the economy and oil.

to dotoar: the post before this one was something i should have posted as an edit in the post before that, which, at some length tackled the issues you presented.

i'm writing here now because the lengthy post showed up at the end of page 9 while what should have been an edit started off page 10, and it got me thinking that you probably only saw the edit post. if so, just know that i didn't try to escape from your argument.

I hade all but forgot about this thread, but better late than never. (Perhaps)

Here we go. Anyone not realizing what the enlightened Zetigeisters have seen is narrow-minded and fooled by the conspiracy. Now, let me ask you: What would it take for you to be convinced that you're wrong? That is, what phenomenom would have to occur in order to falsify the notion of a world-wide conspiracy of the kind you're describing?

Of course there isn't, because there is no such thing as an 'elite'. If you claim there is, please do consider my previous question.

I am well aware of the fluoride myth. Do you have any scientific sources to back up your statement? Are you equally convinced of other conspiracy myths such as 'chemtrails' and the 'fake moon landing'?

Why would they start a revolution? And why would the university want them to? Are you proposing violence?

So what you're saying is that the richest people in the world are insane because of the divide between the rich and the poor? What possible corrolation is there between these two statements? Are you even enough acquainted with these, the richest people of the world, in order to make a mental judgement of them? Bill Gates is quite rich, and has donated quite a bit of his fortune to various causes, if that's what you consider insane.

As for the divide between the rich and the poor: That's simply not interesting at all to talk about, since even the poorest part of the world today is wealthier than they were in the past. If you want to indulge in pure facts, do visit Gapminder .

Yes, you just found someone who thinks war (i.e. destruction) is bad for business.

As usual, another myth until proven otherwise.

...and yet another.

Eastern Germany, as part of the communist regime, naturally resorted to a strictly planned economy, and Trabant was the best thing they could come up with car-wise. Those desperate enough to actually buy one had to wait 10 years to get it.

I.e., you consider every book not agreeing with your own view to be false and indoctrinating. How surprising. Let me remind you of my previous question: What would it take for you to be convinced that you're wrong?

The people would do it? Just like on today's free market? Now we're getting somewhere! Why are you presuming I'm unimaginative and non-loving just because I dont buy the mythology of Zeitgeist? I value peace, love and freedom as much as the next guy but I'm not that naive and otherworldly that I think that it all will work without incentives. If there is incentives to create value instead of destroying it, then value will be created, and it has been proven again and again throughout the history (mainly the past 200 years).

Now, since you once again didn't answer my question: How exactly, in practice, would the society work with all the providing of necessities and whatever it is that people would demand, if there is no reward for it? Who would decide what to build and produce? Where would it be built and produced? Why do you wanna take away value? Do you even know what I mean when I say value? Money is not value, it's a measure of expected value, and that's a completely different thing. So, why do you wanna take away the means by which we most effectively can measure our expected gain in value? Are you proposing barter? And if so, how can I be sure that I can trade my songs (the value I create) for food (the value I desire) at all times?

Now, if you seriously want me to consider this utopia (dystopia), then I want facts and figures about what's wrong with this world - with sources - and how it should work - with sources - and not just some stoned mind's close-minded bantering about "how nice it would be if...".

I never said it was. (Apart from the paper/metal it's carved in).

The oil issue has been discussed above. The economy on the other hand, is indeed in its doldrums. The reason is roughly explained in the documentary I linked to above. (State intervention, that is).

i honestly couldn't care less if you agree with me. if you'd like me to list off all the sources that i've crossed in finding the substance behind my outlook, you're crazy. and if you think my purpose here is to be the provider of that information, then you're really crazy. the last thing i want to waste my time with is compensating for someone else's lazy approach to reading between the lines. yes. i want you to consider what your indoctrinated mind is currently calling "this utopia." so go FIND the facts and figures... YOURSELF. don't rely on someone else to light a fire under your ass. or, you can simply assume you know what's up and continue verbally flogging people for thinking differently.

You're begging the question, and still have the nerve to call me indoctrinated. We're through.

i'd like to know what question you're talking about, and also how it is so that someone thinking about a complete alternative outlook on the way the world works is indoctrinated.

nobody dumps me!

Begging the question as in assuming what you set out to prove. You're accusing me of being indoctrinated just because I don't buy the theories you and/or the Zeitgeist movement throw around, and that is simply because you're in turn indoctrinated by those very theories. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got a strong suspicion that if I was to tell you that I've indeed read about the movement and all the things it concludes about the state of the world today, and still dismiss it as being plain wrong, you would persist in that I'm close-minded, indoctrinated and all that. That is why I will ask you again this fundamental question: What would have to occur, in any selected area that the Zeitgeist theorists set out to explain, that would make you change your mind or even reconsider your notion of the state of the world? Please answer that question and I will at least try to take you seriously.

it would have to be history. i mean that it would have to be tried, and tested. similar to the way we test things today, except when we test things today and see that they don't work, we just keep doing them anyway.

EDIT: as far as me being indoctrinated goes, it's pretty hard to be indoctrinated when you're trying to weigh new ideas against old ones. i don't believe any of this will work. sure, i can play devil's advocate all i want, but i have as many doubts as the next guy. it's just that i don't let that get in the way. if i did, i'd just make lots of money, burn lots of gas, flush perfectly clean water down my toilet along with my personal organic waste and not think twice about it, convince myself that my thirty dollars a month is going to save a child in africa and it suffices for 'doing my part...' just because i don't believe it will work, doesn't mean i believe it (or one of many imaginable permutations of it) won't work.

if you call seeing the world as falling short of its occupants' potential indoctrinated, then this conversation is purely semantics, which i am not interested in.

when i use the word 'indoctrinated' to describe someone else's perspective it is because i can see clearly that they are quite alright with being bonded on a molecular level to the ways of the past. if you were to - instead of chopping my notions down like dead lumber - throw some other ideas out there, i would be far less apt to not only call you indoctrinated, but think you that way as well.

Let's not get stuck on the word 'indoctrination', and I ask you, kindly this time, not to call me indoctrinated just because I don't buy the Zeitgeist theories. I have put forth several arguments as for why already (which you by the way haven't even tried to counter).

No, that's not what I asked for. I'm not adressing the question of wether or not the Zeitgeist utopia would work (it could work theoretically and all else equal, but based on what I once again have noted in previous entries, I don't believe it would, not least considering the presumtions about the state of the world today as well as the fact that noone seems really bothered with how it would work). I was, and am, adressing the issues that the Zeitgeist theories claim to have observed in the world today.

being that it sounds like you are asking me to be very specific about some things, i would like you to be more specific about which issues the zeitsters have claimed to observe in the world today. i'm really not trying to give you a run-around, it's just that i've already made many posts pertaining to a lot of different things, and i work hard and i'm busy and i don't want to spend too much time reviewing the entirety of this thread nor providing a full-length synopsis of the films and the content. i would like to try and have you see this alternatively, but i do have a life and quite frankly i'm not about to make it my mission to educate people on a one on one basis in an effort as i see being only to get people thinking creatively and globally.

i don't want people to join the movement. i'm not even part of it. but i do believe drastic change is needed. arguing it out over the internet is starting to feel "passe," in that redundant sort of way.

You're displaying an ignorance of history. Excepting societies living on the fringes, if you contrast gatherer-hunter groups in a given region to stratified societies in the same region, it becomes patently obvious resource distribution is less meritocratic and more democratic for the gatherer-hunters than the stratified societies, even though stratified societies produce more.

That being stated, it's no accident that any and every single society which has moved beyond gatherer-hunter has adopted work specialization and the social & economic stratification which accompanies it.

i happen to be of the ideological persuasion who believe history repeating itself is a self-inflicted mindset created by laziness, apathy, a lack of imagination, and fear of change.

Speaking of laziness and apathy; I would like to thank you for taking the time ensure not only that your meaning is easy to discern, but for your general promotion of proper grammar.

Anyways, I said nothing of history repeating itself; only that all societys with a division of labor have been stratified. However, clearly, that could all change - now that we have a few individuals who are imaginative and anything but lazy.

I mean, the same trend would only play out all over the globe, on every inhabitated continent, in every single case known - even in the societies which sprung into being without contact from or knowledge of a single other stratified society - because people are lazy! That's why we've kept at it for millenia after millenia after millenia - laziness!

i apologize for... well, myself, but when i read this post, i notice that the whole thing could very well be taken as sarcasm, and as this is a thread about a topic a lot of people feel is ridiculous, i feel i should mention before i reply to the stratification part that i don't even know if you're being serious.

moving on.

i don't think people as a species became stratified as a result of laziness. we've never had nor been able to conceive of the proper tools and technology to even begin building a unified paradigm. the laziness comes into play when we start thinking about how much money, time and energy are being spent on the creation of better television sets and advancements in the archaic gas-powered engine fields of technology. i call it lazy because we spend a ridiculous percentage of our lives distracting ourselves perfectly from the bigger picture.

as far as an inherent stratification, perhaps your are right. perhaps it's just natural that we divide ourselves from each other into smaller groups. but in the future, i can't say. much of our identity-shaping experiences come from the methods and philosophies we employ in the generation of income; from how we go about surviving. in a world where currency plays zero role in the acquisition of necessities, i just feel our brains would operate differently than they do now on so many levels (due to different types of conditioning) that trying to create a hypothesis on how it would pan out sociologically is simply beyond my scope.

Fair enough, and I'd like to see changes as well. It's just that the needed changes I identify as crucial are exclusively political, as in a drastically reduced political influence over the civil society. You, being a Zeitgeist supporter, are probably seeking to achieve something in that vein as well since a lot of the problems stated in reality have their roots in the use and abuse of political control.

However, to get back to the descriptive side of things, I spot some serious misinterpretations in the worldview as stated by you in your previous counterposts to me alone. I could gather them all in a neat little list, but I don't really see for what use since I for one am not looking to refute anything, at least not through a few forum entries, and furthermore, you wouldn't (and shouldn't) change your mind either. But by all means, such a thing as the alleged 'planned obsolescence' is one of them, another the (highly diversified and fragmented) theory/ies of a worldwide conspiracy that at best are the vague estimations by deluded but good-natured foilhats, and at worst bordering on anti-semitism. (Not that I accuse you or anyone else in particular of that, mind you! You seem like a nice guy, but I've encountered some truly scornful cases, not least on my own swedish ground on which they indulge themselves in listing allegedly jew-influenced TV shows that are to be avoided at all costs, but I digress). What I was after (and still am to some degree) is some objective facts that directly or indirectly support such statements, not a thorough synopsis of the whole Zeitgeist idea. I've had my share of it long since.

And if we skip over to the normative side in which we are to find the suggested solutions to the issues as identified and problematized before, it's still all but dependant on the adequacy of the descriptive theories. But let's assume that they're all right, and that there are called for changes that is to be made, my essential question would be: On what level? See, I'm not against the ideas for a resource based economy (which I assume, more or less simplified, is the core idea in the Zeitgeist movement) per se. Not at all, not as long as it's based on the voluntary decisions of the people involved. (Just as I'm not opposed to, say, christianity even if I myself am an atheist, as long as any decision made in the name of christianity isn't violating any other human being's right to make their decision). That said, it may still result in some really foolish decisions by the neglects of the laws of nature and/or the actual state of human activity and relationship, and if it goes as far as causing harm to people, that's where I put down my foot on the descriptive level. But, to return to where I was going with this, on a normative level I'd have no problem with it as long as it's executed by the voluntary action of the ones involved. Hell, I'd even like to see it realised on a small scale if only to either have my own preconceptions either stirred up or confirmed.

So the crucial question for me is simply if Zeitgeist proposes a political call to action (in which case I resent it, lock stock and barrel) or if it reflects a 'revolution of the mind' in which case I at least support the framework of the idea, because I sincerely believe that any change that doesn't stem from a free mind is neither justified, beneficiary nor enduring. And for all I know, all the general improvement that we've experienced during mainly the 19th and 20th century has been made on that exact foundation. It's easy to disregard all that is well today, and merely focus on all the harm that has been made by mankind on mankind and its surroundings, but if you stop for a moment and look around you; how lucky are you to be born into an age in which you don't have to worry about the basic needs, when throughout the absolute bulk of history man has struggled hard against nature and other human beings to even stay alive, and instead can spend your time on discussing Zeitgeist with someone half around the world that you never even have met? What I personally propose is to look at the conditions under which the changes from nothing to something, from bad to good, from poverty to wealth, has been made and since I spot several core statements in Zeitgeist that not only misinterpret past and present conditions and chains of events but even reject them, I simply don't see how the proposed solution(s) are neither plausible nor justified. But I may be wrong, of course, it's just that extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence. That's why I'm being so anal about that.

That was long, and as usual, I still feel there are lots of things unsaid, but I'm not seeking to write a novel on here so I'll leave it at that for this time being.