reflective of true natural processes
to a system of values based on certificates of ownership traded for income on their own,
virtually - I'd say not even virtually - completely decoupled from physical resources.
And we have come from a world based on necessity,
and social drive for preservation and sustainability,
to a world based on strategic manipulation,
pointless materialism, and obsession with property and ownership.
In the words of historian, philosopher David Hume,
'The first man who, after enclosing a piece of ground,
took it into his head to say this is mine,
and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders,
how many misfortunes and horrors would that man have saved the species,
who pulling up stakes or filling up the ditches,
should have cried to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor.
You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all,
and the Earth itself to nobody.'
Moreover, scarcity is now a driving force for commerce.
In our system scarcity equals profit.
The less there is of something, the more it can be valued in terms of money.
In other words, abundance is a negative thing in a profit system.
In the words of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins [corrected],
'The market industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled,
and to a degree nowhere else approximated
where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices,
and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending,
insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity.'
Likewise, I'd like to point out, as a simple aside,
that the money supply in America, at all times,
has less in value than the outstanding transactions required.
In other words, there isn't and never will be,
in the American money supply or most other money supplies on the planet,
enough money in existence, at any one time,
to cover the outstanding transactions within the economy.
Money is created out of debt, through loans.
And interest is charged for those loans,
whether it's a government bond or a personal home equity loan.
If every single debt was called in right now in our economy
there would be enormous amount of money that is literally impossible
to payback in domestic currency.
http://vimeo.com/10707453
ZDAY
by peter
joseph
The social order, as we know it, is created out of ideas,
either directly or as a systemic consequence.
In other words, somebody somewhere did something which generated a group interest,
which then led to the implementation of a specific social component,
either in a physical form, philosophical form, or both.
Once a given set of ideas are intrusted by a large enough group of people,
it becomes an institution.
And once that institution is made dominant in some way,
while existing for a certain period of time,
that institution can then be considered an establishment.
Institutional establishments are simply social traditions giving the illusion of permanence.
In turn, the more established they become,
the more cultural influence they tend to have on us,
including our values and hence our identities and perspectives.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the established institutions
governing a person's environment is no less than a conditioning platform
to program, if you will,
that person with a specific set of values required to maintain the establishment.
Hence, we are going to call these 'established value programs.'
I have found the analogy of computer programming to be a great way to frame this point.
While there is always a debate about genetics, an environmental influence which,
by the way, as I mentioned Roxanne Meadows will go into at length, later in the program,
it's very easy to understand in the context of values,
meaning what you think is important and not important,
that information influences or conditioning is coming from the world around you.
Make no mistake,
every intellectual concept, which each one of us finds merit with,
is the result of a cultural information influence, one way or another.
The environment is a self-perpetuating programming process,
and just like designing a software program for your computer,
each human being is, advertently and inadvertently, programmed into their world view.
To continue the analogy,
the human brain is a piece of hardware
and the environment around you constitutes the programming team
which creates the values and perspective.
Every word you know has been taught to you one way or another,
and thus, every concept and belief you have is a result of this same influence.
Jacque Fresco once asked me, 'How much of you is you?'
The answer, of course, is kind of a paradox,
for either nothing is me, or everything is me,
when it comes to the information I understand and act upon.
Information is a serial process,
meaning the only way that a human being can come up with any idea
is through taking independent information that allows that idea to be realized.
We appear to be culturally programmed from the moment we are coming to this world
to the moment we die.
And I'm not gonna' drill in it much more than that.
However, consequently, the cultural attributes we maintain as important values
are most often the ones that are reinforced by the external culture.
I'm gonna' say that again.
The most dominant cultural attributes maintained
are the ones that are reinforced by your environment.
If you are born into a society which rewards competition over collaboration,
then you most likely will adopt those values in order to survive.
The point is, we are essentially bio-chemical machines.
And while the integrity of our machine processing power
and memory is contingent, in part, on genetics,
the source of our actions come fundamentally
from the ideas and experiences installed on our mental hardware by the world around us.
However, our biological computer, the human mind,
has an evolutionarily installed operating system, if you will,
with some seemingly difficult tendencies built in
which tends to limit our objectivity and, hence, our rational thought process.
This comes in the form of emotional inclinations.
Contrary to popular belief, evidence now shows that our early human ancestors,
which predate the Neolithic Revolution,
really didn't live in a state of perpetual conflict and extreme scarcity
as many anthropologists early on had assumed.
In fact, hunter-gatherer societies were a very unique arrangement
immersed in both a restrictive yet self-regulating environmental paradigm.
Before the advent of agriculture, there was very little control over what was available.
You didn't have agriculture, you couldn't control the environment.
So, what happened is a natural balance was in order.
And the societies themselves seemed to reflect this balance by having, in fact,
non-hierarchical, noncompetitive, leaderless social structures.
In fact, it has been found that their value systems, their social values,
were essentially based on equality, altruism and sharing.
And they literally forbid upstart-ism, dominance and aggression, and egoism.
We know this today because of anthropological research done
on remaining hunter-gatherer societies around the world
such as the Piraha, which is how is pronunciated, out of Brazil.
Amazingly it appears that well over
- it is important point, for anyone that tells you that the current system is natural -
for well over 90% of the human beings' existence; human species' existence,
on this planet as we know it,
we were within social organizations that did not use money, that did not have hierarchy,
and even had 'counter-dominance strategies,'
where the majority would work together to shut down
any individual that was trying to gain power and control.
Pretty much the reverse of what we have today.
The Neolithic Revolution changed all of that.
It provided human beings with an ability to control their environment more intently.
The sustenance of life could now be cultivated essentially at will.
Now, while this advent would appear as a profound benefit to all,
it also introduced some pesky social problems
as a result of conditioning attributes which we still deal with today.
In the view of anthropologist and Professor of Neurology at Stanford University, Dr. Robert Sapolsky,
'Hunter-Gatherers have thousands of wild sources of food to subsist on.
Agriculture changed all of that,
generating an overwhelming reliance on a few dozen food sources.
Agriculture allowed for the stockpiling of surplus resources and thus, inevitably,
the unequal stockpiling of them,
stratification of society and the invention of classes.
Thus, it has allowed for the invention of poverty.'
Since this dramatic change in the structure of human society, the creation of imbalances has continued
and social stratification and income inequality are now staples of the modern world as we all know.
In fact, many who are unfamiliar with human history
would probably consider these attributes again to be part of some 'natural human order;'
it's so pervasive today.
We have gone from food cultivation, to commodity bartering, to gold exchange,
to metal-backed certificate exchange, to fiat currency.
We went from a system with values reflective of true natural processes
to a system of values based on certificates of ownership traded for income on their own,
virtually - I'd say not even virtually - completely decoupled from physical resources.
And we have come from a world based on necessity,
and social drive for preservation and sustainability,
to a world based on strategic manipulation,
pointless materialism, and obsession with property and ownership.
In the words of historian, philosopher David Hume,
'The first man who, after enclosing a piece of ground,
took it into his head to say this is mine,
and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders,
how many misfortunes and horrors would that man have saved the species,
who pulling up stakes or filling up the ditches,
should have cried to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor.
You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all,
and the Earth itself to nobody.'
Moreover, scarcity is now a driving force for commerce.
In our system scarcity equals profit.
The less there is of something, the more it can be valued in terms of money.
In other words, abundance is a negative thing in a profit system.
In the words of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins [corrected],
'The market industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled,
and to a degree nowhere else approximated
where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices,
and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending,
insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity.'
Likewise, I'd like to point out, as a simple aside,
that the money supply in America, at all times,
has less in value than the outstanding transactions required.
In other words, there isn't and never will be,
in the American money supply or most other money supplies on the planet,
enough money in existence, at any one time,
to cover the outstanding transactions within the economy.
Money is created out of debt, through loans.
And interest is charged for those loans,
whether it's a government bond or a personal home equity loan.
If every single debt was called in right now in our economy
there would be enormous amount of money that is literally impossible
to payback in domestic currency.
http://vimeo.com/10707453
0 comments:
Post a Comment