by mc_squared

Wow I'm surprised there are no threads about this, so I guess I might as well start one.

The third Zeitgeist film "Moving Forward" is going to be released online January 25th.

But last night it premiered at select screenings put on by local Z-movements around the world. I was lucky enough to attend one of these screenings. So for anyone who wants a sneak preview, here's my thoughts:

1. I'll start off with some criticism.

The title is sort of misleading. For those people who are very familiar with the first two movies I think you'll find some of the info in the new one a bit redundant. A lot of the previous concepts from before - i.e. why the fiat/monetary system is a total fraud, how our society is conditioned to uphold completely vapid and trivial pursuits to keep us essentially enslaved by TPTB, etc are rehashed.

2. What this movie does do in a "moving forward" sense is take these topics that were previously touched upon and really hammer them home now. The movie is quite long (+2.5 hours), and it goes into great detail on things like social conditioning - "nature vs nurture" - and particularly how this relates to violence and crime.

It makes many more fantastic points about how frivolous and utterly backwards many of society's ideas on value/wealth/happiness are. If you haven't seen the first two movies you'll probably be quite moved by this. If you have you'll likely just be nodding along in total agreement going "mmmm hmmmm"...

The film also goes much deeper into ideas of peak oil and how utterly SCREWED we are if we continue on this completely unsustainable path (wait till you see what your income taxes will look like in the future!).

3. The new movie also has a touch of humor peppered throughout, and it takes a few awesome jabs at those who just want to label the whole thing "communist propaganda".

4. It really expands on what a resource-based economy would look like, and how it could all be correlated and carried out efficiently. The main point is that all this is completely possible with the technology we have today. The only thing that's missing is our resolve to make it happen.

This part is both really inspiring, but also kind of daunting. The movie focuses much more on the ends rather than the means. There is a lot of resistance to this path - mainly because TPTB are trying to keep us all apathetic and lazy and self-involved and divided and completely afraid of realizing how much power we all have to make a real change.

So to me what was really the most inspiring thing about this movie was simply the turn-out at the live screening. The theater was PACKED with over 800 people and many others had to unfortunately be turned away at the door because it was already a full house. The crowd wasn't all just young naive idealistic hippies either - it was full of different age groups and backgrounds. People of all creeds and colors basically who seemed bounded by the fact we're ALL just really fed up with this ****.

So the main message behind "Moving Forward" was, as hokey as this sounds: We ARE the world. We are the ones that make it run. Money has absolutely no value until you convince people to do something for it. So we need to stop mindlessly doing TPTB's bidding for it, just because we're conditioned to think this is the only way the world can work.

We are the many and they are the few - and in the end they need us way more than we need them. So we actually have much MUCH MUCH more power than they do.

But we all need to get on the same page first to make that count.

Zeitgeist is not about any existing political ideology. These ideologies are just a farce anyway to keep us all divided. Zeitgeist is simply about stepping outside of the rat race for a second and re-evaluating the very idea of what makes a society function as productively and thus beneficially as possible. The answer to this is not rooted in any current "ism" because they've ALL been hijacked by corporate and political powers to serve their own interests.

Meanwhile our own priorities have long been manipulated to simply support them in doing this. So we need to get over all the hyperbole and rhetoric they feed us about how thinking outside of this box is a threat to our freedom or whatever.

We already don't have any freedom. And the more people that start thinking outside the box, the more that will finally wake up and realize how much we are all TRAPPED inside of it. The powers that be are the ones working to keep it that way - but the only thing really holding us back is ourselves.

The Zeitgeist movies have been progressively maturing along this line. The first one was brilliant, but also kind of sensationalist in the way it focused on how much everything out there is a lie. The second one started to look at things a little more inwardly. Moving Forward continues along this path. Out of the three - it is the one that probably requires the most self-reflection and evaluation.

So I think maybe that's what they meant by "moving forward". We should all know by now what the problem is. But it's not going to get fixed just by all of us sitting around complaining about it - or hoping that TPTB suddenly have a change of heart and clean up their act. It starts with each and every one of us making the personal decision to stop enabling them.

Like Ghandi said:

Be the change you want to see in the world.