http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ skip the first 6 minutes.

Holy cow.

That is not funny at all.


I feel like posting my thoughts about the movie on forums managed on a game server that I use to distract myself from the slavish realities of my life pays it no service whatsoever.

i've always assumed that "cash rules everything around us" and that a few people ($$ and secret societies) pretty much got whatever they wanted, but hearing something like that (despite whatever exaggerations/inaccuracies there may be) fires me up so much that I feel like there isn't a way for me to relieve the pressure.

Like . . . . massive coup against the elite is almost the only way anything is gonna change . . . like ron paul will probably just get killed if hes pres, assuming we make it to january 2009 before bush/the ptb pull(s) a palapatine

I posted this in general, someone moved it.

suicide is bad mmmkay

How so?

I thought it was funny.

Granted I saw that at, or most of it (as it seems to be assembled bits of older movies) at the UU church a few years ago.

It kinda blows my mind that everything in there isn't matter-of-fact to most people. Of course cash rules everything - because, by extension, cash is everything - at least, everything in the material world - and it's kinda hard to horde stuff that isn't in the material world.

I mean, most people try to deny this, from day to day, but everyone knows it. Unlike the 9-11 bits (where there's a lot of hard-core denial on both sides), it's not a vast underground conspiracy. In the grand scheme, it isn't even evil: it's just life.

And yes, all the power in the civilized world is concentrated in the hands of a few select families. This has always been the case, and everyone knows it. It isn't hidden information, and never has been. The poor die to feed the rich, both locally, and internationally; this should be no revelation either.

I do contest with this sort of flick where they rip the humanity out of these power mongers. I mean, no one on earth consciously seeks power for power’s sake: people have goals! For their families, for their nations, for their world. These “heartless power mongers” are human beings, and they believe that what’s best for them and theirs is best for everyone. Or at least that’s what lets me sleep at night without hunting down and killing members of the extended family. Further a lot of these people "behind the curtain" (which few, if any of them are) are as fooled by their own "lies" as the general populous!

I guess for some people learning/accepting that is part of growing up, but I guess I had it beat into me at an earlier age than most... Thus... I find it funny.
_________________
”Kids do have to learn that life is a humiliating charade of endless disappointment and tragedy, ultimately culminating in pain, decay, and death. My parents used to sing me to sleep with that one.” – Samantha Bee
Thothie

The thing is, 80% of people DON'T realize it. They know it could happen, that it probably does happen to a certain extent, but they don't realize how what they do/don't do allows it to progress, and how far its going to go.

No it hasn't ALWAYS been like this . . . the biggest issue is that america was founded in rebellion to things like these, it started as a sort of psuedo-enlightenment movement if you will, and people still think thats what we are . . . . when those days are long past. SO many american's are blinded by their views of america as an awesome place that they refuse to recognize the possibility that it has become as/more corrupt than any other place, thereby allowing that to continue unabated.

This is nothing new to me because I've always thought that a good society needs an overhaul every couple hundred years . . . we're too selfish to keep things legit. My point is just that its overhauling time, but i don't see a world government being overthrown very easily (or even a US gov't), plus id rather have change than have to deal with a revolution (although I will).

maybe its just because im not some jaded and complacent middle-aged sucker, but I actually give a shit about what happens.

No its not evil . . . I don't think evil exists objectively . . . but it is contrary to what I want (and what I've been told and promised), and I'll be damned if I sit back and let some other motherfuckers take that away from me.

Well, I wish I had more time to respond to this (probably will later), but the internet is so intermittent where I am at the moment... I'll just say that's the closest thing I've seen to a coherent post on these boards in ages, and as such, I'll reward it by moving it from Funny Links to Political. ...Which is kinda like getting promoted to death, but hey... Posthumous promotions at least get the next of kin more spending cash.

This thread is now dead. Good work thoth.

Odd, because the bits and pieces I watched just now have a number of overt factual errors. Overall, the piece feels like most conspiracy theories - very reliant on correlates and general relationships that fall well within the realms of natural chance, and almost constantly violating Ockham's Razor. Simply put, if you allow too many parameters, you'll always find a way to set them so they fit the data - especially when you then throw out all the data you don't like.

That's not to say the general principle espoused - disproportionate influence of a few on the many - is wrong. It's certainly correct. The details, however... make a good way to fail out of a statistics class.



There are many forms of influence that have no direct counterpart in the material world. They are also frequently the most insidious.



The very first paragraph about 9-11 was already factually wrong, so I stopped watching the 9-11 stuff after that. I've seen a lot of similar 9-11 videos though, at any rate, unless this one is somehow really special.



Significant portions, surely, but "all" is a grave overestimate. The modern world is an overly complex system, very impossible to control fully. However, disproportionate amounts of influence and power are certainly concentrated in the hands of a few families and individuals. But, despite that, the influential don't exactly form a cozy club - well, no, wait, they often literally do form clubs, but in practice, their interests are frequently in conflict - one of the things that irks me so about this video and others like it.



Such "overhauls" have a tendency to get jacked and create something worse. A rough approximation might be bad->worse->worse->worse->better->worse->worse->worse->way better->worse->worse->worse etc.

*cough* holocaust *end cough*

Yeah, I flipped to the middle of that movie, watched the part about Jesus, wikipedia'd Horus, and then pretty much decided that they were just talking about bits and pieces of facts and at least didn't tell the whole story.

Albeit wikipedia isn't the best source.... From wikipedia:


Wtf!? Yeah, I don't remember that part in the Jesus story.

Occam's Razor



I thought erik's main point was that "we need an overhaul" because you can't let one system reign supreme forever. That system, once it becomes all powerful, is what eventually drives the worse->worse->worse machine.

It's sort of like our brand of capitalism and antitrust....there should be a healthy level of competition, or we all suffer in the end.

It's not really more proper, unless you know of a magical reason why it really ought to be labeled that way. I realize Occam's got a longer historical precedent, but times change.



Theoretically, maybe. In practice, the stable, stagnant, corrupt political systems can go on a LOOOONG time before we have to pay the piper, though. And attempts at major change are, as I was pointing out, the real danger. They generally start with good feelin' and lotsa charmin' intentions, but have a habit of gettin' jacked and being directed towards unleashing Cthulhu.