whether it was a conflict or disagreement that happened between the Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project,

because I remember watching that ... Jacque fresco, that he said he was ...

you guys had a disagreement, but he didn't say much else about that. Was it ...

So can you tell us what happened?

PJ: I've always been hesitant to expand on that anymore than necessary, because it's petty - it was a kind of ...

After two years of working with the Venus Project and allocating tremendous resources and such to the Venus Project

they felt fearful of their identity and they felt like I personally,

who was their biggest advocate, who had brought them out and was their biggest fan obviously.

And they felt like I was interfering with some kind of identity that they had -

that I and in one level, that was my final insult, was that, I was trying to, you know, usurp Jacque.

Something like that. As an ego trip. And I couldn't tolerate that.

So in a personal level ... I will l never, you know, asked anybody to stop interaction with them.

In fact we have ... we still have partnership stuff that we do -

the linguistic team still works with the Venus Project and so on and so forth.

So, and I just stopped talking about it, because, okay ...

I don't want to put any more, do any more damage to any of this.

Venus Project has a think-tank type of structure. They're not a movement.

And that's great. And that's Jacque's work - that's Jacque's life's work.

And that should exist as it is.

The movement is a linear force trying to do everything possible with every bridge possible -

with any options we could find to make things happen for the better.

I mean obviously our goal - the Resource-Based Economic model - what defines that train of thought.

It's shared to a degree, but I could actually say, there are some differences the way,

I personally think and communicate in the way, Jacque thought and communicated,

when it comes to nuances of things.

But I don't want to go into that either, because it sound ...

it seems like people become competitive when you start talking like that and I hate that.

So I just say ... let's just ...

It is everything keeps changing and moving and I hope another organization comes

along that's even better than the Zeitgeist Movement, you know,

because there's always gonna be a time span for things.

It's been 10 years of this. And I'm not gonna be mad, If someone took all these ideas and made it better.

I would never be mad at that. I could sleep finally.

[Laugh]

Q: Hi there.

In your presentation you talked about the Mr. Beer, he was talking about the fifth system

and the gentleman, he was talking to, was about people, right?

So just the idea of the recurring system or recursive systém

and systems working within systems - in what way will people …

what role will people have with working in conjunction with that system?

PJ: That's a great point and you can read a whole book on it.

What I'd like to do now, is actually put in the context of what's going on right now in the 21st century,

because that was a long time ago - the way they are approaching, but basically decentralization -

something, that is of on everyone's tongue now, that's thinking, you know, forward.

Decentralization, where you have pockets of people, that are mostly independent -

remember the autonomy property, that I talked about -

and they are connected to other pockets at people,

they are autonomous to a certain degree, they manage their own work.

I'll give you an example.

Think about an energy grid.

Instead of the consolidated energy grid that we have now, you know.

You have a decentralized energy grid, where people are actually producing

their own energy independently on their own structures, that they own, that their homes -

solar panels and so on.

So they are in a sense their own singular systems semi autonomous.

They're still vulnerable to the environment and they're still connected to others,

because what are you do in that circumstance you connect

that viable system of that home producing that renewable energy.

Anything, that they you do in excess of their use,

goes back into a larger grid with all the other homes doing exactly the same thing.

Suddenly you don't have a centralized Energy Authority.

This has been talked about by a lot of people why. That's not my idea.

I think Jeremy Rifkin's talked about this of the the energy internet, he calls it.

It's very logical, eventually that's the way it's going to be. So that's a great example of it.

Did that answer your question you mentioned the top tier fifth thing?

Well think about the democratic sense, if you deciding to have your own energies off the grid,

so to speak energy world for your own work in your own home,

but you're also participating in the larger collective, so if I didn't ...

Think about mesh networks with cell phones in the internet.

I have been loved thinking about this.

So your phone can actually be changed and to be it a signal itself

and if everyone has a phone with the same signal going to each other's phones as a big network,

you could create a cell phone network without any controlled Authority.

You could create an internet structure without any control authority.

No one can flick a switch, no one can control it, no one can censor things.

I mean there's caveats, there's lots of things, that you could talk about technically, you know.

But that's the kind of thinking. So, if you bridge all that out, what you have our economic agents,

that are autonomous, we get, as pointed out in the model, they exist in environment,

where they're trying to, you know, bridge things together to respect that system unity

and they're autonomous at the same time and they regulate their own little world

while it works in that hierarchical levels of recursion they call it.

I'll leave it at that for now, because I can go on spiral of things,

but the idea of autonomous, collective autonomy, so to speak

where everyone's an individual agent just like your body, your liver and so -

as your liver respects the fact, that it's a part of your body,

it has its own self regulatory mechanisms along with it regulatory mechanisms your body.

And now one thing, I would add to that is, that when you have say your own home with that energy grid,

you're gonna have self-regulating mechanisms in that grid simultaneously, that you monitor.

So you're in control of that element of the of the whole node system.

Q: Okay. So this question is kind of two fold and if possible actually and … I'm sorry.

I didn't catch your name in the purple down there?

PJ: Josephine.

Q: Josephine, this might actually be best answered by you,

but I'll ask first ... about critical mass.

I wanted to talk about critical mass and how we bring about more wide sweeping changes,

because obviously, you know, we've got a very politically inert class, who is not interested,

they're not going to make implement changes legislatively. So, you know, strategies for sort of motivating that.

And the part, I wanted to ask you Josephine, was

you were out there talking about the basic income conference and how this is actually happening.

My big concern is, that if the Conservatives get elected, that they'll cancel the pilot program

and that won't go forward. So do we have any kind of feedback on that?

JG: First of all I think, they felt a little frightened to say, that they wouldn't continue it.

So at the moment they claim, that they would, I don't trust that guy obviously.

I think, you know, our first move is, if that guy looks like he's winning or he's gonna win,

we make sure the Liberals an NDP form a coalition,

because then we have critical mass to ensure, he doesn't get in power.

That's one thing.

But I will say, the basic income is absolutely vital, you know, as a means

by which people can be freed up to make these changes and change their behavior,

because, for instance, I would love to go and hang out at the Repair Cafe.

It's very rare, that I can actually squeeze out the time and the money to go and get there.

Which is really sad, right? And my project work is the same problem.

But when it comes to critical mass to make massive change,

you have a couple of things to keep in mind.

One is, that climate chaos is throwing a level of urgency, that has never existed before

and it's real and we can't ... , you know, well, people can pretend it's not ...,

but we all know it is, right?

Secondly, the dinosaurs, who thought, there was no future, who grew up,

thinking, that they had to get under the desk and that the world is going to blow up any second, they're aging out.

So you need to take hold every people, who are coming into positions of systems power

and structural power and you need to meet with them and talk to them.

You need to remember, that you pay them to make change.

You pay them to change our systems.

They are using our money, right? And that's, they're also being paid by us.

So that's imperative.

And I would lastly say that, if you want to get a sense of how that human part of a system -

structural systém - can operate in a self-corrective way,

this is where human rights education comes into play.

If you actually look at the treaties this country signed in our name

and then, you know, neglect it to tell anybody about it,

if you actually look, how they work - they work based on the kind of model,

that Peter's talking about, because it starts off with a notion of self-determination,

but responsibility, collective self-determination and responsibility institutions, individuals, state -

all have the rights and the responsibilities.

So now you see, that you're having a complex system with a framework of guidelines,

that you can apply and of course there's going to be issues and times,

when they bump up against each other,

but we have to stop sitting around and saying „oh let's wait for somebody to bring this into being“.

No, we already have these systems, we have these blueprints and we can utilize them.

We utilize them in our community organizing - in a very diverse community

with people from all over the world, because they get it.

It's much easier, than talking about poverty or ecological disaster.

We talk about human rights and then we browded it in ecological needs and realities.

And in that way we connect the dots between the ecology, human rights, structural change,

systems change and the ability to finally hit that critical mass point.

PJ: Yeah.

[Applause]

Stay with us. You can do my speaking for me.

Q: So, this was very theoretical and ...

So, I work with Emily, I work with Lawrence with Toronto Tool Library

and we're part of the Institute for a Resource-Based Economy.

And in this presentation I don't think we heard a Resource-Based Economy once.

So I'm interested has your perspective changed or should we be renaming or organization?

[Laugh]

PJ: Remember as I said the very beginning, I've done so many talks and focused on so much

about the Resource-Based Economic model or Natural Law Resource-Based Economic model,

whatever you want to call it. And this was a variant of my presentation style.

Usually I'm all encompassing, so ...

I choose to go for the train of thought in description. When you start to label things -

again, you have that categorical thought problem and you end up with symbols.

And I'd rather avoid the symbols and names and titles and just go straight

to the jugular of the train of thought, because that's where the argument is.

So does that make sense? I have never changed my view on any of it.

There are subtleties, I think, that ...

I've educated myself about in terms, you know, this particular kind of thinking systemically is a little bit different, I think -

for example then the general model of the Resource-Based Economy proposed by The Venus Project.

There's actually far more centralization in their original proposal.

Then the decentralized reality that we've become to see so much more robust over the past 10 years.

So things are morphing and changing and then as they should, you know,

and things will change even more, but we don't know what's around the corner

in terms of what that core integral solution will be, that will really alter our framework

of what's actually going to work and what isn't.

Q: First of all thanks for the presentation, thanks for coming Peter.

PJ: I don't know where you are.

Q: I'm over here.

I actually have a three-part question and also a word of caution as well.

The three-part question - as an activist the barriers I hit up against most often are,

what that RBE idea sounds terribly useful and I think, they were to suit me down to the ground,

but how do we get there? I get that probably every 24 hours.

The second part is, how do you find hope in all of this,

because human evolution is so deathly slow, that it's very difficult

to actually spot it happening and I share ...

there's only so many times I can share Toronto Toil Library postings

and, you know, second videos of the Zeitgeist series and what else can I do, what else can be done?

And then the word of caution is actually about universal basic income

I've studied this, as well, personally and what I can't get to grips with is that,

if you understand the very basic laws of supply and demand in economics,