Zeitgeist: Addendum

The continuation for Zeitgeist, the Movie, Zeitgeist: Addendum discusses the Federal Reserve System in the United States, the CIA, corporate America and others, concluding with the advocating of the Venus Project, created by social engineer Jacque Fresco. The documentary is separated into four parts:

Part I criticizes the practice of fractional-reserve banking and criticizes the way the Federal Reserve creates money. Their argument goes as following: Dollar bills get printed, or the money supply is increased, when the Fed buys Treasury Bonds. This money ends up in commercial banks. Then, once that money becomes a reserve in banks, it becomes “multiplied” through the fractional-reserve system, and then loaned to customers. The film claims that such a system is “absurd” because the Interest that must be paid for the money that was loaned does not exist; it was never created. The film compares this system to a game of musical chairs, in which a person will also be left-out. The film does not attempt to go in detail to explain all that is involved with money and banking, but tries to explain the most basic aspect of a money system. This subject is also touched in the first Zeitgeist film.

Part II is a documentary style interview with John Perkins, in which he describes his role as a self-described Economic Hitman (EHM). He claims he helped CIA and the ruling political/corporate elites who have worked to undermine legitimate foreign regimes that put the interests of their populations before those of transnational corporations.

Part III describes the Venus Project, a proposal created by Jacque Fresco. The film promotes the Venus Project as a sustainable solution for mankind on Earth. Its main goal is to produce a “resource-based economy” using modern technology.

Part IV states that everything wrong with the world is “fundamentally the result of a collective ignorance of two of the most basic insights humans can have about reality — the ‘emergent’ and ‘symbiotic’ aspects of natural law.”

Source of the above:
Wikipedia contributors, “Zeitgeist: Addendum,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zeitgeist:_Addendum&oldid=249336614 (accessed November 3, 2008).

Below you can watch the entire documentary.

After seeing it, I have to say that it does a pretty good job at presenting the issues it wants to present, but the solution offered to them is false. Social engineer Jacque Fresco is presenting the Venus Project as an ideally perfect vision, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects, ignoring the fact that utopias usually become dystopias (that or they don’t exist at all).

The best parts of the documentary are the first and the second, with the third being interesting only as far as the presented technologies go. If we ignore the pragmatic content of the third part, we could say that it represents the point where the pie begins its gracious flight in the sky.

All in all though, it is a worthwhile watch, good conversation starter for those who can’t bother getting their spark from more “mature” and valuable sources. Just take a boulder of salt with it.