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Zeitgeist: Addendum - Part Four

Author: Edward L Winston
Added: August 16th, 2009

Peter Joseph (creator of Zeitgeist) believes that I'm mentally ill because I disagree with him. You can read all about it on his forums (linked from this forum post), with a blog-based rebuttal here. You better not disagree with him, or you'll be labeled insane next. Perhaps I'm crazy for pointing out his forum post?

This is the last part in my series of articles on Zeitgeist: Addendum. Please refer to the introduction if you were lead to this page.

This part of the film does not contain as many claims as the first and second parts of the film; most of it is commentary and are my opinions. Actual discussion has sources marked with [#], otherwise it's probably an opinion.

My country is the world...
and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine
1737-1809

The quote originates from Thomas Paine's work The Rights of Man, the full quote is:

"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."[1]

[Narrator]
The social values of our society, which has manifested in perpetual warfare, corruption, oppressive laws, social stratification, irrelevant superstitions, environmental destruction, and a despotic, socially indifferent, profit oriented ruling class, is fundamentally the result of a collective ignorance, of two of the most basic insights humans can have about reality, the emergent and symbiotic aspects of natural law.

The emergent nature of reality, is that all systems, whether it is knowledge, society, technology, philosophy, or any other creation, will, when uninhibited, undergo fluid, perpetual change. What we consider commonplace today, such modern communication and transportation, would have been unimaginable in ancient times. Likewise, the future will contain technologies, realizations and social structures, that we cannot even fathom in the present. We have gone from alchemy to chemistry, from a geocentric universe to a heliocentric, from believing that demons where the cause of illness to modern medicine. This development shows no sign of ending, and it is this awareness that aligns us and leads us on a continuous path to growth and progress. Static, empirical knowledge does not exist, rather, it is the insight of the emergence of all systems, we must recognize. This means we must be open to new information at all times, even if it threatens our current belief system and hence, identities.

Sadly, society today has failed to recognize this and the established institutions continue to paralyze growth, by preserving outdated social structures. Simultaneously, the population suffers from a fear of change, for their conditioning assumes a static identity, and challenging ones belief system, usually results in insult and apprehension, for being wrong is erroneously associated with failure.

When, if fact, to be proven wrong should be a celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness. The fact is, there is no such thing as a smart human being, for it is merely a matter of time before their ideas are updated, changed or eradicated. And this tendency to blindly hold on to a belief system, sheltering it from new, possibly transforming information, is nothing less than a form of intellectual materialism.

"When, if fact, to be proven wrong should be a celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness" tell this to other conspiracy theorists.

The monetary system perpetuates this materialism not only by its self preserving structures, but also through the countless number of people who have been conditioned into blindly and thoughtlessly upholding these structures, therefore becoming self-appointed guardians of the status quo. Sheep, which no longer need a sheep dog to control them, for they control each other by ostracizing those who step out of the norm.

Let's stop using the word sheep; when someone calls other people sheep it makes them sound absolutely stupid, arrogant, and elitist. You'll never convert people by insulting them. Any movement that calls people which oppose it "sheep" is always doomed to fail. Growth can't happen when every thinks you're an asshole.

This tendency to resist change and uphold existing institutions for the sake of identity, comfort, power and profit, is completely unsustainable and will only produce further imbalance, fragmentation, distortion and invariably, destruction. It's time to change.

From hunters and gathers, to the agricultural revolution, to the industrial revolution, the pattern is clear. It is time for a new social system, which reflects the understandings we have today.

That's what people have been saying since before Karl Marx, but hindsight is 20/20 and now many realize that the world wasn't ready then for capitalism to fail because of the massive and quick growth needed. Are we sure we're ready for the future? I think so, but many others don't.

The monetary system is a product of a period of time where scarcity was a reality. Now, with the age of technology, it is no longer relevant to society; gone with the aberrant behavior it manifests.

Likewise, dominant worldviews, such a theistic religion, operate with the same social irrelevancy. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and all of the others, exist as barriers to personal and social growth, for each group perpetuates a closed worldview and this finite understanding that they acknowledge is simply not possible in an emergent universe.

So religions that don't believe in a deity, such as Buddhism, are more valid and less evil?

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