Jacque Fresco - Dec. 19, 2010 "Relation to Academia" www.thevenusproject.com
The American Psychological Association,
people who deal with mental problems, stress, all that sort of thing,
as far as I know
have not written books on the effects of environment upon behavior
and criticizing the way government operates.
It's unsane, and I've never found them to talk about government that way.
Maybe they'd lose appropriations if they did.
But I don't know whether they're interested in appropriations
or understanding human behavior.
I know of no group of psychologists that advocated social change
in order to avoid most stresses and most of the problems that people have.
I've never known neurologists that laid out a plan
for informing people with better methods of evaluation,
so that they don't have the stresses they have.
Therefore, all their books seem to be maps of the brain
and what region of the brain controls what pattern of behavior,
which is all right anatomically
but does not describe or alleviate problems.
Knowing the anatomy of the brain will tell you
that a tumor in a given location will cut out speech
or visual; that's all good information.
But that's not what The Venus Project is about.
The Venus Project is about finding solutions or workable ways
of influencing people to modify their behavior,
to fit the circumstances of the world,
not the opinions, or reactions, or emotions of an individual.
So when a person says to me
"Let's have input from the scientific community,"
the reason I don't go for that,
because the scientific community never came up and said
"Why go to the moon when the earth is falling apart?
Let's solve those problems first."
They don't participate; they don't seem to suggest a direction.
They merely describe the anatomy of the brain,
which is all right, I have nothing against it,
but they have no direction.
I've never known The American Association of Architects
to lay out a whole city system.
They say the 'green' rooftop.
Well, the greening of a building does not change society.
So the reason I do not seek information from the academic world
is because they don't take it far enough.
They deal with limited aspects of human behavior
and limited functions of the brain.
They study the brain, I would imagine... Like I said before,
if I fly over a village of thatched huts
which are up on stilts in water,
I can tell you that the people probably live on fish,
and their values are related to the coconuts
and the food available on the island
and the problems they have with other islanders
wanting to take their women or their food away from them.
So their philosophy would be a simple one.
It would not be high level communication.
So you don't need to go there and study the people. Just take a photograph.
A photograph of New York City, Chicago, LA, any city,
shows every building a different size, which means every man for himself,
which means it's a selfish, self-centered culture.
I don't need to ask what people are like in Chicago.
I know by looking at the city
and the fact that they tolerate what exists.
I haven't heard school teachers
say "Let us make education relevant to the needs of people."
I've never heard a descriptive system from universities
or any elaborate organization.
The democratic concept, for example,
where everybody participates and contributes,
I believe they can only contribute that which they have learned from the culture.
And they can't be that different and be a member of a standard organization.
Now if a person says "There are lots of aspects of The Venus Project
that Jacque doesn't cover,"
you haven't asked those questions.
How do you know that?
So you have to say "Andrew, what are his views on child nurturing?"
"What are his views on family? What are his views on education?"
and get that down then compare it with the academic world.
You'll find that it's very different except the anatomy.
When a doctor says this is the knee reflex, this is the temporal lobe,
he's right, frontal lobe, all that stuff, a map.
There's nothing the matter with that, but it doesn't deal with any problems.
I find most architects self-centered,
designing buildings and being proud of what they design
and sharing rooftops of green, which is all right,
but that isn't the answer to the problems.
So, I thought if the academic world had any validity,
they'd be in confrontation with established views.
I do not find that. So, I do not find ...
Even B.F. Skinner did not go into the anatomy of a new culture,
how it works, what type of education for children.
I asked Skinner whether he thought man was a machine,
meaning reasonably connected.
By machine I mean, you can't roll your eyes in a given position,
unless there's a muscle that pulls it there.
That's what I mean by mechanistic.
You can't see unless the visual system is supplied with light
and the back of the brain is supplied with enough associations
to interpret the forms around them.
So, education comes from the environment
and as you pointed out, all cultures are primitive
because they're in a state of evolution.
Primitive compared to what?
Compared to what there IS to know about people, we are primitive.
As long as we have prisons and military solutions, we are primitive.
I will never listen to military people for their solutions to problems
unless they have outgrown that and have come to new conclusions.
Like General Westmoreland, if it was General Westmoreland,
or Eisenhower when he said
"Beware of the military-industrial complex."
I wish he elaborated more on that and spent more time on that.
But he didn't.
Apparently he felt by saying that,
he would alert people to be conscious of that area.
Judgments are based on cultural systems,
otherwise no one would ever go to a movie
because it has nothing to offer.
No one would watch soap operas, because it has nothing to offer.
It's a repeat of the same story.
Jealousy, our present-day concepts of love
and family are always uniform.
If they weren't, it would not become popular.
If a person's elected to be president by a group of Americans,
they do not have the ability
to judge a person's ability to manage society.
They do not have the kind of training
to nominate the proper people for education.
Neither do the educators.
But when you take a course in engineering,
as long as they deal with structures
and torsional loads and compressional, it's okay.
But how is it to be used? Engineers don't give a shit.
If it's a fascist culture or a democratic culture,
they make engineering projects for that culture.
Engineers do not collectively, as a rule, in numbers,
step out of engineering and say "What is this for? How is it to be used?"
"I refuse to work on weapons of mass destruction.
I'd rather work on studying the culture that we disagree with
and see if we can find areas of agreement, not destruction."
So I do not personally
find evidence to align myself with scientists.
I never met a scientist,
just like I said, I never met a Christian
that upheld the Christian doctrine.
A scientist to me would be into sociology, anthropology,
engineering to some extent,
electronics to some extent, you know what I mean?
To whatever extent they can be, they would be interested
and say "I don't know enough about
decision-making and different cultures to want to destroy them.
I'd like to understand them before.
I'd like to talk to their leaders."
Even if he talked to the leaders, with an American value system
he could not hear them. Do you understand what I'm talking about?
You can't talk things over if you speak a different language
and have a different reaction to words.
If people do not understand The Venus Project ...
It isn't that Fresco likes to dictate the ways.
I'd like to understand what they have to offer to alter society.
I'm not interested in three views to an airplane
unless I know what that plane is for. Do you understand what I'm saying?
I hope this answers the question
as why I do not usually join scientific committees,
because I do not find them to be scientific
nor oriented to be able to handle the wide range of problems.
So I consider almost every society primitive,
and if you disagree with me,
what I'd like to do is put forth areas
that enable me to see the shortcomings.
But don't say "I don't agree with him."
Point out the area of disagreement or what you think you disagree with.
But without a conversation, without attending the tours,
without sitting down and sharing ideas,
it'd be very difficult to know exactly how I mean certain words.
There are many semantic problems
that can be resolved with a personal meeting.
I don't know how to resolve problems with scientists in general
unless I meet with them as individuals for a given amount of time.
I can't give a guy in 20 minutes what I believe,
even if he's a scientist.
There are some scientists that will take to this right away, I know that.
Because they're looking for answers and they don't have the tools.
I've met many scientists, but I've only had brief encounters with them,
like 10 minutes, 20 minutes,
but never a long period of exchange of ideas
so far.
This is the reason I do not seek answers from the academic world.
If they are academic it means they accept,
or they accept to a large portion, what goes on.
That's my reason.
What has to be done is people should investigate
the educational system of The Venus Project, what it offers.
They must then look into the environmental aspects of The Venus Project:
how we intend to support and restore the damaged environment.
Then, what different types of vehicles would be used for transportation,
how WE solve the transportation problems.
If they find shortcomings in it, say
"Present your recommendations."
But don't say "I don't like that system."
Present your recommendations or alternatives.
If you want people to be safe in swimming, safe from sharks ...
You really don't have to make a swimming pool any deeper than 5 feet.
You can swim in 5 feet of water; it's hard to drown.
If you can't make it, you can reach bottom.
And children's pools would be shallow, and you can swim in them,
you can't drown in them. It isn't that I like shallow pools.
If children have difficulty, you can't always see it.
I think our friend's child was drowned
because mother couldn't watch over her in the ocean.
And she blamed the old man, the old man blamed the mother for not watching,
and then they both blamed the lifeguard.
You know, it's inadequate systems is what you're dealing with.
Do you understand? I don't find lifeguards who submit new ways
of watching over people on the beach. They're always a lifeguard.
They never seem to innovate, or make a life preserver connected to a cable
that goes out to the drowning person.
That's what they need, not the lifeguard grabbing them.
They need the thing getting there faster.
The lifeguard can only get there at a certain speed.
So I would design a life raft that moves out very fast,
stops by proximity mechanisms,
and then moves slowly toward the person so they can grab it.
And if they can't grab it, you send human assistance on a vehicle out that way.
Anyway, I've never heard of lifeguard associations
making recommendations, except binoculars for the lifeguard to look around,
but limited, very limited.
Lifeguards are not trained as innovators.
But if you bring innovators to the system and say
"How can you innovate that system to make it more efficient?"
If a man is mechanical, he might make a life preserver connected to a cable.
If he's into electronics,
he would pick up distress in the water.
You know, whatever it is.
But I don't find academia to be critical of a political system.
I don't find many opinions coming forth on how to modify our system
so that we have less problems. I don't find that.
Now in books on politics,
I don't think George Washington would be surprised
at the decision-making today,
because it's not that different.
Benjamin Franklin or anybody else.
Our political system is based on opinions,
projections, inadequacies, incompetence.
That's why I say they would feel at home in this society.
But they would not feel at home in The Venus Project.
No politician would know how decisions are made.
They wouldn't understand why our schools are the way they are.
They wouldn't! Even if they came and visited the schools
they wouldn't understand.
They wouldn't understand
the nature of environmental reclamation, why it's done.
And they wouldn't understand where you get the money
to do environmental reclamations.
If the Earth is declared common heritage,
that's the only way you can have access to anything.
I can't understand, if you have based all your decisions on
"How much will it cost?" well you wouldn't do anything,
because everything costs a lot of money, except war -
it MAKES a lot of money.
It isn't that I want to direct the whole thing.
I haven't gotten assistance from others
on how to put up buildings faster that were that new.
So I had to innovate all this shit, because I didn't get anything from others.
I'm not interested in doing all that.
I'd rather have people capable of knowing when they see a ship,
what is it you want? You want the whole cargo unloaded at a given place.
You don't want to take off one container at a time.
That's okay if different containers go different places,
and we've got one ship. But in the future, you must design
automobile manufacturing in a certain region,
so you deliver metals to that region, not all over Detroit
or wherever you have auto factories.
You have automotive production in a given region.
You know what I mean? With production lines.
So you deliver more stuff, the same kind of stuff, to all the auto producers.
Cows and farming would be in a region with farming canning factories nearby
the farm and not 50 miles away. Do you understand what I'm saying?
I don't know any other system. I've never heard of a food producer
that said "I'm going to open a cannery on my grounds
so I can can the string beans."
And besides they wouldn't rot if they did that right away.
I never heard of an undertaker making recommendations
for the use of usable organs before the burial.
A kidney, whatever it is you could get.
And you don't ask people whether they want to give their kidney if they're dead.
If they're dead they say "I wanna be buried whole."
The Jews do not permit dissection.
But the Jews won't ever know what the inside of the body is like
if they don't permit dissection. You know what I mean?
But people will die due to their belief systems.
But, if you wanna go with that belief system, you can go,
but I can assure you, you won't live as long as other systems.
And if our system can't make the appropriate decisions
we'll be surpassed by China or North Korea,
or some other country that can make those decisions.
I don't say they will,
but we will be surpassed if we can't make the appropriate decisions.
So nature is a final eliminator, not Fresco.
I don't eliminate people.
If their insufficiency is "every man for himself"
then that society will run as long as evolution will permit it to run,
until the system is automated and they fall on their face.
That doesn't mean social change will be made.
It means people might die fighting each other and killing each other
and riots because of different values,
unless there's something put out there that people can understand.
I think I could sell the package, if not [to] all the people, a great many people,
enough to influence them. Because I don't come there as an American,
to get them to accept our value system as the only one.
And you don't attack their customs.
You wait till evolution passes the need for customs of that kind.
There are a group of Israelis that are interested in The Venus Project.
But if I went to Israel I'd be booed off the platform.
The majority does not believe,
does not lean towards science.
I would try if I were invited, don't misunderstand me.
If there were a big enough group in Israel
I would go there and talk to that group
and tell them how to reach the other group. If I talk to the other group,
I need three days, not a one-hour lecture.
I never came up with ideas because academicians approved them.
I came up with them trying to find a working solution.
Academia doesn't know how to stop wars.
Academia doesn't know how to ask "What is the bomber for?"
They don't seem to do that. That's why I don't respect them.
If they understand my direction, that's more important
than being a member of academia.
And people would say to me
"Are there any great people that accept The Venus Project?"
There's something the matter with them, they have a low self-sufficiency.
If a great man says "It's a good idea," they'll follow it.
I don't want that kind of shit. Do you understand?
If you say "Are there any famous people that accept The Venus Project?"
Not that I know of.
But you would then go along because Einstein said it was okay. What about you?
If you understand what I'm talking about, you say it's okay,
even though the world doesn't agree with you.
The guys in the old days that believed the Earth was round must have had a very
rough time with academia.
I think it was academia that burnt them.
It's academia today that can cut you off,
that can say "The man is completely unqualified, never went to MIT,
has no record of achievement in this world." This is all true,
but that doesn't mean anything.
What means something is if people understand
that if you don't take care of the environment, you lose it.
That isn't difficult. But it may be:
"I guess the experts know what they're doing.
Let's leave it to politicians. At least they know what they're doing."
I don't believe they even know what they're doing.
I don't believe they have the slightest idea of what they're doing.
I believe there are academicians that believe one opinion is as good as another.
How many Catholics visit a Lutheran
or Presbyterian church to get their point of view?
To go feel which one is closest? Some do, I don't doubt that.
There are many religious people that go to different churches
and stop at the one nearest to their values.
That's what all people do.
And if they all pick primitive things, your culture needs an overhaul.
If we still go to war, you know...
I think in the motion picture 'Things To Come'
somebody said to Dr. Cabal, or the guy in charge,
that they're at war. He said "Still at it, eh?"
There were some comments
which normal people did not react to in the film, at all.
They couldn't react to it. They had no background to react to it.
They found a bunch of scientists running things
and it just didn't look right.
It looked [like] the answer was-...
H.G. Wells' friend said "It sounds like fascism."
Now this system would sound like fascism because Fresco
lays out the schools, the buildings, the cities,
only because not enough people are into that yet.
But there will be more people laying it out as they get into it.
Edison taught people how to use the electric light, how to build generators.
Or people that made generators for Edison, taught people to make generators.
But the average person did not get up and say
"I don't want any generators, they're not God given."
There were some people that said that, that never used generators.
They're out of business.
So, presenting ideas is not the answer.
Preparing people's attitude
to be able to hear new ideas, so when they listen to you they say
"I don't know enough about the subject to make a decision.
I think I'm going back and read up on it and come back next week."
Very few people do that.
Sure you'll find evidence among some academicians
to support some of the concepts, but not enough.
I hate to use academicians, because they climb up on the back of innovators.
But I do understand reliance on academicians to help support the project.
But that isn't real.
I think people had to learn from the Wright Brothers
how to build airplanes.
After they built the first flying machine, the Army said-...
The Army was the first to order five airplanes
from the Wright Brothers, for surveillance.
They thought that a war tank is better for shooting.
Airplanes could only carry, they used to carry a rifle.
Before that they threw bottles and stones at one another in the air.
Did you know that? in the old days?
Because airplanes couldn't carry a cannon, it could only carry a rifle.
The guy would stand up from cover, and try to shoot the other plane down.
And then they had a gun way above the wing
so that it would clear the propeller.
Then somebody invented a synchronous machine gun
that shoots between the rotation of the blades.
Do you know what I'm talking about? You don't?
There's a bump on the camshaft.
You know what that means? The camshaft turns the propeller
and that bump operates the machine gun ... between where the blade is.
Otherwise they shot off the propeller. Do you understand that?
So, it's the invention of the machine gun at the pilot's eye view
that enabled him to shoot down more planes.
When the guns are on top, it's only an approximation. Do you understand?
They were on the top wing, above the height of the propeller
or out on the wings, which didn't give you a good view.
So, invention compensates for human insufficiency.
But we have a lot of inventors making things that are useless too.
A house should be a public library, a school,
intercommunications systems, not just a home!
With the laptop, the house is becoming more
than just a place to sleep and eat.
In the future it'll be a place with your built-in gym
and everything else, if you can afford it.
Or, if society can make a house-...
The better integrated people are and interconnected, the richer society.
People say "Would everybody be uniform?"
If they were technically uniform it would be useful.
Non-technically it would not be useful.
There's nothing the matter with uniformity.
All architects and all engineers
have to pass a standard exam, which is okay
for competence, you know.
But if you know of technicians that advocate
aspects of The Venus Project, great!
Technicians eventually will do that.
But remember, they bring with them some of the primordial slime.
Because they don't come from an environment
that's objective or scientific, yet.
The scientific world is in the early phases of the scientific method.
Academia is not The Venus Project.
Nor is it science as it's used today.
They wouldn't work on bombers if they were part of The Venus Project.
They wouldn't work on weapons. They wouldn't be patriotic
if there was such a thing as a science.
I'm sure there are. I'm sure they're having a tough time too.
I'm sure that some scientists must come to some conclusion similar
but not all joined together.
It's very rare for someone to have this identical environment I had.
Very rare. No, they don't come to the same conclusion.
They believe- most scientists believe in free will.
I asked them. Don't forget, I met a lot of scientists.
"Do you believe in free will?" "Of course...
I scored high in my school."
And that means something else. It means they have a different environment
but they don't look at it objectively.
They feel they're achievers.
If they get a Nobel Prize, they feel good about it
rather than share it with other labs.
They don't have a scientific attitude yet.
It isn't here yet.
And if somebody advocates it, then you build a following.
And the following does not give
an interpretation of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
There are people that do that too, [they] say "There's no evidence."
There's lots of evidence. They don't know what evidence means.
The evidence is that the trees
of a million years ago were different than the trees today.
They evolve, they change, not necessarily for the better.
There were poisonous snakes, I'm sure, at the time of dinosaurs.
I'm sure they were different than the snakes of today.
But all animals seem to undergo change
according to digging into the ground.
I don't think the people will study too much of the past
except that nations took over other nations, took their wares.
But no speeches by Patrick Henry or anybody else
because they couldn't say anything relevant.
I don't listen to most political speeches because they don't say anything.
They rarely say "We can improve automotive production
by sharing ideas with different companies." They don't say that.
I don't find enough evidence to identify with peer groups.
I'm not saying they don't exist.
I'm sure there are people out there in the scientific world
that would jump onto this.
But some scientists may say "Have you heard about The Venus Project?"
- "Oh, that guy is self-made.
Never heard of him making any contributions."
You know, they might do that. I don't know what they do,
but I can't concern myself with what they do.
So here am I proposing something:
I wish that a lot of doctors at the same time said "Wash your hands."
It was only one guy. And they said "What's your basis for that?"
They didn't all have microscopes in the old days.
So he showed them germs on the skin.
That was when the real change came, with the microscope.
But, there were people that even said
"Well how do you know they cause disease?" They were always present
when a person had eruptions on the skin,
that type of bacteria. When they had visual problems
and they found bacteria that was responsible
they always found similar bacteria on the eyes,
on the hands, on the genitals. Sexually transmitted bacteria
were the same. Do you understand what I mean?
But it wasn't until the microscope
that uniform agreement could be established.
It could not be established by debate.
No matter how. Unless the doctor was very important
most doctors listened to the established leader of a system.
We have no established leaders.
All I'd like to do is get the ball rolling, take it from there.
But before I get the ball rolling, I want to get the ideas out on education,
on learning theory, on how the brain is influenced by environment.
If I can get that out
it's a good safety measure to control values, moreso.
I'd like to get "I don't know" out there too, moreso.
"I don't know. I don't know enough about it
to make a decision."
www.thevenusproject.com
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