I’ve mentioned a few times what an inspiration youtube has been to me. There is tons of great stuff on there, buried beneath cats doing tricks and people pranking their little brothers. I’ve been tossing around some ideas of my own to put some video’s together, but it’s a lot of work, and nothing has come out of it yet.
However I did put together a quick response video to some guy who ‘challenged’ the Zeigeist Movement and Venus Project. It has no production value, just me correcting some misconceptions, being a bit cheeky, giving the other side.
Please explain how we get from here to your utopian fantasy land?
Nowhere in any of this is any mention of practical steps to start moving towards this vision.
Do you seriously think the psychopaths in power will willingly surrender it?
They never have before.
How are you going to deal with psychopaths who destroy things for pleasure without eugenics?, as it is becoming clearer that much of our personalities are genetically determined.
Don’t think I am not in favour of your vision or don’t understand it.
I think much of what you say is possible, but I find your idealism naïve and childlike. Practical direct action along with vision is required if these dreams are to become manifest in reality.
My bullshit detector goes off when I hear utopian idealists blather on, and I smell a rat under this thing, can’t put my finger on it yet, but I smell a rat.
Actions speak louder than words.
Strum
“Please explain how we get from here to your utopian fantasy land?”
I don’t, nor, would I ever claim to know the future, but I’ll address the topic of transition later, because you bring it up again.
The system I advocate is hardly utopian, this is a ridiculous argument that ignores the reality that no matter what life-support systems we create on this planet, there will always be dissatisfaction, always be want and need for change. The utopia of one generation is the prison of the next.
If you don’t understand that, think about how a Hunter/Gatherer might view our society. A world where you don’t have to spend 10 hours a day searching for brackish water sources, hunting small game, and picking fruit, and constantly staying on the move, just to survive? No, we just have it all sitting there at a ‘store’ for us. To a Hunter/Gatherer, this would be utopia.
Only it’s not Utopia, you and I both know that. And thefuture never will be, we’ve never claimed that it will be, it’s a ridiculous statement made by people who have little understanding of what is being advocated.
“Nowhere in any of this is any mention of practical steps to start moving towards this vision.”
I addressed the points that were brought up in the video. Didn’t really have time for an ‘oh, by the way, here is every other piece of information you might possibly be looking for regarding this direction’.
Besides, we are already making large steps towards making this vision a reality. For 30 years, Jacque has been talking about this idea, refining, it, and in just the last two years, the zeitgeist movement has sprung up chapters in almost every country across the world, each with the goal of simply, raising awareness of this direction, since we are so limited by our current society in the actions we can take until we reach a larger mass of people (though we are doing great for only being barely 2 years old), that’s pretty much all we can do right now.
As for exact transitional steps — I can’t give ‘em to you. I can make guesses, but we can’t predict the future, that’s for psychics and economists. We can only continuously adapt and do what seems best at any given time during the push towards these ideas. It’s an issue of problem solving, and constantly revising your problem solving methods and structure.
That’s actually what our whole system is based on. Problem solving, science.
“Do you seriously think the psychopaths in power will willingly surrender it?”
They don’t have to. They only have power because we, the people, willingly give it to them. Take away their support system, and their power is recognized for what it is — an illusion. Our plan is to reach a critical mass of people, and take action to dismantle the current system, thus removing these people from any illusory power they feel they have.
“They never have before.”
We’ve also never had the global systems of communication (the internet) circumventing their main current control function (the media) in such a major way before. Lot’s of things happen all the time that have never happened before. Saying X has historically been rare or non-existent does not prove that X is impossible.
Besides, like I said, they don’t have to give up their power. It’s not real anyway, and if people realize that then we really don’t need to do anything. Let them sit in their mansions until they get over their embarrassment and come join the rest of the world.
“How are you going to deal with psychopaths who destroy things for pleasure without eugenics?”
Wow, loaded question. Firstly, psychopaths who destroy things for pleasure do so, usually, because of their own fears and negative emotions. Often these emotions were so traumitizing as a child that the person has blocked out all emotion in order to compensate. These people would, of course, need to be restrained, and the root environmental causes of their behavior identified.
Once we begin this type of true behavioral science, we can apply it to our social design, and continuously lower (remember, there is no perfect here, no final frontier, just the best we can do at any given time) the amount of people who end up in psychopathic emotional states.
Secondly, Eugenics would do nothing, since we’ve tried, and have never been able to find a criminal gene, a gay gene, a shoplifting gene, or any other gene directly being responsible for a behavior. A quick look at human history shows how adaptable we are to our environment, and scientific studies on human, and ape and chimpanzee behavior confirm that our brains are ‘hard-wired’ for environmentally-contingent behavior.
In other words, there are no evil genes we need to get rid of through eugenics. This is an old idea that has been shattered by new scientific findings. We inheret looks, physicality, and propensities for certain illnesses and sometimes behavior, but we never directly inheret a behavior.
“as it is becoming clearer that much of our personalities are genetically determined.”
In fact it is becoming clearer that our personalities are NOT. I would definitely suggest you check the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky and Dr. James Gilligan, among others. I can send you tons of research in this area if you are interested.
In short, though, I will say that a very direct correlation has been found between not only poverty and crime (suggesting that poverty causes far more crime that ‘genes’), but also between income inequality and crime. Yes. I’m saying that no matter how rich, or poor a country is, virtually all of it’s societal health factors DECLINE the larger the gap in wealth between the rich and poor is. This is a profound finding on the effect of environmental stress on so-called ‘criminal’ behavior.
“Don’t think I am not in favour of your vision or don’t understand it.”
I hope you are in favor, I don’t see how anyone could be logically against it, but your questions clearly show that you do not understand it, unfortunately.
“I think much of what you say is possible, but I find your idealism naïve and childlike.”
Be more specific. I can’t respond when I don’t know which things you think are possible, and which you dismiss as naive and childlike (which really, is a shameful degradation of the conversation thus far, to resort to name-calling makes me wonder, again how well you understand what you are attempting to refute). I don’t believe my ideas to be idealistic at all. They all have a sound, factual backing.
“Practical direct action along with vision is required if these dreams are to become manifest in reality.”
Agreed. Very, very much so. But in order for practical (meaning non-violent) direct action to take place, we need a larger mass of people. So we need to raise awareness. Hence what we are doing right now.
“My bullshit detector goes off when I hear utopian idealists blather on, and I smell a rat under this thing, can’t put my finger on it yet, but I smell a rat.”
Now we’re just descending into insults (idealist? blather?) and vague statements about odours. Personally, I don’t give a shit what you think you smell. I’m going to keep continuously updating and changing my view of the world based on science. Not gut reactions or surface examinations (which it is clear that is all you have given to the proposed RBE idea).
“Actions speak louder than words.”
My local chapter is involved in direct action raising awareness. Larger scale boycotts or other type of actions will have to wait until we have the numbers to do it. Boycotts and other non-violent actions are not effective with less than half a million members worldwide, and violent actions never solve the problem they were trying to fix.
“Strum”
Aaron. (The Infinit Yes) :)