Previously Titled [ten minutes ago]

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, a Documentary Film Review

The title, subtitle, and the replaced working title above are all based on quotes from this Peter Joseph documentary. If you have read my reviews on this site you know that I take the titles and subtitles as often as possible directly from the subject matter. This film is so chock full of great quotes and profound concepts that I had an index card full of subtitles and titles to choose from.

When I discussed the first two films in this series on this blog I had not viewed a copy with credits at the end. I therefore did not know that Mister Joseph is not only the producer, but writer, editor, director and narrator! I had some problems with the first film even though I loved it. I was also critical of ‘the producers’ on a point of religious scholarship. Knowing that one man did all this work, I’m thinking that I was too critical.

What a job Mister Joseph has done, in crafting what I think are the most important films of our time. I do not see any way that Peter Joseph is not on a federal hit list somewhere. You know dude, that the only reason why you are still alive is that the Feds are counting on NFL fans to laugh at you.

I recommend that Zeitgeist: Moving Forward be viewed before the other two films in this series. View them all. To me this series of films are too important to be subject to a review by me, this selfish little ape pecking away at this keyboard in his toxic tree-house. Let me just provide an outline of what is covered. But, before and after that I shall have my Harm City say.

I do my best to associate with those more intelligent than I. This is probably an attempt to assuage the solitude implicit with working in the service industry [as Mister Joseph points out, the only expanding portion of the work force] where I tend to be 'the smartest person in the room’. Nothing is more solicitous of social isolation then being surrounded by the intoxicated, the brain-washed and the empty-headed.

Lately, as I have burrowed snuggly into middle-age I have noticed two disconcerting trends among my dozen-or-so [okay, 11] highly intelligent friends and family members. Those over 40 believe that we as a society have taken the wrong fork in the road, and see no hope. Those under 30 universally deny a spiritual component. All of the highly intelligent young folks I know laugh at the very mention of religion, just as the older intellectuals shake their head at man’s seeming betrayal by his every social institution, including the religious ones.

I have also recently been sought out by individuals and groups of non-violent educated people, who would have been pigeon-holed as liberals by anyone I knew until very recently, about what they fear is the increasing lethality of our culture. I, ‘The Violence Guy’, now have vegetarians, school teachers, grandparents and Green Party types asking me for self-defense advice, vigilante assistance in the case of a local social breakdown, and technical information on the efficacy of weaponry for repelling home invasions. I also get snail mail from educated people who like this site but are afraid to buy anything off of it because Homeland Security might track their purchase back to this little anti-establishment chimp in his toxic tree-house…

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is presented in four parts.

If I have misspelled any names please forgive me. The name tags did not stay on screen for long and my right hand has been broken seven times in repeated demonstrations of violent behavior. Your panelists should understand Peter.

Part One concerns addictive and violent behaviors and marshals an impressive series of commentators: Doctor Ron Sapolosky; Doctor Gabor Mate [the smartest dude in the Zeitgeist room until Jacque Fresco shows up]; Professor Richard Wilkenson; and Doctor James Gilligan. These commentators do an excellent job of explaining the social and genetic influences on human development, especially in defining gestational development of the human fetus. During a discussion of ‘social corrosion’ and ‘psycho social stress’ they site inequity as a major factor, and Mister Joseph is not left in the lurch as he reminds us from his editorial chair that 1% of the planet’s humans have 40% of its wealth, and that a purely parasitic Hedge Fund manager makes 300 million dollars per year compared to a beneficial research scientist’s 60 thousand dollars per year.

Part Two starts out with a scathing critique of John Locke and Adam Smith and introduces Doctor John McMurtry, financial analyst Max Keiser, and my favorite social critic journalist Michael C. Rupert. The highlight of this section has to be a cartoon depicting Planet Earth as a solar panhandler! ‘Planned obsolescence’ as the cornerstone of our current economy is exposed as an extension of a world economic model that was formulated by 18th and 19th Century thinkers who believed that our planet’s resources were infinite. Remember, that when all of our social systems from free market libertarianism to communism were being formulated, humanity knew very little about the extent of world resources, knew nothing about environmental impact, and had not even mapped the globe.

Part Three finally introduces Jacque Fresco for us by name, the egg-headed futurist that I picked on in my previous Zeitgeist article. Fresco is shown in a 1970s Larry King interview and we get some of his back story which really endeared me [Although I would still make him my slave scientist in a desert island shipwreck situation.] to him. This segment of the film makes a case for the scientific solution of social and material ills, describing a 'resource-based' economic model. We are also introduced to Doctor Berok Khoshnevis and Doctor Adrian Bowyer who discuss such things as occupational hazards and three-dimensional printing.

This is where I fall in love with Zeitgeist and where it loses me in terms of hope, like that woman that doesn’t call you ‘sweetie’ until she is walking out the door. This all makes too much sense. What I think Zeitgeist shows us is how an earth type planet should be settled and utilized by humans, or how a small surviving population of non-violent scientists and engineers might one day emerge from a post apocalyptic nightmare earth to finally coexist with the world, as opposed to fighting over it.

Fresco has the two best lines in the film, ‘The more justice you seek the more hurt you become.’ and ‘This shit has got to stop!’

His attractive assistant, who I shamelessly invoked as potential caveman war booty in my earlier editorial, is named as Roxanne Meadows, the non-bitch of the future. She seems to be the spokeswoman for Mister Fresco’s Venus Project. I’m sorry Jacque, I really admire you, but I don’t see your Venus Project and Roxanne in her sensible attire holding up against some White Supremacist Mars Project led by a Nordic breeder named Valkyra packing a set of Tech-9s in a halter top imprinted with ‘I LUV WATERBOARDING’.

Part Four introduces Doctor Colin J. Campbell, petroleum analyst Jeremy J. Gilbert, and more deep concepts, such as ‘structural violence’, the ‘denatured world’ and ‘peak oil’. The highlight of this piece is when Peter Joseph is killed by right wingers while narrating his own demise…The experts introduced earlier are all brought out for a recap, resulting in two of my favorite facts presented in the film: that every calorie of food consumed on this planet currently requires 10 calories of petroleum to produce, and that worldwide, poverty has doubled between 1970 and 2010. The crowning commentary is posthumously given by comedian George Carlin, who I always believed to be the most insightful man of my parents’ generation.

The end of the film totally loses me with a pie-in-the-sky vision of people worldwide peacefully throwing off the yoke of our oppressors. I’m thinking more along the lines of a six-billion person gang fight over the last can of beans on Planet Earth.

Of course, if you’ve been paying any attention since you were dragged kicking and screaming into this two-legged rat-race, you probably realize that reality will fall somewhere between Jacque Fresco’s dream and his nightmare.