Overall I have a kind of liking for the Zeitgeist series, and the final goal the series promotes, which on the face of it is an egalitarian, unpolluted world living in harmony with high-tech human engineering. Zeitgeist is (I think) a German word which means ‘spirit of the ages’. It’s unfortunate however that the succulence contained within the Zeitgeist movies are served with pretty large portions of dead and decaying meat
For example: Seemingly smarter people than I , supporters of the The Mises institute , go on to suggest Zeitgeist of trying to make us deep-throat Communism.
“Come get some” – Lenin. {or was it Duke Nukem?}
But some of us sheeple don’t particularly want to join that particular flock, so we’ll decline the offer, but thanks anyway boys.
If that wasn’t bad enough, which it is, then we get to the other point that pervades the Zeitgeist movies: It’s hatred of religion.
Now, as then, today’s residual rabble of communists/socialists/Marxists(of the very unfunny kind) don’t entertain the idea of religion, and once more, true to form, they embark upon a way to purge it from humanity. While “Zeitgeist” isn’t able to slaughter tens of millions as in Communisms golden age, it sets out to achieve this purge by the only means left at its disposal: an appeal to the mind, or more accurately, a gross deception of the mind.
Hey buddy, get with the real world man. We’ve NLP now.
I will hopefully demonstrate Zeitgeist’s third attempt to pass on their contempt of religion contained in its spiel in the latest movie: ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD (2011)–
It becomes quite obvious towards the end of the very interesting (yet utterly godless) first section in which humans development is described as a function of their genes and environmental factors (sorry God, no room for you here).
Putting aside references by Dr Gabor Mate, Physician, author. Portland society, to Israyhelli mothers ‘trauma’ before the ’67 war, or those of Dr James Gilligan, Former director of the Centre for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, who mentions the idyllic Kibbutzim (of which many probably reside on stolen Palestinian land), Dr Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, suddenly brings in an obvious reference to religion by offering a bipolar choice:
“Whether life is basically about sin or about beauty. Whether the afterlife will carry a price as to how we live our lives or it’s irrelevant.”
Everyone likes beauty and of course wants to be around beautiful things, hence the ‘answer’ to Sapolsky’s question is to go with beauty. Sin therefore was incorrect. Having rejected sin, a follow up false conclusion is put before us that because sin (i.e. religion) is wrong, we must ditch the idea of the afterlife and a price to pay. Summary: life as lived via religion is irrelevant. Don’t bother wasting time thinking deeper about either God or religion, being thought of by many as being beautiful, or good practising people of faith being beautiful individuals and so on. So great stuff Zeitgeist. Remember this?
“You’re either with us or with the terrorists.”
Oh hum, Choices choices choices.
Right. The mental anchor has been set. Now comes a reinforcement, i.e. part two, “Social Pathology, The Market“, and boy does this take the cake.
Dr John McMcMurtry Professor Emeritus (of philosophy) University of Guelph initialises this part setting the scene with the fact that the economic system is collapsing. McMurtry gives an “explanation” how this comes about, by talking about only two men: John Locke and Adam Smith.
McMurtry mentions Locke’s treatise about private property, and eventually a shot of a document entitled “Two Treatises of Government: In the former, The Falfe Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer” appears, which makes me wonder why that is shown and not Locke’s actual treatise ???. On Locke, McMurtry mentions the three provisos for the justification of private property, the second of which is shown in the shot below
But isn’t the second proviso actually the one BEFORE the part that’s highlighted? i.e.
Anyone can through his labour come to own as much as he can use in a beneficial way before it spoils; anything beyond this is more than his share and belongs to others.
I rather think it is. However, there’s no word ‘God’ there, and that such a prominent word ‘God’ gets tagged along with ‘spoil’ and ‘destroy’ in the next sentence is just too irresistible. My guess is, most people never noticed what Zeitgeist did, and casually accepted the visuals were matching McMurtry’s words.
To fair to McMurtry at this point, he actually gave the correct proviso, verbally saying
“you [i.e. us humans] must not let it spoil”
which is indeed the part immediately before the highlighted section. McMurthy hasn’t mentioned God at all… yet… but Zeitgeist did it for him.
How devious. How generous.
McMurtry then says, accompanied with the screen-shot below:
“–cut–
Well He drops them. He drops them like that. Right in one sentence he says, well once the introduction of money came in by men’s tacit consent, then it became – and he doesn’t say all the provisos are cancelled (!!!), they’re erased [raised??] – but that’s what happens. So now we have not product(s) and you property earned by your own labour, oh now, money buys labour now. There’s no longer consideration of whether these enough left over for others, there’s no longer consideration of whether it spoils because he says ‘well money’s likes silver and gold and gold can’t spoil therefore money’s can’t be responsible for waste’ –cut– which is ridiculous, were not talking about money and silver were talking about what its effects are. It’s one non-sequitur after another. Just the most startling logical ledger[ledgered?] domain that he gets away with here. But it fits the interests of capital owners.”
If you read the screen-shot above, do you think McMurtry is actually accurate in saying Locke dropping those provisos? To me, the text preceeding the highlighted text is being quite specific/contextualised. Locke seems to be talking about a specific case where money prevents a man from laying title to land, land which has already been claimed by somebody else. Because the land was unworked, the land must have been in excess of the original claimant, hence original claimant has lost the right to claim that land. The new claimant – now working the land – (and therefore because he is working it shows that land insn’t in excess for him) has the legitimate claim. But in the presence of money, i.e. the ‘monetisation’ of the land, whereby a monetary value assigned to the LAND, then the new claimant now loses the right to the land because he didn’t pay the ascribed monetary value for it. And it is this monetary situation which is allowed to persist by the rest of society.
That’s my analysis of the passage shown, and to me, VERY different from what McMurtrys interpretation. OK, I’ve not read it the whole document, but I think the paragraph is enough. Whose analysis, mine or McMurtry’s do you think is in closer agreement to the text in the screen shot?
So the monetisation at work here harms or alter the natural and fair provisos about excess.
But say that I’m wrong, and McMurtry was correct, and money did indeed ‘drop’ the provisos, then all that Locke had said before, instantly becomes irrelevant and he has just negated his own advocacy of a just system of property rights. Also, given this effect of money (in various forms) was around long before Locke and in the domain Locke lived amongst, then those provisos could only refer to times or cultures so far removed from Locke’s society that his treatise would have virtually no applicability and hence be irrelevant! Hence, my belief that the interpretation of Locke on this point doesn’t make any sense.
And if you didn’t catch it, McMurtry said: Locke NEVER said those provisos were dropped. There’s a good reason for that John, and I’ve just explained it above. My experience of philosophers is they often shine new lights on what people said before, but sometimes the message gets changed in the process and hence has hardly valid.
Besides, money has ALWAYS bought labour or the products of labour.
So I disagree very much with John McMurtry here, as I do about his accusation of non-sequitur. However McMurtry never said anything about God in respect of Locke so far, but Zeitgeist did.
The cuts are a bit annoying too, reducing ones confidence in Zeitgeis’ts honesty here., but still, it seems McMurtry’s point is generally coming across.
Then he moves onto Adam Smith, reading, unjustifiably IMHO, between Smiths lines.
44m25s:
Then Adam Smith came along, and what he adds is a religion to this ‘Lock started with God made it all this way, this is Gods right’ and now we get also with Smith coming along he says its not only Gods – I mean he’s not saying this but this is what’s happening philosophically in principle – he’s saying its not only a question of private property – that’s all now pre-supposed, its given, and threes there money investors that buy labour – given, that there’s no limit to how much they can buy of other mans labour how much they can accumulate how much inequality – that’s all given now. And so he now comes along and what what his big idea is – and again it’s just introduced in parenthesis, en passent, – when people put out the goods for sale and others, the supply and other people buy them with then with the demand and so forth, how do you we have supply equalling demand and demand equalling supply, how can they come into equilibrium, and that is one of the central motions of economics is, [Moves forward, cementing the point] how do they come into equilibrium and he says it’s the invisible hand of the MARKET –possible cut!!–
… that brings them into equilibirum. So now we have God as actually immiment
he just didn’t give the rights to property and how, all this ‘ware with all’ (?), and its natural rights
of doing all that Locke said, now we have the system itself as God.
In Fact Smith And Smith says when he talks – and you’ll never find this Quote, you have to read the whole “Enquiry into the wealth of Nations” — audio CUTS– He says the scantiness(?) of subsistence sets limits to the reproduction of the poor and that nature can deal with this in no other way than elimination of their children. And So he anticipated evolutionary theory in the worse sense that that will apply this is well before Darwin, And so he called them the “Race of Laborers” so you can see there was inherent racismt built in here. There was an inherent acceptance, life blindness to kill innumerable children, and he thought that ‘well that’s the invisible hand making supply\ meet demand and demand meet supply, So see what how wise God is. [Pics of FACTUAL rubbish tip appears] So you can see a lot of the really very life destructive eco-genocidal things that are going on now have in a way a thought gene back in Smith II.
Now, I’ve listened to this section again and again and taken note of obvious cuts in McMurtry’s dialogue. In the build up to the very important thing McMurtry says, i.e. “the system itself as God“, Zeitgeist conjures religious images before your eyes and actually inverts what is being said. Zeitgeist gives the impression it’s God that’s the system, or the system OF God Himself is behind Smithsonian economics, but McMurthy disn’t actually say that. McMurtry is saying (read the extra transcription below) that Smith or the people that took up Smiths work (Smithsonians) are replacing God’s system.
Do you agree Zeitgeist has inverted it? [Remember God, ‘presumably’ fair would probably ascribe the fairness principles of Locke wrote in his provisos).
Zeitgeist is deliberately punching below the belt here.
And McMurtry is being somewhat honest in repeatedly highlighting his interpretations or beliefs of what L&S said, reminding us L&S didn’t actually say them.
Zeitgeist takes over:
“Adam Smith never fathomed that the most profitable economic sector on the planet would eventually be in the arena of financial trading or so called investment, where money itself is simply gainsed by the movement of other money in an arbitraty game whihc holds zero product merit to society… Fundamental: money is treated as a commodity in and of itself… Money is pursued for the sake of money and nothing else. The underlying idea which was mysterously qualified by Adam Smith with his religious (Zeitgeists emphasis) declaration of ‘the invisible hand’
Oh I am pretty sure the father of modern economics, Smith, fathomed that – at least in some respect, given the historical ripples of usury and mercantile’s throughout Europe, since, say, from 1517 onwards in Europe.
As for use of the the word ‘mysterious’, is the use of the word ‘mysterious’ appropriate? It sounds nice and acts as a testicle grabber and its supposed to connect with or reinforce with Zeitgeist says afterwards is the “religious declaratioon of the invisible hand” – Wait a minute, Smith never declared that the ‘invisible hand’ had to be the hand of God. That’s Zeitgeist’s projection upon what Smith said. Well if Zeitgrist says he did, then so it must be – right?
Zeitgeist says “ALL economic systems are said to be use of money for monetary gain.” which is kind of true but is it true in the evil scheme kind of way Zeitgeist is trying to envelope you in, i.e. one that’s put down to God (via Smiths invisible hand)? No. Money is not the root of all evil. Abuse of money is a part of some evil – but nobody likes grey areas.Zeitgeist’s shows off his emporers new clothes with this statement as BEFORE Smith (allow me:) ‘made his mysterious declaration‘, the same economic system was already in motion. So in fact, it’s not Smith who MADE this. And if you ‘defend’ Zeitgeist here, and say “well yeah, Zeitgeist is saying it’s Gods system” then you have just admitted that God exists, just that you are calling God evil. And in fact Zeitgeist does the same, trying to pin the evil environmental and genocidal eugenic economic systems on God too. But Zeitgeist has put forward the view that God doesn’t exist. How then can he legitimately claim it’s God’s fault and God is evil?
The Zeitgest movies contain many of these almost schoolboyis ploys.
But to some,
what Zeitgeist decrees, is.
Hallelujah
ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD 2011
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