The great thing about this film,” a friend says on email, “is that it suggests workable, practicable solutions to all of the world’s problems. Most of us can only criticise and despair, but these guys have come up with answers.”
“It’s easy to get sucked into believing lies, especially when the lies are mixed with truth and then packaged in an artsy, well-directed film,” writes one of many unconvinced bloggers (http://tinyurl.com/c6oqbq).
Peter Joseph’s free-to-download documentaries Zeitgeist, the Movie and Zeitgeist: Addendum (http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/) are among the most widely seen Internet films ever, and they provoke very polarised reactions. “Zeitgeist is The Da Vinci Code on steroids,” writes eSkeptic (http://tinyurl.com/d2cbwm), and indeed the early sections of the first film — the ones dealing with the “truth” behind the Jesus myth and the hidden meaning of the zodiac signs — are similar in effect to Dan Brown’s bestseller: you can’t help being riveted while the ride is on, but afterwards you take a deep breath, stand back and accept that most of it is tosh.
However, the two Zeitgeist films cover a much wider range of topics, and some of what they say is worth listening to. The central thesis is that institutions such as politics, religion and money are tools for keeping people in a state of “indentured servitude”. Inspired by the work of the futurist Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project (http://www.thevenusproject.com/intro_main/whatis_tvp.htm), the films posit a near-Utopian world built on a high-technology, resource-based economy rather than the debt-perpetuating monetary system that all of us take for granted. Solar, wind and tidal power would be fully harnessed making fossil fuels redundant, magnetically run trains would make existing forms of transportation seem shockingly primitive and inefficient, and people wouldn’t have to spend their lives chained to jobs (“paid slavery”) that they aren’t inherently interested in.
It can be a tricky business watching these movies. On the one hand there are sequences where you can tell you’re being manipulated or fed information that sets up a neat narrative; at its worst this amounts to paranoia-stoking through a hotchpotch of conspiracy theories. Taking the “facts” stated here at face value would be a mistake: “these films should be used as stepping stones for research, the same way you’d use Wikipedia” says a commenter on eSkeptic. But on the other hand the more general observations about the problems facing the planet, and the vision for a better future, can bestir hope in even the most cynical breast.
In a long, thoughtful piece in the Idaho Observer (http://tinyurl.com/ch6lvz), Hari Heath commends Zeitgeist: Addendum (“it deserves serious consideration by everyone who wants a future worth living”) but ends on a bittersweet note: “The two greatest problems are the average person’s infantile understanding of the world around him and the fact that the Zeitgeist Movement is at least a century ahead of our time.” There may be another stumbling block. “The lie that is perpetuated in the film is the lie that humans are basically good,” says the Que est Veritas blog (http://tinyurl.com/c6oqbq), pointing out that it’s improbable that people will choose to be collectively intelligent so that they can live in peace. Look at our history so far!
Still, as a commenter on the Unofficial Blog of the UK Libertarian Party (http://tinyurl.com/cdg4n5) puts it, “regardless of the validity... Zeitgeist provokes thought on important subjects and compels the reader to ask questions”.
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(For more, see The Zeitgeist Movement: http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/)