Economic activist and film-maker Peter Joseph reveals the underlying faults of modern economic systems, in which the rich strive so hard to maintain their wealth.
The Zeitgeist film series was originally Peter Joseph’s creative expression. It then carried over to the Zeitgeist movement, thanks to the number of people who wanted to start being actively involved in social change.The Zeitgeist movement overall is built upon the ideology of the Venus project, the lifework of Jacque Fresco. “All of the work that he’s done throughout his entire life, compiling sustainable designs, compiling ideologies, value orientation,” Peter Joseph said. “If we want to approach all the problems in the world, we should think about it technically, not think about it through political parties, not think about it through the acquisition of money or the movement of money. It is time we just go straight to it, because we understand it now.”Peter Joseph is talking about a firm physical science of what it means to meet the needs of the human population. By taking away the current monetary structure from the equation, Peter thinks we can solve such problems as crime and disease. “A guy will run out, steal a car that’s worth $15,000. He gets arrested and thrown in jail for possibly ten years at the expense of probably $300,000,” Peter says. “Just give him the car! It’s inefficient, the entire crime and punishment. Give people what they need.” Our culture is based on artificial wants – and actual needs, true viable things, are on the other side of the spectrum. If people don’t have their needs met, crime emerges, so the entire environment has to be low-stress.“It is not in, I believe, our basic human development to just kill each other,” he said. “If you took all that money we spent on war and applied it to renewable energies or applied it to basically anything social, you could resolve that problem in a second.” Peter Joseph believes there is not going to be an economic recovery. The terrifying idea of the collapse of oil-based industrial civilization is based on statistics.“If we don’t adapt ourselves to renewables, which we have plenty of, we just need a system approach to energize them and get them going to change the global infrastructure,” he said. “If that doesn’t occur, we’re definitely going to see more wars, we going to see extremely high gas.”“What we need really is a Manhattan Project, but for renewable energy research,” he added.Peter Joseph doubts that anyone has a voice in the democracy we call America. “The public is always going to be given the short end of the stick, and always has been,” he said. “Nothing is really changed. We are living in feudalism and nothing more.”Peter Joseph is not only claiming that the current socio-economic system is not working, but also has some suggestions in case the trends that he sees continue.“People in power are preserving themselves and they don’t really have a general interest to help anyone else,” he says. “I do suggest people be more cautions and try to find other sources of information, more independent media. Get away from the dominant institutions.”