The Fascinating Turnip

I haven't read enough about this subject to have a forged opinion yet, and I apologize if this has been answered/asked before, as i haven't read all the comments:

How can "Jacques Fresco" blatantly say that there are enough resources for everyone to live abundantly?

That's it? The only "proof" i've seen him give is that the US churned out 90000 fighters per year during WWII. Of course, capitalism leads to waste. During the Great Depression lots of food was burned while people were starving, and that's obviously not f*cking all right. But how can he be sure there's enough food for everyone?

Also, let's not forget human nature...it's made other "perfect" systems fail. Or did he also say that everyone was essentially good? Just like that?

And how exactly is progress the cure for all our needs? I'm sure the Unabomber would disagree...I jest, but still.

For example, wouldn't the automating of the services currently performed by humans, who'd instead have more time to "think", make us even more unhealthy than we are now? In my experience (which is little, but hey, what else have i got?) boredom (i.e "having too much time to think") leads to being unhealthy, both physically and mentally. On the other hand, I'd gladly spend my whole life travelling around, reading, and listening to music. Dilettantism, in the finer sense of the word, i'd say.
This also comes into the competition issue, there will always be conflicting theories, how would all scientists work together? Science isn't philosophy, I'm aware of that, but still.
Plus, competition (although I find agressive competition has the contrary effect) stimulates progress. That's one of the few things that's all right with capitalism. If there was no competition, where would we be? The need for making better products wouldn't exist. Sure, the need for making cheaper and faster resorting to the exploitation of the workers also wouldn't exist, but i believe progress can exist without exploitation.

I'm not sure everyone is like this, though.

P A N

good questions. again, i'm no expert either and i can only really, just like anyone else, speculate.

so, jacques: i don't know how exactly he can say this. but i do know there is more than one way to skin a cat, and i can probably imagine a few. the way feeding people works right now, is basically to make chickens and cows and corn grown really fast in as little space as possible. and if you've ever ever seen an industrialized cow or chicken farm, you'll notice it looks incredibly uncomfortable, and it still spreads itself across massive pieces of land. i mentioned earlier the concept of taking farming into a vertical framework, where multiple acre-wide floors would be stacked, and on every floor is a farm devoted to... well, whatever you want.

that's one idea.

the recycling of more materials than are currently recycled will also help this all work. the materials created out of the recycled waste will be used in everything from roadways (replacing expensive, unmaintainable and earth-gutting asphalt and concrete) to the casing of your computer to the packaging of our food... if there is still any of that to be found.

"planned obsolescence" is, to the best of my knowledge, a term coined by corporate minds to ensure further sales in their companies by making sure products either eventually fail to work or are infantile in comparison to the latest product of its kind. what a great way to vent some of that competition! (ps, i understand and possibly even believe why everyone seems to think competition is natural, i just don't understand why the manifestation of it has to have some involvement in the acquisition of money and possessions.) planned obsolescence is NECESSARY FOR CAPITALISM TO SURVIVE. if it weren't we would all have great stuff that didn't break and rarely needed repairing. impossible when the companies that govern the government need to pump more products to more people in less time.

a large part of the overall idea is that we humans give ourselves the credit we deserve... i think, anyway. right now about 66% of people work in the service sector (in north america), 32-33% in industry, and 1-2% in agriculture. (we should also never cease to forget how much money is circulated and generated via illegal means, cuz it's a sh*t load of money.) 100 years ago(ish), 35-40% of people worked in agriculture. i can't remember the rest of the percentages, but essentially it outlines pretty clearly that people are being herded whatever way technology dictates. and that's perfectly natural. but now, that technological progress is being stymied by the monetary system's fundamental flaw of needing to always produce more money. i also said in an earlier post that the first fully-automated restaurant opened in germany in the last few years. no employees. the logical outcome of this is that every time the percentage of people in the service sector drops due to the influx of technology, the number of people in the workforce drops. keep in mind, this is natural. man will not stop creating things to make life more efficient.

picture the progression of technology's advancement on a timeline dating back to the finding out of how to create fire at will and the wheel and all that. those advancements were few and far between in comparison to the advancements we're making today. on this timeline - drawn from the point of the first tool to now - the "advancement-of-technology line" will go from being pretty much horizontal for a really long time to near vertical where it stands now. the important thing to note about this is that this type of thing doesn't just stop. there will be no plateau that indicates the attaining of perfect knowledge... and hey, if there does come that time, i really doubt we're we're going to have to worry about much.

this all relates to giving us the credit we deserve in the sense that jacques fresco thinks we're capable of an entirely more efficient system than the one we have now. and so do i. i think it's the next step in evolution, which oddly comes with the first-time ability to ignore the essentially biological change occurring within ourselves. this credit that we might give ourselves would (and i know this sounds like a fairy tale) essentially lend us new powers. the one coming to mind being that if we see that there is not abundant food, we use or minds and our tools to meet that challenge and defeat it. we don't just say "well it's not like that now, it hasn't ever been like that, so it won't be like that in the future. nope. not even if we tried." why don't we say that? in my opinion, cuz we're not a bunch of selfish and lazy pussies.

now onto progress as a cure: i don't believe i've mentioned anything about progress itself serving as a cure for any of humanity's ailments. it should be noted though that progress is not just a human thing. it just is. and it IS, everywhere. life is progress. death is progress. the world, as part of the bigger system to which it belongs, is just a never-ending stream of events. and anything found therein which is biological will naturally change and shift to adapt to new surroundings. so progress is really independent of the human experience and is thusly something we should be viewing from an external and as-subjective-as-possible standpoint so as not only to understand it but work with and within it.

...which leads to the point that progress exists without the exploitation of the worker already, we're just getting in the way.

Freebase Dali

If you're into the whole Zeitgeist thing, minus the obvious propaganda, then you should watch this:
Free Documentaries Online | Kymatica

It's pretty good. It centers more in the philosophical, humanistic realm. Like Zeitgeist, there's some laughable shit, but overall I think Kymatica holds a lot more personal meaning when it's all said and done. Definitely worth a watch for you backyard philosophers out there. (Hint hint, Cardboard Adolescent)

333

I've been keeping myself updated on this thread since it opened up. I used to follow Zeitgeist a good bit after seeing the movie. In fact, I even showed Zeitgeist Addendum at the university I was attending in hopes of opening more minds. The more I thought about it and the more I researched the facts that the movies presented, the more I was let down. The society Fresco presents to his audience is beyond what we are capable of now. This Utopian society is not possible if we don't come together. This, I think, is what we should be focused on. We are too separated as a race to realize or even acknowledge the possibility of a collective consciousness. Not to say all of our problems will magically appear before us once we "come together", but it's a start, no? Sure, there are certainly arguable facts in this movie, but I feel like there was a bigger, more general idea. An idea of unison in the people to create something larger than we can even imagine. Perhaps I've an drunken optimistic view of what humanity is capable of ... So fucking be it.

Freebase Dali

You must have just watched Kymatica.

333

No, actually, I didn't. Maybe I should.

Freebase Dali

definitely!

gotjuice

Thanks for the link, just watched this and found it very interesting. Still not sure entirely how I feel about most of it, probably need to watch it again to process everything they were saying.

__________________
I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders...

P A N

i am super "with you" on this one, and rather thrilled that someone posted anything along these lines at all.

the reason zeitgeist interested me so much is that it was the only 'organized' movement of its kind that i was aware of. and i don't mean a movement headed toward technocracy, but rather a movement heading toward something along the lines of a binding of the human spirit and will. it's a given that those are vague terms as they are potentially totally subjective, but i would like to see the people of the world do better than we are currently doing, and i think those words and what they stand for are key, because we all share the world, and it's still going to be here when we die.

ever had a job and the person that did that or another job in the same space on the shift before you did nothing they were supposed to do leaving you to do all their work and then set up for your shift and then do all your own work? same idea (but not the defining driver of my philosophy on this), except the people after us get a f*cking planet to work with (again, not the defining driver of my philosophy on this).

i haven't got around to watching kymatica (just started a new job with lots of road time) but am excited to see it, as zeitgeist does come off as a little presumptuous.

basically, i want to be part of an everybody, an everybody that thinks critically and decides collectively when enough is enough.

^kind of a crappy post... i'm scatterbrained and tired.

zeitgeist three has come out.

here is a link:

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Watch Free Documentary Online

OccultHawk

If it ain't about reducing the world's human population it's stupid and not worth considering.