In fact, members of society often become so indoctrinated by their socially acceptable
norms, that each person's very meaning is framed by the dominant established value system
and the interpretation of new information is consciously, or even sub-consciously, prefiltered
to be consistent with their prior biases. Now, this basic idea understood, let's hone
our focus and briefly consider this mind-lock phenomenon, as you could call it, in the context
of economics, specifically, market economics. Actually, a more accurate term at this stage
would be 'economic theology'. For, as this presentation will explore, the majority of
people on this planet not only have no idea how they are being affected negatively by
the market economy at large, they actually, on average, hold a steadfast commitment to
its principles based on nothing more than the traditional indoctrination. I got an email
once that said to me, "If you're against the free market, you're against freedom." (Laughter)
And, naturally, I shuddered at this state of mind control that the dominant established
orthodoxy has successfully imposed. Of course, this is how power is maintained and has been
maintained by the dominant, established orthodoxies since the beginning of time. And the trick,
again, is to condition people so thoroughly into the established value systems, that any
thought of an alternative is inherently ruled out without critical examination. And to show
how deeply pervasive this phenomenon is, you will notice that virtually all the activist
organizations in the environmental, social, and political movements of the day always
exclude the market system itself as a determinant of harmful effects. It doesn't even occur
to them. Instead, they focus on individuals and certain groups or corrupt corporations,
and while, you know, it is needed on a per-case basis to target problematic areas, it avoids
the mechanism which is essentially creating the problem. This is the fatal flaw of what's
happening in the so-called activist community today. And, as will be firmly and clearly
established over the course of this presentation, the greatest destroyer of ecology; the greatest
source of waste and pollution; the greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, inhumanity,
poverty, and social distortion; the greatest generator of social and personal neurosis,
mental disorders, depression, anxiety; and the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping
us from moving into new methodologies for global sustainability and hence progress on
this planet; is not some government. It's not some legislation. It's not some rogue
corporation or monopoly or cartel. It's not some flaw of human nature. It is, in fact,
the economic system itself, at its very foundation. The market system, monetary system, free market,
capitalist structure, whatever you wanna call it, is not only the source of some of the
greatest social problems we face today; it is also setting us up for what could be called
the terminal stage of this disease, where the pathogenic social value cancer has mutated
and multiplied to a point where we are now faced with nothing less than the death or
collapse of modern civilization as we know it. Now please understand, I'm not a doom's
day theorist. I'm not here looking for general knee-jerk emotional reactions to say it's
the end of the world. It doesn't take a genius to see where the trends are going, the trends
that the media won't talk about, and given the pattern of political, economic, and environmental
negligence and abuse, we are on a collision course, which I will explain as we continue.
Are there solutions to these problems? Yes, there are. But they are so far outside of
the status quo, and a threat to those in power, both politically and economically, that they
are just outright dismissed as irrational and absurd. The self-appointed guardians of
the status quo won't even hear it, because it's far outside of their reference and identity.
Here's a few examples of some of the things that are currently happening right now and
there's many more. These are just a few that have popped up in the mainstream media. This
is where The Zeitgeist Movement comes in. I'm really sorry to say, we can no longer
rely on government institutions to steer us in the right direction. Every government on
this planet is locked into an economically-oriented social program which is self-serving, unsustainable,
and destructive to one degree or another. The possibility of a smooth transition into
a new enlightened social design, which does not have the negative byproducts, which I'm
going to talk about, is extremely limited, given the options made available in the current
order; meaning the legal system, the political system, etc. Likewise, we can no longer endure
the profit-driven ethos of the corporate and financial powers which control all of our
precious resources on the planet, resources we all need for survival. Society today is
sick and the illness permeates all life systems within it, and I see The Zeitgeist Movement
as the immune system of the social world, if you will. [applause] Thank you. Chapter
one: Diagnosis. Before I begin this analysis of the social condition, we need to first
consider the problem of value and cultural relativism. People today tend to think that
their ideas are equal to others' ideas, regardless of supportive information. This obsession
with opinion has created a frame of reference for so many people today, which has no physical
referent, where evidence becomes inconvenient and ultimately, people think that everything
is equal. And you get this argument a lot, I'm sure you've all experienced this. It's
a very, very specific point. Everyone is not equal in their opinion. It's impossible, as
quaint and convenient as such a concept might seem. The ultimate question becomes, "What
actually deserves belief?" What is important to everyone on this planet, and how do we
maintain our well-being, both personally and socially, in a sustainable way? What is the
indisputable common ground, which can all be agreed on, in a world of Christians, Muslims,
Capitalists, Socialists, Atheists, Anarchists, Scientologists, Republicans? What can we all
agree on? Well, here's one thing that's universal: being healthy versus being sick. Being healthy
is a preferred value preference, you could say. Normal versus pathological states, hence
healthy versus diseased states, provide an incontrovertible value basis for all individuals
and societies. Virtually all people in all societies prefer to be alive and healthy,
last I checked. There is no cultural relativism about whether having good food to eat, staying
away from cancer, or having unpolluted water to drink, is a good value to have. Therefore,
our analysis of the health of society is not going to be based on GDP, consumer price index,
the state of the stock market, economic growth, unemployment levels or employment levels,
free trade agreements, or any other commonly referenced economic attribute used to claim
that society is "improving" or "growing". Instead, we will examine things that actually
matter, such as rates of disease, poverty, social capital, trust, conflicts, corruption,
planetary depletion, pollution, murder rates, life expectancy, educational performance,
imprisonment rates, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, etc. These are things that
actually matter. So let's begin. 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,
non-competitive, 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 - and this is an 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 they 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.