Hello everybody, thanks for being here with us. My name is Brandon Kristy.
The title for this presentation is "The Case for Human Unity."
The first part, we'll be discussing how unity
appears to be a natural progression for us as a species,
based on the universal dynamic of unity
being virtually expressed in all of life,
and on the critical role that unity has had in our human evolution.
The second part looks at "Human Division," where
we basically struggle against each other for survival on a global scale.
Part III, False Divisions, [is] a quick part about how the notion
of division is a narrow and really false perception of the world,
and that our observable human-earth oneness really returns us to reality
as the most relevant and productive view to hold.
And the fourth section, "Unity"
looks at what the powerful benefits would be of a unified global society,
as contrasted to today, and ends with some closing points.
Part I. Progression to Global Unity
Human unity has been been an issue of survival;
it's not just a lovely thought.
Defined as the state of being one, or whole,
unity is expressed virtually everywhere in life.
The Earth itself is a unified, living, interconnected system
made up of interacting parts, attached to,
and a part of, progressively larger unified living system wholes.
Cooperation -the act of working together for common gain
and achieving more than being on your own -is
also widespread throughout nature as a common survival strategy,
expressed at many levels of life, from bacteria to living organisms to
social structures of birds and in insects, and it's universal in mammals.
And we know that the evolution of life
evolved from this kind of cooperative way
at the cellular level, when life was just forming on Earth.
Inside cells, when the lower competing units of those cells
would start to cooperate with each other,
cells started to form more and more complex life forms.
Competition -the struggle between, and within, species for survival -
is also widespread throughout nature, as a means of survival.
Cooperation and competition are the activism of life to survive,
and it's no surprise that our social mode
has been based on these two varying roles throughout our evolution.
Today, competition is the basis for our social structure
in what we call "the competitive market system,"
but our capacities for cooperation and unity are ever-present.
Cooperation has its roots in the early stages of our evolution.
The culture of cooperation was a very successful survival strategy,
and we owe our evolution to our pro-social abilities
to work together in communities.
It benefited us to help each other as support was lent back,
creating a mutually supportive group-team.
Not only did this social unity work for us,
but our very human biology is wired for it.
The more connected we feel to others, the healthier and happier we are.
Culture in general is full of evidence of this need to be connected,
from the social media phenomenon, to public events,
and if you look around there's kind of like this social nature
to everything that we do.
Through our early evolutionary, cooperative behavior
our young species succeeded, and in time, populations increased.
As populations increased, another major driver of human evolution
that has continued to shape our values and cultures today
is technical innovation.
From early stone and bone tools, to early farming and agriculture,
to early developments in transportation and energy harnessing,
to the Industrial Revolution that transformed our economy at the time,
to the modern day of space exploration
and the global Internet technology and awarenesses,
always resulted in increasingly more connected, more interdependent paradigms
that conformed to the technical reality and awarenesses of the times.
Human society has changed greatly over time,
as our advancements continue to connect us in larger and larger ways,
where we are now more and more a unified, interdependent, world community.
Now, harm done in one part of the world affects the entire population.
And with that basic realization,
we now find that one's personal world of survival
becomes strangely and ironically self-sabotaging,
because at the end of the day, we all directly or indirectly influence society,
society which influences us.
So, it is more and more now in all of our self-interest
to have a responsibility for the obvious reciprocal roles
that we have in society.
Throughout our evolution, one's survival, activism and awareness
could only afford to extend to one's family or community
at the exclusion of outsider groups.
As we gained experience in the world and got better at surviving,
communities grew. But survival was crude, resources were scarce,
and the social environment was still competitive,
setting the stage for the competitive division paradigm we exist in today.
Part II. Division
Human society is based on a multi-level division and competition,
from the local and global level,
consisting of nation-states, race, creed, social class distinctions,
giving this illusion that we are all inherently different,
and that we should act upon that perspective,
when in fact we share only a common human experience.
Given this historical divisionary view,
along with the environmental scarcity that has really always been with us,
it's easy to see how we built our economic approaches
and philosophies around this view, where
humanity today still struggles essentially against itself
in an advanced form of competing for survival.
This divisionary mode of interaction
is no longer relevant to us in the modern day,
carrying with it major consequences
such as: scarcity, war, crime and corruption, inefficiencies,
environmental harm, a hostile social environment,
and serves as a great hindrance to our human progress.
Here's a quick overview of some of these consequences.
War. War is an age-old tradition fetish of
dominating over each other out of fear,
yet at the same time, this pattern is being really provoked
by the very nature of our still-survivalist social mode itself,
where control over land and resources still equate to group advantage
and hence ensured survival. War is also a profitable industry,
bringing in about one-and-a-half trillion dollars annually,
further reinforcing the pattern.
The applications of modern technology,
nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, to warfare,
make it increasingly easier and quicker
to kill ourselves in greater numbers.
This kind of destructive power really threatens the whole planet now
that we all share,
making it all the more critical that nations learn to find common ground
for mutual benefit, to actually achieve the goal of peace.
Crime and Corruption: mainly motivated by the need to survive
regardless of the social and environmental costs,
whether it's scavenging for food, recyclables, or it's stolen property,
or it's the highest corporate crimes,
the lines of what's legal or right are blurred up and down the scale,
as the divisionary structure of human economic interaction is based
on this doing whatever is necessary to "make it."
Inefficiency: Competing and not working together
is inefficient from a fundamental standpoint,
putting a drain on valuable resources and energy overall,
causing much more injury and loss than good.
The economic operations of our human division and competition today,
as expressed in these pictures, are extremely inefficient.
Production and distribution of goods are non-localized.
When you look at it, it's non-streamlined,
shipped from long distances, criss-crossing all over the planet.
Transportation systems are a mess;
our methods for harnessing and converting energy [are]
inefficient and really dirty.
There are hundreds of millions of undernourished people in the world,
and at the same time there's hundreds of millions of
overweight people in the world,
a severe imbalance and inefficiency.
There's also a great waste of time, which is really valuable,
where people literally sit in hours of traffic a day, people waiting in lines,
and the general navigating of the needless complexity of modern-day society.
Environmental Harm: With such inefficiencies
naturally comes environmental harm and waste,
with rampant pollution to our soil and water, our atmosphere,
also noise and light pollution,
all outcomes of a divisionary competitive structure, where
individuals and businesses have to attain and maintain a profit,
as priority, out of return.
Social Hostility:
Our environment is hostile at the social and macro levels,
with the pressures and stress that come with having
to prove your worth daily, in a competitive environment,
and with the inherent social class inequality,
that is structured right in to our economic model,
where some literally have less right to life than others.
This unfair and unnecessary structural violence
is a major source of crime, stress and behavioral conflicts in general.
World division and competition greatly hinders progress,
as successes, ideas, new technology, new information,
are not shared, but are restricted by competitors for advantage.
New improvements that can benefit all of society
are literally restricted and withheld, and protected.
With division and competition and scarcity and trade and exchange,
comes naturally this thing called "cost," which is very very limiting,
where as a species we are literally unable to afford our own progress.
Stepping back here, from a purely technical standpoint,
just looking at the Earth, a resource-abundant humane global system
that ensures the quality of life for everyone, is a reality.
It's really no longer technically necessary
or rational to compete against each other
as a world society, as we do today, in our economic traditions.
It is only reasonable to unite globally
and harness the global potential.
Part III. False Divisions
Divisions are obviously false.
Distinctions are made only for the sake of communication.
The earth is about 4.5 billion years old,
a unified, interconnected system, as Jason was describing,
consisting of many interacting life systems.
There's a physical order to the natural earth environment
in which all species interact.
This common ground experience
virtually transcends all notions of cultural division.
Since our survival and quality of life as a species
depends upon how well we interact with the natural world,
based on our emerging understanding of it,
our worldview and economic methods should always be applied
in the most relevant and encompassing context that we can observe.
From this perspective,
nation-states and other widespread social divisions
are clearly arbitrary and false divisions.
And we can acknowledge and respect this reality that
we are a single-species community, trying to make it on a planet in space,
and harness this community potential, to the benefit of all of us, or not.
Part IV. Unity
Our future is world unity,
one of positive interdependence
holding great possibilities for future sustainability.
As we evolve out of our long-assumed default mode of division
and competition, and begin to harness our collectivity,
developing a world system that reflects that potential
and that reflects our growing understanding of both ourselves and the Earth,
a very different world emerges, where many of the conditions
that motivate, and are the main cause of, problems today
would simply not exist, structurally or socially.
By collectively applying our current potentials for harnessing clean energy,
applying automation to labor and setting up networks for high speed transit,
and a cooperative, unified world economy
that could easily meet the life needs for our global population at a high level,
energy and resource abundance would become a reality,
and eliminating the need to engage
in the false life-system of financial exchange,
gone with its many consequences and irrelevancies.
In a unified world, true security and peace
could obviously never really come from retaliatory cycles of
violence and force and intimidation,
but could only come from a global solidarity,
a global consciousness, right?
Patriotic loyalty to one's "homeland" is really inward and exclusive,
rooted in superiority and fear, which only fuels tensions
between the people of the world, not cohesion and peace.
Global unity would be efficient,
as working together transcends the dysfunctional barriers of affordability.
Economic methods of transportation, production, distribution of goods,
energy harnessing, could all be optimized directly,
based on what's technically possible, not financially possible.
People's awareness and concern could now shift
from one's own personal world of survival to that of the global society,
fostering truly sustainable environmental awareness.
Social unity creates well-being and synergy.
Division creates clash and stagnation.
In closing, competing against each other is a primitive survival mode,
characteristic of an early stage of evolutionary development,
with no relevance to empathic, cooperative, modern-day
human society, with a scientific awareness and technology
that can support the entire human population.
Our evolution, from small communities
to being progressively connected in larger social organizations,
implies a new global age.
And with the ongoing consequences of human division,
a move to unity is not just a natural evolutionary progression,
but is a pressing necessity to the times.
The Zeitgeist Movement is a worldwide response
to this imperative for unity.
The Movement recognizes that a shared global consciousness
is an essential step towards this.
Its activism, in part, seeks to unify the human family
through this basic perspective, that we all share this planet,
and that all nations must disarm and learn to share resources
and ideas if we expect to survive in the long term.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
The Zeitgeist Movement