ZDay 2014
Los Angeles CA
Let's give a warm welcome to Brandon.
[Applause]
Hello everybody. Welcome to Zeitgeist Day,
our annual awareness event.
The title of my talk is
‘Unifying Threads of a New Paradigm.’
I’ll be talking about the
train of thought here today
that we hear a lot about in the Movement.
A train of thought:
a unified worldview for activism.
How this worldwide activist community
that we see throughout the world
is beginning to share this
common unifying worldview,
unifying around early seeds of it,
if you will,
and how this worldview can
further unify our efforts.
And I'll be talking about how this
unifying worldview points toward
what we advocate here: a new
paradigm based on reason and resources,
and how this train of thought can
be established in that new paradigm
as a foundational approach
for human society and economy,
which defines our times.
Lastly I'll be talking about how
the last great task remaining
in embracing this new paradigm
is a humane shift in culture,
a conscious shift within ourselves,
for we are the ones who
ultimately create our society.
It can come from nowhere else, right?
These are the two parts:
Identifying this common train of thought
is kind of the first section,
and the last section will be about
the social value shift:
changing ourselves, changing culture.
There is a common life thread that
runs throughout all of nature.
Some call it survival,
some call it sustainability.
There are social and natural
awarenesses and actions
for the all-out quest for life support
that all life engages nearly everything with.
I want to break these awarenesses down
that comprise this unifying worldview.
The growing worldwide activist community
is beginning to take hold
of this common life thread,
a unity of activism like
never before seen in history,
a global finding of common
ground through shared oppression,
shared values, shared awareness of
structural flaws within our society,
and through a general shared
interest in a better world.
Ideas like equality, democracy,
sustainability, human rights,
freedom from oppression,
ending war, ending corruption,
have become early seeds for common
ground from which to unify our activism.
This early stage common
ground must further root
and continue to be specified and understood,
for the purpose of building
that global community
that can continue to share and build
upon common goals towards a more
ecologically sustainable and
life-supporting social system.
So we dig into this working train of thought,
this unifying thread that we see emerging
under the surface of our collective activism.
We hear a lot about it,
we advocate a train of thought,
or the scientific method
applied for social concern;
concepts within the Movement.
And I want to get into that here and
the various concepts that make that up.
Let’s start with
nature's universally shared
innate strategy for sustaining life.
I don't know what it's called
throughout nature or in the cosmos
but we here, we call it science.
How does science relate on
the everyday community level?
or to social changes even?
Science is highly intellectualized,
highly methodical.
Theories, calculating things,
testing things, dry lab work,
indulging in repetitive processes of
studying random intricacies of nature.
Too abstract to be applicable on the
personal or societal level, right?
However we all use science constantly,
acknowledged or not,
continuously taking in information
and feedback from the environment,
processing it and adjusting
our actions accordingly,
everything from timing
and beating a lunch rush,
to avoiding contact with
a substance with which
one develops an allergic reaction to.
See, the core purpose of
science for living things
is to gain awareness,
awareness of ourselves,
and of the natural world,
for the purpose of getting better
and better at living, at sustaining.
To fulfill our life needs in an
ever-changing natural environment,
better mastering nature's challenges
for improved species sustainability.
A bird learns the best source for
food and will return to that source
until conditions change.
It's about the nearly automatic
natural adjustment to environmental
feedback for improved quality of life.
Science is this simple,
and our potential to flourish
through this kind of natural world mastery
is truly profound, as we are
seeing in the modern society.
When we step back to view the
relevance of science to society,
how we harness the Earth,
how we organize our species
survival from a baseline context,
science is of pinnacle relevance,
yet to fully rise to its proper
societal and economic roles.
As there could be said to
be a science to everything,
from survival, to intuition, to diet,
we appropriately extend it to our
economic and social institutions,
where this foundational ...
life-sustaining strategy can become
a central origin of influence
with respect to how we
reason and orient society,
leaving us with a common ground
train-of-thought approach.
This strategy here, this scientific approach,
is the only true life-sustaining
approach we've ever known.
Science and its methods have been
recognized on and off throughout history,
fighting again to remain at
the heart of our society,
among all other false constructs
that we have built on top of
this natural inherent
strategy to sustain life.
A strategy that is there to be
utilized and cooperated with.
Moving from the umbrella
of science presented here
will be a core set of awarenesses,
concepts that could be said that comprise
a unified worldview for activism.
An encompassing adaptive train of thought
that is unified by the very nature of
its reasoning, purpose and awareness set,
from which to further unify
our global activism around,
and identify as a foundation
for economic thought and action
in a new global paradigm.
So let's jump into it.
Let’s start with the life ground.
This is about actively
identifying and acknowledging
our basic life needs and essentials,
bringing them forward and
keeping them established
as the central primary focus to our society.
Life needs may seem obvious
but they currently play
secondary to business survival.
We need food, water, clean air,
shelter, health care,
safety, security, culture, play,
a way to participate and
contribute in the world.
And we need a healthy ecosystem
which we exist and rely upon.
As we look honestly at our
society and go about changing it,
as the issues at hand
are seemingly too complex
with no grounds for resolution,
we return to these core guiding
requirements of what sustains us.
And from there, priority
and resolution becomes clearer,
eventually giving way to a more
valid life-focused social system.
From the life ground,
we have universal human values.
Naturally there's a commonly
shared set of human values
that runs consistent
throughout the world cultures,
common threads like health
and well-being, social bond,
self-improvement, empathy, trust, fairness,
responsibility, knowledge,
life over death,
low stress environments.
These shared human values in combination
with the prior life ground awareness
stands powerfully above all
divisions and relative viewpoints
to bring a unity to our
perspectives and worldviews.
And then interdependence and symbiosis.
Interdependent meaning
we are mutually dependent upon
each other as a global community.
And symbiotic meaning
our long-term interconnected
life-supporting relationships
between human society and with the planet.
Our world is highly
interdependent and symbiotic,
whether recognized or not.
We have populated and industrialized
all corners of our world,
having the ability to alter
our Earth system dramatically.
And since all social and natural
systems feed across each other
as one interconnected system,
negatively impacting behaviors or
events affect the whole planet,
making this interdependent
symbiotic awareness a core component
to our worldviews for activism and change.
We live in a world community now,
and it's about embracing
that global relationship.
Transience is our next thread here.
Another important awareness in our
unifying train of thought for change:
the idea that life is always changing.
The only constant is change itself.
Our collective practices and outlooks
on reality have always undergone change,
as new awareness and abilities come forward.
Through the recognition of this transience,
it's important to be real with ourselves
that present awareness,
ability and outlooks will likely be altered
or entirely superseded,
to some degree at some point,
by new knowledge and ability,
as our long history of culture and
technical changes clearly shows us.
And so we go to adaptation:
an integrity, or respecting and aligning
with the leading edge of our
ever-improving intelligences,
abilities, and natural changes.
To avoid getting stuck on current ways
that may be inhibiting such progress.
We’ll always be confronted with new
opportunities to adjust society for the better.
And we want to be sharp and honest in
recognizing those new and better ways.
Activism and social change
is all about adaptation,
and any resulting paradigm should be
oriented around this strength, likewise.
Efficiency.
The concept efficiency is another core
attribute relating to human
society at a common core level.
We want to be efficient in
our economy and society.
All life and living communities
seek to preserve as much time
and energy as possible in pursuit
of sustaining life itself.
This is built into life. We as a society also
want to sustain ourselves as best we can
with the least time and energy expended,
and our emerging potentials
for this efficiency
are truly amazing and transformative.
So we can begin to further root this
everyday life-relevant principle
as a primary role in our thinking
and approaches to social management,
as a new sustainable era draws near.
Then we come to the concept
of ephemeralization,
another core awareness
integral to our collective
activism and way forward.
This concept of ephemeralization, a term
coined by futurist R. Buckminster Fuller,
to describe the trend of doing
more and more with less and less,
in the context of sustainability and
economic life-supporting processes.
How we harness and convert energy,
how we produce materials,
how we channel those materials and resources,
transportation, communications, construction,
how fast and accurate
information is processed.
All with less effort, less time,
less material, less waste,
less space taken up.
We're talking about technical
adjustments and improvements
that simplify, optimize and
minimize economic operation
to better and better fulfill human life.
This is a key awareness for society in
our growing worldwide Earth movement
to understand as our emerging technical
abilities bring about a new world.
And then we come to sustainability,
predominately in activist community
today, almost passé.
What is sustainability? Sustainability
quite simply is the web of life itself,
on which our long-term survival depends.
It is life support over time.
And so in the human and
ecological context here,
that which is sustained, as a sustainable
communion between man and nature,
does not come through endless
employment, economic expansion,
and self-interested competitive advantage.
What is sustain in the broad sense
is the proper ongoing integration
with this web of life,
accounting for, supporting, and combining
with its innate life-supporting processes.
Our ability to sustain
and interlink with nature
is a defining goal for our species
and it can't be understated
that our activism continue
to find a common pursuit
and awareness in sustainability
within its proper ecological context,
as the term has been
largely coopted and hence
trivialized and misunderstood.
And then the natural-world
natural-law train of thought,
the next concept here,
that works to support our
unifying thread awareness.
The acknowledgment of the natural world,
aligning our way of life
and methods of economy
with the governing physical
laws with which we are bound.
For an ongoing failure
of our human society has
apparently been to leave out and
override these natural law awarenesses.
Yes, we've been able to utilize nature,
we've evolved ourselves,
evolved our tools, but human society
has often struggled to respect
and understand nature’s science and limits.
Even in indigenous cultures who were
typically known for their
deep connection to nature,
historically there have been cases that
where such communities have failed to
fully respect and align their methods
with their immediate environment,
overwhelming its limits, causing
die off and division and violence,
and general regress.
And then we have technology and the
technical relationships of everything.
When we come to this,
technology can be described as
anything with utility and function.
Like the human body itself is
made up of various technologies,
each executing specific functions.
A tree is made up of its technologies,
its roots suck water from
the earth like a straw,
channeling it through its trunk
to its branches,
and its leaves act like
little solar panels that
collect the sunlight for energy.
There's an inherent technical order
and use of technology in nature.
Technology for us has obviously developed
from our use of fire, to language, to maps,
to life-saving medicine to
learning how to harness the
Earth system in its entirety.
This basic use of technology
gives proper warmth and humanity to our
technological ability, and to use it -
all financial affordability aside, and
assuming we work together as a world team -
to use that ability in preserving all
of humanity by transforming our world
economic way of life,
to provide the necessities of life
to the global population.
Relieving us from the
labor obligations we have,
transitioning our toxic energy
practices to clean abundant energies,
along with the resulting peace and balance
that comes with such a
global cooperative world.
The real technology though,
the real technology is our application of it:
how it's applied, the system through
which it can be applied or not.
Through this humane,
direct technical view of possibility,
a much more common ground approach
to society and global activism emerges, where
a self-realizing coercive action
presents itself on its own,
ultimately transcending variance of opinion,
politics, affordability, or any "isms."
And then we have the concept of
systems or systemic thinking.
This is about seeing and
understanding life in terms of
living systems that make up the whole,
integrated whole, of life.
Organized into an infinite, almost infinite,
apparent seemingly infinite
regressive nesting systems,
a seamless unity of which
none are free and independent,
patterned throughout
nature as these interconnected networks.
(This is the pattern.)
All organisms are systems,
a tree, an animal, a human being,
which themselves are made up of
smaller systems like organs or leaves,
and then into smaller
systems still, like cells.
And of course we recognize
larger community systems,
like an ecosystem or a social system.
A system's structure and purpose are
the sources of its own behaviors.
And so the strongest leverage point
in this sense within a given system
would be to change its
underlying structure and purpose,
which aren’t typically very noticeable,
but it’s where significant change happens.
And significant major
changes are less to do with
altering its surface elements or parts,
which are actually more noticeable.
And so our activism for change
can tend to only look at the
surface expression of things
rather than underlying structure.
This systems awareness
gives us a common framework
naturally for understanding how
our social environment systems,
social and environmental systems,
work and interrelate,
where we can look at our
social problems as a whole,
instead of treating them independently,
each needing their own solution,
bringing a needed simplicity and unity
to our frame of reference for
activism and transforming systems.
Causality, this is our next thread here,
is about cause and effect relationships.
Causality: cause and effect,
feeding forward from the
awareness of systems.
It's about looking beyond the problems
that float in our face every day,
to source down,
source down and gain as close
an understanding as possible to
the true root origins
and causes of our issues,
so we can correct and remove it.
This way of reasoning our social
problems is critical to exercise
as the course of action we do or
don't take are nationally based upon
and dictated by whatever we establish,
as the cause of something.
So, developing a shared work ethic ...
towards understanding causality
can be influential not only
in finding proper solutions,
but in getting on the same
page as a worldwide effort,
with respect to root causes to
social and ecological problems,
as it’s easy to stop short, or become lost
with respect to where
the problems really lie.
So we want to take due thought and effort
to get to the bottom of our common issues,
to be as effective and as unified as possible;
we don't want to waste our time.
Synergy and cooperation.
The next thread in establishing
a unifying common ground
is the idea of this synergy and cooperation:
working together for added
benefit to the whole,
as opposed to working independently
for less of a benefit,
for an individual or a group.
We have of course evolved
through synergy and cooperation;
life and nature demands it.
The difference going forward is
that this cooperation and synergy
take a global context,
and that they become core
premises of our global economy,
instead of this slight and
indirect cooperation we see today
which is dominated by layers
and degrees of competition,
as the power we have to
transform and elevate society
through the momentum of synergy
and through the mutual advantage
of cooperation is truly profound
when we connect the possibilities.
And then there's the open source concept
where we begin to transcend our
current restrictive paradigm
of patents and property
rights and self-interests,
to openly share improvements,
ideas and designs,
learning from each other and
collectively developing and building upon
each other's ideas and technologies
for the benefit of everyone,
accelerating our collective
ability and awareness.
And then there's inequality,
or rather equality as a value,
to unify our efforts with.
Our inclination towards greater equality,
trending throughout history in
various stages of more equal rights,
ever-present in many
regions of the world today,
bringing unrest and activism together
around common awareness and goals.
Equality is fundamental;
it's part of our biology,
beyond the obvious physical effects for
those with less access to means of life.
We humans have evolved as
highly social, empathic creatures
and so at the end of the day,
whether advantaged or disadvantaged,
the imbalance is psychologically
destabilizing on both ends,
from the highest affluence
to the lowest of the low.
And current research clearly
shows this strong relationship,
as Jason just gave a talk on,
between inequality and social problems;
the relationship is very strong.
Now validated with a scientific basis,
we can continue to unify ourselves
economically across society.
Highlighted here was a core
group of understandings -
that I thought were a core
group understandings -
that comprise a unifying
worldview train of thought
for activism across the world, which
are all basically trains
of thoughts in themselves.
You could drill down and
they connect to each other.
They all kind of make up this
connection of understanding and
a unified common-ground
train of thought, that could
very well serve as a potential
foundation for new human life -
for a new human life
system in future society.
And so we could view it this way:
a train of thought, a concept,
rather a connection of understanding,
a connection of awarenesses,
of what each imply in
relation to one another,
how they support and
amplify a larger picture,
and a more accurate context for activism,
human sustainability, and progress.
With this connection of understanding,
when we observe causality and
how to source down problems,
when we recognize the patterns
of transience and adaptation,
when we understand all known
methods and awarenesses
are in constant state of change,
with new developments
exponentially increasing,
when we take a global systems view of life,
when we understand our potentials to
elevate the entire world population,
when we look at our basic
scientific unifying awarenesses,
and when we reference our human sustainability
from these scientific awarenesses,
a clear path and course of
action surfaces before us.
Social change and transforming
our world won't be easy but
brought to the surface
here is a unifying thread
from which to center ourselves around,
which is ultimately nameless,
belonging to no one, sourceless,
existing as a self-evident logical
connection of understanding again,
that presents the way
forward on its own really,
which ultimately transcends,
again most divisions and parties of thought,
views and allegiances to find
value and meaning in unifying
with a group thread of awareness.
Gone are the days of “isms;”
there is only an ever-expanding
connection of understanding
on behalf of the collective consciousness,
an evolving, unified common ground approach.
In turning ourselves back towards
our world with this unified worldview
to look at our global way of life,
with new eyes and clean awareness,
we see how forgotten
these guiding basic threads are in
our global way of life as a whole.
We see a system that is unfit going forward
to fulfill our pattern of evolution.
We see a world system attempting balance
and progress through self-interested
competitive advantage and see
the structural flaws of this,
not based on reality.
There are inherent structural
issues with our life system
that not only perpetually
provoke problems and conflict,
has a toxic incentive system
and class divide built into it,
but actually restricts progress
and solutions overall, by design.
That striving up in a
competitive survival environment
breeds corruption and problems no
matter what class you find yourself in,
that our condition of greed,
status, corruption, violence
are not to do with any
human nature but are in fact
being provoked by the current system.
A new way of life is coming to the surface
through our collective common
ground awareness of ourselves,
of our planet, our current system,
and of emerging possibilities,
where we can now trust
to work together,
we can trust each other to work together,
to share resources and
meet human needs directly,
doing much more for ourselves as a whole with
much less complexity,
struggle, and suffering.
Significant vision on what a
new human life system would be
would be like, from its intricacies
to is broadest structure and intents,
are detailed in the new TZM book,
which is available at cost, across the room,
over there.
(6 bucks at cost)
As the current paradigm erases itself
through installation of new technologies
for greater cost efficiency,
eventually eliminating most jobs,
giving way to a new paradigm,
we will see a new paradigm...
we will see a new paradigm one way or another
as the system kind of erases itself.
It's just a question of whether
it will be sustainable, or humane.
The path is clear, merges again on its own.
We have the vision, we have the technology,
we have the awareness.
We have the energy and resources needed
for a new sustainable paradigm.
So what really is missing here?
Of all our great achievements,
of all the great possibilities and potentials
we have to create a better society,
there is one achievement yet to come forward
in which the application of all
our achievements and discoveries
hinge upon, in order to be put
to use towards a better world.
And that is us: the social achievement.
How do we change our society?
We change ourselves:
how we think, our values and perspectives,
which we support such a system with.
For a society is enabled by none other
than the people who inhabit that system,
and the worldviews they maintain.
Conversely we are born into
and under the influence
of such a system from the very beginning.
So the haunting aspect of this is that
a circular reinforcement is at play,
where the very system we
walk and come to expect
and are influenced and shaped by,
we feed forward right back into itself,
creating a culture-to-system,
system-to-culture chain of causality,
rolling us onward or downward by
its own momentum and existence.
So it falls to us, to stop
and think and look around
and start being at the
cause of a better world,
and less at the effect
of a culture in decline,
breaking this never-ending
chain of influence.
This shift in consciousness
is initiated through
new awareness of ourselves, of each other,
of our interdependence, of new possibility.
These new awarenesses are brought on by
broad educational awareness efforts,
whether through grassroots activism,
personal passive activism.
The arts are a great way.
Or through live every day reinforcement
of more humane values and actions,
both on a personal level and
in our social environments.
Achieving an inner balance is great,
achieving well-being and
inner balance is great.
But going beyond that even,
beyond the internal landscape,
to have an active influence,
active influence on our fellow man, right?
It's about having more empathy,
receptivity and trust,
patience, honesty, compassion,
acceptance, connecting more with others,
daring to connect with people.
Being more aware of our surroundings
and the kind of impact we're
having in our social environment.
Being aware of our own ingrained behaviors,
pausing more before we react,
non-violence in the face of aggression,
living with passion, purpose,
but also being present and
vulnerable and flexible,
thinking for ourselves,
valuing a common ground also -
it’s very important here -
valuing a common ground
communication and understanding.
Now widening our circle of
concern to that whole of society
and learning to override our
patterns of fear and impulsivity,
self-interest, self-destruction,
anger, division,
blame, revenge,
while inspiring and educating each other
through a common ground thread
of awareness and values.
These concepts are recognized worldwide,
running throughout the fabric of
society if one looks close enough:
in social groups, communities,
various subcultures,
and lie at the core of world religions,
again if you look close enough.
There's a very practical
direct book actually out there
about this science of transformation,
this value shift.
It’s called ‘Mindsight,'
it’s by Daniel Siegel,
‘The New Science of
Personal Transformation.’
It talks a lot about this personal
shift and hence cultural shift.
It has a lot of positive information
about there, about modern brain,
how our modern brains evolved
around pro-social behaviors,
and really details the
process of behavioral changes.
It's hard; there's nothing
more sacred and rigid
than one's views at the end of the day,
or identity and sense of self.
This sharing of awareness along
with one's personal changes
and reinforcement of new values
through social interactions
may seem basic and minor or even
insignificant amid the global picture,
as one hardly sees any kind of
tangible or immediate return
reciprocated on such efforts.
But this involves culture itself:
a living breathing machine
that drives us essentially,
that drives essentially
every aspect of our society.
This involves who we are, what we are,
what we're aware of, what we think.
There is no greater origin
of influence for change,
as our human awareness is
naturally what all tangible
physical change ultimately comes from, right?
We're all part of a great
evolutionary shift in our world,
and I'm not talking about
some creepy internal delusion,
some self-indulgent cultish thing where
we subject everyone to our mission
as something were imposing here onto history.
Anyone can see our time is marked
by a great turning point
that we'll either take or not.
Not to say that there haven’t been
turning points throughout history,
there obviously have been and will be,
and our time is marked as such.
If there's anything I wish to
leave us with here today it's that
there is a common ground worldview
emerging amid our world activism
and scientific aware- scientific communities,
a foundational train of thought based
on the fundamentals of life and nature,
from which we can work in unify from,
that is beginning to take hold
overall relativism of thought.
It's time to move beyond the chairs of
excessive pontification, and theory,
to stand and work together
in a unified understanding,
towards a new age of species
sustainability and enlightenment.
We're not doomed to infinite
differing outlooks of points of views.
It's important to be honest
about our real tendencies
to take up positions simply
for the sake of having one.
The real value at this stage
of endless division and debate
is in coming together on common threads,
as our roads will eventually meet.
At the end of the day...
remaining positional over
finding our common threads,
at the end of the day,
within our dialogues
isn't going to get it done
with respect to collective
changes and collective shifts
in our values and thinking. Unacceptable.
All hands must begin to grasp
a common compass
of awareness and values, a common worldview,
and begin to unleash the power of
our humanity, stirring not so far
beneath the surface of world cultures.
Finding this unifying thread
along with the continual
humane shift in culture outlined here,
is what social change really
hinges upon at this time.
Until then, solutions and advancements will
sit on the side as near novelties,
only to be slowly absorbed in the old
dinosaur of the established order.
And so I stand here today with the
purpose of not to introduce anything new,
or to get you on some side or
anything like that but to
bring about an awareness
and a common ground unified focus,
laying foundations for
our collective activism
towards a new social system.
The Zeitgeist Movement is
a global activist group
working to bring about this
empathic shift in culture
by inspiring a socially
conscious global perspective
within the individual, and educating
through this unifying train of thought
about the new sustainable
and humane paradigm possible,
should we find it within ourselves
to come together as a global
community for the common goal
of peace and well-being.
So let's continue to put ourselves out there
with integrity regardless of reciprocation,
and shift our world one
day and project at a time.
It's up to us.
It's one life as far as we know,
let's make it count.
We’ve got a great opportunity,
let’s seize it.
Thanks for listening today.
[Applause]
The Zeitgeist Movement
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
