Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward
Directed by	Peter Joseph
Produced by	Peter Joseph
Edited by	Peter Joseph
Music by	Peter Joseph, Lili Haydn and Yes
Distributed by	GMP LLC
Release date	January 15, 2011 (2011-01-15)
Running time	161 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is the third installment in Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist film trilogy. The film premiered at the JACC Theater in Los Angeles on January 15th 2011 at the Artivist Film Festival and released online. As of June 2014, the film has 22,163,109 views according to Youtube statistics.

Content

The film is arranged into four parts. Each part is an amalgam of interviews, narration and animated sequences.

Part I: Human Nature

The film begins with an animated sequence narrated by Jacque Fresco. He describes his adolescent life and his discontinuation of public education at the age of 14 and describes his early life influences.

Human behavior and the nature vs. nurture debate is discussed. Robert Sapolsky sums up his opinion of the nature vs. nurture debate in which he refers to it as a "false dichotomy." The film then says that it is neither nature nor nurture that solely shapes human behavior, but the combination of both. Disease, criminal activity and addictions are also discussed. The overall conclusion of Part I is that social environment and cultural conditioning play a large part in shaping human behavior.

Part II: Social Pathology

John Locke and Adam Smith are discussed in regard to modern economics. In Two Treatises of Government, John Locke lays out the fundamental principles of private ownership of land, labor and capital. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith uses the term invisible hand as a means to explain how an individual's self-interest benefits society as a whole. A critical view of economic theory is made by questioning the need for private property, money and the inherent inequality between agents in the system. Also seen critically is the need for cyclical consumption in order to maintain market share which results in wasted resources and Planned obsolescence. Critical views of the monetary system are given. According to the movie, the current monetary system will result in default or hyperinflation at some future time.

Part III: Project Earth

As with Zeitgeist: Addendum, the film presents a "resource-based economy" as advocated by Jacque Fresco discussing how human civilization could start from a new beginning in relation to resource types, locations, quantities, to satisfy human demands; track the consumption and depletion of resources to regulate human demands and maintain the condition of the environment.

Part IV: Rise

The current world wide situation is described as disastrous. A case is presented that pollution, deforestation, climate change, overpopulation, and warfare are all created and perpetuated by the socioeconomic system. Various poverty statistics are shown that suggest a progressive worsening of world culture. According to the United Nations, currently 18,000 children a day die from starvation. Also according to the UN, global poverty rates have doubled since the 1970s.

The final scene of the film shows a partial view of earth from space, followed by a sequence of superimposed statements; "This is your world", "This is our world", and "The revolution is now".

Interviewees

• Dr. Adrian Bowyer
• Dr. Colin J. Campbell
• Jacque Fresco
• Jeremy J. Gilbert
• Dr. James Gilligan
• Max Keiser
• Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis
• Dr. Gábor Máté
• Dr. John McMurtry
• Roxanne Meadows
• Michael Ruppert
• Dr. Robert Sapolsky
• Richard Wilkinson

Award

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward received "Best Political Documentary" in 2011 from the Action on Film International Film Festival.

Reception

An article in the American Spectator described the movie as featuring "a parade of “experts” — mostly academics — touting the supposed benefits of collectivism and the purported evils of private property, profit, and free markets. Using a barrage of pseudo-intellectual terms such as “Unified Dynamically Updated Global Management Machine,” the movie essentially concludes that Fresco’s vision is the only way to move forward," end quote, from the article.

A review in the monthly publication The Socialist Standard commented on several aspects of the film. Regarding its production values they stated that the film had a "well rounded feel." In terms of content they criticized the "shaky economic analysis" contained in the second part of the film and noted that Karl Marx had already undertaken a more scientific and thorough critique of capitalism. They went on to state that, "despite these false beginnings the analysis is at least on the right track." Regarding transition to the new system proposed in the film, the review critically noted that in the film "there is no mention of how to get from here to there."

Fouad Al-Noor in Wessex Scene said that the film has more of a focus on solutions than the previous film. Calling it a modern phenomenon, he noted that while there are controversial elements, he challenged those using labels to describe the film to watch the films first.

In her article on the Zeitgeist Movement, published in Tablet Magazine, Michelle Goldberg felt that the film was "silly enough that at times [she] suspected it was [a] satire about new-age techno-utopianism instead of an example of it", but noted the large following of the movement that produced the film, saying "it even seems like the world's first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity".

See also

• Zeitgeist: The Movie
• The Zeitgeist Movement
• Criticism of capitalism

External links

• Official website