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  • Today R.T. is talking to Peter Joseph, activist and filmmaker.

  • He's the founder of The Zeitgeist Movement and has recently released

  • his newest film 'Zeitgeist: Moving Forward'.

  • Peter, thank you for joining us today.

  • For our viewers who may not be very familiar with it

  • please briefly explain what The Zeitgeist Movement is.

  • - The Zeitgeist film series I'll first point out

  • is my own creative expression

  • and it carried over with an influence and inspiration

  • to The Zeitgeist Movement through a number of people

  • that wanted to start being active in social change.

  • The Zeitgeist Movement overall

  • is built upon the ideology of The Venus Project

  • which is worth mentioning, the life work of Jacque Fresco.

  • What that means is all of the work that he's done

  • throughout his entire life as an engineer: compiling sustainable designs

  • compiling ideologies, value orientations

  • compiling ideas essentially that make us in tandem with nature.

  • If we want to approach all the problems in the world, we have to think about it technically

  • not through political parties or the acquisition or movement of money.

  • It's time we just go straight to it because we understand it now.

  • Science... I say that and people don't quite understand what I mean.

  • I'm not talking about an esoteric view, but a firm, physical science

  • of what it means to meet the needs of the human population.

  • -You often talk about the problems caused by our current monetary system.

  • How is it that by taking away money from the equation

  • you really think we can eliminate

  • such problems as crime and disease?

  • - It's not just taking away the physical currency.

  • It's the entire system itself. Let's make sure

  • that's abundantly clear. When I talk about money

  • I'm referring to the monetary structure and its holistic entity.

  • Let's start with crime: 90-95% of all crimes are based on property.

  • A guy will run out and steal a car that's worth $15,000.

  • He'll get arrested and thrown in jail for possibly 10 years

  • at an expense of probably $300,000. Just give him the car.

  • It's inefficient, the entire crime and punishment

  • so give people what they need

  • and you'll begin to see that needs and wants start to divide.

  • We live in a subculture based on wants.

  • We create all these artificial wants. People want their stylistic

  • and materialistic ideas, and the things they want to own

  • and show their property and status: This is a concoction.

  • Then there's needs on the other end of the spectrum.

  • Needs are true, viable things

  • and when people don't have their needs met, crime emerges.

  • Crime is easily related to money

  • and there's only one small percentage of really serious violent crimes

  • and even many of those come from psychological neuroses.

  • You can research the work of James Gilligan.

  • They come from bad conditions

  • and in a Resource-Based Economy, that is a very important issue.

  • It's not just the technical management of resources.

  • It's understanding that the entire environment has to be low-stress.

  • -You also talk about our over-reliance on fossil fuels

  • and how this will eventually lead to a financial collapse.

  • What do you think that it will eventually take

  • for us to to start looking at our energy issues a lot differently?

  • Does gas have to be 10 dollars a gallon?

  • - If you're born into this system or indoctrinated into it

  • and you think the system is working

  • 10 dollars a gallon might be the rude awakening it takes

  • to get society to understand what's happening.

  • - Let's talk about how over-consumption is affecting us in real time.

  • Here in Los Angeles we're dealing with high unemployment

  • unprecedented hunger. Does it really have to be this way?

  • I think a lot of us over the years have grown to learn

  • that there has to be some suffering in this world, right?

  • - Capitalist, free-market system, I don't believe it's going to hold up

  • for that much longer. I'm not a prophet

  • but I think that it's going to show itself

  • and people are going to begin to see that it's intrinsically flawed.

  • The collapse of industrial civilization to put it

  • very exaggeratedly

  • because we base everything on oil is a very terrifying idea.

  • I am not a doomsday theorist. I'm simply looking at the statistics.

  • If we aren't adapting ourselves to renewables

  • which we have plenty of: We just need a Systems Approach

  • to energize them and get them going to change the global infrastructure

  • which we could easily do if there was an interest to do so.

  • It's a technical phenomenon. We don't need money to do it.

  • We just do it. You know what I mean?

  • If that doesn't ocur, we're definitely going to see more wars

  • and extremely high gasoline prices. We're going to have a huge profiteering subculture.

  • The collapse of society will be met with a huge profiteering group

  • that are shorting all the interests, that are the owners of the goods

  • that are going scarce because scarcity equates to more profit

  • and that's another thing I think people should understand.

  • There's no intrinsic interest

  • in the whole of society for the well-being of everyone

  • and there isn't going to be as far as I'm concerned

  • a legitimate economic recovery. We're not going to see...

  • The heyday of the human species, as far as I'm concerned, is over

  • until radical shifts are made because of how important

  • the hydrocarbon issue has been, and no one is doing anything

  • to counter it. What we need really is a 'Manhattan Project'

  • but for renewable energy research

  • and without having to worry about limitations of corporations

  • to get it done. To answer your question, there's not going to be

  • an economic recovery that people are expecting.

  • -But it was many poor and middle-class Americans

  • who contributed to the victory of our current president.

  • Is their voice not being heard?

  • - Does anyone have a voice in this democracy we call America?

  • It doesn't matter how loud someone yells or how many letters

  • they write to their congressman or how much they complain

  • very little can change what is set in motion

  • by the very nature of the political system which is simple:

  • It's appointed dictatorship, boom!

  • Once they're in power there's very little any of us can do

  • and since the entire thing is subservient to corporate interests

  • through taxation and everything else

  • you see that the political corporate interest in what John Perkins calls

  • 'The Corporatocracy' is the phenomenon that exists.

  • The public is always going to be given the short end of the stick

  • and always has been since the divinity of kings.

  • Nothing's really changed. We live in an advanced form of feudalism and nothing more.

  • - In the past you've pointed out the dangers

  • of our massive debt problem here in America.

  • Do you think that this is an issue that's just impossible to resolve

  • even with the massive austerity measures that are being proposed?

  • - Austerity measures are an abomination

  • a complete atrocity against the general population

  • as all austerity measures have been from the World Bank or any other institution

  • because the problem isn't the people.

  • They cut natural gas programs, NPR

  • things like education.

  • These are the core attributes of human survival.

  • They cut welfare. Why are they cutting that

  • when we're spending a trillion dollars a year on war?

  • Where is the logic with all of this?

  • - In your film, you talk about how robots will eventually be doing

  • all the jobs that humans are doing.

  • To a certain extent that's already happening

  • robots are taking the jobs of thousands of people.

  • This sounds like a bad thing

  • to those workers that are losing these jobs now

  • but you think that mechanization will eventually be a great thing.

  • -Technological unemployment has manifested throughout time.

  • Every major labor change that we've had as a civilization

  • has been based on the advent of technology from the Agricultural Revolution

  • (the invention of the plow) to the Industrial Revolution

  • (the invention of the power machine) until we come to the Information Age

  • we have now where everyone is interacting with computer systems.

  • The contradiction of capitalism by some economic theorists

  • that investigate this idea that we're displacing ourselves

  • with mechanization that can create more

  • provide more, but yet reducing human purchasing power...

  • What you have is the more we mechanize, less jobs

  • less money in circulation, so how can an economy work?

  • It's starting to stifle itself because of this very phenomenon.

  • Technology is more efficient than labor. It's time to maximize that.

  • Instead of corporations feeling that they would be providing

  • a social service to keep people employed, we say

  • "Forget the labor crippling system. We're in a different paradigm now."

  • We can create an abundance on this planet, an 'Access Abundance'.

  • We can have vertical farms fully automated off the coast of Los Angeles

  • that could produce all of the organic food for all of Los Angeles.

  • - You make the claim that our current socioeconomic system

  • is just not working. For people who agree with you

  • or want to create change right away, what suggestions do you have for them?

  • - If the patterns and trends that I see continue:

  • ignoring of energy issues

  • ignoring the growing instability through society

  • the naivety of the general population to think

  • "Oh, everything is just going to be OK"

  • these things will coalesce into what I consider collapse

  • and it's a multifaceted, very difficult thing to anticipate

  • and it won't occur in some big 'you wake up one day and everyone's on fire'

  • it will be a slow grind of more unemployment

  • extreme poverty, suffering, death, more wars

  • more basic social instability, rationing of resources.

  • People should boycott the major banks

  • especially the banks that are part of the Federal Reserve cartel.

  • This is a corrupt financial institution that has a cartel of private banks

  • and everyone seems to think it's OK. People are beginning to realize

  • that people in power are preserving themselves

  • and they really don't have a genuine interest to help anyone else.

  • I do suggest that people begin to be more conscious

  • and try to find other sources of information.

  • I happen to enjoy RT independent media, more independent media

  • and get away from the dominant institutions. Imagine

  • years ago when you lived in a society

  • where all you had was a newspaper. There was no television.

  • All you got was the newspaper in your front door. Imagine how easy it was

  • for people to control what people thought. Don't ever join the military.

  • Support the people that are there and respect them as human beings.

  • When I speak to people in the military, I say "Just get out!"

  • I keep respect for the people that go into this. I feel for them.

  • The poorer Americans that have been forced, coerced

  • by the economic structure to get money for college, and boom!

  • They're thrown into this hugely detrimental psychological environment

  • the shell-shock and everything that emerges

  • the one in four veterans that commit suicide.

  • It is not in our basic human development to just kill each other.

  • I think that it really is a bad state of mind and causes more hurt than anything else

  • and in the larger perspective geopolitically all it does is create animosity.

  • If you took all the money we spend on war and applied it to renewable energies

  • or applied it to anything social, you could resolve that problem in a second.

  • If you took all the scientists that are currently developing weapons

  • and put them on how to actually redesign a sustainable society...

  • If you get out of hydrocarbon economy

  • if you had people actually utilize the interests of the well-being of the planet

  • and its human species, if we just simply made that decision

  • instead of constantly trying to kill each other

  • for whatever temporal purpose or resource, geopolitical alignment

  • or whatever strategy of dominance happens to be the flavor of the month

  • if we could just get away from that

  • we'd be much better off, to put it very frankly.

Today R.T. is talking to Peter Joseph, activist and filmmaker.

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