Zeitgeist
   



   Peter Joseph, the creater of the Zeitgeist movies, and The Venus Project
couple have created a misleading image of their viewpoint about politics.
They actually express no grasp or even interest in politics or economics.
Jacque Fresco even presents his own ineptness at managing simple rent and
utility responsibilities as being an entirely normal adult experience, and not
something seriously amiss. He expresses also a direct idealization of
managerial complexity being delegated entirely to computers, and in his essay
about economic motivation he cites only examples of white collar activity and
completely misses the relationship I observe between self-sacrificing overtly
advisory parents and seriously lazy corrupt kids. Roxanne Meadows likewise
expresses concern, for all the people in the world who are left out of the
American possibilities, with no more sophistication in her countinence than a
young child would have. Peter Joseph describes the experience of normal
corporate employment as being comparable to being on an endless hamster wheel,
as if managerial opportunity doesn't even exist.
   Their utter lack of managerial interest is very familiar to me and I
don't doubt their sincerity. I think that they are not actually proposing
anything at all. That would be managerial. They are predicting trends based
on managerial development that has already happened. This is the root of the
apparent absurdity of the Zeitgeist Movement. Few managerial oriented people
are drawn to join and those few are disrespected and ignored because the
Zeitgeist Movement is solely about seeding managerial images into an unknown
social mystery that produces managerial phenomena.
   The Venus Project couple don't even seed images into political or
economic leadership arenas. They are only offering predictions to customers,
about what they expect to evolve spontaneously in the social fabric. Peter
Joseph also expresses a similiar naivete about how management happens in the
present world.
   For example Mr. Fresco suggests, and Mr. Joseph echos, that that social
mystery should be and in the future will be, studied by academically oriented
people using the standard evidence based scientific method. This suggests to
me that neither of them recognizes that people like them have forced the
effort to remain hidden, and forced the wisdom derived thus to be used and
communicated through a fog of encoded defensive theatric. The two don't
suggest clemency for the present and past researchers, but their overt
statement suggests a hopeful trend among non-managers.
   Thus there is no argument. Peter and his associates are predicting that
Bill Gates, David Rockefeller and all their associates will evolve into a
resource based form of management, with social management research being out
of the closet. They are predicting a moon shot, not suggesting that they are
rocket scientists or describing rocket designs.
   What creates the apparent argument is the barefaced predatory avarice
of the non-managers, who are a serious majority and can easily outvote the
managers. The predatory threat looks totally real because so few people are
actually managing anything enough to have sane real data about resources.
Even supposed top management people are often out of touch with physical
reality enough to contribute to the threat of mutiny on spaceship earth.
   I have read many examples of how this plays out, and seen a similiar
charade on the personal scale. The managerial people are destroyed or they
have the sense to duck out of the story early in a limited cultural group
that buys the resource based economy idea as something to demand instead of
request. The resulting pollution and heartless machinelike management of
people's lives gets to everyone eventually and they slide back into
capitalist management.
   In small groups it happens fairly quick, a couple years at most. Even
the Soviet Union caved in in the long run. Cuba was taken by a single highly
effective manager, a capitalist in tramp clothing, who may set a precedent
for the New World Order people. I dress that way too. It is a big help for
avoiding economic scapegoating by non-managers, so that most will support my
dominance, though many wealthy strangers presume me a possible criminal at
first.
   This I think is the real direction I see evolving. The end result looks
the same as Peter Joseph describes, but only to the uninformed and
simplistic observer. I envision managers taking Castro's presentation to
heart with a complete de-emphasis of their differential advantage, even
deliberately disquising it. Resource based dominance is quite as attractive
as Jacque Fresco suggests, though he doesn't say the word dominance. He
suggests instead that some unnamed people will be inspired to step in and do
what needs doing, and they will be recognized as competent by everyone else.
As long as the manager is able to dodge hurting anyone's feelings, the
collective grants sovereignty, but doesn't even notice the economic
differential. The manager must simply let sleeping dogs lie, and terrorize
the few that wake up. This is what Alex Jones appears to be howling about,
on the part of current world leadership. I think it really is happening.
   Some have accused Peter Joseph of speaking in behalf of the Illuminati
or exploitive managerial elite, and I think so also, but I highly doubt
that he intends that. He has said often though that there is no "they" to
resist. I think he knows that his program is an appeal for human sharing to
a class of people who are very emotionally walled off by years of
harrassment by non-managers. He is asking for a good-hearted meeting of the
worlds, a plea for everyone to settle down and quit declaring demons. He
wants all demonic behavior to inspire careful study of the originating
context of hurt feelings or terrible poverty or fear of loss, and he wants
to inspire cooperation with any social structure that promises addressing
of those kinds of issue.
   I observe that happening in my town and from the Obama administration,
but not within the Zeitgeist Movement. I observe many managerial people in
my town deliberately choreographing emotional catharsis about future
technical changes, so that the non-managers will run out of hysterical
initiative before any action actually occurs that they might sabotage. I
call this the management of evil. Inevitably this new focus on deliberate
management of actual evil is making more obvious to the managers their own
tendency to evil.
   Evil can be defined realistically as any sort of active predator who is
not hungry. This is supposedly only valid as a description of wealthy
people, the working people being innately always hungry. But I've been to
Ethiopia, so I'm not fooled. The people there were less inclined to evil
than those in my town, probably because they were less lonely.
   I think Peter Joseph is too timid with his words about this, in order
not to alienate his major listener group. Evil, to me, is anyone acting upon
invented hunger invasively, regardless of technical or imagined entitlement.
He and I both imagine that the best way to deal with evil is to identify it,
because an evil person is spontaneously unwelcome, and that is by far the
greatest possible loss to everyone touched by it, in or out of the welcome.
He and I have both observed that evil people are nearly always clueless
about the nature of their loss of welcome, or how to avoid it.
   For example, a customer may always be technically right, but in the
underlying sentiment that appears to me to be spiritually essential to
everybody's well-being, they are only welcome if they are nice. In many
contexts, a non-customer isn't welcome regardless. A salesperson often acts
on invented hunger, as does a worker who is broke every paycheck. I can
imagine that a general awareness of this spiritual rapport destruction could
inspire general avoidance or the deliberate personalizing of all formal
commercial contexts, even to the point of not having any form of trade at all.
   I think that unintentional invention of deficit, and unwillingness to
engage in management of the result, is a major source of this sort of evil,
and that if somehow that can become commonly understood, what I am calling
evil will spontaneously fade, even with no important changes in the physical
fortunes and physical circumstances of actual people.
   I perceive the rotten feeling of being the object of apparently unnecessary
predation as the real matter of importance, and not the technical damage done.
I believe that my easy rapport with money compared with Mr. Fresco is directly
a result of his having been the object of heartless auctioning off of his
heartsong collection of materials, due to what for him appeared to be an
accidental cash crunch that was beyond his ability to prevent, and clearly not
an actual crisis for those people doing the auction.
   I would say that he was psychically raped, with money valuation of his
emotionally vital materials as a vehicle for the disaster. If his personal
items had been impounded by a landlord with a sincere wish for him to get his
managerial thing addressed into a respectful relationship of real friendship
and welcome between them, then he might appreciate money as the device for
communication of feelings that I view it as.
   I am convinced that psychic rape, the emotional trashing of someone's
wellbeing in a psychotic catharsis, is the actual root issue, getting
converted by intellect into dimly related financial or semantic debate. My
being forced, by a coalition of neighbors and building department officials,
to trash my own home, destroy a lot of my own emotionally anchoring symbolic
materials, at huge cost and effort on my part, did not get me to associate
money with evil as much as a technical idealism of the sort that Mr. Fresco
vividly expresses, unconditionally destroying all of the old materials of a
community economy and homelife due to a perception of technical imperfection.
   Peter Joseph and Alex Jones, in a fairly friendly interview on Mr. Jones'
radio show, illustrated this confusion about the nature of evil really well.
Mr. Joseph expressed that the common culture of the whole human race appears
to be headed towards a non-competitive frame of reference. He doesn't mention
Star Trek, but the image I have of the actual lifestyle he envisions is the
one depicted by the Federation in Star Trek, though perhaps without the
military imagery. Ironically Mr. Jones expresses a wish to be accepted as a
person similiar to Captain Kirk, though he is far less polite than the
television character.
   I think that Mr. Joseph may be right about the direction of natural
human development. I observe that the new computer and vehicle technology
becoming available to more and more people has made possible a kind of
bird's eye revere or meditation that enables relaxing into a more
diplomatic and spiritually aware state of mind, similiar to that of
aboriginal people who are not overpopulated.
   Peter Joseph emphasized in the interview that differential advantage
evokes hysterical, perhaps inappropriate, response in those who are
confused about the specifics involved. The spontaneous honoring of nobility
and hard work, that I have seen rule on the small scale between familiar
people, fails on the larger scale, especially with massive differences in
ability to use money and husband resources. I observe that in a complex
society involving contact with entirely uncomprehendable strangers, this
freak out about differential advantage can become the normal condition, with
or without a monetary system involved.
   Mr. Joseph said that he enjoys emotionally manipulative music used with
a verbal presentation and Mr. Jones said he enjoys harsh debate and the
interplay of monetary references such as substituting 19.95 for $20. Both
stated that the free enterprise idea does not presently dominate the world
economy, but instead has been used as a way to rationalize the presense of a
huge differential advantage created through violence, threat of violence,
and media deception, instead of through the interplay of goodhearted
trading. Mr. Joseph insists that true free enterprise was the root source of
the evil behavior, whereas Mr. Jones likes to express minor league
beligerent emotion and only puts the evil label on overt criminality, not on
hurt feelings. Recognizing a predatory spirit in the Zeitgeist Movement
rhetoric, Mr. Jones expresses concern that Zeitgeist movement is encouraging
of criminal economic and political intent, or even engaged in it.
   Both fellows note that hurt feelings do inspire greater scale
heartlessness and corruption in the market, but Mr.Jones accepts that
problem as a natural and unavoidable basis for social beligerence, whereas
Mr. Joseph is sure that a widespread adoption of a non-monetary relation to
economics would undo the creation of hurt feelings. He talks like he's
presuming that real technical needs, and not accident or playful ignorance,
are the basic root of people getting their feelings hurt.
   That I have observed, the hurt feelings phenomena that they are
identifying, that inspires heartless indifference or actual attacks,
actually originates in entirely non-economic relations involving very
sophisticated social interplay in feminine focused or dominated society.
People design dream images that they attempt cooperative expression of. I
observe women deliberately playing light heartedly with tragic confusion
and I observe men echoing or copying forms of expression whose actual effect
on others they are unaware of.
   This is especially true of me, wherein my emotional perceptiveness is
too feeble to reliably track the unintended hurt feelings that I cause with
my body language and light hearted remarks and actions (on my part, intending
benefit to the others involved). My only effective defense against this is to
completely avoid the company of corrupt women and idealistic men, and to avoid
the media that portrays their choreographic styles and viewpoints, so that my
subconscious choreography is kinder.
   I observe the economy motivated almost entirely by emotional hysteria
rather than actual interest or need of some sort, and I observe most
consumption being the result of an emotionally misguided attempt to use a
technical device to temporarily handle hurt feelings or simple loneliness
through upstaging the feelings with more intense other feelings. I think that
the original invention of writing, painting and mathematics, and later
printing and domestication of the horse also provided meditative recovery
activities that people could use to ease hurt feelings without economic
focus. Since I observe women being quite prolific in their invention of such
meditative activities for their own emotional rebalancing, I credit women
generally with promoting their use over what to me is the more sensible but
much more problematic direct human spiritual interplay between conscious
equals.
   Thus I disagree with both men, in assessing what is amiss. I theorize
that the way to answer the corrupt world leadership, of people like Dick
Cheney and associates, is to create an overt validating discussion of
constructive and necessary adult emotional recovery methods, calling them
that, and lifting the stigma of infantile or wimpy association that present
public discussion always puts on the matter. I have observed that,
privately, most women are sincerely constructive with each other about
this, with great healing effect and a much reduced tendency to participate
in actual warfare or destructive physical ambition.
   But the real game killer in my view, in Mr. Joseph's proposal, is the
issue of what constitutes "enough" to any given person. I was evicted from
Burley Design Cooperative, iced out of Hoedads tree planting cooperative and
Advanced Training Products (Bike Friday), and fired from Oregon Temporary
Services, for not presenting or contributing "enough" to those employment
situations. I have also been busted several times by neighbors using the
building department, the utility company or the police, always for being
too casual. I have also been rejected as a social associate, lover or
potential roommate many many times, likewise for lack of some kind of enough.
   None of the rejections or attacks were evoked by an actual trespass or
an invasive or abusive act. Always the issue was a violation of the other
people's idea of "enough" cleanliness or politeness or modesty or
reliability or willingness to submit to direction by another or amount of
time spent in the shared continuous focus of the others. I was never
rejected for getting too little accomplished or being a slow learner or
consuming too much or committing an actual trespass, but I saw many others
busted in those ways also.
   My residence has become like a refuge for me and several other people, a
refuge from the oppression of enough. This has been in spite of most of my
roommates as well, many of whom have pressed me to meet or enforce stiffer
or different criteria of behavior or participation within the household.
   The angst expressed by all these complainers has appeared to me to be
genuine and not overdone. I observe, on the part of nearly everyone, a
major willingness to be tolerant as much as possible. I believe that we all
break under real stress, perhaps generated by our own internal immaturity
or confusion, but real nevertheless, and answerable, in the short run, only
by ending the triggering influence.
   More the point, I believe that the present world enonomy and panorama of
cultural expression is the best possible arrangement for coping with this.
I believe that warfare and ambition have become less and less a part of the
human focus as men have become generally wiser and women have become more
willing to be comprehendable.
   I also think the social phenomona of royalty has been a major social
battlefield between men and women through all of recorded history, and
probably prior to that as well. Every woman I have ever met has shown to me
a clear recognition of the social blessing made possible by despotic
leadership of any sort on any level of society, and though I have seen men
spontaneously cooperate with the real sanity of despotic leadership, I have
never met a man who does not have a dream of a life that excludes it. I
don't think the world will ever achieve any real peace and sanity until
this topic is out in the open, constructively managed by the women and
overtly understood by the men.
   I observe both men and women overtly validating and encouraging
badhearted despotic behavior, often with complex rationalizations rather
than fear or apathy. Jehovah can destroy whole cities for simply ignoring
him, King David can get a wife to add to a harem of 500 by arranging the
death of her husband, a sergeant can loudly demean a private, a mother can
humiliate her child, a landlord can charge a huge rental payment, and a
rock star can destroy their motel room, without offending hardly anyone.
   People are only offended, enough to express it to me, if the despot is
choreographically seperate from the scene they are ruling. People often
decry to me the harsh sentencing of a municipal judge, the remodel and
behavior prohibitions demanded by an absent landlord, or the policy changes
of an absent boss. Even with those issues there is mostly a grudging
acceptance of the heartlessness being expressed by the despot. Men only
advocate to me for an unseating of the despot, if they propose any change at
all. Women express to me only the wish that I would passively absorb the
impact of their angst about the feelings involved. A few women will validate
the unseating idea. No-one ever suggests that despots should be kinder.
   I am in agreement with the women, that royalty at all levels are a
necessary part of social cohesion. Mr. Jones likewise expresses his belief,
and probable observation, that any group of five or more will spontaneously
evolve into a despotic arrangement, and that there is no point in endlessly
resisting that.
   What I think is missing is an honest evolving discussion of ethical
despotism. I need Mr. Jones to recognize that Mr. Joseph hurt his feelings
with critical remarks out of genuine idiocy, not to invite a battle. I need
Mr. Joseph to grant sovereignty to socially valuable despots at all levels
of social responsibility and sentimentality, including the big scale and not
just to householders.
   I also have observed over and over that every democratic association
has covert despots, who respond to the disrespect they receive from their
associates by being more heartless in their direct personal associating, as
with Mr. Joseph's unnecessary cutting remarks. Also an individual despot
defends against getting their feelings hurt by pressing for physical demands
related to physical things that symbolically affect them due to their past
good-hearted stewardship of those items. This is especially a tough sell for
the despot if the stewardship is focused on gigantic public infrastructure.
   I think Mr. Joseph is wrong in rejecting recognition of big scale
ownership and license to prohibit access. I also think that Mr. Jones is
wrong in granting owners, on any level, permission to charge a usury fee for
use of their items, unrelated to actual maintanence costs, and to restrict
cultural expression using their items. I believe this usury fee issue is
the actual cause of all the hatred towards big scale stewards. It's
important to me to relate to a large usury fee as equal to a total
prohibition, even if the money can be obtained, because a large fee implies
to me that the offer of welcome is insincere and my feelings are going to
get trashed later when I have to face that.
   Both men are what I call cultural regulators, and I'm a grouch about
that. I believe that cultural regulation has got to end if there is ever
to be a real peace at any level of society. I believe that both fellows are
responding to a meme problem, what I call social virus. Mr. Jones expresses
a wish for a widespread cultural meme validating beligerent opposition to
political corruption, rather than Mr. Joseph's (and my own) idea of vigorous
study of the conditions that inspired it. Mr. Joseph expresses a wish for a
widespread meme of responding to price of any sort as equal to a refusal,
rather than Mr. Jones' (and my own) view of trade as a willingness to engage
in relatively grim productive activity in a manner entirely in behalf of
someone else.
   Unfortunately, if political corruption gets public notice at all the
public response is almost entirely focused on the specifics of who did what
and what sort of heartlessness is to be done to the minority singled out in
the matter. Any wholistic study of social conditions that evolved the trouble
gets no media attention that I notice. Likewise the subject of trade in
regular conversation and all the media I'm familiar with, particularly
advertising, gets presented as being inately a predatory and exploitive
competition, not a sharing of goodhearted offers. Thus both fellows express
a wish for a major cultural refocus, either of which would be huge improvement
in my estimation.
   In arguing his idea, Mr. Joseph oddly made no mention of the Patty Hearst
case, of an intelligent good-hearted young woman, violently kidnapped and
jailed by a small group who eventually motivate her to carry a gun while
participating in a bank robbery; evidence to me of the environmental influence
that Mr. Joseph insists is what creates criminal behavior and evidence of what
I call a social virus rather than of evil people. I describe a social virus as
any shared frame of reference that cannot get a fair honorable hearing from
people that dislike it. Inevitably a censored frame of reference becomes a
basis for dishonorable behavior towards those who oppose it.
   That I have observed, any social virus is hard pressed to survive in a
social environment in which antagonists recognize it and make no issue of
anyone choosing to hold it. Thus I believe that political corruption has been
radically reduced in ghastliness and hardheartedness over the centuries (and
I presume will continue to be), solely by Gandi's approach of giving it
visibility.
   I have observed this idea being especially important in child care: to
keep a clear distinction between response to outlook or sentiment and
response to actual problems that directly result. Hense Mr. Joseph focuses
his whole appeal on logic and discussion and balks in frustration when Mr.
Jones demands to know how the opposition is going to be erradicated. Mr.
Jones expresses recognition of Mr. Joseph's apparent use (I think
unconsciously) of linquistic humiliation that could shame some of his
listeners into adopting his view without really assessing it. Mr. Jones
seems to me hardly one to talk about humiliating listeners instead of being
diplomatic. Both men express serious urgency about their ideas, superceding
intellectual diplomacy.
   Both men seem to hold a very different view than I do of voluntary
activity in America. Mr. Jones expresses that a lot of vital work will
languish if no-one can obtain differential advantage by doing it. Mr.
Joseph expressed explicitly that genuine appreciation will adequately
motivate literally any form of work.
   That I have seen, only work that can be done with a light heart, meaning
without karmic or recognized environmental tragedy and including some kind
of obvious divine significance, can win volunteers in a reliable easy way.
   My experience, in the dozens of noneconomic associations I've been part
of, has been that work that has what I call evil environmental or social
costs, such as routine car repair or coercive childcare done for complete
strangers, can only be sustainably motivated through differential advantage
in the form of despotic sovereignty over the car or the child, or through a
substitute form of despostic license using trade. That I have seen, trade
alone can motivate for no more than three years of sustained "evil" effort,
and though it can have enormous value in getting an activity started, it
looks to me actually entirely non-essential or even a deterrent (a symbolic
dishonoring) in the long run. In my experience, people can only be motivated
for their whole life by direct despotic possession of the matter they are
taking responsibility for.
   Many, or maybe even most, people in my culture have expensive and
desperate technical addictions of some kind that can only be appeased with
trade materials offered to similiar addicts. Many younger people, and many in
developing countries express, in what I read, a huge fascination with
commercial possibilities. Thus trade activity has plenty of takers, and
people cope with flagging motivation through changing jobs or heavier use of
stimulants. I observe no dearth of leadership in the economic mix to inspire
reverence towards non-avaricious, stewardship inspired leaders.
   I believe that major social leadership will only arise in Mr. Joseph's
behalf in a sustainable way if the overt shared rhetoric attending their
position honors the emotional vulnerability of being a steward. That is, I
believe Mr. Joseph is going to have to, in the long run, grant despotic
license to every steward, and publically encourage everyone else to do
likewise. I view Star Trek as a good illustration of the kind of honoring of
the steward that is minimal to get a volunteer in a leadership position.
   I believe that the confusion about financial or differential advantage
motivation related to work is the result of the huge market for what I call
prostituted effort, which I define as effort offered for short term trade
without a taking on of divine responsibility for the long term feelings that
will result. As long as everyone affected forgets, or pretends to forget, or
can't realistically see any results of their work, then long term feelings
may be realistically irrelevant, though this to me is a tragic waste of a
life.
   For me to get motivated I need my activity and that of my associates to
have divine long term relevance, worthy of being remembered, regardless of
compensation. I have occasionally found myself employed with others who
related to my activity with them as if it were spiritually trivial, and yet
legitimately due a large compensation. Though I have found this an emotional
burnout factor for myself, I can definitely imagine another person getting
jaded or nhilistic about the futility of getting honored properly, and just
taking the money quietly instead. With my outlook, I lose such a job one way
or another, and my resulting income instability would not be okay for many
people.
   Both men have what I call a view of inalienable entitlement that is due to
every living person. I have a very different view of my present condition of
entitlement, from the perspective of what I presume my life context is
actually offering to me.  I suggest that our actual root context is defined
by the real collective unconsciousness, with the following two rules:
  -- When a person is conceived, they are not a free agent. They are overtly
a complete parasite, unworthy of autonomous authority over their life in
any way. Thus, whoever is their steward has complete sovereignty over their
wellbeing, up to and including the right to murder them. This is the case on
all levels of social stratification, with anyone's life or possessions being
potentially forfeit at the whim of anyone else in a position of genuine
stewardship over their life context. Thus abortion is a natural right and
any compensation taken legally by a business or political leader in the
normal course of their leadership is likewise a natural right. Even the
ritual or genecidal mass murder of constituents is thus a natural right,
given that the victoms make no effort to take on the stewardship of their
own life, well in advance of the execution.
  -- If a person has no real estate, wherein they are clearly definable as
not a trespasser when sleeping overnight there, then they are unwelcome in
the human race, in the same class as a wild possum, and due no more legal
protection than a wild possum. They cannot be redeemed by finding someone who
will prostitute their property for a fee. Their use of that kind of property
is still a trespass on the general society. The only true redemption possible
for such a person is for them to successfully validate the voluntary
stewardship of someone who does have property that is legally adequate to
share, or else to earn money, while living as a trespasser, long enough to
afford the direct purchase and adequate development of a property. Property
ownership is ultimately subject to cancellation by a significant number of
nearby property owners or through comfiscation of the property by a superior
military force. Property ownership can be defined as a grant of title from
all other interested parties, regardless of what motivates their granting, so
it can likewise be withdrawn without process of any sort.
   These rules were not my idea, they are what I observe myself subject to
from the culture around me. That I know of, they were not arrived at by any
sort of conscious or deliberate negotiation on anyone's part, and are thus
not open to renegotiation, in a manner that Mr. Joseph hopes to inspire and
Mr. Jones hopes to get forced. Having never seen a genuinely democratic
meeting produce anything but well worded senseless curses, I have no faith
or interest in any kind of meetings. Where there is a clear leader or
steward I will go with their overt direction, regardless of their associates.
Where there is no clear leader I will stay as subtle as possible and make my
exit. So far neither of these fellows appears to be actually leading anyone.
   I also don't recognize, in my own life, the presumed economic struggle
that both men allude to. But I recognize the complaint. Almost everyone I
have ever known in my fifty years has demonstrated to me a pathetic level of
basic resource management in their life, related to some kinds of absurdly
simple managerial challenges. Some people have taken on genuine stewardship
of one kind or another but nearly everyone is financially idiotic on a
colossal scale, and many talk about money, food supplies, and other basic
resources, with words similiar to those of Mr. Joseph, as if they could do
nothing about their vulnerability to shifting fortune.
   I cannot imagine what the hangup is with this. I live in a normal place
in an average American town with a yearly basic maintenance expense rarely
breaking $2000, though I buy whatever I am inspired to. Most of my life I've
been quite unemployable, due to my preferred appearance, social awkwardness,
and lack of useful skills. But the christmas tree harvest alone can bank me
for a year. It took me two years full time at minimum wage to buy a house
outright, and with four roommates, who pay a tiny amount each, there's no
overhead for me at all. I'm helping raise one kid and sort of another, but a
kid is a really cheap date. They eat like birds compared to me. I have
commodities in way excess, to the point that floor space is too
compromised. I have all the musical instruments, 30 computers, high speed
internet, three running motor vehicles, 15 or more bicycles and several
trailers, a thirty foot sailboat, plus what my roommates share. I'm adding 3
bedrooms and a bath to the house for an eventual total cost of $4000 or so.
I've taken no food stamps or unemployment, inherited nothing, won no prizes.
   That I can tell, my sole important economic uniqueness is that I have
never wanted to handle feelings through use of money. Because that approach
is so common I have explored it though, presuming I must be missing
something. I have been to a restaurant once on my own volition, got drunk
once, drank coffee a few times, hired a guy to pressure wash my house for
painting, stayed in a motel once, bought ice cream once and so on. But it
doesn't work, I don't feel better, just poorer. So I don't go there.
   The commercial media is a brutally mocking horror show, nearly always. A
higher price is nearly always a warning of greater horror. I used to drive
some but I grew to hate it. It's nerve wracking compared to bicycling or
walking, I hate polluting the air and I miss seeing everything. I'm
sentimental about my motor vehicles and I used to start them once a year or
so just to commune with them.
   I handle loneliness with human contact, fatigue with sleeping, low
self-esteem by accomplishing something, lack of novelty by inventing
something or wandering around, spiritual destitution by vision questing in
the neighborhood.
   I've visited many friends with huge houses. Big just feels spooky and
lonely. I've seen lots of new commodities but they remind me of all the
tragically polluting factories I've worked in. Used trinkets are just as
amazing without the grim associations or the price, and most of the new
stuff, that isn't an outright lemon, shows up in the garbage after a couple
years anyway.
   So the higher standard of living topic sounds to me the same as a heroin
junkie discussing their $1500 a month habit. I'm not convinced that greater
access to hypnotic self-propelled vehicles, greater estrangement from the
bugs in the front yard, less grasp of the underlying structure of the
items that I depend on using, and obliteration of nearly every familiar
vista of my town, will lead to a happier life than I already have.
   A friend of mine, just back from a trip to Greece, noted fondly that
houses where she stayed were far older than their occupants, that my 80
year old building would look new there. Many people have quipped that 200
year old trees are not a renewable resource, but my house is made of them,
and to me such a house is not a renewable resource either. I see no reason
and much tragedy in scrapping existing structures that already have a
history of feelings and imagination, just because the walls are 2 x 4's
covered with 1/4 inch plywood.
   One of my jobs for the past 12 years has involved ferro-cement artistic
building, similiar to the Venus Project houses, with one of my latest
projects being a motel made of several connected domes that so far I'm only
building in Second Life (a website). I appreciate the new and clever
buildings but I see no problem with cobbling on to what's already here. I
am still in the city of my youth because my whole being rejoices in the
echos of the past.
   A higher standard of living for me would have every house be teeming
with people who revere it as mine is. No-one would live with less than five
other adults. All castaway materials and items would go into an organized
freebox on the same property, for the public to paw through. Every house
would have a compost heap that has all the kitchen scraps, yard waste and
humanure from the household, with effective microbes to ease the odors.
Every yard would have a creeping edibleness settling in, with fruit and
nettles and rosemary and non-hybrid sweet tasting grass.
   No-one would ever accept compensated employment in excess of ten hours a
week, unless saving the entire remainder for a specific divine objective.
Mental health and positive outlook on the job would be the major priority,
surpassing reliability or customer service or what the resume is going to
look like.
   People would get a growing meddlesome curiosity going about the other
households and flora on their travel routes, enough so that self-propelled
travel would fall out of fashion. Computer programs and websites would
evolve to compete for versitility instead of featuritus, deliberately made
to be used on old machines to both gain a bigger market worldwide, give
usefulness to all the sentimentally preserved relics of the 90's, and ease
the pressure for new manufacturing activity.
   The building code would be converted into an optional certification
program for real estate intended for sale, instead of a system for
blackmailing neighbors. Building with garbage, cob and ferro-cement would
be encouraged wherever possible to reduce industrial activity and increase
fire safety. Landuse would become entirely a neighborhood legislated matter,
but would particularly encourage maximum population density and creative
placement of living space, likewise with intent to minimize new construction
and expansion. Collection and storage of refuse of all sorts would be
encouraged also, to reduce the waste stream and new production, and to
inspire minimal cost innovation.
   The rules for vehicles would change to charge no fees, to end any
suspension or denial of a driving license other than for failure to show
ability to drive, to license only the bottom of the frame, and to require
only turn signals and taillights, encouraging anyone who can to help avoid
the manufacture of a new vehicle through remodel of an old one into a useful
new form; adding novelty to the highway as well. As many vehicles as possible
would be converted to run on electricity, fueled at debit card operated
charging sites, marked like handicap parking but deliberately in low demand
spaces. All city vehicle purchases would be electric. No towing of vehicles
would be permitted without the request of the driver, regardless of where
the vehicle had to remain otherwise, except for clearing of a right of way.
   Children would have the same rights and opportunities as adults, at
whatever point in their life they were inspired to explore those kinds of
focus. School would be a place for all ages, set up like a public library or
college, with an experimental college, and no standards at all for anybody,
no degrees or grades and no censorship of content, especially related to
sexuality. Class offerings would be related to real life challenges like
shopping and preparation of food, vehicle or appliance repair, recreational
drug explorations, house wiring and plumbing or the like, using materials
from the student's actual life. Student behavior would be entirely
regulated by other students in their own behalf, with the teachers left
to compell orderly learning by having desirable material. Remaining an
idiot, outside the whole game, would be classed as honorable.
   Police would have a mandate to never take any action involving force
that does not have the direct active support of at least one interested
bystander, and no naysayers present at all. There would be no prosecution
against any cultural practice in any way unless initiated by direct request
and participation by a victom, with support of a simple majority of
interested parties who share the culture of the victom. No officer would
ever be required to take any beligerent action against an idealistic group
of three or more antagonists. Sentencing would always involve community
service only, wearing a locked on tracking device. There would be no jail or
fines ever. Traffic enforcement would be handled entirely by voluntary
delinquents and ruffians taking action inspired by the moment. Those unable
to cope with that would have to avoid driving.
   There would be a new controlled substance law, applying only to
businesses with a visible sign saying what they sell or a clearly
identifiable commercial location. The law would prohibit the sale of any
consumable substance scientifically shown to cause expensive and
debilitating disease in a sustantial percentage of regular consumers.
Marijuana would be thus exempt, and all tobacco, refined carbohydrate foods
and foods containing significant transfat would have to be sold from
unmarked residential buildings.
   No businesses with poisonous liquid waste would be permitted to use the
sewer system for disposal. They would be required to construct an inhouse
system adequate to produce water to be reused in the same process. Solid
waste would be set out in a maintained public access area to facilitate
hauling away by interested passers-by. Materials would spend at least 2
weeks in the storage area before being taken by the garbage truck. Air
pollution would have the same restriction as waste water. Any substantial
vapor release of clearly identifiable poison would be prohibited within the
city limits.
   Taxation would be shifted entirely to businesses grossing over $200,000
a year in payments to workers, on a publicized donation basis, with no
consequences for non-payment. Public expense would be arranged to be highly
flexible so that spending could always be tailored to match actual receipts.
No borrowing or bond sales would ever occur. No city service level would be
termed to be mission critical.
   Voting would be restricted to people of any age or Citizenship who could
prove a local address, and ownership of any real property anywhere or
liquid assets of over $2000 at the time of the election. No building rental
or motel room agreement would be legally binding unless involving a tenent
who had allodial (patented) title to a property of equal or greater value.
Mortgages likewise would be available only to people holding allodial title
to property worth twice the total mortgage principal, and reliable income of
four times the monthly payment. No credit card use, auto loans, personal
loan agencies, or stock market brokers would be legally protected within the
city and those services could only be offered from an unmarked residential
building.
   Sleeping on public land would be permitted anywhere and anytime. Any
public building would be set up to be a refuge from the weather for those
without alternatives. Any group, agency or individual offering assistance
to street people would need no permits, regardless of location.
   These conditions would be, for me, a higher standard of living, but for
many others it would be a lesser standard. So I have not been inspired to
present this before. The prospect of a huge cultural shift to a Venus
Project or Star Trek like sterile hive society has openned a public
discussion about this sort of speculation on the internet, compelling me to
express something. The forums are numerous, but so far I have discovered no
evidence of actual collaborative feeling related to living space.
   The formal ease, and emotionally protected creative initiative, of
capitalist organizing, remains seductive to all the forum participants. Like
me, many can make a hobby out of dreaming social engineering dreams, but
few can make a hobby of genuine stewardship of several other peoples'
lives. The core managerial awareness, on the part of regular residents,
that would give a steward the necessary appreciation and protection, as in
Star Trek, would also have made the same people find ease in capitalist
society as I have. So far the forum writers express managerial confusion
about their lives, similiar to Mr. Joseph, of being stuck on a hamster
wheel and barely staying afloat with essential resources.
   The faces of the other customers at my local grocery are more anxious
than usual today, perhaps just a random fluke or else a symtom of a slow
economy. I intuit that it is they with whom I really need to find a way to
establish mutual support of some kind. I can shake down illogic on the
internet, as with building dome houses in Second Life, and that has been
great. Unlike the Venus Project area, my town is not a marsh in Florida,
cleared every few years by a serious hurricane. It is a creative college
town, already set up for bicycle commerce, already wind, micro-hydro, and
solar powered more than 50 percent, already with a huge downtown open-air
farmer's market and natural foods cheap in all the groceries.
   When I went traveling 14 years ago, America seemed like a foreign
country, except for the language, compared to my town. People drove an
insane amount of miles routinely, and lived on refined food, brutally
seasoned vegetables, and meat. Nearly all houses were 75 degrees in winter
and 65 degrees in summer and dominated by television, and the streets had
no pedestrians or bicycles at all. I think it is those people who are
writing to the Zeitgeist forums, hoping to get out of the Borg into a new
spaceship.
   One fellow wrote in from eastern Europe somewhere, with a story similiar
to mine about his town and life challenges, and the same question about
this apparent drive, in the Venus Project ideas, to live on a spaceship. It
makes sense to me now, that Jacque Fresco and most Americans are already
living in a sort of spaceship-like cultural arrangement in which land no
longer lives, trade has become so divorced from root materials and
genuine effort that it has evolved into a perversion, and nothing of
importance is more than 3 years old; there is no past to have feelings
about.
   I received a couple of letters, from (I guess) a moderator fellow, on
the main Zeitgeist Movement forum, after I had contributed a post remarking
about the website having such complex markup language that anyone poor and
stuck with an old computer on a pay by the minute dialup would not be able
to contribute to the site. I thought this to be a serious mistake for a
grassroots spiritual change program hoping to win the whole world.
   I apparently errored in my assumption that someone on the website staff
had written the markup language and could have written it differently. The
fellow who wrote to me made that clear by suggesting that I write the
relevant code, not himself realizing how much more daunting it is to write a
text based access to a frames and java based login database, compared to my
idea of starting with a text based database. I guess now that someone cut
and pasted all of the code from another unrelated site, changing only the
referenced filenames. Having a 2 or 3 GHz machine, it never occurred to
them to copy from a site an old machine could read, and now it's way too
late with everybody's data already in the complex format.
   What this illustrated to me is that the real programming work involved
in the website was so distant, in time and social linking, that the
mechanical reality of it, and of the real machines on the world network,
had no part in the shared consciousness of the people making the site. I
can quite imagine someone that out of touch with real human effort and real
hardware is in no position to relately responsibly and good-heartedly with
compensating anyone properly or being accountable to mechanical limits of
the real earth resources; hense the proposal to scrap all valuation and
accounting entirely, and end use of the monetary system.
   I observe that this has already occurred in the culture of the ruling
elite described by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, and extrapolatable
to the modern ruling class. In their books, money that represents direct
real valuation of a thing or an achievement is only paid to people outside
of their class, in a show of respect for a completely foreign reality of
working as an exchange. In one story a woman is forced by fortune to
prepare for entry into the working class. In all the stories the assumption
remains, that noble human culture must have another class of human culture
that maintains direct contact with the living earth and the unpleasant
physical things, the same as it had to keep a class of domesticated horses.
   The stories also appear to me to express the belief that there is no
possiblity of existing in both classes at the same time, with a firm grip on
sanity. The male sex role in the stories requires meeting that challenge to
a limited degree. The wealthy men must make decisions about business
matters or play a role in military engagement, always off stage in the
stories but with occasional references to it. The authors seem to concur
with Mr. Joseph, that the result of this is a semi-insanity on the part of
all the men, and for the one woman facing the transition.
   Though the contact the wealthy men must make with physical economics is
real, it is always on what I would call an impersonal or collosal scale,
like steering a supertanker, in which common ethics, as I observe it,
becomes very hard to track through regular logic. Put more bluntly, they
lack access to the data that makes possible normal common sense. Hense the
wealthy men are forced by their predicament to establish a relationship with
some kind of oracle-style link with divine or broad scale sanity, in the
form of spiritual practice to trigger intuition or academic research to
facilitate accurate modeling.
   The women in the Austen and Bronte stories don't appear to have this
handicap, due I think to having no conscious impact on the physical world.
What they buy or hire done appears to them to just happen out of magic.
Activity they direct looks to them like a video game, heavy objects have no
real weight, fatigue is only emotional. They make passing reference to
religious practice or books (by men) of philosophy, but never with any
seriousness. It is as though they are reading a menu at a restaurant. The
men in the stories portray a similiar indifference about divinity while
with the women. No heartfelt reference to any form of divinity or genuine
deliberate research occurs ever in any of the stories. Mr. Jones would find
it quite spooky.
   In the stories it comes across to me that many of the women are not
fooled by the men's apparent light-heartedness, responding to this with a
special compassion for the men, for their struggle with what looks to the
women to be a social awkwardness caused by worry. It is these women who are
presented in the stories as nobler or more intelligent, though even they
relate to actual religion or philosophy or politics as entertainment.
   I see this relation to oracles on the part of upper class men as the
main source of strife between Mr. Jones and Mr. Joseph. Global warming or
the middle east political strife or similiar world scale issues have
become a commonplace focus of men like them, as matters for them to actually
take responsibility for. Though they debate the specifics, they all agree
that it is their proper place in life to meddle in the actual policy
outcome. And (at the personal level in their lives) machines, factories and
service people have taken over the direct relations with the earth and with
gross physical issues.
   Mr. Jones, Mr. Joseph and probably the lion's share of their associates
are working on something productive, or driving a car, motivated by formal
trade, probably 50 hours a week, plus several more hours of work to maintain
personal hygiene and lifestyle appearance. But the menial sort of activity,
the lawn mower repair and window washing, is all done by hired specialists.
They may even avoid all food handling, cleaning, message taking for other
people and the like, so much so that they have completely lost touch with
real life as much as any aristocrat.
   Thus they have become, in actual lifestyle, similiar to the wealthy men
in their need for an oracle to advise them on policy matters for which
direct data is unreachable and consequences are potentially catastrophic and
permanent. Mr. Joseph wants a general adoption of the academic scientific
committee style oracle, whereas Mr. Jones likes Moses' burning bush, or a
formal divine reverence event for evoking insight. Both men scoff at the
other's oracle as ridiculous childishness, resulting in hurt feelings all
around, since neither oracle is actually defensible.
   There is considerable evidence, such as with the demise of WTC 7, that
the people who are actually able to affect big scale policy directly are
not inclined to play straight with informing the people in the public who
will be impacted. This, to me, is an unrelated problem, but one that vastly
compounds the oracle issue by making assessment by regular Citizens nearly
impossible. The resulting ideas from either kind of oracle are often what
will be sanest for the greater scheme of things but quite at odds with a
simplistic one person sort of idealism.
   I don't know why the national leaders forbid serious mainstream study of
UFO issues or want to do wars in the middle east or want to do the drug
enforcement insanity. But I have a clue in that all but one of the people
who have done building department ratting in my neighborhood have tried to
stay anonymous, even to the point of straight up lying directly when asked.
Given the potential danger to a national leader pursuing an agenda whose
purpose can only be understood by other world scale leaders, cooperative
lying and hoaxing the public may be necessary to avoid anarchy.
   I have found it even to be true, with some matters in my household of
several adults, that hysterical narrow-minded beligerence, like that
expressed by Mr. Jones, can take over shared focus to the point that no-one
is actually leading anymore, similiar to when several children are crying
at the same time. I have read about several famous cases of sailing ship
disasters or Easter Island style crises in which this actually happened,
where an entire society dissolves into brutally seperate individuals looking
out only for number one, until outsiders with overt coercive ability show up
and force regular social engagement through superior terrorism.
   My neighborhood (and maybe most neighborhoods) has apparently dissolved,
long before my arrival 20 years ago, into highly secret psychic armed camps
of one or two adults, some of whom hold young prisoners. Any attempt to
visit results in a deliberate dance of illusion creation at best, or
outright beligerence to drive the visiter out. Most of the jailed children
are held at continuous psychic gunpoint by one or both parents. The few
kindly parents are painfully secretive about their own subtle feelings, and
are less open to visiters than the mean ones. I imagine that being a leader
of such a group would be like living in a political minefield, a certain
disaster for someone aspiring to be straightforward.
   Mr. Jones cries for everybody to get upset about President Obama having
bullshitted some issues to get elected. He wasn't quite the boy scout after
all, but neither is anyone else I know when under far less pressure than the
president faces. I was sure he was headed for assassination if he was being
completely sincere, and I was appalled, hoping he would temper his resolve
enough to be passed over. Mr. Jones demands that he be condemned for
cooperating with the main program of the regular wealthy people.
   I don't see global scale issues as being within my means to affect or be
adequately informed about, and I stay quite rooted in the menial labor and
core materials that my life depends upon, so I am more like Jane Austen's
working class even though I do hardly any actual work (for myself or for
trade). I have ample free time, so meditation or study experiments can
progress virtually unimpeded, and I've engaged a lot of both. Having direct
access to viseral economic reality, I can compare the oracle results with
hard data.
   Inevitably I am thus immune to being destroyed by the loss of common
sense that appears to plague the aristocratic people, trapping them on a
hamster wheel, as Mr. Joseph puts it, or rendering them easily robbed and
terrorized, as Mr. Jones would say. The monetary system has always appeared
benign to me, a blessing from my culture that grants me a clear measurement
of how much from me is enough. It is permission to be indigent, with no
ethical compromise, fundamental to real freedom in my view. But to the
aristocratic people the monetary system is confusing seduction into debt
and abusive slavery of and by other people. Unable to think clearly, they
fall into financial promises that curse them later, and appear unavoidable.
   Most of the aristocrats speak about the problem like Mr. Jones, saying
that it's hard to make it work, but an exciting and noble challenge, and
not realistic to live without and still have a nice life. Mr. Joseph says
the opposite, that we can all relate to each other like Jane Austen's
aristocratic women, with "occupation" being a choreographic term and taking
of service or taking of stuff being limited by politeness and elegance and
the onus of responsibility for maintenance.
   Oddly, my own perspective is that both viewpoints are valid, and not
contradictory. The monetary system is to me a backup system, like a spare
tire in a car, ideally never used but also never left behind. I aspire to a
life that never needs it ever, but always has the option.
   I have one close friend who's a farmer, and a roommate who's a grocer,
both of them appreciative of my presense in their life in a way inspiring
them to give me a lot of non-marketable, but incredible, organically grown
food. My yard and some of my close neighbor's yards are also contributors
part of the year. One eighth of my roof is photo-voltaics, feeble compared
to an aristocratic load but a match for my personal demand. The toilet
system I use is completely waterless and I am generally not inspired to
bathe more than twice a month. I prepare simple, generally greaseless meals
that need a little cold water for cleanup. I'm a jack of nearly every trade
I have any use for. I'm a packrat and a garbage hound, and so are several of
my friends, so my consumer glut is huge and everchanging but almost
entirely cashless.
   Money is a harsh formality to me, a polite confusing way of saying "no
you can't have it, but, oh well, maybe for a comparable sacrifice". The
tired employee putting on a smile for me is just a confusing tragedy I want
out of as quick as possible. I delight in how my life has evolved away from
money and I equally delight in having somewhere to turn when I want a
particular item right away.
   I think the aristocratic people like Mr. Jones and Mr. Joseph and
President Obama would have a far nicer life, both personally and in global
impact, if they could relate to a price as a polite way of saying no, as a
request to leave ownership of the matter untouched, whether related to a
restaurant meal or a fighter jet, whether in behalf of America or related to
their own estate. I don't see a need for better fiscal responsibility in
government, I see a need for less openness to the idea that feelings are
appropriate to address through the hiring of someone who is not inspired to
offer a gift.
   I think that the real imagery of the gift perspective shows in a video on
YouTube presented by the Absolut Vodka company, titled In an Absolut World,
Money Would Be Replaced By Acts of Kindness. The short movie shows a series
of brief scenes of people who are playing an aristocratic (non-participatory)
consumer role, paying the service worker with a non-sexual kiss or a hug,
and completely indifferent to original sources of materials, and absentee
workers.
   For me the video presents a bizarre anomoly that the real world actually
has a lot of, of people who establish a service role, often 40 hours a
week, serving one generally appreciative aristocrat after another, for a
major portion of their life; and playing the role of aristocrat themselves
for the rest of their time. The tracking with money looks fairly unnecessary
and crass if I imagine it overlaid onto to the people in the video, while
still including the kisses, but what I've seen with roommates, neighbors and
friends, who do in fact pay with little more than hugs and smiles and other
symbolic gestures, is that a reliable service provider or product maker gets
utterly taken for granted, and even heartlessly pressed to their limit of
endurance and resources. The actual spontaneous gestures of fondness,
though, are reserved for people who evoke happy feelings through precise
choreography, not through technical benefit. In fact the reverse appears
to me much more common. That is, gestures of fondness, whether real or
not, and clever choreography, inspire people to offer technical gifts.
   Among my associates the use of electricity, clean water, toilet paper,
gasoline, and the like, gets obscenely heedless in the absense of overt
policing or a significant financial incentive. In shared areas, cleanliness,
concern about pollution, and attention to soil erosion become a minority
focus, if a focus at all.
   As I see my local situation, the differential advantage arrangement of
some territory claims and materials is all that prevents complete and
brutal collapse of the local ecology and neighborly spirit. If this general
heartlessness could be addessed somehow, through discussion or theatre or
someone setting a captivating example, I can imagine that people who had
lived in both sorts of world might retain a measure of consciousness. But
many of the older people I've gotten to know who were ecologically
concerned and clean as young adults are quite casual now. I have only seen
direct differential advantage reliably get people to care about their own
ecological and spiritual impact, even people expressing strong concern.
   The people I know who have a huge income cannot be reasoned with about
their personal contribution to air pollution, unnecessary solid waste and
the like. They are appalled at my apparent poverty or stinginess, my use of
repaired old equipment, my composting apparatus, my storage of reusable
materials, my huge bicycle trailer loads, my cold house, my avoidance of
chemical use, and my invitation of so many roommates to live in the house.
They are not mean people, but they will not take ecology in their own life
as important.
   Nearly everyone I've ever gotten to know has made it clear to me that if
money were no object, they would have a five bedroom house kept at 70
degrees with the temperature controlled by openning a window. They would be
on a plane at least once a month, they would drive a huge vehicle every
day, they'd keep a hot tub, and they'd buy and give away a huge pile of
commodities every day, heedless of whether the stuff went right in the
trash or not.
   Though Mr. Joseph suggests some ecological concern, I don't doubt that
both men have lifestyle environmental impact limited only by their own gross
mismanagement of what they acquire and by forces outside of their control.
Both men express a belief that a subculture of wealthy people have developed
lower cost and lower ecological impact electrical power devices that they
withhold from general use. Both suggest that the consequences of releasing
the technology to common use would be a net benefit to the ecology, though
the replacement of horses and wind by fossil fuel has resulted in a shocking
increase in industrial impact and population worldwide, and 40 years of
discussion about it has made no noticable difference.
   Mr. Joseph takes the view that a careful scientific assessment of the
earth's carrying capacity could make reliable predictions and would
authorize even more intense use of energy and mineral resources than is
presently happening. He suggests that the scarcity issues in the regular
economy are entirely supply manipulations by large businesses, to trick
people into being more moderate in use and into paying a higher price.
People did actually curtail their driving some and oil company dividends
were higher during the $4 a gallon gasoline period, but I don't observe any
reliable evidence of anyone's ability to control the matter.
   Everyone appears to me to be a small player in proportion to the whole,
and everyone appears to be hellbent on processing and marketing whatever
resources they have access to as fast as practical, going for differential
advantage now rather than later, even if later would be a greater advantage.
Every government and business and individual seems inclined to spend or use
everything on hand and to borrow from the future to the maximum degree
possible. Every story I read about a CEO describes them sacrificing the
future health of their company for a temporary increase in marketing
numbers. I wish those with resources would be more conservative about their
marketing, and compell moderation through withholding stuff. I certainly
would not comdemn it.
   Mr. Joseph suggests that more widespread educating of people about his
ideas could inspire a gentler humanity, with lower impact on the earth. But
I am sure he's wrong about that, given the prolific number of people in my
town who have a high level of ecological comprehension and the same gross
heedlessness as anyone else.
   Even the people on the Zeitgeist Movement forums all discuss consumptive
escallations if they discuss anything concrete at all, and many people
overtly tell me or post on the internet that ecological issues and scarcity
are just evil propaganda by people who want more for themselves. As my
abilties get better, and my personal resources get more casual, I have
become more reserved about helping people who seem bent on destroying my
world as fast as they can.
   I don't see a need for stopping criminal politicians with Mr. Jones or
doing a new form of posh residential development with Mr. Joseph. I see a
need for less self-destructive grasping after tiresome expensive technical
illusions when what I perceive as the real drive is for choreographic
sharing with sincere and friendly friends. I'd say, better to focus on being
worthy of those friends' interest, by whatever means, and let the money
and stuff thing whither a bit. I see a need to recognize the potential
value of everyone's refuse, and deliberately make a point of sending it to
it's next owner as a blessing instead of a load, if at all possible. I see
a need for everyone to use the resouces they have access to as slowly as
possible, regardless of who is paying.
   I don't agree with Mr. Joseph in his view of the monetary system. I
would say that like access to heated space, privacy, recreational food and
drugs, and freedom of speech, the monetary system is dangerously seductive,
pulling people into expressions of self-pity and heartlessness. I advocate
minimal involvement with all of those things, for the sake of sanity and
moral development, but abolishing them seems sure to create even more social
confusion and dispair, not less. I see a need instead for major world
spokepeople like Mr. Joseph and Mr. Jones to focus on describing social
activities like the monetary system and all the other widespread dangerous
seductions as accurately as possible, but to leave the question of personal
expression up to each individual, whether a corporate leader or a small time
Citizen. I see the actual social influence details as far more complex than
any verbal analysis suggests, given the complexity I've seen in my own
household.
    While I consider the publicizing, by these two fellows, of the criminal
world politics, to be a noble and brave contribution to public discussion,
I don't see deliberate political or social action on a world scale ever
being any more morally accountable than it presently is, given the constant
direct physical danger to all the major individuals, especially if they act
from clear conscience, as some assassinated leaders have apparently done. I
consider media access, that permits a realistic view of what is happening,
to be a very helpful influence on minimizing immoral leadership by taking
some of the fun out of it, not through feeding the problem with more social
terrorism and rationalized demonizing of civic leaders living at gunpoint.
   I see my best hope for worldwide constructive social evolution, and a
potential for a sane elegant economy on a world scale, is to focus
exploration on morally accountable living with direct associates, at the very
least to be accountable to those associates. If I ever succeed at that, I
would then look at the neighborhood level.
   I cannot see pressing national leaders to be more honorable and socially
constructive than their entire constituent base. Even Mr. Jones must speak in
a combative character assassinating tone that I can hardly stand to listen
to, to maintain confidence in his unarguably dangerous social role as a
famous talk radio host addressing world scale criminality. If we compare the
present world leadership, both the official and unrecognized, with the
inquisition or with the invasive genocides in America, instead of with some
theoretical ideal, I think we could claim major hopeful progress.



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