Eerie Investigations meet Peter Joseph
Director of Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist Addendum
Zeitgeist, meaning spirit or mood of the time,
is the film of the time.
Produced as a personal creative project,
it was made available on the Internet
and quickly became a global phenomenon.
Its comprehensive coverage of the facts behind Religion,
9/11 and the finance system
caused such an explosion in popularity
that Google's video counters reached their limits at 15 million views.
In October 2008, the second film "Zeitgeist: Addendum" was released.
Covering the banking system, its negative effects on humanity
and designs for an alternative, new and improved future.
Peter Joseph, Director of "Zeitgeist" and "Zeitgeist: Addendum"
talks with us about his reasons and inspirations
for creating both films, and his hopes for the future of Humankind.
Hi Peter, thank you so much for finding the time to talk to us today.
I know you've had a really busy schedule while you've been in England.
And, obviously we're here to talk about "Zeitgeist" - Of course.
- "Zeitgeist: Addendum" - Thank you for having me.
It's fantastic, we're so pleased about that.
First, before we kind of jump into "Zeitgeist"
If you could just tell me
a little bit about yourself, what you do, your background,
and why you started this project?
Well, as a commercial producer in New York,
it was very unfulfilling for the most part.
You walk the line, you have your job as anyone does,
and ultimately, I've always had other aspirations creatively
so I was engaged in other projects such as film making projects,
off-Broadway projects and multimedia projects.
So I had a pattern of doing this independently, on my own, in New York
even though it was never really for money or anything like that.
And as time went on I started to realize that there's a lot of
really terrible, sinister issues going on in the world
and I decided that it would be to my advantage
and to the advantage of society and actually to my own satisfaction,
to do something that would have not just
an artistic element for the sake of art, but something
that would actually be beneficial to the system,
because art without conscience, in a lot of ways
is kind of meaningless, I've come to find.
I think as time moves forward, you look back at what contributions
of art have really endured, they actually have a great presence
to them as far as how they relate to the human condition.
You go back to J.S. Bach and the Church
and just all of these elements that come forward with art
that has a relevance to it outside of just for the sake of art.
So a painting not for the sake of painting, but a painting for the sake of
actually communicating something about humanity
and the social conditions of the time perhaps.
So, "Zeitgeist" was an attempt to combine my artistic interests
with some social cause or social interest.
And I think what triggered it was 9/11
because of how catastrophic the event was, and then as time went on,
information began to come out,
about how ridiculous the government's account of the story was,
and then you began to see who actually gained from this,
as time went on, with the wars and the corporations.
So, my initial trigger for "Zeitgeist" the original movie was 9/11,
so to speak. And then as I was approaching this
to create an artistic work representing it
which by the way the original "Zeitgeist" was shown
as a multimedia work in lower Manhattan initially
with no intent to be an actual release, at all.
It was shown for six nights, for free, to an activist group
who came in, and then it was thrown up online afterwards
and then it just happened to erupt with interest. - Exploded.
Which, by the way, put me in a very precarious position,
because I didn't own the rights to a certain amount of it.
It was all friends I had made in the movement and things like this
so I had to retroactively go through this big mess.
As far as the film itself, religion was always
very interesting to me, ever since I was a child.
I was never raised in a really rigid religious environment,
but I was around it to a certain degree. My family's families
were very Catholic, my parents were not particularly religious.
- Yes, I was raised as catholic also. - Right. - And I went
to a Catholic school for a little while so I got to experience this,
and as a child, there was always something strange to me.
In one class I'd be in science, and then in one class
I'd go to this little church situation and, even at a young age,
there was a strange dichotomy to me that didn't make any sense.
And not to say that all religions don't have a value.
They actually all very much do, historically. And a lot of people
who see the film get the wrong impression about
what I'm trying to say about religion.
In the first film, I deal with the history of religion
that's sort of a history that no one really talks about
because it's not the established representation. - Pattern. - Right
I must admit that when I first watched that myself,
I was absolutely flabbergasted when you
show how the Christ religion and how many others came in
under very similar situations and that absolutely knocked my socks off
because I never knew anything like that.
- Yes, the dying and resurrecting god man. - That's right!
- Has been going on for millenia, for ages
and it's a symbolic rebirth, as early pagan ideology,
it's where you're born again, all these... - because it goes right to
the Druidism and the Solar Cross, Myth of the sun.
- It's age old, exactly.
And it has multiple symbolisms, apart from the Sun as being its core.
Astrotheology is the terminology used to describe this stellar
and solar element that has basically been transmuted
and transformed into the historical religions
that we think these attributes are actual history, when if you look
far enough back, you see that it's basically pure allegory.
And even if there were certain characters that emerged historically
say in Christianity, there probably was somebody
that fulfilled some role that this Christ character assumed.
But by the time the Bible came to fruition,
the Christ character was transformed into a totally mythological figure.
So there really isn't a historical element, there is no documentation of
a historical Christ. In that, it's very challenged, of course...
- So where do we stand with the Bible,
because, there are so many books in there talking about the Christ
so, I guess you must have miffed off a lot of Christians
when you put this out there. - And they misinterpret, I believe,
because even if he didn't exist it doesn't matter,
it's the message - It is the message, yes!
Religion has a propensity toward materialism, they don't call it
materialism, but they hold onto something
and they really can't break away from it
and that's the definition of materialism in my mind.
So to think that, just because this character didn't exist
this demeans the whole thing, is not necessarily the case,
if you want to drive for pure superstition, then yes
it is the case, which of course I don't advocate.
I think philosophy is much more important than
philosophy, superstition is a derogatory sort of term.
But when it comes to these notions of
the man dying for your sins. I think these are misconstrued.
I think there's no real relevance to it. And it's based on this sort of
control mechanism that you are guilty the moment you are born,
and he died for your sins - Original sin
- Yes. It's distorted on one side and then there's also kernels of truth
that speak to the human condition like "love thy neighbor".
- So everything gets mixed up together, doesn't it?
- It does, and, to speak a little more about that,
the Christ character is very much composite, because,
there is a lot of dichotomy in his rhetoric.
In one passage he says : "I don't bring peace, I bring a sword",
"I want to have your neighbor against neighbor" and then
in another passage it's "Love thy neighbor and love your enemies".
- So it's a bit of a mixed message, isn't it really?
- Well, because it's a composite text, and that makes sense
you find these dichotomies, these ying and yangs
happening through lots of different God men that have existed,
so that's why it's even more proof that it's-
- On the research that you've done on all these different
characters in history who come in as religious leaders, icons.
Which ones would you say, actually really, do you believe, did exist?
- As far as the major religions? - Any religion
- I think it's obvious that the later religions, there's some of them.
Muhammad existed, that's well documented by historians.
But the farther you go back, the more the characters
become more elusive in their definition.
Buddha, I'd question if Buddha existed.
His symbology is extremely solar, just like Krishna.
And these, of course, are thousands of years before Christ.
It's just, almost, I don't really focus on it frankly,
I don't really think if they exist or not it matters, but if you go back
far enough there really is no historical documentation, secular.
So, if you can't find that, then all you're looking at
is the faith based texts,
which are inherently biased because of what they actually are.
So, I really couldn't tell you. I think, obviously,
that Allah didn't exist per se.
It's the god that was a redefined element
from the old testament and the new testament.
And then, Muhammad, I guess,
definitely did exist because it was
not that far along, it was 800, 900 years after Christ and there are,
actual historical documentations. I think he's been interpolated,
just as all... all of them have,
they take the prior faiths, and they just build upon it.
They are emerging culminations, but the characters are in the stories.
You tend to find this throughout all religious texts,
even I think, to modern religions,
and you find all sorts of strange things, like Scientology,
things like this, that continue these types of patterns.
So, I think the sadness to me is that most religions are arrogant,
and they don't realize that they are interconnected.
And I think if they realized it, there wouldn't be so much dispute.
I mean, the problem with religious texts in general
is that they are semantically interpreted.
Christianity alone has about 34,000 different subgroups,
and they all are slightly at odds with each other.
The Seventh Day Adventists, you know. They all have these tiny
little variations of interpretation. I believe that's very dichotomous
and, in the end, my major argument
towards religion is that it's completely divisive of humanity.
So, It's not progressive. It has crumbs of truth,
but I think it's time most move beyond these dogmas,
and these faiths that really tend to separate humanity because
nothing is going to come positive from that type of awareness
- Well, I was talking to someone the other day about this
we all want to work together as one humanity, but,
it's like, there's groups, and then there's groups within groups.
As I was saying to someone the other day, "You're pink and I'm blue",
we're still trying to aim for the same things, but it just dissects people
all the time. And in this culture where the world is becoming
a smaller place, it's so sad that we're not coming together
and we seem to be spreading further apart.
- Somewhat - Yeah, and it's really sad that, you know,
everybody is in their own camp and they don't want to come together
- Right - Because there's one slight difference
- Sure, everyone sees the differences between each other,
they tend not to see the similarities.
In the new film, I have a quote by Carl Sagan which is very nice,
which is like :"If an extraterrestrial visitor came to the planet,
they would probably recognize all the similarities
between the species, and tend to see differences as trivial"
because we all function in the same environment,
we all have the same needs fundamentally.
So I think it's a flaw of consciousness that's happened.
And I would say, to give it a rhetorical kind of notion,
we're barely out of the jungle on this planet as far as consciousness.
- Exactly! - So you know, I think, through time, and that's why
I've made the films that I do, I talk about the topics that I do,
people will realize that this infighting, and I think it slightly comes from
the restrictions of our language, because in order for me to
describe something to you, I have to separate things
into words : this is a table, this is a glass.
So division is inherent in our cognitive awareness,
but we haven't reached a spiritual awareness enough to know that
even though this is a glass, it's still made of the same thing as this table
and the fact that it's separate from this table is actually quite suspect.
It just looks that way because of our five sense reality.
Molecularly, when you get into quantum mechanics
and high levels of science, it's more of like a sea of molecules
that sort of intermerge, and there's different things
that happen over time, time spans that are so vast
that we can't really recognize, so we don't see them.
Like, if I have my hand on here long enough, it's going to make
an imprint on this table, through the chemicals
that will emerge... - That's right - ...and come together.
So there's no separation, it's an illusion
that there's any type of separation. - Just as well, on that subject,
I know it's slightly going off the beaten track.
But, talking about things making an imprint :
sound and vision, ghosts,
I know I'm throwing it into the pot there, but,
things are being recorded, like we're recording this now.
That's something that could come in where things are stuck in time,
and then something triggers it off. What do you think about that?
I've never really given much thought to that specifically, but I think
there's a lot of possibilities out there that we don't have the ability
to recognize. The problem with the human mind typically is that we only
see what we have been conditioned to see.
And I mean that very literally.
There's been tests done, psychological tests
where you can have a picture and one side of it will be,
inside the picture will be multiple symbologies. And it'll gauge
someone's mentality, someone's particular state of mind at that point.
So, say someone's angry and they show this picture, the person
will immediately recognize the negative attribute in the picture.
If someone is happy, they find the positive attribute in the picture.
So I think we project, like crazy,
so things that are outside of our general consciousness,
I think the reason that they're not recognized by many
is because they don't have the vocabulary to recognize it.
So, phenomenon that would be considered,
supernatural, to whatever that might mean.
Well, I would say that generally speaking that everything is natural,
there is no such thing as supernatural. It's only supernatural
to the extent that... - We don't understand it, yes.
So, things like a ghost, whatever that is, which we say it's something
like that, we have a cognitive notion of what it could be.
But these figments that could occur
could actually be many, many different things.
And most that would experience that are too closed
to recognize that in general. - Exactly,Well I always liken it to,
my expression has always been : "it's a higher science
that we haven't quite discovered how it works yet.
You know, when we say, like, you say, supernatural phenomena,
and then somewhere, further on down the line it's explained,
and then people go, "Oh, that's how it works" - Yeah, just like back
in the old days they thought ghosts would possess you, and give you
illnesses. - Yeah, we've moved on a bit since then, I hope.
- Well yeah. And we'll continue to move on and
discover all sorts of nuances of unexplained things that will
eventually be explained by understandings and
technological understandings that we can recognize. I think
it's an obvious pattern. And that's the unique thing about knowledge.
There's no such thing as tangible knowledge or there's no such thing
as a smart person. It's just a matter of time before everything we know
is basically transformed or eradicated and built upon. - It's like a child.
A child being in nursery school as opposed to a professor
being in a university, it's just that professor has had
the time to learn everything that he's learned.
So it doesn't mean to say that child, because he's ignorant of
knowledge, will not reach that status at one point in its life.
- Right - And also, we were talking about frequencies,
and what you just said before was, "We see what we want to see".
- Very often, yes - Because a lot of the time, we block things out,
because, possibly, it's just too much for our brains to want to take in
- Possibly - we just don't want the knowledge - Right
And it just reminds me of a story, I don't know if you've heard this
and I think it might have been Paul McKenna, I'm not sure
a hypnotist over here I don't know if you've heard of him.
And he was on stage, and there was a chap where
he had this watch on, and there was the child, who was in front,
of like the hypnotist and saying, "What's, what's on the watch?"
But he couldn't see because the child was there, but he could see
right through the child to see what the inscription
on the watch was, so how could he do that? - That's fascinating
- So he was, the hypnotist made him block out
what was in front of him, the child,
which was blocking the view to the watch, and he could see
right through it, he could give the inscription and everything
and I was just absolutely amazed by that. So it just goes to show
that you can tune and see, going on to the molecular level. - Sure.
- So you can see through the fog as they might say. - Right
- And just as we're on that subject of seeing
the real picture, because this is what we're talking about to do
with "Zeitgeist", is seeing the real picture,
I feel like, and I don't know if you feel like this,
that sometimes we are just being tuned in on a frequency
just so all we say is what certain bodies want us to say.
- Well, sure, that I think you could say that the mass media does that
on a daily basis, so they've created this illusion of terrorism.
- Exactly - Which is statistically irrelevant.
As far as, the odds of any of us dying
in a terrorist act are virtually zero.
But yet, you turn on a television and that seems to be
a very common topic continuously.
And then they change the language so now the war in, say, Iraq,
is no longer a war against insurgents; it's a war against terrorism.
So then you have this nonsense that's perpetually built upon,
and they did the same thing, you know, with communism,
they did the same. They just need these enemies for that example.
But, the media tells us what to think, and it creates a state of mind.
We tend to absorb that and create an identity with it
and then we end up projecting it.
So, that's the thing about, we're so influenced
that we have to be very careful in how we behave, in multiple levels.
That's one of the things about consciousness that
many don't really realize. Coming to the new film,
one of the things that I talk about is the free market system,
or what I call more generally, the monetaryism,
as a general distinction, which is more of an invented word.
Where all societies, it doesn't matter what they are, if they're
communists, socialists, fascists or even free market capitalists;
They all have the same type of competitive structure inherently,
because it still exists, we all exist within scarcity.
So there's a taking mechanism that comes naturally in the environment.
I don't say naturally because that's the way we are.
There's this debate of course between human nature and human behavior,
and nature versus nurture, these attributes.
I tend to find in my understanding,
this brings me back to this point on the awareness,
is that it's mainly,
I'd say 90 percent behaviorism is what conducts what we do.
In other words our environment dictates what we, how we communicate,
obviously, I could be born in the middle east,
and I could be born to a Muslim family
and odds are I would be speaking Arabic, and be Muslim.
So, for example religion,
in regards to the same point we were discussing
as far as this brainwashing, so to speak, is the way I would put it,
a sort of conditioning which we touched upon.
It's completely arbitrary to, as far as the established religions.
If you're born in this area, you're most likely gonna be in that religion.
Most people don't think that way, which I find fascinating.
But anyway, that's a little bit of a side track from what I meant to say
as far as the free market, capitalism and everything else.
We live in an environment that rewards competitive and
chiseling mentalities. Parasitic mentalities, where all of our
established institutions, in order to survive they have to get money,
in order to get money they have to basically fight for it
one way or another. They don't call it fighting, they call it
negotiation or they call it this and that - Clever words -
Yes, but what it really is,
the whole species is divided in this "us against them" type of element
on a daily basis, just because, in order to survive
you have to do certain things for your own self interest.
You have to take, as opposed to give. And the difference I think is
that our environment now, has conditioned us into this
overwhelmingly selfish mentality that really has reached the point
where things like the corruption of the Iraq war, and say a cat burglar
there's no difference whatsoever. I broke my thought there for a second,
There's no difference between a cat burglar, needing to survive
because they come from scarcity, or more specifically saying,
where I come from, south central Los Angeles,
there's no jobs, everyone sells drugs.
They're addicted to drugs because they're upset,
because they're in this horrid environment of poverty.
So they do what they have to do to survive. There's no difference
between that type of criminal behavior and, say, the high corporate elite
that chooses to invade a country to take its resources, take it over,
and create all the elements that it wants
for its own personal gain. It's the same mechanism.
And I think that's something that hasn't been realized.
And it's the environment that's to blame for all of this.
Granted survival is inherent, it's a genetic base of that we want to live.
But how we conduct our living is based on what we've been taught
as far as what the necessity is. So back to my original point, is that
everything is taken in the system, one way or another, or manipulated.
You manipulate your environment to get what you need one way or another.
If I want a job, I have to go in and convince the boss that I need that job.
If the boss wants to give me a low wage, he has to convince me
that for some reason, they have to give me this wage. I have to convince,
if I go and have to compete with someone else that needs the job.
You could twist this around into all sorts of, you know, seemingly
endless spirals of, like, that's just the way it is, and it's OK
it's not really corrupt. I get these arguments all the time.
- But it changes a person, doesn't it? Because, like you say
you have to become vicious.
- To a certain degree - To get that job, yes you do.
And people say, well you don't have to get that job there
but actually everyone has to work. One way or another
this is one of those things in the system that everyone talks about
and the mechanism is this manipulative, chiseling,
parasitic, taking type of mentality.
And my original point, which I've jumped around a lot, is that
I think that the conscious awakening has to occur
when people realize that it's giving and not taking that is the key.
So in a new society, which is what I advocate in the new film,
the shift would have to be that people realize that their integrity
is only as good as the integrity of everything else around them.
For example, if I'm walking down the street and I see a homeless person
I know that through time, there might be
a propensity for that homeless person to commit crime.
Because they have to survive, they might have to rob people,
they might have to do what they might have to do; and,
when pushed in a corner, like an animal, in fear,
they're going to do what they have to do to survive. - Exactly,
fight or flight? - Well sure, yes. So, as long as there's
a homeless person, or a person that's deprived,
and abused perhaps, I'm not safe.
And this is something no-one really thinks about
no one's safe in this system in general
because it divides everything up; there's always
the "have's" and the "have not's" due to this system
because there's always edges in the system,
there's manipulative edges that certain groups can gain, it's inherent.
It's inherently corrupt, basically, is the way I would describe it.
So, in order to combat that, in order to combat say,
someone that is going to rob you and hurt you, which is simultaneous
to combat the corruption of a ruling elite, in my opinion.
You have to start altering the environment and altering
the conscience of the people, and to do that,
people have to realize that they have to start contributing
to the world at large in more of a communal sense.
It can't be all a selfish mechanism, it can't be survival of the fittest,
it can't be the old Adam Smith free market ideology of :
"You preserve yourself, and everyone does things for themselves
and therefore society will work out as a whole by some invisible hand"
which is what he used to claim. I'm not putting down Adam Smith,
he did say a lot of good things, I'm just using that as an example.
He's one of the fathers of this free market system.
And it's also related to all other forms, not just the free market.
People think I'm just attacking Capitalism and things like that.
I've been working on this concept called "The Zeitgeist Movement"
which is an attempt at a grassroots conscience awakening
environmental shift for literally the species
as ambitious as that might sound.
You tend to find most movements are politically oriented,
they're regional, they're specific to certain things.
I've yet to see something that really would attempt to unite humanity,
especially with an actual tangible train of thought,
not just, you know, hyperbole of idealism.
So, after the first film came out, everyone asked me
what do we do about these issues, what do we do about these problems
and I thought about it, of course, myself.
The first film doesn't give much of an answer to anything like that,
except at the very end when I talk about consciousness in general,
the need for people to realize how they are interconnected.
Very quickly I denote that through a few different personalities
at the very end, which I actually pick up with in the new film.
What I found, through my research, as I was approaching the new film
I discovered was a man named Jacque Fresco
and a project called "The Venus Project".
Jacque Fresco is about 92 years old now,
he's been working his entire life thinking about social design
thinking about something you typically never hear about.
Where you actually design society to benefit society
as opposed to this kind of environment we are in now,
where everything is just kind of a free for all, with different levels
of differential advantage, everyone wants to sell something.
Nothing really gets done in our current society unless money
can be made from it. There are all sorts of problems such as the fact
that we think we live in a free society. Well you may be free enough to
step out your door and walk down the street and go buy things.
But you're only as free as your purchasing power will allow you to be.
- Exactly - So really, there's no such thing in a monetary system
as a free country, it doesn't exist.
So, you're a slave to a corporate structure, basically, very simply put.
Essentially Jacque Fresco,
presented new ideas to me I had never thought about,
and it took a long time for me to absorb, like I think
a lot of people, when they first hear about these ideas,
it takes a very long time for them to realize, because they've been
so indoctrinated into this, sort of,
freedom oriented capitalist connotation,
or free market connotation where they think that,
they associate freedom with the fact that they go and
they can buy whatever they want. They can buy from,
they can choose from 75 types of cereal in a grocery store
yet there is only two political parties in their country. - Exactly
- There's a massive disconnect - That's crazy isn't it? -
And they have no idea that democracy is a complete illusion
because in a true democracy, well first of all,
whatever a true democracy may be is actually to leave to question.
But in our system, money rules everything.
And all you have to do is look at any campaign across the world,
especially in the western world, to see that money and the
financial support from financial backers, the financial industry itself,
such as in America, we have Barack Obama now,
who's heavily backed by Wall Street.
He completely destroyed McCain and his financial backing.
His funding is heavily financial and corporate.
They put people in power that support the industry at large.
The United States, for example, is just a large corporation.
- Of course it is - And just like the UK or anything else
And if people can't see that, then they really need to open their eyes
Absolutely, and that's one of the things that people
don't really think about much, is the real problem of money itself,
and this is what Jacque Fresco thought about.
And in his final conclusions, that I found, it made perfect sense to me.
It's that you can't have balance or equality or a world without poverty
or a world without war, or any of these, sort of, utopian,
Christian ideals that people think about in a very traditional sense.
Like, why can't we have people living in a balanced,
classless, non hierarchical, non elitist type of environment.
Why is it that the elite always come to fruition? And to really
figure it out, if you didn't recognize that the biggest tool,
the biggest catalyst of this is the monetary system
because it perpetuates stratification. It perpetuates greed,
it perpetuates poverty, it perpetuates scarcity.
Very quickly, one of the many things
I learned about "The Venus Project" very quickly is
that the monetary system creates scarcity because
scarcity is rewarded. So you can never have a world of abundance,
you can never have a world where everyone is fed. Because, in such
an environment, no-one can make money off of it.
Inherently. So scarcity and deprivation is built into the system.
Corruption, is built into the system. So, what he began to think about
and what I'm advocating in the new film, which I very much support,
and I have my own trains of thought too, it's not just
"The Venus Project" and in fact it isn't just Jacque Fresco,
it's his underlying ideology that you have to start
designing society to benefit humanity as a whole.
And scarily enough to many people, in this fearful,
new world order kind of environment of people who think this way
you need a certain degree of technological world unification
in order to do so. And when I say this, a lot of people say,
"woah, that's like one world government".
- Yes, that's been on a lot of people's lips actually. - Yes it has.
- They've very scared about how we could go down that path. - Sure.
But there is an inherent fallacy to these notions,
you need world unification, basically because the highest optimization
of utilizing the planet would be an organization worldwide.
That's why I say I say technological and intellectual unification.
It's not that you could break down all the borders, and you'd have
no countries, that's not at all. First of all countries are inherently
primitive. The monetary system and need for survival
is what creates countries, essentially.
Countries would exist in the future, hopefully as a form of organization.
It wouldn't be nationalism. - I was gonna say that, who's
gonna run the show? Who's gonna be in charge?
- We get rid of money, which they are trying to do anyway.
- Well, sort of. - They're trying to move the paper stuff out,
where does it go from that? - They want to have a digital currency
- That does affect a lot of economies if paper goes. - Well, yes.
They can't control, the mechanism of paper
is traceable, and they used to have the pound,
used to be supported by gold, and same with the dollar
and now that's been gone, they just have these little things
they say it's fiat, basically. In the States they do. Eventually
they're going to eradicate the currency, and you'll get to the point where
there's no way to trace anything, to look at the numbers or the math.
Like, I can look at the math, more or less, at the federal reserve
and see how corrupt in the pyramid scheme that it is. You can look at
the inflation, you can look at the depreciation of the dollar.
You can look at all the attributes more or less still, once they
financially get to the point where they have the technology to do it,
they'll make it a complete illusion. Which is what it is anyway.
Money isn't real. The only thing that is real are resources
and that's what Jacque Fresco recognized. So you have to move past
this, and realize that resources are really what's important
and until we utilize the resources, and utilize our
intellectual creativity, which is what creates technology,
which is really what everything is in regard to
what helps us on a very utility based level.
Everything is technology, from this chair to this...
- Why don't we just talk about the technology
if I can just jump in there - Sure - I'm fascinated about
how do we get rid of the oil and the pollution.
And if you could just talk about solar energy
and geothermal? - Geothermal energy - That's the one.
- There are so many different forms of energy out there, we are
restricted to oil or anything only because of the corporate structure.
So there is no sustainability in this type of system because
there is a need for self preservation, which inherently
is corrupt. Because systems that have, you know they...
Evolution continues in an emergent cycle, and we discover
certain things, and we are always going to discover something better.
But what happens in the monetary system is, because money is made off
of one institution, they don't want to change. And until they can get
the leverage to maneuver themselves... - Exactly, into something else.
- Like they want to bring in hydrogen into America.
Why? because they can use the same infrastructure as gasoline,
as opposed to say, battery technology, which at this day and age
could be unbelievable if they actually maximized the potential of it.
Given how small microchips and everything is now, there's no reason
that you couldn't have a battery in a car that could run for,
eventually, a thousand miles, on one charge. It's just insane
to think that we can't do that, because we certainly can.
So, it's parasitic, it's paralyzing, is what the system is.
We're paralyzed. - And parasitic - Well, parasitic inherently,
but as far as the actual progress, we're paralyzed.
So technological progress is restricted because of
the monetary system and the need for self-preservation.
- But how do we make this jump from? - Well, you have to have a shift.
- This "Venus Project", the utopia? - That's the most difficult question,
- Exactly, how will we do it? - It'll take a shift in consciousness
People will have to realize what's important. Unfortunately, we have
so many dichotomous religions and world views...
I'm not ignorant and naive to the difficulty of it,
but this is the path. This is what has to happen.
You have to have people realize how they are interconnected
symbiotically, and then simultaneously realize that everything
is emergent and changing. And those are two things
that people don't recognize. The arrogance of religion is such
where, people believe they are separate, that they are special.
They think that they're different for some reason than a bug
or something; the reality is that there is no difference whatsoever.
But, this is what they've been taught, this is our primitiveness
that perpetuates, and keeps us divided and separated from nature.
Because once you step back and realize how we're connected to nature
Well, first of all we're connected to nature with to the effect that,
everything we do has a cause and effect. And with each other,
and everything else, and with the environment. Corporate pollution
is unbelievable, they don't care about the environment.
No one is realizing this. So, when you realize that,
you realize that in order to live in harmony with nature,
you have to actually listen to nature, understand its processes,
its natural laws, in a line, there's no reason we should do anything
that's not sustainable. 75% of most production is waste.
So to make anything, there is so much waste involved.
Not to mention, for example, a computer is made out of materials
that are only durable to the extent that the market system
will allow for them to maintain market share.
So the highest form of resources aren't utilized, to make things
really long and efficient because, inherently,
they have to keep market share so things get more and more cheap.
- Everything's meant today to break down. - Planned obsolescence.
- Exactly, when I was a child, you'd have a hair dryer for example,
and it would just last for ages! And now everything conks out,
for want of a better word. In a year or two,
it just breaks down. It's not built to last.
- So it's unsustainable. - Unsustainable in that case, yes.
- And that's very hideous for us
because it has so many ramifications. From the landfills,
to the pollution. So we're totally out of line with nature.
So, the first thing that has to happen I think is people need to realize
that all operations have to be environmentally aware,
period. And if you are in a position that it's not,
then you're doing something wrong, and the system
obviously is wrong when you step back far enough.
Because the system doesn't reward any of that.
So, I think, when that awareness comes forward, for example,
Then people will begin to shift, and it's slowly happening.
Very slowly, unfortunately, because we're still paralyzed by the system.
But more tangibly, the first thing I think needs to happen is that
we need to build a new city, and if you look at "The Venus Project",
this is one of the things that they've advocated. We need to find
a place that has, a multi-mile radius and to build the first
circular design which Fresco has been designing and advocating
for years, which is completely self sustainable.
It could be a test city, so to speak. It could be an amusement park,
it could be an experiment to show people what could be.
If they wanted it to be. So you'd have everything self-sustaining,
you'd have everything made out of the most prime materials.
Granted, we're still going to have to do this within the monetary system,
so there'd have to be a lot of financial backing to do it.
But it would set this precedent to show; "Hey, this can be done!"
We can have an environment where there is virtually no waste.
Everything is self sustainable. - But there is communities
like that though, isn't there? - Small ones - I've heard of one,
an island actually, called, I think it's called the Unicorn,
the Unicorn Project. - Sort of like a commune type thing? I'm not sure.
- I think so, yes. People sort of give up
the outside world and go and build a house,
and live on the farm type of thing. - Sure, but because of the need
to preserve, because of the financial restrictions of that.
Since it's still in the monetary system, it doesn't reflect
our advancements of technology. So, in this particular city,
you'd have the highest forms of transportation.
You'd have the maglev trains. - That looks fantastic actually!
- You'd have no cars whatsoever, because everything is designed
where you could get anywhere you'd want in the city with extreme ease.
There are so many attributes to it.
The homes that are made of materials that are all fireproof.
There's no reason for a fire department because nothing can catch fire.
Concepts like this, that no-one thinks about.
Problems in this society are regulated by laws.
The idea is actually to eliminate laws.
So, essentially we have to create an example,
to show the world what can be done
because most people have no idea what's really technically feasible.
And the technology we have today is,
technology is really our divinity, so to speak, it's what we have,
it's what we create to make our lives easier.
I'm not saying that replaces other forms of spirituality.
But tangibly, the utility of technology
is what creates freedom for us. Nothing else.
There's nothing else that I can think of.
Money and capitalism are tools to get through,
to make it a little more free, but at the cost of subservience
and this vast type of class based vision
Everyone who's wealthy does it at the cost of somebody else.
Very simply, there's a balance to it, and there are many reasons
for that, we need to eliminate that and get an environment design
where people actually live together, and they begin to establish
a different train of though, a different consciousness
where we'll get to a point where technology will be so advanced
that there'll be no monotonous jobs. No-one's behind a cash register.
There's no money, so there's no reason for that anyway.
Most jobs, like law would vanish. There would only be technical issues
that would have to be dealt with. You maintain the environment
and eventually people would do that because they want to contribute.
They understand what their role is. Not that they want reward from it,
not that they want to take. They want to give, because they realize
that giving is what the system is.
And it's much more natural to the human condition than just taking.
And they realize something more important, in this system
it's very primitive, because survival is associated with
taking and advantage, and getting a job and keeping it,
and manipulating the environment, for your self interest.
That is only beneficial to a certain degree. And that's what
we've seen, because of the homelessness, the wars,
the poverty, the disease epidemics that don't get any treatment.
The death of millions of people in Africa
that no-one cares about. This is the cost of this.
So, what's going to happen is the consciousness will shift,
people will give because they will recognize that if they don't,
this is what's going to happen all over again. So it's in their own
self interest in a different way, to actually contribute to society,
and that's really the awakening that needs to happen.
And that's what the entire element is completely about
with "The Venus Project" and "The Zeitgeist Movement",
which is a grass roots means to try and get this information
and understanding out there, and get people motivated
on a global level to move forward in this direction.
I'm not naive enough to think this would happen overnight,
I think it would take a few generations.
- Well, what I'm worried about is, it all sounds absolutely fantastic
If this could happen, and we could all work together
for a project such as like, "The Venus Project".
But I think, unfortunately, the people who are in control at the top,
they have got such power
- Sure - And every day you're seeing them,
take more power. I mean, only this morning,
I saw something on the TV about taser guns coming in.
And that really scares me, that these people,
well, police, can just shoot people down with these taser guns.
So, I feel like we're going backwards as people trying to go forwards.
But then you're battling against this all the time.
How do we make that switch
in such a short amount of time?
- Well, in the short time we still have to do the general activism.
We still have to combat these things on a fundamental level.
At the traditional level, the protest and activism level.
But I think over time, the power elite is only as powerful
as the people that support their system,
which is why I advocate at the end of the new film to start boycotting
different attributes of the system. For instance,
if no-one ever joined the military, ever again, universally,
there would be no war. There'd be no reason for it.
Because the military establishment is essentially..
The more power one country has, it just means that another country
has to get that much power. So you just stop it. Period.
For one, war is irrelevant anyway for multiple reasons,
But in the end, if they didn't have the military,
there would be no grounds for so many different things.
They would have no means of control. - Absolutely
- And then the police would eventually go too. Awareness would shift
in the human mind, where people that are police officers
or military men they would say: "why am I supporting this system,
when I realize, in the long run, I'm actually hurting myself?"
- And others, your family and people who are close to you, yeah.
- Of course - Because who are you fighting against? We're all
walking around on the same planet. - Right. Even more profoundly,
there really is no "they". I really believe that.
I mean there is obviously a "they" in a temporal sense,
there is an arrogant group of people that have maintained power
for long periods of time, and they continue to do so,
and we still support that. There is really, only, us.
And as long as we focus on "they", at a cognitive level,
a "psychic level", so to speak, they will always exist.
Until that consciousness awakens as well, until we realize
that there really is no "they". - Because we,
well, not me personally, but people give them the power.
- Yes. They give it up and - Give it up, yeah.
- And they support the systems that have been created by them.
But it's actually us. So that's one of the more cataclysmic
things that people don't really realize on a fundamental level,
that there really is no "they". So I don't advocate activists
that perpetuate this, you know, we have to battle the new world order,
or battle this and that. They don't really get it,
as far as I'm concerned. I don't like that.
I think they have to realize. There is a reason peace protesters
are met with guys with automatic weapons. Because they are waiting
for the peace protesters to do something to bring them
to their own level with the automatic weapons so they can use it.
They want the conflict. So conflict isn't going to resolve anything.
The more we battle something, the more the battle is going to go on.
So, that's something people need to think about.
- But we have to do peaceful battles. - Yes.
Well, it's more of an awareness shift. - And spread knowledge, yes.
It is about the awareness. And making people wake up.
Well, I would just love to spend more time with you.
- I know, hopefully.. - And I'm nowhere, absolutely on the clock here.
- But it's been fantastic, so please come and talk to us again. - Yeah
- When you come back to England, I hope that's going to be soon.
And thank you so much for your time. - Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Many thanks to Peter for giving us his time.
For more information see www.zeitgeistmovie.com
and the Zeitgeist movement site www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
Presented by Karen Frandsen
Camera and Sound - Ian Pleasance
Theme Music - Mark Cocking and Rod Giles
Graphics - Neal Pleasance Design
Researchers - Karen Frandsen
and Lisa Herbert
Editing and Post Production - The Eerie Investigations Team
Director - Ian Pleasance
Copyright © Eerie Investigations
For more interviews and investigations visit www.eerieinvestigations.com