Friday, October 10, 2008

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Some of you may already be familiar with the original Zeitgeist movie, directed by Peter Joseph. It ended up becoming a veritable internet phenomenon. I remember there being quite a bit of controversy last year when Wikipedia came under fire for deleting its entry about it, leaving many crying "censorship". That entry is back up now. The original Zeitgeist movie was a three-parter focusing on the Jesus myth, the 9/11 attacks and an exposé of the formation and function of the United States' Federal Reserve Bank. Its purpose was to reveal the myths that have been used over the years to maintain the established order in the United States.

Zeitgeist: The Addendum is a continuation of the first movie and seems a bit more focused in its purpose. It seeks to explain how the global monetary system uses debt to control how the world is governed and leaves the interests of transnational corporations trumping those of ordinary people. Some of this was ground covered in a great little animated documentary by Paul Grignon called Money as Debt. Zeitgeist: The Addendum takes it further, however, by attempting to outline steps that can be taken to weaken this debt-based monetary system which Joseph presents as being at the root of all social instability. Joseph presents a case for the social transformation necessary to end a status quo propped up by corruption , where sustainability and the interdependence inherent in community could lead to a better world for all.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks; I'll definitely be watching that today. Question: What did YOU think of the first Zeitgeist movie?

M said...

I thought it was a little all over the place. I understand that he was trying to present what he viewed as some of the methods by those in power to to control people, but it seemed a bit fragmented anyway.

Most of the stuff presented about the story of Jesus is stuff that's already been covered ad nauseum elsewhere (i.e. there wasn't much in it that was new). The 9/11 segment -- anything is possible. I don't know enough about it to be able to say the conspiracy theorists are right or wrong. I have a good friend who lives in NYC who's convinced that what's been portrayed as the truth is the biggest fabrication in recent US history. He's no dummy and has been researching it critically since it happened. I guess that I'm sitting on the fence about it, myself. As for the third part about the Fed, it was a real eye-opener for me. It was the part of the movie that rattled me the most.

Have you seen it? What are your own thoughts on it.

Unknown said...

Well, the whole Jesus thing was news to me. I was in the process of resigning from my religion when I saw that for the first time and it totally blew me away...I'm embarrassed now for my ignorance, but that's how I was then.

The 9/11 stuff was what scared the hell out of me. I'd never heard any of the conspiracy theories so that was also new to me. (I was very sheltered. :) That movie definitely catalyzed some serious study on my part. I think I've read everything available about 9/11, from both sides, and I think the movie exaggerated a bit but the basic premise makes sense.

The Fed stuff was hard for me to follow. I am still quite uninformed about economic stuff, but that "One World Order" stuff is a tired theory. I'd like to learn more about the Fed and our monetary systems but I thought they went a little overboard with their final premise.

kes4162 said...

I had already done some studying about most of the topics in the first movie, but i was unaware of the truth of the fed. Before, i could never understand how the economy worked until i saw the zeitgeist 1 movie. Now, the federal reserve is clearly a semi pyramid scheme.
It is so bizzare when you think about how manipulated the general public is. There are people that spend their whole lives studying the bible or economics and yet never understand its real underlying truth. Peter Joseph should do a movie on how social conditioning works.

M said...

chandelle: The only reason I ever ended up learning about the "borrowed" mythos was that I studied comparitive religion and mythology in university.

I'm not so sure myself that the idea of centralized global power is all that worn a theory. Globalization is happening *now*. Multinational companies (e.g. think Monsanto, for instance) are worth more and are more powerful than many actual countries. Organisations like the IMF and the World Bank have incredible power. Countries are already letting down trade / policy barriers (e.g. the European Union and more recently, talk of a North American Union). That was some of the stuff discussed in the Zeitgeist movies that I see going on around us now.

M said...

kes4162: You might enjoy the BBC documentary called Century of Self. I'm fairly sure it's still available on Google Video. It's about how Freud's theories have been used to control people through the creation of "public relations". It looks at the roots of consumerism and at how we've come to view ourselves through the conditioning of governments and corporations. It's lengthy, but definitely worth watching.