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The views expressed in these interviews are those of the participants alone

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and do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or its sponsors.

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Orion Network Films LLP

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In Association with PositiveTV

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Directed by Mark Waters

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Presents

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The Summary

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The Zeitgeist Movement

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My name is Peter Joseph. I am currently the de facto founder

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of an organization called The Zeitgeist Movement

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which is seeking to alter the current cultural climate, if you will

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into something that can be considered as actually sustainable

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for not just one nation or class but all the world's people.

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The Zeitgeist Movement

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We live in a paradigm, now, where we have society operating

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on the idea that we can grow infinitely.

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Therefore, we keep buying and consuming

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regardless of how many resources we have.

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This creates a collision course with nature, which the world

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is figuring out right about now on many levels,

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that the Earth is essentially a closed system.

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It took billions of years to create the minerals we have.

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It took many hundreds of millions of years

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to create the fossil fuels which govern everything we have.

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And, amazingly enough, we've created this system

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where we're using all of our resources to create the economic growth

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required to sustain employment and everything else.

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And simultaneously, we're diminishing our resources

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at a near exponential rate it seems, as population continues to grow

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and no one seems to understand that it's an absolute clash

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and that eventually we're going to run out of pivotal resources

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and eventually you're going to see things, I don't know,

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like the human population start to dwindle down.

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My name is Jacque Fresco

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and I'm going to present the concept of The Venus Project.

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The Venus Project

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If you don't want war

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if you don't want poverty, hunger, unemployment

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you have to declare all the Earth's resources

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as the common heritage of all the world's people.

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All the artificial boundaries have to be removed

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so that people can travel anywhere.

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It has to be a global society.

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There are many people that feel "Well, let's develop each country."

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You can't do that because if the Russians do experiments

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with nuclear materials and the Chinese

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that air goes all over the world.

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So it's very hard to work independently.

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So, I would say, if you want these things

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you have to change the way your society operates.

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We believe, here at The Venus Project, we are not civilized yet.

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As long as you have armies, navies

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prisions, police, we are not civilized.

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No nation is civilized.

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Being civilized is an ongoing process.

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The more we learn, the more we know about the environment

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and human relations, the more we're able to deal with the problems.

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If we fail to do that, we won't be able to solve problems.

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If we go with traditional values, we won't be able to solve problems.

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All of these pump-primers do not work.

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There's always been wars.

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The wars have continued to get worse

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even though the universities today

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have the most sophisticated equipment

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in the science labs, the architectural labs, all the labs

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and the wars are getting worse. Explosions are getting worse.

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Since the atom bomb, the explosive power is much worse.

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So, there's something definitely wrong with all cultures.

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When I say wrong, I mean that the system doesn't work.

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Now, to talk about a system that does work

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is a little foreign to our habits of thought.

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I'm going to try to explain how we make decisions.

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Actually, we don't make decisions. We arrive at them.

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The only way a real society can operate

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period, is in a steady-state economy

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meaning you don't have the mechanism of constantly needing to do anything

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other than being sustainable in your every day living

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and having society recognize the attributes of sustainability

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which are required. That's the value-system orientation

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needed to create a stable society.

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As a brief extension of this, we live in a materialistic culture.

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We live in a culture that's predicated on inferiority

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and people thinking that they need more and more

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because of many reasons, because of someone else having more

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status-oriented issues, so on and so forth.

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And that fuels into this mechanism of the growth economy

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of getting more and more. Holidays... People give each other gifts.

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These are inventions for economics.

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As long as we use money and the bottom line is profit

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then those who control the money

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are able to make the laws in their favor.

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And that means that they really don't care about people.

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They care about wealth, property and power

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when that is the main incentive.

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So, when we use the monetary system

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there is no justice within this system.

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There's no making this system equitable.

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What we need is an entirely new system

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that we call a Resource-Based Economy.

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Resource-Based Economy

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In regard to social operation and how to create a new society

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or better yet just to say to create any society that would be

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sustainable and efficient

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there's really an empirical train of thought, if you will, on how to do that.

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First of all, you have to think about what the human being actually needs.

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We require resources at the bare minimum. We require food

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water, etc. as we all know.

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Therefore, resources become the most paramount subject.

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Resources in fact should be the foundation of any economic structure.

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So, what do you do? If you consider that the Earth is a closed finite system.

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First thing you have to do is a survey of the Earth's resources

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and the carrying capacity of the environment.

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If you produce a population far in excess of the carrying capacity

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of the environment, you're going to have trouble.

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You're going to have malnutrition and all the problems that go with it.

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So, first we have to find out

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what can each successive environment carry

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and maintain a population in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth.

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Not what I like or somebody else likes

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or some politician's notions.

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It has to be based upon the carrying capacity of the Earth.

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To organize a structure based on the intelligent management

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of the Earth resources, you start from

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essentially, the base level of where is everything.

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So, you look at the planet and you say "Ok,

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we see we have iron ore here. We have petroleum deposits here,"

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if we're using petroleum at that point in time in the future.

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Hopefully we will not be because it's damaging. "We have places

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for great wind energy here." You get the point.

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We can assess the entire environment of what we currently use

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based on our technological facilities at that point

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and we start to create a structure of analysis

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maintenance and management

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and basically monitor and understand what we have.

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Then we can design the parameters for the new society.

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Without a survey we couldn't do that.

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Survey means physical disabilities, all the known diseases.

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That tells us how many hospitals we have to build.

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Of course, the survey would include available materials.

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Otherwise, if you just sit down and turn out a hospital

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or turn out a social plan not based on what you have

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not based on what Fresco believes, only statistical evidence.

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The end of "What's your opinion? What's your opinion?"

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should have been gone in 1927.

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Then you move to the next level. How do we utilize resources in the most efficient way?

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Technology is the methodology to harness any type of resources we have.

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Technology is the growing intellectual field that allows us to know

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how to manipulate our environment for our betterment

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and to be more sustainable, hopefully.

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So what we do is we utilize our technical information

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and then we analyze the planetary resources.

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Then we build from the ground up an entire infrastructure, not based

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on the whims of any type of ideology, capitalist, socialist

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fascist, whatever, what have you, communist.

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You do it based explicitly on the most efficient means to do it

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with the most peak efficiency possible

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based on the technology available at the time

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the intellectual resource of the time.

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You have peak efficiency and sustainability as your goal.

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You just simply weigh all parameters when you analyze anything

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and then you're going to build a society that is, essentially

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for lack of a better expression, perfect.

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It's not perfect at all because it's going to constantly change, but

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it's the best you can do at that point in time

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which I think would be a variance of perfection.

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A Resource-Based Economy does not use money, barter or any form of servitude.

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It just makes goods and services available to everybody

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through intelligent use of technology.

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Creative Director / Cinematographer / Director: Mark Waters

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Producer: Frank Da Silva

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Executive Producers: Dana Amma Day, Nicholas Pilbrow

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Production Assistant: Simon G. Powell

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Storyboard Artist: Alexander Ward

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An Earth 2 Production for Orion Network Films LLP

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In Association with Positive TV and JustLivinFilm

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Filmed on Location: Venus, Florida / New York City, NY