The movie was very strong in naming and explaining what is wrong with the world today. Namely the economy, monetary politics, usage of capital and debt creation, production/advertising/goods distribution ways and related consumer behavior. It also had many points on how our behavior impacts environment - and the makers also skillfully put stress on our planet being finite (having finite volume of resources) we can use without the regard on sustainability and/or renewal. It was alright. The most sounding point was that shopping for, gathering and consuming (=trashing) goods does not make us happy. It doesn't. Paying up debts doesn't either.
But then, they've unfortunately came up with "solutions". I would have so many logical and practical questions and remarks to that as a proof it's nothing but an utopia. There's no way people could be motivated or even forced to create something like that and remain compliant with these rules. It would never work - not even in theory.
Shortly after, the whole "solution" started to evolve about the designed life project called The Venus project - a vision of Jacque Fresco. It's a huge techno-communist and an utopian idea about making a high-tech tech robots and systems serve the people of this self-sufficient society. Everything would be taken care of by these machines and they would eliminate the need for standard human jobs. Even garbage and mail would be distributed by robots running around in tubes.
And hold your breath : no money would exist in this society. In reality a market would start to exist the minute after this came in effect and people would trade the "free" things they get.People will always want something from each other and very likely they'll have to pay by something that represents value. The sentence about money free system would make any theory ridiculous. It said people that do not work for the money (and are under stress of their lack+need of) would not just sit around but they'd do things for joy. OK, I get that although I'm pretty sure they would rather choose fun activities than doing anything useful and a disaster would be inevitable. And wait, who would operate or service the robots? Slaves? Who would study long years to be able to program, create, build and repair all those super devices, watch over resources distribution, double check if machine are working and not making wrong choices? Who would study for and work jobs that could not be replaced technically like a doctor for example? This society was said to have 95% less crime than normal society. Sounds great but I'd like to know if people would want to risk their life as cops if they could do something safer as far as everybody could do what they wanted. Oh wait, nobody said that. Not once in the whole movie. That's probably because even in a very wild dream this could only exist if people were enslaved to fulfill "the purpose of common" good. (And they might be dumb enough to welcome that).
We've had these "perfect" iron-fist "righteous" systems so many times here in history. And though we as people are fairly dumb we must have learned already there's absolutely no good in an ideological common "good". As sick as it sounds people need to be simply motivated egoistically or their will disobey and revolt.
This world has gone wrong in so many ways and we really need to pay attention especially to global-scale problems and figure out how to fix them but I tell you one thing - this is not the way. By far. What has to be granted though is, they present their ideas openly and not try to hide or mix their meaning.
This movie reminded me what I already knew (and extended of some interesting stats) that earth and humanity is sick and something has to be done. But I am very positive, this movie doesn't offer ideas that could serve as an effective cure and everyone who understand the reality should agree.
Make sure to notice the passage when the title expresses worries about possible insults and labels like communism and fascism. The movie gave a lot of reasons for people to address these labels towards these ideas. The zeitgeist engineers then respond to this hypothetical insult and explain why would it be wrong to call them Marxists, communist or fascist. And they are right. The correct world for this non-sense would be (techno)utopianism.
And they were brisk enough to even include that one!
But then, they've unfortunately came up with "solutions". I would have so many logical and practical questions and remarks to that as a proof it's nothing but an utopia. There's no way people could be motivated or even forced to create something like that and remain compliant with these rules. It would never work - not even in theory.
Shortly after, the whole "solution" started to evolve about the designed life project called The Venus project - a vision of Jacque Fresco. It's a huge techno-communist and an utopian idea about making a high-tech tech robots and systems serve the people of this self-sufficient society. Everything would be taken care of by these machines and they would eliminate the need for standard human jobs. Even garbage and mail would be distributed by robots running around in tubes.
And hold your breath : no money would exist in this society. In reality a market would start to exist the minute after this came in effect and people would trade the "free" things they get.People will always want something from each other and very likely they'll have to pay by something that represents value. The sentence about money free system would make any theory ridiculous. It said people that do not work for the money (and are under stress of their lack+need of) would not just sit around but they'd do things for joy. OK, I get that although I'm pretty sure they would rather choose fun activities than doing anything useful and a disaster would be inevitable. And wait, who would operate or service the robots? Slaves? Who would study long years to be able to program, create, build and repair all those super devices, watch over resources distribution, double check if machine are working and not making wrong choices? Who would study for and work jobs that could not be replaced technically like a doctor for example? This society was said to have 95% less crime than normal society. Sounds great but I'd like to know if people would want to risk their life as cops if they could do something safer as far as everybody could do what they wanted. Oh wait, nobody said that. Not once in the whole movie. That's probably because even in a very wild dream this could only exist if people were enslaved to fulfill "the purpose of common" good. (And they might be dumb enough to welcome that).
We've had these "perfect" iron-fist "righteous" systems so many times here in history. And though we as people are fairly dumb we must have learned already there's absolutely no good in an ideological common "good". As sick as it sounds people need to be simply motivated egoistically or their will disobey and revolt.
This world has gone wrong in so many ways and we really need to pay attention especially to global-scale problems and figure out how to fix them but I tell you one thing - this is not the way. By far. What has to be granted though is, they present their ideas openly and not try to hide or mix their meaning.
This movie reminded me what I already knew (and extended of some interesting stats) that earth and humanity is sick and something has to be done. But I am very positive, this movie doesn't offer ideas that could serve as an effective cure and everyone who understand the reality should agree.
Make sure to notice the passage when the title expresses worries about possible insults and labels like communism and fascism. The movie gave a lot of reasons for people to address these labels towards these ideas. The zeitgeist engineers then respond to this hypothetical insult and explain why would it be wrong to call them Marxists, communist or fascist. And they are right. The correct world for this non-sense would be (techno)utopianism.
And they were brisk enough to even include that one!