We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us.
But our technology is racing forward. We are trying to adjust to the rapid advances in technology with obsolete values that no longer work in today’s world.
What is needed is a change in our sense of direction and purpose -- an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike any in the past. This is what we are presenting here and we call it The Venus Project and its activist arm organized by Peter Joseph is called The Zeitgeist Movement.
When I referrer to sustainability I am not referring to sustainability for the banks, corporations or our obsolete social system but sustainability or the well being of people throughout the world in a new system that would help bring them to their highest potential while preserving the environment.
I am not talking about anyone’s wishes hopes, or dreams for the future but a way to intelligently manage earth’s resources by using the methods of science applied to society in a more human way.
Almost everyone will prefer using scientific means when it comes to surgery, the building of aircraft, skyscrapers, bridges, and cars. Over the centuries, we have developed a consensus that when it comes to matters of personal safety, we choose science and technology rather than primitive belief systems or politics because science has been proven to work.
Then why don’t we use scientific scales of performance when it comes to planning our societies: our cities, transportation systems, agriculture, health care, and so on? If science has a lot to do with what works, then clearly there’s much about today’s social and economic system that is NOT scientific, because things aren’t working very well for a majority of the world’s people or the environment. If they were, war, poverty, hunger, homelessness, pollution, would have been solved long ago.
Unfortunately our social structures evolved with no overall global planning or an understanding of what shapes our behavior and it is not being considered today.
The Venus Project wants to apply an intelligent method of planning for planetary survival. The degree to which we don’t apply this scientific method to the way we live, may very well determine the unnecessary amount of suffering that will occur.
So our outmoded social system has not kept up with our technological ability to produce abundance all over the world. By this I mean that we do not have the money to even feed everyone on our planet. We have the technological ability and still have the resources to do so but we don’t have he money. How do we even begin to solve our problems with this method?
The use of money is hardly ever examined, but let’s consider it and just how much it influences our behavior and values.
Money itself does not have any value. There is no gold or anything to back it up. It is just a picture on a cheap piece of paper with an agreement among people as to what it can buy – I would say a forced agreement. If it rained hundred dollar bills right now, everyone would be happy except the bankers.
Money is just an interference between what you need and what you are able to get. People think in terms of wanting a job to get the money to fulfill their needs. But if they thought about it, it is really not a job or money they want but access to the necessities of life.
The use of money results in social stratification and elitism. They say in America anyway that all people are equal. Well I don’t know what they are talking about.
Most people don’ buy the kind of car or home they want they buy what they can afford
Most cultures tell their people they are “free” but one is only as free as their purchasing power. How can someone have freedom when they can’t get the best medical care or education for their children?
Most people are slaves to jobs they do not like only because they need money.
Most laws are enacted for the benefit of corporations, which have enough money to lobby, bribe, or persuade government officials to make laws that serve their interests.
People say that the monetary system produces incentive this may be true in limited areas but it also produces greed, embezzlement, corruption, pollution, jealousy, anger, crime, war, poverty, tremendous scarcity, and unnecessary human suffering. You have to look at the entire picture.
The entire monetary system is based on artificial scarcity. Goods such as foods are sometimes destroyed to keep prices up.
There is tremendous waste of material and strain on available resources from superficial design changes each year in order to create continuous markets for manufacturers.
This is very evident in the fashion industry
There is tremendous environmental degradation due to a higher cost of better methods of waste disposal.
But one of the greatest wastes of resources and lives is the military. How shameful that it is one of the biggest industries in the world. War is a big and vial business.
The Earth is being plundered for profit.
One that is very little understood is the extent that our values are shaped by our monetary society.
Practically all media is used to influence values for the benefit of the power elite, which are the banks, most churches, the military and the corporations. For the most part they determine the public agenda to serve their own interests while they perpetuate the illusion that society’s values are determined from the ground up. They do this with such notions as Freedom, Patriotism, and Democracy.
What we have all over the world is managed news by the establishment. The books, TV, education and entertainment help to shape much of our behavior, and values.
Most important, when the corporation’s bottom line is profit, decisions in all areas are made not for the benefit of people and the environment, but primarily for the acquisition of wealth, property, and power.
For instance if your country really cared about you they would not outsource jobs for lower wages elsewhere.
Industry often takes very good care of their production machines but their employees are often neglected.
What if all the money in the world suddenly disappeared? As long as topsoil, factories, technical personal and other resources still remained, we could build anything we chose to build and fulfill our material needs. As I mentioned, money is not what people really need; rather, it is access to the necessities of life.
The Venus Project advocates that we could easily overcome scarcity, which is the cause of wars, corruption, and aberrant behavior by implementing a Resource Based Economy.
This is a very different concept than anything that has gone before. It is not socialism, communism, capitalism or fascism. To put it simply, a Resource-Based Economy uses resources rather than money, and people have free access to whatever they need without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.
All of the world's resources are held as the common heritage of all of Earth’s people.
The real wealth of any nation is not its money in fact no nation has any as they are all in debt, but their real wealth are their developed and potential resources and the people who work toward the elimination of scarcity for a more humane society for all.
If this is still confusing to you consider this: If a group of people were stranded on an island with money, gold, and diamonds, but the island had no arable land, fish or clean water, their wealth would be irrelevant to their survival.
In a Resource-Based Economy, resources are used directly to enhance the lives all the world’s people. If we manage our resources wisely, we can easily produce all of the necessities of life and provide a very high standard of living for everyone.
This may be hard to believe but even the wealthiest of today would have a much higher standard of living within a Resource Based Economy.
When technology and science are unleashed into society without restrictions of the market place or patents, it would be a far different world.
In the future children would be taught to be problem solvers instead of the parasitic professions used within the monetary system that do not contribute to the well being of people such as advertizing, insurance and real estate agents, lawyers, bankers, politicians, sales personnel to name just a few.
But I don’t want to leave out one of the most detrimental and savage profession that could easily be surpassed in a Resource Based Economy and that is the military profession. These people are just trained to be killing machines. How wonderful if they were all trained to be problem solvers instead and taught how to bridge the difference between nations.
When all earth’s resourced are managed as the common heritage of all the world’s people than the artificial barriers that separate nations would no longer be necessary. The scramble to secure or steal resource through military means would be surpassed.
In the future instead of fighting one another over scarce resources people will be working toward solving problems that are common to all such as heart disease, tsunamis, earth quakes, cancer and more.
Remember that almost every new concept was ridiculed, rejected, and laughed at when first presented, especially by the experts of the times. All new ideas for social betterment were always met with resistance from woman’s or black rights to eliminating child labor.
During the time of the Wright Brother’s the distinguished scientists of the day were writing books exclaiming why man can’t fly. The Wright Brothers did not read these books and went right ahead and built the flying machine.
With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human wellbeing and environmental protection, there is no doubt that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without.
Hopefully we will eventually understand that most forms of so-called criminal behavior, which fill our jails, are generated by the scramble for money and property in an age of often-contrived scarcity of the monetary system and the values it generates.
If we fail to accept responsibility for our own future others will do our thinking for us, known as fascism.
Roxanne Meadows - The Venus Project
