Candled Night

At my homie's place. Candles and Zeitgeist on rewatch.

Industry cares for people

We did a team-building session at work. The team I was within had the following question?

-"What is the goal of TheCompany?"

It was easy

-"To make money."

It's private limited company operating in technological services. There is no other goal, there CANNOT be another goal.

It turned out there can be. There can be so many actually:

-"To provide jobs."

-"To advance careers in engineering."

-"To lead the engineering market in the kingdom."


I won't type the extended list, I already feel condescendant enough right now, no need to aggravate it.

I do believe Zeitgeist on rewatch for this night.

…So when you say “Industry cares for people”; that’s not true. They can’t afford to be ethical. Your system is not designed to serve the well being of people. If you still don’t understand that, there would be no outsourcing of jobs, if they care about people. Industry does not care. They only hire people ‘cause it hasn’t been automated YET.  

Jaques Fresco

Look Within Instead of Outside

Zeitgeist: The Addendum on rewatch with some Bangalorian zeitgeist supporters. It feels really weird to watch the Zeitgeist series with someone, even more supporters of the project. Nonetheless, thank you people.

In the end, the most relevant change must occur first inside of you. The true revolution is the revolution of consciousness. To understand is to transform what it is.

 Zeitgeist : The Addendum

The project encouraging critical thinking gets blindly embraced. A cunning intellectual paradox.

We're connected

"The fabric of the natural world, from human biology, earthly biosphere to the gravitational pull of the solar system itself is one huge interconnected system. Fully interlinked just as human cells connect to create organs, and our organs connect to form our bodies, and since all organisms cannot live without food, air and water; we are all intrinsically connected to the earth."

How the dollar is still coping

Zeitgeist II : The Addendum on rewatch.

More than three years ago, I had to write a paper on economical inflation for a friend. I'm not a fan of the money science and by that time, I didn't know a thin about economics and was repulsed by anything having to do with finance, commerce, economy and marketing.

While looking for insight on the meaning of inflation and money - the paper was supposed to be at least 50 pages and written by a two years grad economics student, so... -, I stumbled upon this free documentary and since then, Zeitgeist series belong to my rewatch list.

On Oneness

Now in our culture, we’ve been trained for individual differences to stand out. So you look at each person and immediately see brighter, dumber, older, younger, richer, poorer, and we make all these dimensional distinctions, put them in categories, and treat them that way. And we get so that we only see others as separate from ourselves, and the ways in which they’re separate.

And one of the dramatic characteristics of experience is being with another person and suddenly seeing the ways in which they are like you, not different from you. And experiencing the fact that that which is essence within you and which is essence within me is indeed one. The understanding that there is no other. It is all one.

Richard Alpert

In religion, this concept may be portrayed differently but it is present in every single one. 

Now, now, now let's not get serious on the Vervein's Way.
Vervain makes you casual, carefree and relaxed.

The needs of the Slave Owners

"It is simply a matter of historical fact that the dominant intellectual culture of any particular society reflects the interest of the dominant group in that society. In a slave owning society the beliefs about human beings and human rights and so on will reflect the needs of the slave owners.

In the society, which is based on the power of certain people to control and profit from the lives and work of millions of others, the dominant intellectual culture will reflect the needs of the dominant group. So, if you look across the board, the ideas that pervade psychology, sociology, history, political economy and political science fundamentally reflect certain elite interests.

And the academics who question that too much tend to get shunted to the side or to be seen as sort of ‘radicals’.”

 

Gabor Maté

The Monopoly Game

Now, my grandmother was a wonderful person. She taught me how to play the game Monopoly. She understood that the name of the game is to acquire. She would accumulate everything she could and eventually, she became the master of the board. And then she would always say the same thing to me. She would look at me and she would say: “One day, you’ll learn to play the game.”

One summer, I played Monopoly almost every day, all day long. And that summer, I learned to play the game. I came to understand the only way to win is to make a total commitment to acquisition. I came to understand that money and possessions- that’s the way that you keep score. And by the end of that summer, I was more ruthless than my grandmother… I was ready to bend the rules if I had to, to win that game.

And I sat down with her to play that fall. I took everything she had. I watched her give her last dollar and quit in utter defeat. And then she had one more thing to teach me. Then she said: “Now it all goes back in the box. All those houses and hotels. All the railroads and utility companies… All that property and all that wonderful money… Now it all goes back in the box. None of it was really yours.

You got all heated up about it for a while. But it was around a long time before you sat down at the board and it will be here after you’re gone: players come, players go. Houses and cars… Titles and clothes… Even your body.” Because the fact is that everything I clutch and consume and hoard is going to go back in the box and I’m going to lose it all.

So you have to ask yourself when you finally get the ultimate promotion, when you have made the ultimate purchase, when you buy the ultimate home, when you have stored up financial security and climbed the ladder of success to the highest rung you can possibly climb it… and the thrill wears off – and it will wear off – Then what? How far do you have to walk down that road before you see where it leads? Surely you understand it will never be enough.

So you have to ask yourself the question: What matters?

Jordan Maxwell, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

On Human Nature

In a society that is predicated on competition and really, very often the ruthless exploitation of one human being by another, the profiteering off of other people's problems for the purpose of profiteering,  the ruling ideology will very often justify that behavior by appeals to some fundamental, unalterable human nature.

So, the myth in our society is that people are competitive, individualistic and selfish by nature. The reality is quite the opposite.

We have certain human needs. The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely is by recognizing that there are certain human needs.

We have a human need for companionship and for close contact, to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted, to be seen, to be received for who we are.

If those needs are met, we develop into people who are compassionate, cooperative, and who have empathy fir other people.

The opposite that we often see in our society is in fact, a distortion of human nature, precusely because so few people have their needs met.

So yes you can talk about human nature, but only in the sense of basic human needs that lead to certain traits if they are met and a different set of traits if they're denied.

Dr. Gabor Maté

The Zeitgeist Movement: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist first movie on rewatch:

"In a society where success and status are measured by material wealth, not social contribution, it is easy to see why the state of the world is what it is today"

"The entire money-structured and materialistic-oriented society is a false society. 10 or 15 years from now, our society will go down in history as the lowest development in man. We have the brains, the know-how, the technology, and the feasibility to build an entirely new civilization."