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  • The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) ZDay 2012 University of Southern California

  • Areas of Unfolding A Perfect Storm by Jason Lord

  • Welcome to our 4th annual ZDay event in Los Angeles.

  • My name is Jason Lord.

  • I volunteer to take part in awareness activism for The Zeitgeist Movement.

  • My personal involvement has been as a coordinator for the many chapters

  • that have sprung up in California over the past three years.

  • I'm honored to be here today and to do my best to communicate what the movement is

  • and the train of thought that we're putting forth.

  • I've entitled this presentation 'Areas of Unfolding - A Perfect Storm'.

  • The movement advocates the need to move out of a market economy

  • into a Resource-Based Economy.

  • We use this term for many reasons

  • and to this end, I will touch upon four major areas of unfolding

  • in regards to our socio-economic system,

  • describing what can be seen as the social imperative

  • to transform our civilization into one that is sustainable and equitable

  • for all the world's people.

  • As with our usual introductions, the term 'zeitgeist' can be defined as

  • the intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era.

  • The term 'movement' implies motion or change.

  • And thus, The Zeitgeist Movement is an organization which urges change

  • in the dominant social values of the time,

  • specifically the methods and values which would better serve

  • the well-being of everyone through scientific unfolding.

  • Our hope is that the direction we advocate becomes self-evident

  • as the components of what comprises human well-being

  • and social stability are considered.

  • So, in this regard, let's open with asking "What are the underlying dynamics

  • of conflicts and problems that we see in the world today?"

  • "What can we expect as our social integrity erodes?"

  • and "What else can we do that embodies the term 'sustainable'?"

  • To start, we are looking at a huge topic;

  • there is nothing simple about advocating a transition at a societal scale,

  • namely our modern industrialized society.

  • Over the ages, civilizations have developed as complex societies;

  • history shows a long transition of culture and values.

  • As complexity increases with the evolution of civilizations,

  • they become organized around cities; they use agriculture, use writing and mathematics,

  • and they hold the division of labor. They're centralized,

  • with people and resources constantly flowing from outlying areas

  • towards more densely populated hubs.

  • And as described by archeologist Joseph Tainter

  • "When seen in terms of complexity,

  • there have been 24 civilizations from this perspective

  • and all, except the current industrial civilization so far,

  • have collapsed."

  • Tainter describes the growth of civilization as a process

  • of investing societal resources

  • and the development of even greater complexity, in order to solve problems.

  • But complexity costs energy, and eventually a point is reached

  • where increasing investments become too costly and yield declining returns,

  • since available energy resources are finite.

  • And it's at this point where society begins to experience collapse.

  • It's this notion of collapse I'd like to put into perspective.

  • Think of collapse in terms of social systems shedding their complexity,

  • undergoing a contraction of economics

  • and exhibiting decentralization over time.

  • This perspective is more accurate, helpful and probably less scary

  • than imagining the single catastrophic event

  • some of the existing worldly literature would have you believe.

  • But it also opens avenues for reshaping the social landscape

  • that is not offered by the apocalyptic vision.

  • Our society is a dynamic and complex system,

  • and it's in this view that we find where the root cause of our problems lie.

  • Donella H. Meadows was a PhD in biophysics from Harvard

  • and a research fellow at MIT,

  • where she did much to bring the field of system dynamics into the public view.

  • I'd like to read an excerpt from one of her published works regarding systems.

  • "Hunger, poverty,

  • environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment,

  • chronic disease, drug addiction and war

  • persist, in spite of the analytical ability and the technical brilliance

  • that have been directed toward eradicating them.

  • No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist,

  • but they persist nonetheless.

  • That is because there are intrinsically system problems, undesirable behaviors

  • characteristic of the system structures that produce them.

  • They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame,

  • see the system as the source of its own problems,

  • and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it."

  • The problems we suffer in today's world are symptoms of a systems disorder.

  • The root cause of these negative outcomes

  • are rarely identified, in this way, by the public at large.

  • We have language for good and evil and even identify with such words,

  • but most of the public has no frame of reference for systems dysfunction,

  • and that's a problem. Without this frame of reference,

  • without language for understanding a root-cause systemic issue,

  • what do you think we fall back on? It will be whatever is in our frame of reference:

  • politics, religion, nationalism,

  • monetary-isms, the Democrats, the Liberals.

  • In a way, the purpose for the awareness of today's zeitgeist is exposed.

  • And with this cultural zeitgeist in mind,

  • we're operating a value set that is making for

  • a perfect storm of system failure on a global scale.

  • We do not want people to suffer. We do not want a decline back

  • into the existence of labor-intensive survival, and we don't have to.

  • But, as our socio-economic system experiences a loss of complexity,

  • here are the major areas of unfolding that pose our greatest challenge:

  • monetary economics, labor for income,

  • energy resources, environmental degradation.

  • Let's take a quick look at these areas, starting with economics.

  • When somebody identifies themselves as an economist

  • or a capitalist, I have to remember that such identity

  • presupposes the market system as a given by the structure of reality,

  • the same as the law of gravitation or thermodynamics.

  • At the same time, they often construe their asserted 'given' reality

  • as the natural order. Ironically,

  • this is done even when the given structure has to be imposed on a society

  • that has chosen to reject it,

  • such as one can find in the history of military coups or civil wars

  • plotted and financed by the CIA

  • and carried out through US military operations

  • over the last 50 years, to accomplish just such an end.

  • As the market economy has become the world's baseline,

  • the concept of constant growth continues to be ignored by the status quo.

  • The market economy requires constant growth

  • through perpetual consumption to maintain the labor for income game.

  • For many of us, we now understand

  • that infinite growth is a paradox in a finite environment.

  • Cyclical consumption is an underlying premise of the market model.

  • This means that a business owner or employer

  • pays an employee to perform work.

  • This work means the creation of a product or service

  • that can be sold to a consumer at a profit.

  • The money from this transaction then goes back to the employer

  • to pay the employee to continue their work.

  • And then the cycle begins again.

  • Of course, this buying and selling cycle

  • presupposes the need to purchase any good or service on an ongoing basis.

  • So in order to keep the structure from breaking down,

  • it must be perpetuated, regardless of the social cost.

  • Consumption, it's the new national pastime. Baseball, it's consumption,

  • the only true lasting American value that's left,

  • buying things, buying things,

  • people spending money they don't have on things they don't need,

  • money they don't have on things they don't need

  • so they can max out their credit cards and spend the rest of their lives

  • paying 18% interest on something that cost $12.50.

  • And they didn't like it when they got it home anyway:

  • not too bright, folks, not too bright.

  • Another important component is the issue of debt, along with consumption.

  • The more an economy expands, the greater the debt that is created,

  • and this sets up an inevitable system crisis,

  • for the money needed to pay the interest charged on the loans

  • does not exist in the economy outright.

  • Therefore, there is always more outstanding debt than money in existence.

  • And once the debt grows larger than a person or a company can afford,

  • the defaults begin, the loans stop, and the money supply begins to contract.

  • This particular scenario of debt overpowering and nullifying expansion,

  • along with the onset of austerity measures,

  • is unfolding, as we speak, with our European counterparts.

  • And to shed some light on our relationship to the astronomical amount

  • of US national debt that we've all been saddled with,

  • this is debt that you don't see and you don't feel directly, but since 1984

  • 100% of the federal income tax that is taken out of your paycheck

  • goes to pay the interest on the national debt owed to the Central Bank

  • and nothing else.

  • When we can't afford the interest payments on our personal debts,

  • we know this is being broke, or going bankrupt.

  • And as we've seen, it's no different with nations,

  • and I find it insane that when this fictitious bubble pops,