1 00:00:00,346 --> 00:00:04,400 I’ve been busy all my life, working on solutions to problems. 2 00:00:04,871 --> 00:00:09,271 I’m a social engineer, and I try to improve the world I live in. 3 00:00:09,680 --> 00:00:12,764 A social engineer is one who concerns himself with 4 00:00:13,244 --> 00:00:16,355 social phenomenon; what makes people the way they are. 5 00:00:16,631 --> 00:00:19,884 What are the conditions responsible for human behavior? 6 00:00:20,133 --> 00:00:22,702 And how can society be rearranged 7 00:00:22,933 --> 00:00:26,453 to function with minimum pain and war? 8 00:00:26,657 --> 00:00:30,044 Poverty, hunger, unemployment: how can we eliminate that? 9 00:00:30,346 --> 00:00:33,511 This is what a social engineer tries to minimize. 10 00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:37,208 I did a lot of the groundwork to try to find out 11 00:00:37,591 --> 00:00:39,920 what it is that shapes human behavior. 12 00:00:40,150 --> 00:00:42,551 I try to remove the conditions that produce 13 00:00:42,791 --> 00:00:45,751 serial killers, gangsters, thieves, murderers... 14 00:00:45,902 --> 00:00:48,488 I try to remove the conditions responsible 15 00:00:48,595 --> 00:00:50,915 for human and aberrant behavior. 16 00:00:51,377 --> 00:00:53,297 My partner is Roxanne Meadows. 17 00:00:53,517 --> 00:00:56,426 She works with me, and this is what we set out to build – 18 00:00:56,648 --> 00:01:00,440 a research center here – to try to arrive at the best ways 19 00:01:00,670 --> 00:01:03,955 for changing society, in the shortest time possible. 20 00:01:04,666 --> 00:01:10,062 We try to build models of a city system, and try to modify it, 21 00:01:10,328 --> 00:01:12,328 and bring it down and simplify it, 22 00:01:12,622 --> 00:01:15,742 so that it can be built all over the world. 23 00:01:16,195 --> 00:01:18,737 And we try to work out systems and communication 24 00:01:19,075 --> 00:01:21,840 for changing people in the shortest possible time; 25 00:01:22,106 --> 00:01:24,524 changing their mental set, and their values. 26 00:01:24,862 --> 00:01:28,568 The Venus Project is a method of attaining sustainability 27 00:01:28,808 --> 00:01:32,115 for all people by giving them pointers such as: 28 00:01:32,453 --> 00:01:34,666 We must declare the Earth as the common heritage 29 00:01:34,790 --> 00:01:36,302 of all the world’s people. 30 00:01:36,435 --> 00:01:40,150 We must remove all the artificial boundaries that separate people. 31 00:01:40,364 --> 00:01:43,226 We must make things available to people without money. 32 00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:48,622 We must eliminate social elitism, technical or otherwise. 33 00:01:48,915 --> 00:01:50,675 So I said “Let’s take care of everybody,” 34 00:01:50,837 --> 00:01:53,082 the inventors, the designers, the engineers, 35 00:01:53,322 --> 00:01:56,018 and the people themselves. Make things available to them, 36 00:01:56,180 --> 00:01:57,680 and that will change their behavior. 37 00:01:58,050 --> 00:01:59,854 We’re working in the wrong direction, 38 00:02:00,009 --> 00:02:02,352 and all over the world societies are collapsing, 39 00:02:02,522 --> 00:02:04,955 going bankrupt, not able to work things out, 40 00:02:05,214 --> 00:02:06,842 because they use political methods, 41 00:02:06,992 --> 00:02:09,317 which was good as I said a hundred years ago, 42 00:02:09,468 --> 00:02:10,785 but they do not work today. 43 00:02:10,917 --> 00:02:12,920 So they’re failing all over the world. 44 00:02:13,407 --> 00:02:15,712 The people have to lose their homes, their jobs, 45 00:02:15,868 --> 00:02:18,992 then they have to lose confidence in the people they elected. 46 00:02:19,150 --> 00:02:22,010 Once that happens, they are open to new ideas. 47 00:02:22,564 --> 00:02:24,715 “Oh, you’ll never see that, not in a thousand years. 48 00:02:24,927 --> 00:02:26,950 You’re a dreamer, you’re a utopian! 49 00:02:27,143 --> 00:02:30,131 You’re a goddamn communist!” Or you’re this or that. 50 00:02:31,901 --> 00:02:33,482 I believe all things change. 51 00:02:33,830 --> 00:02:36,018 Utopia is an impossible concept. 52 00:02:36,211 --> 00:02:39,797 It assumes that you can design a city that’s good for all time. 53 00:02:40,065 --> 00:02:42,545 You can’t do that. Everything changes. 54 00:02:42,870 --> 00:02:45,543 That’s the only constant in nature, and that’s change. 55 00:02:46,075 --> 00:02:49,392 I don’t believe that the cities of the future will be fixed. 56 00:02:49,543 --> 00:02:51,816 They will undergo changes continuously. 57 00:02:52,042 --> 00:02:54,578 I do not believe there are any final frontiers. 58 00:02:54,738 --> 00:02:57,656 I believe that men and women will continue to invent 59 00:02:57,811 --> 00:03:01,698 newer and better systems, and there’s no limit to what humans can do. 60 00:03:02,315 --> 00:03:05,364 The pain of watching the way the world is moving, 61 00:03:05,529 --> 00:03:08,084 and the directions of war, and human suffering, 62 00:03:08,221 --> 00:03:10,992 and the loss of lives, and the destroying of cities, 63 00:03:11,214 --> 00:03:13,265 all of that motivates me 64 00:03:13,449 --> 00:03:15,976 to try to do a better job than what politicians 65 00:03:16,160 --> 00:03:18,810 are trying to accomplish without knowledge. 66 00:03:19,493 --> 00:03:21,890 If enough people work at what I talk about, 67 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:25,016 I believe we can change the world. If they do nothing 68 00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:26,954 nothing will happen. 69 00:03:27,328 --> 00:03:29,765 I can’t accept the world as it is today, 70 00:03:29,957 --> 00:03:34,757 so I do everything I can to build a world of sustainability, 71 00:03:34,990 --> 00:03:37,349 for all people - not any single nation. 72 00:03:37,957 --> 00:03:41,418 I don’t hope to gain anything, I just hope to do the best I can, 73 00:03:41,620 --> 00:03:43,184 and whatever happens, happens. 74 00:03:43,740 --> 00:03:46,405 www.thevenusproject.com