Looking backwards

"Zeitgeist: Moving Forward" is the last part of the trilogy that gave us the Zeitgeist Movement. I admit that I didn't bother watching all of it, nor shall I do so in the future. It seems to be a rehash of the ideas in "Zeitgeist: Addendum", the main difference being that director Peter Joseph has added interviews with a number of scholars to give his little movement more clout.

If anything, "Moving Forward" sounds even more absurd than "Addendum". The film advocates a world-wide planned economy, but without mentioning that tainted term. Instead it uses the flashier monikers Global Resource Management System, Global Production Management System and Demand & Distribution Tracking System, all part of a Resource-Based Economy defined as "the scientific method applied to social concern". The planned economy controls everything through computers, which work independently of humans. Science and technology are unbiased, neutral and objective. "There is no Democratic or Republican way to build an airplane". Therefore, a strictly scientific economy will truly solve our problems and take care of all our needs.

Apparently, all (!) private ownership should be abolished as well. Everything you need can be borrowed gratis from local "access centres". Production is based on an assessment of human needs, including the need for leisure, recreation and music. It's not clear how these needs can be assessed or quantified by computers, but we are assured that they will. Strangely, there will be abundance despite the fact that the planned economy will be strictly sustainable and in harmony with Nature.

Our old friend Jacque Fresco is featured again. He is virtually unknown, but presented as an important inventor, political thinker and social critic. According to Wiki, Fresco used to be both a Communist and a Technocrat before striking out on his own. Indeed, the Technocrats seemed to have had some ideas similar to those of the Zeitgeist group.

As usual, we are not told *how* the brave new world should be brought about. What groups, strata or classes in society have an objective material interest in creating an international planned economy? Who could carry out such a program? How? Using what strategy? Presumably, scientists, engineers and technocrats are the vanguard of the future. But then what? Why should scientists support Joseph or Fresco?

I'm not against sustainability or even state intervention in the economy, but please, this is demented. I'm not against technology either but, once again, the over-reliance on technological solutions in "Moving Forward" sounds almost like a parody. A parody of Murray Bookchin or Sam Dolgoff, perhaps?

The Zeitgeist Movement is something as peculiar as a utopian socialist sect based largely in cyberspace.

And there it shall remain.