The Zeitgeist movement is, to sum it up very briefly, a movement that presents the most profound, essential, analysis of our current social, political and economic system. I’m suspecting it’s because the founder, Peter Joseph, happens to have remarkable pedagogical skills that they have managed to present their analysis in such a clear and very compact way.

What they are basically saying is that a market economy is doomed, that we are depleting the planet’s resources at a bewildering pace, that we are all playing a worldwide game of poker and that a lot of us have been dealt very poor cards or no cards at all. For somebody to win a lot of others have to lose. Political parties offer no solution, only variations to the same theme. Socially we are all conditioned to compete, cut each other’s throat, and to adorn ourselves with the latest consumerized status symbols to prop up our rickety identities. Our money is paperized debt, our jobs ( a job is short for ‘just over broke’) are a race to make someone else rich. We don’t have an economy, we do not economize, we have a waste economy, our economics our anti economics, we are on a crowded bus heading towards a ravine and some of us are still selling us useless safety belts in order to make a huge profit, we buy the belts, work for them, and nobody thinks to change the direction of the bus.
Changing that direction is what the Zeitgeist movement is about. We need a radically new way of managing our economy. One small example: why does every family need to buy a hammer? How many times is the average hammer used? Why not have something similar to libraries where you can borrow a hammer for a couple of days? We would need to make far less hammers, we wouldn’t waste resources AND everybody gets to have a hammer when they need one. This is just a tiny, tiny example of the absurdities of our consumer economy the Zeitgeist movement explains.

How has the Zeitgeist movement impacted me? In a whole number of ways:

-for some years I was a propagandist for a tiny communist party. They say similar things like the Zeitgeist movement, but they lose themselves in endless, inane, absurd discussions about when or why Lenin said this or that. They discard people because of some negative comment on Stalin. In many ways they invest a lot of energy in distorting history for their political purposes. This is a complete waste of time. Who cares what Lenin had to say? What does it matter for us today if you can manage to prove that it was really ok for Stalin to kill and butcher so many millions of people? Peter Joseph doesn’t worship at the altar of some historical figure. The Zeitgeist movement is not a religion. The communist party I was a member of is more something like a religious sect. In stead of explaining the problem, they need to refer to their Gods (Stalin, Lenin), constantly. They have to compare themselves to other communist parties and prove to themselves they are more pure than the others. This makes them scary, obscure, sinister and very unaccessible to the general public. The apex of this absurdity is their ridiculous schism between Stalinists and Trotskists. Both hate the other sect more than any capitalists. It’s a tragicomedy to get involved with today’s communists. Fortunately Peter Joseph doesn’t play that childish game and looks at the world with the eyes of a technician who wants to repair a machine that is broke. That is SUCH a relief after years of hearing communists bickering over what Lenin had for breakfast on his birthday. Also: never, at any point, in 30 years of heavily funded propaganda have the Belgian communists been able to explain the economical situation the way Peter Joseph does in 20 minutes on a minimalistic budget…

-The Zeitgeist movement has given me more insight in why I often feel depressed, why I am often vain, and why I have a near constant need to prove myself. Just this morning I read an article about Zuckerberg and his book club on Facebook. This guy is one year younger than me. He is a billionaire. You know how that makes me feel? I must have screwed up my life. I’ve always been told I am very intelligent. Then why am I not a billionaire? He’s one year younger than me! And he’s just one of the examples that the media punch me in the face with as soon as I open a magazine or go on the internet. I’m not kidding: people like Zuckerberg make me want to kill myself. I am swallowing, gobbling up, values spread by the media, a value system in which I totally underperform. In today’s culture I am a TOTAL faillure, yet I have master’s degree from a very respected college and I speak something like 8 languages. Within this system I have never seen any other option than be a wage slave to survive. When I see a person younger than myself, without a degree, becoming a hotshot billionaire, I feel cheated, dumb, lost, I feel like I have invested my energy and time in completely the wrong way. But have I really? I’m not a billionaire money wise, but I have a better life than most any medieval king. Still, a lot of my days on this earth are spent thinking about ways to kill myself, because compared to some people on the internet I haven’t done anything worthy of mention. Am I a loser or am I living in a mentally destabilizing system? The Zeitgeist movement gives me the answer: I’m involved in a high stake game of poker. At stake are tons of money, my values, my humanity, our planet, and ultimately my life. When I play it by the rules, I will lose, because the game is rigged. My only chance is to go and play a different game, because I’m not a shark at playing poker, however hard I’ve tried to be or would love to be.

Thanks to Peter Joseph and the Zeitgeist movement for spreading without a shadow a doubt the most important message of our time, in a way unburdened by partisan politics, worshipping of any historical figures or other supersitious beliefs. Their level of objectivity, clarity and vision are unrivalled.

Get to know them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xGyKuyGhaE

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