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The Zeitgeist Movement

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The Zeitgeist Movement
AbbreviationTZM or ZM
FormationAugust 18, 2008[citation needed]
TypeSocial movement
Region served
Global
Key people
Peter Joseph
Websitewww.thezeitgeistmovement.com

The Zeitgeist Movement (Zeitgeist is a German expression meaning "the spirit [Geist] of the time [Zeit]") is a global, nonprofit, nonviolent sustainability and social equality advocacy organization founded in 2008. Zeitgeist proposes that humanity should, essentially, abolish capitalism, the nation-state and parliamentary bodies, and adopt a moneyless global socioeconomic system in which all resources would be equitably, commonly and sustainably shared.

Philosophy and history

The Zeitgeist Movement describes itself as an educational group based on the belief that the "monetary-market" economy must be replaced with a system in which the Earth's resources are equally shared by its inhabitants in a moneyless and stateless system where debt, credit, exchange, barter, wage labor, private property and the profit motive would be eliminated.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Creation of a global social system using a type of resource-based economy model is advocated by The Zeitgeist Movement members.[8][9]

Zeitgeist members say the current socioeconomic system is structurally corrupt and needs to be replaced with a system based on efficient and careful resource use through the technological potential of sustainable development.[1][2][10][3][11][12]

The movement was originally inspired by Peter Joseph's film Zeitgeist: Addendum (2008).[13] Zeitgeist used to be the activist arm of The Venus Project (TVP), which featured in the films Zeitgeist: Addendum and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (Jan. 2011) as a possible solution to Earth's cultural and ecological problems[11], but in Aug. 2011 the groups split and currently are not associated with each other.[14]

Activities

The movement holds an annual event, Z-day, in March.[1][11] It was first held in 2009 in New York City.[10] The 2010 event also took place in New York, with "337 sympathetic events occurring in over 70 countries worldwide."[1] London and Vancouver hosted the 2011 and 2012 main events respectively.[15][16]

Criticism of the Zeitgeist movement

The Huffington Post[1], The New York Times[10], The Palm Beach Post[3], Globes[12], TheMarker[11], VC Reporter [4], RT TV[5][6] and Reason magazine[17] criticized various aspects of the Zeitgeist movement, specifically: (a) utopianism, (b) reduced work incentives in their proposed economy, (c) practical difficulties in a transition to that economy, and (d) subscribing to 9/11 conspiracy theories in Zeitgeist: The Movie, the original 2007 film that inspired the movement. The movement responded to the criticism by saying that (a) it does not believe in utopia because there is no final frontier, and that, instead, it believes in a non-finite process of updating society's notions of economics and politics to continuously re-align them with new scientific and technical discoveries, (b) workers will be intrinsically motivated, (c) the difficulties, while very serious, are not impossible to overcome, and (d) there is no direct association between the material in the Zeitgeist documentaries and the movement.[11][7][1][10][3][12][4][5][6][14][18]

An article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion described the movement as an example of a "conspirituality", a synthesis of New Age spirituality and conspiracy theory, asserting that Zeitgeist: The Movie claims that "organised religion is about social control and that 9/11 was an inside job."[19] The movement said that the article paints an "incorrect, misleading, offensive and defaming picture of the movement," and that the material in the first movie is unrelated to the movement.[18]

In Tablet magazine, Journalist Michelle Goldberg criticized Zeitgeist: The Movie as being "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories", and called the Zeitgeist movement "the world's first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity."[20] Zeitgeist said the accusations were "erroneous, pejorative, derogatory and intended to silence the movement's message", and that the movement does not blame international bankers, corporate leaders or politicians as individuals, but rather the global socioeconomic system that supports their values.[11][7][14]

In 2009 a German social networking site, studiVZ, banned Zeitgeist groups from their site for promoting antisemitism. Zeitgeist's Australian website commented on the ban thusly: 'The decision made by StudiVZ was without basis, the accusation devoid of evidence'.[21][18]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "The Zeitgeist Movement: Envisioning A Sustainable Future". Huffington Post. Mar 16, 2010. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ a b "Resource Based Economy". The Venus Project.
  3. ^ a b c d A dream worth having, Rhonda Swan, The Palm Beach Post, April 30, 2009
  4. ^ a b c New world re-order: The Zeitgeist Movement spreads to Ventura County, Shane Cohn, VC Reporter (California), May 12, 2011
  5. ^ a b c Zeitgeist Solutions: New World Re-Order, RT, Sept. 14, 2011
  6. ^ a b c Zeitgeist Solutions: Money, Debt and RBE, RT, Dec. 2, 2011
  7. ^ a b c Discussion of the Zeitgeist movement with Peter Joseph, TheMarkerTV (Israel), Jan. 19, 2012. Interview conducted in English, following a brief introduction to Joseph and the movement in Hebrew.
  8. ^ http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/faq#faq5 Retrieved June-17-12
  9. ^ http://blog.thezeitgeistmovement.com/category/tags/resource-based-economy Retrieved June-17-12
  10. ^ a b c d "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". New York Times. 2009-03-16.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Quotations and citations in this Wikipedia article are based on the translation from Hebrew to English of The Filmmaker Who Helped Recruit Millions for the Global Protests of the Bottom 99%, original Hebrew article by Asher Schechter, TheMarker (Israel), January 19, 2012.
  12. ^ a b c Quotations and citations in this Wikipedia article are based on the translation from Hebrew to English of Imagine, original Hebrew article by Tzaela Kotler, Globes (Israel), March 18, 2010.
  13. ^ Bill Stamets (February 15, 2011). "Art-house films: 'Marwencol,' 'Zeitgeist'". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved March 7, 2011.
  14. ^ a b c "The Zeitgeist Movement – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)".
  15. ^ "Brockwood at Zeitgeist-Day in London – March 13th, 2011". Brockwood Park School. 2011-04-11.
  16. ^ "Zeitgeist Day 2012 - Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, BC". voguetheatre.com.
  17. ^ http://spectator.org/archives/2011/01/17/jared-loughners-zeitgeist-obse Retrieval June-07-12
  18. ^ a b c Understanding The Zeitgeist Movement Critics, The Zeitgeist Movement, July 15, 2012
  19. ^ Ward, Charlotte; Voas, David (2011). "The Emergence of Conspirituality". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 26 (1): 109. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
  20. ^ http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/57732/brave-new-world Retrieved June 9, 2012
  21. ^ http://www.zeitgeistaustralia.org/studivznet-shut-down-zeitgeist-groups/ Retrieval June 2, 2012
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