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Zeitgeist: Addendum
November 22nd, 2008
I watched Zeitgeist: Addendum not long after it was released, but I haven’t gotten around blogging about it until now. What made me do it was the blog post by Tim Exile, a music producer who’s using Reaktor to do wicked stuff, whom I respect and admire. He’s soon to release a new album which is different from his previous raw DnB/techno. I have yet to decide whether I like it or not.
Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, Zeitgeist: Addendum is an addendum to the documentary Zeitgeist, and where the original movie analyzed religion and human nature in general, the addendum analyzes modern economy and banking. It’s divided into four parts, and I will not go into detail what each part is about, but I recommend you to watch the movie, despite my criticism towards it.
I also recommend anyone who has watched or will watch it to read this blog post which talks about a number of things I thought about when watching ZG: A, but didn’t really know how to express. Do not just read the post, read the comments as well. A lot of great points are being made there.
The following can also serve as a summary of Point’s post.
- Currency is not the same thing as money. - Money is anything with value that can be traded. It’s simply another word for value. Currency is a concept for organizing value. No matter what political and financial system is in place, there will always be a market where people can buy what they want. Currency is certainly not the only kind of money; goods, services, gold, power and violence are other likely candidates in a system without currency. And even if today’s currency system is flawed, it’s not an argument why the general concept of money should be abolished. (In fact, it can’t, unless resources are completely abundant)
- Capitalism is not the same thing as imperialism. - Part 2 of the movie goes on to link economy with corruption by listening to the confessions of a so called “economic hitman”. The problem here is not the accuracy of his accounts - I’m sure each sory is accurate en ough - but the confusion between capitalism and imperialism. What causes large scale corruption is ultimately imperialism - concentration of power. It might true that capitalism implies imperialism, but so does just about any political system. The phrase “Even the Romans” might seem like a cliché but is in fact very relevant. Corruption has always existed and will always exist. By removing capitalism, we do not remove imperialism, we just make it change forms, since every political system implies imperialism.
- Human desire is unlimited. - I’ll copy and paste a quote from the comment section of the blog post I linked to above.
Money is a concept, not an object. It is anything that can be exchanged for something you want, and human desire is unlimited. There will always be something people want beyond what they have, sometimes it’s a physical object and sometimes it’s not. There is no way all of those desires can be satisfied for all people so somebody will always be deprived of something and willing to trade to acquire it, and thus money will never go away. Making stuff abundant is technically the same as making money scarce, you will only make it more valuable by making it more difficult to find items or services that people are willing to accept in exchange for the stuff they trade. And the idea that resources on this planet are unlimited is absolute nonsense. Go watch Chris Martenson’s “Crash Course”. Google that.
My advice is to both watch the Zeitgeist: Addendum and read that blog post, and most importantly, approach both with caution and use your critical thinking.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
“And even if today’s currency system is flawed, it’s not an argument why the general concept of money should be abolished. (In fact, it can’t, unless resources are completely abundant)”
If your going to tear up this movie those are some pretty ‘bush-league’ arguments you have there guy. My immediate reaction to your first argument (the quote above), was that in the movie it talks about how if we devoted as much as our human capital as possible to the development and harvesting of resources, then we would have enough natural resources for the entire planet to live comfortably. In regards to your confusion of the second part of the movie; what’s the difference? Whether it’s capitalism or imperialism, the movie explains that the root cause of corruption is money, which is ultimately derived from the human characteristic greed.
I would NOT recommend this blog for anyone. It was a waste of my time, because your three arguments are garbage. Any single sentence from Zeitgeist: Addendum pwns your entire bush league blog.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
First off, I highly suspect you’re an idiot for childish attributes like confusing “you’re” with “your” and talking about polticial arguments in terms of “pwning”. And of course following one doctrine so religiously that anyone who does not uncritically swallow all of their arguments are “Bush league”.
It is even funny how you googled for “zeitgeist addendum accuracy” when you obviously already religiously believe the whole movies to be completely accurate.
And how are we going to do that? My bet is through a mighty state that legislates that we must do so. Which is a step away from anything called freedom.
Fact is that 1) human labour will always be necessary to uphold our civilization 2) people will always want to get rewarded for their work, proportional to their labour. If I work twice as hard, I want a reward twice as high. Deploy this on a national scale and you’ll see an obvious problem with removing all kinds of money mechanisms.
Learn to read the English language. I’m not confused; the makers of zeitgeist are.
Which is exactly my point. Greed is part of the human nature. And until you invent a magic pill that can remove that part of human nature, imperialism and corruption will be a problem no matter how society is governed. I’m not claiming that capitalism is perfect, and I’m even claiming that today’s interpretation of capitalism is flawed and needs reform. But, I’m still convinced that capitalism in some way, shape or form is the least of evil that we know today, because it givs some degree of personal freedom.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Mr. “Nitro2k01″,
First, please do not dismiss someones post based on grammer, that is not very intelligent (yes I spelled grammer wronge twice) because typing does not show smarts. Spelling and typing show nothing of thought, just communication.
2nd, read, then read more. Both American history and world history. When you are done with that read “real” stuff. Start with Darwin, then James, then some of today’s thinkers like Ridley and Pinker. They and most other support the claim that most human neg’s are brought on by nurture not nature, including greed. I have watched the movies and looked into everything I had a question on. Not all of it is 100%, but human greed is man made, that is fact. Much like your need to quickly discredit someone on something like spelling, before stating your point. Hope you got your (replace with you’re, if you need a comeback) “quick leg up” before you posted a general education retort.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Even better,
I did not know what site I was on, I was searching something way off topic.
Nitro your vast giant brain is on gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com
Wow, I know why your thoughts are the best now. “Make just the money we need to buy video games, and don’t make waves” lol, WTF.
Turn off the system and read. Not “like mom said” the shit that is not in your ho dunk town.
Or don’t, buy into all that is told to you.
Bunch of fucking lemmings (no not the 8bit game lemmings.)
Don’t bother with a reply I will not get it and put in a fake email.
Have fun with your 8 bit life.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:07 am
Nice review, honestly I think I do agree with most of your arguments but I do believe more of the points that Addendum are making (more so than it sounds like you do). The Venus Project is really on to something eh?