Over the last few years, The Zeitgeist Movement has gained a great number of advocates and though it is still rather small, its radio addresses and festivals (namely Z-Day) have become increasingly popular in communities across the world.

The fact that it is an entirely peacefully revolution has often left it floundering in the wake of the larger, more destructive world events that it seeks to end.

Due to this, this thread will really be aimed towards those already familiar with the ideals of the revolution as it is a large concept with many facets. Though for those of you who are not familiar with The Zeitgeist Movement and wish to be, there is a resource you can use (if you have the time):

As for those among us who have developed a stance of the matter, I would love to hear what the general public of The Escapist thinks of it!

Zeitgeist is an overrated, undersourced piece of propaganda. While it does share interesting perspectives, its value as an informative piece is severely hampered by its inaccuracies.

Pretty much what stagnant said. its a very nice idea but incredibly unrealistic and incredibly under researched and thought out.

I have no idea what Zeitgiest is, and I am not about to watch a nearly 3 hour long video on it. Can someone explain it to me without linking to a long-ass video on it?

BreakfastMan:
I have no idea what Zeitgiest is, and I am not about to watch a nearly 3 hour long video on it. Can someone explain it to me without linking to a long-ass video on it?

A fellow gabbing on about conspiracy theories for a few hours and saying they're all connected. Think of that scene in MGS2 with the president.

http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/

For anyone interested here's a database debunking it.

Also I oppose it as I view it as nonsense.

Stagnant:
Zeitgeist is an overrated, undersourced piece of propaganda.

I'm nobody in particular and I support this message.

BreakfastMan:
I have no idea what Zeitgiest is, and I am not about to watch a nearly 3 hour long video on it. Can someone explain it to me without linking to a long-ass video on it?

From what I understand, some pretty naive stuff about how money lending should be full-reserve (meaning banks cease to exist and you'd need to bring a wheelbarrow full of banknotes to buy a car in the future) and about how communism is so great that one day people will wake up and spontaneously start working for a common good.

Think of it as a recipe of a lot of conspiracy theory, half a book of Karl Marx and one or two Star Trek elements thrown in.

Where's the option for "it's silly and naive and if it did work it would be the definition of totalitarianism"?

Istvan:

BreakfastMan:
I have no idea what Zeitgiest is, and I am not about to watch a nearly 3 hour long video on it. Can someone explain it to me without linking to a long-ass video on it?

A fellow gabbing on about conspiracy theories for a few hours and saying they're all connected. Think of that scene in MGS2 with the president.

http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/

For anyone interested here's a database debunking it.

Also I oppose it as I view it as nonsense.

TY for the database. I looked at what quotes they had there for the first part, and the debunker is mostly right-- and the cases where I think the debunker is a bit off are simply a lack of subject knowledge on the debunker's part, which would show that the movie is an even *bigger* load of hooey.

Basically, the first and second parts are complete junk. The whole sun=good darkness=evil all Pagan religions had a good vs. evil dark/light juxtaposition alone makes me want to kick something. The sun isn't the creator in all ancient religions. The darkness is widely conceived as *dangerous*, but not "evil" in the kind of Manichean dualistic way Christians would think of it. The debunker is completely correct on Set not always being thought of as a bad guy (in fact, Set is on Horus's sun barque on its nightly journey to battle Apep-- that's who is the consistent Egyptian bad guy, but who represents uncreation, not darkness). He's off on his explanation of Horus. There isn't one Horus, there are several, most notably Heru-ur (Horus the Elder, that's the very, very old sky god) and Heru-sa-Aset (Horus the Younger, son of Isis and Osiris, the one who contended for kingship against Set). Also, which Egyptian gods matter is a very local issue, with each city having its own principal pantheon. A lot of the stories most people know are later-period things, after Greek and Roman meddling. Also, the contendings of Horus and Set have a lot more to do with maturation and being ready for kingship than any kind of Christianesque good-vs-evil light-vs-darkness kind of thing. (I'd ask a friend of mine, who's published on Egyptian theology and history and a practicing Egyptian reconstructionist, for comment but I like her too much to put her through debunking this twaddle. :)

I'm not touching the 9/11 crap with a 40' pole other than to comment, as I always do with this conspiracy bullshit, that anyone who believes it doesn't live here (in Northern Virginia). The plane hitting the Pentagon was seen by quite a few people, as were the pieces of plane that fell on people's cars on Rt. 110.

Why is it that fringe bullshit like this wakes up the politically apathetic, but the idea that actual change is possible by ordinary people working through the process never does? Work isn't sexy, but it does, well, work.

Istvan:

BreakfastMan:
I have no idea what Zeitgiest is, and I am not about to watch a nearly 3 hour long video on it. Can someone explain it to me without linking to a long-ass video on it?

A fellow gabbing on about conspiracy theories for a few hours and saying they're all connected. Think of that scene in MGS2 with the president.

Hm, sounds like New World Order to me.

Pleased to see so far no one supports it. Then again, this is the Escapist, so we might be the only ones who don't support it for all I know.

It is, however, reasonably entertaining to watch.

Polarity27:

Why is it that fringe bullshit like this wakes up the politically apathetic, but the idea that actual change is possible by ordinary people working through the process never does? Work isn't sexy, but it does, well, work.

A number of reasons, mostly it's got to do with the excitement of being persecuted by a clearly evil super villain, it also serves to vindicate anything that might be wrong with the individual as any issue in their life can be attributed to some extent to the conspiracy.

To be fair though, we all start out politically apathetic and grow into politics, and most of us end up in the conventional parts of that arena.

McMullen:
Pleased to see so far no one supports it. Then again, this is the Escapist, so we might be the only ones who don't support it for all I know.

I think they're right.

Except... I think we're doomed. No hope we'll save ourselves... we've fucked this planet and ourselves in the process.

OK in 1980 Carl Sagan who 31 years ago was identified as a bloody mad man scientist, atheist loony who wanted to abolish God and all the rest of it. What he said at the time was not accepted by social norms and instead demonized or ignored... but by the scientific community just brilliant.

Wikipedia:
Despite his criticism of religion, Sagan denied that he was an atheist and said that he hated the term, saying:

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

One famous theory, or rather equation is the Drake Equation.

This is the equation to work out how many possible civilizations will exist at any one time. However we can only estimate the numbers and have no proof as to if this is in fact correct.

As a lack of evidence he had one idea to answer that, the Fermi paradox.
Once any civilization develops. It merely destroys itself.

It's an hour-long but watch the first 20-25 mins... you get the drift.

The cosmos is a 13 Episode Series. He explains the beauty, complexity and immense space of it all.. and then in the last one (the one in my post)... he explains how easily we can fuck it up. And the insanity of it. This man would identify with what the OP posted... the aims at least...

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Eternal-Chaplain:

Part 1. Well Geneology, in short the guy who was cutting things to geather made a hash of it but I got the jist. Human nature is that only what the society creates.

Most of the caste studies cited are correct and I can say myself for some that bad parenting breeds our brain and even body to be wired differently. I'm suicidal! I have depression and have problems forming close relationships... because of my alcoholic dad and what he etc etc.

Also the fact that Genes turn themselves on and off for different people under different circumstances is not confirmed but heavily plausable with no real data at this point. The main POPULAR answer this would address is the "Gay Gene" and could explain why and how those who normally wouldn't reproduce end up passing down their genes but you have this obvious difference in behavior. (Its not magic... there is a biological explination which no one has worked out yet.)

Part 2. Some of the stuff mentioned in the second section is correct most not. I have (and am still) studied economics and the thing about efficiency and the monetary system being counter-productive to sustaining and economical use of resources... correct... sadly...

Also the part about corrupt financial trading that leads to a big vacuum of wealth where it is assumed something exists where nothing really exists in the physical world, correct. I wasn't sure about the first part of it, but when the dragged Max Keiser on there... he knows what the fuck he is talking about. can't predict the future but damn good at analyzing (hence, why he was a stock broker).

They also mentioned a computer chipping money off of the market. I've done that. No really... your allowed to do this and I have.
I am at no risk if the company goes bust as I am an independant agent oprorating in the market, My money is given to me upon completion of the transaction and the company make their money off of the margins, so if I earn £12, they take £1. If I lost £12 then they take £1 so I've lost £13.

Its all fucked up but hey, at one point I couldn't leave the house without try to throw myself under passing cars so that was how I made money >.>

Part 3. Plain speculation, where the bloody hell is the painful transition? Speculation albe it very appealing speculation does not make it all perfectly right.

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The film hit many key problems... wouldn't it be wonderful if we had solutions. More research needed otherwise worth the watch... apart from the action movie ending... which I skipped through and was as lame as I predicted.

I still don't get the whole "Zeitgeist Movement" thing. A guy read a few articles on conspiracy theories and made a movie about it. He isn't particularly charismatic nor is he a good speaker and yet he managed to bullshit people into creating an entire movement based on some wildly assumptive "theories". Then again, Zeitgest appeals to people with completely different sensibilities to my own so I shouldn't be surprised it managed to gather such a huge following.

Istvan:

Polarity27:

Why is it that fringe bullshit like this wakes up the politically apathetic, but the idea that actual change is possible by ordinary people working through the process never does? Work isn't sexy, but it does, well, work.

A number of reasons, mostly it's got to do with the excitement of being persecuted by a clearly evil super villain, it also serves to vindicate anything that might be wrong with the individual as any issue in their life can be attributed to some extent to the conspiracy.

To be fair though, we all start out politically apathetic and grow into politics, and most of us end up in the conventional parts of that arena.

Well, no, many people don't grow into politics, to my endless frustration. They couch-surf and consider themselves completely above the "gross" and "bullshit" of politics, like it's somehow virtuous to opt out of the process completely. Then complete horseshit like this or the Tea Party comes along and it's all "OMG I HAVE SEEN TEH TRUTH!" It's grandiosity or nothing at all, and it just bugs the hell out of me.

Comando96:
snip

I have not seen the film, because I wasn't sure I wanted to spend 3 hours watching it. Instead I looked for people's descriptions of it and found that it was just a bunch of conspiracy theories thrown in with a generous helping of pseudoscience, so now I have even less interest in seeing it. Besides, I once tried to watch What the Bleep do We Know? and just couldn't stand it anymore after about 30 minutes or so, and Zeitgeist shows every sign of being the same. I'm probably not the person you want to reply to, because your wall of text is wasted on me.

Your post is very unclear to me. I'm not sure how much of that is because you're referring to things in the movie and how much is because many of your sentences seem to jump from one topic right to another with no apparent connecting ideas between them.

This pessimism, I think, comes from knowing the bad things but not the good ones. You should watch a few TED talks. There are brilliant people working on these problems and finding ways to deal with them that have their basis in reality. There's quantum computing, the singularity, new materials, new food and energy sources, all sorts of exciting stuff.

There is a lot of reason for hope.

What the Bleep do We Know is a great parallel to Zeitgeist - looks great, seems very professional, seems like there's a lot of info there, has tons of sources, and ultimately is simply completely inaccurate and utter bogus.