The dictionary defines Zeitgeist as the general intellectual,

moral, and cultural climate of an era.

And even though the 21st century has forced humanity

into so many different fractured elements,

there's an inescapable need to unify,

to ensure a future for our species.

It's with this in mind that the Zeitgeist Movement was formed:

as a collective call to challenge the global status quo.

And next month on October 4th in Los Angeles

the organization will host its 4th annual Zeitgeist Media Festival,

which has traditionally brought together artists, activists and musicians

to enthusiastically embrace the solutions to the global problems we face.

Earlier today I was joined by the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, Peter Joseph.

I first asked him why the themes of his festival are an integral

to the revolution of consciousness.

[Peter Joseph] Activism has been the cornerstone of ...

development, social development, experimentation,

technological development, all of these things have interweaved,

all the great scientists of the past, that have made

massive contributions have also been free thinkers and great artists.

From Arthur C. Clarke, who had basically invented

satellite communication was also, as you may well know,

one of the greatest non-fiction writers and

quite prolific in his view of the future world,

to Albert Einstein who played the violin and Nikola Tesla.

There is a deep-seated experimentation in art needless to say

as you well know, and that bridges open-mindedness,

that bridges creative thought, experimentation,

courage of course, which is something that's long lost in our world

when it comes to be willing to risk your identity,

risk your reputation to do something different, experiment.

So the Zeitgeist Media Festival in a lot of ways is a parallel

to our intellectual day, Z-Day as it’s called or Zeitgeist Day,

which occurs in March of each year,

which is a very intellectual day, highly organized

as far as trying to present solutions to global problems.

Very heavy, often depressing, as you might understand

considering the state of the world,

and so we try to balance it in the fall of each year

with the Zeitgeist Media Festival.

It’s an inspirational type of event and I encourage

anyone out there to come out if you’re in Southern California.

- I’m really sad I’m missing it this year because it really was

such an amazing event when I was there; it was incredible.

I encourage everyone to definitely check it out if you’re in the area.

And let’s talk about the Zeitgeist Movement as a whole Peter.

You famously created those three mind-blowing viral documentaries

breaking through some of those most dominating myths

that keeps humanity stunted,

which spawned an international organization pushing

for an alternative future.

Briefly talk about what the Zeitgeist Movement is all about.

- Sure.

The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability advocacy organization

and what that means is we deal with three primary issues:

public health, ecological sustainability, and social stability.

And clearly all of those intertwine in a systems context.

And I’ll just jump to the end realization.

If we alter our basic socioeconomic system, the underpinning

of everything that we do - we can call it market economics,

we can call it capitalism, we can even go deeper to address

the actual foundation of what those words and what this system

actually organized out of -

if we take that and we modify it a certain way,

we can resolve all of the major problems we have in the world today.

From poverty, to the propensity towards conflict,

to the growing and developing mental illness,

to the huge lapse of public health, to these enormous flaws.

We don’t need to live this way anymore if we simply

obtain the type of efficiency and industrial practice

that we’re now capable of doing through technological development.

And that’s the big realization.

And if anyone wants to learn more about that

they can read the book that’s been written that's free online

called 'The Zeitgeist Movement Defined'

or they can go of course to the Zeitgeist Movement’s website

thezeitgeistmovement.com and see

hours and hours and hours of lectures and general media

on this subject. But I would add one more thing,

is that all the problems we see in the world today

are not going to be resolved within the framework

of the current socioeconomic model.

It’s a very bold statement,

but that unfortunately is the conclusion that’s drawn by the Movement

with an immense amount of supporting evidence,

and until we start to address this core source base root problem,

we have a lot of running in circles to do unfortunately.

- Right, you’ve said that activist groups

fighting for their respective causes working within the framework

of that system is failing. - Right.

- It’s basically because they’re merely patching the problem.

It’s mostly fruitless unfortunately.

Explain the difference between categorical and systems thinking

and how people CAN take effective direct action.

That’s a great polarized qualification:

categorical thinking versus systems thinking.

I’ll jump deep just for a moment, you know,

we evolved with a 5-sense perception and we are very tangible.

we want to palpably understand and perceive but it’s also very limited.

We think categorically.

We identify things by objects and words and subjects,

and we tend to organize our sense of causality categorically

in a very narrow or I would say truncated frame of reference.

And this has permeated just about every major social facet

from the way we think about the legal structure to the way

we think about economics of course.

Even of course as you mention activism which

everyone seems to really mean well,

they really want to resolve problems, they're going to their state legislatures

to try and get legal legislation in place to say

stop climate destabilization, stop the resource overshoot that is dramatic

(it’s been estimated we’ll need 27 more Earths by 2050

to meet demand of the 9 and a half billion people coming),

and I’m sure you’re very aware of all the other social and ecological issues

that pertain to this. And these resolutions are trying to use a system that,

in the interpretation of the Movement in which the "systems" awareness,

is actually flawed in and of itself as well;

is actually completely vulnerable to the wrong propensities,

which is essentially the nature of the market system

and its influence to stop this type of interest in efficiency,

preservation and sustainability.

Efficiency, preservation and sustainability

are the enemies of the current socioeconomic system.

Now that’s a slight deviation. Systems thinking,

which I’ll jump to in more of an intense manner,

has to do with the largest causal technical reality you can conceive of,

which wasn’t in our awareness in early evolution.

It was all purely tangible. It took the scientific method to come forward,

to start to realize say for example dynamic equilibrium:

to look at a forest,

and instead of cutting the whole thing down and realizing

that it’s not regenerating fast enough based on the consumption of it,

to actually to be able to measure this, to be able to measure the planet,

to be able to measure energy consumption versus resource availability.

These are basic fundamental sustainability and efficiency aspects

that you’ll see throughout, anyone that's involved in the technical sciences.

And sadly enough our social system doesn’t have any of those qualifications built in.

The legal system - I’ll throw that one out there as a final point

as again this contrast between categorical thinking

and systems thinking - the legal system is explicitly based

on the idea of humans' "free will" and their "decision"

as though there’s no other influences,

to make this or that choice that may or may not be socially offensive.

So when we throw people in jail, is that a solution to anything?

And statistically speaking most people that go to jail

come out with a higher propensity to commit more crimes.

So clearly it doesn’t work in the long run,

and it’s obviously not addressing the system consequence

and anyone that you talk to in the basic public health sciences will tell you that

the leading cause of crime and violence is deprivation.

What’s the leading cause of deprivation?

Social imbalance, inequity.

So if you want to stop a lot of these

huge negative tendencies and violence and aberrant behavior,

the best solution at this point is to reduce dramatically

class inequality, and give people what they need to limit deprivation.

So there’s a good example.

- Incredibly enough I found the most amazing statistic

that exemplifies exactly what you’re saying. Right now Peter,

there are 356,000 Americans with severe mental illnesses in prison.

That’s 10 times the amount than in state psychiatric hospitals

which is an incredible statistic.

How does that play into the concept of structural violence

and how much of the current system necessitate that crime and poverty?

- Well there’s a few angles on that.

You can compare countries that have different levels of class imbalance

and then compare their public health outcomes.

I encourage people to read-...

there’s hundreds and hundreds of studies on this issue.

There’s one book called 'The Spirit Level' by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

that I encourage you to research,

which comprises the majority of this research.

And what they find is that there’s a

massive increase in mental illness, there's a massive increase

or I should say decrease in education levels,

a massive increase in violence,

The vast majority of negative public health attributes increase

in societies that have massive wealth imbalances.

So in America which has-...

Well, as a one brief aside, it is noted that

due to cost efficiency in the state,

they pretty much cut all mental health services in the 1970s

and decided that the prisons would be the new mental health facilities.

So that is a point of influence, but that of course is a deeper,

excuse me, a more shallow link in the chain, that leads to this.

Clearly all of the imbalance and shame

and inequality, which has a deep emotional impact,

generates all of these factors; statistically proven, it’s not a conjecture.

So anyone that questions that should go out and look into this.

If we don’t take a systems perspective,

nothing gets resolved; we run in circles.

Even the criminal propensity; everyone’s obsessed

with criminal politicians and corruption.

The analogy I use is that

you can stomp on the ants

that come out from under your refrigerator

and keep stomping on them and spraying them and trying to get rid of them,

or maybe you can remove the spoiled produce or food

that’s behind the refrigerator that’s actually causing them to come.

And that’s what this society doesn’t do.

It doesn’t resolve any of its problems and,

to add one more punchline to that,

it’s not profitable to resolve any problems in this society.

If peace and sustainability and efficiency,

these are things that if achieved, create a nice

equilibrium where little action is required.

And that is again the antithesis

of what our economic system demands, especially at this stage.

Given the unemployment,

it needs problems in order to keep persisting with GDP,

employment, growth, etc.

- I just don’t understand why people can’t see the link

between that structural violence and the millions of deaths,

hunger, poverty, inequality-...

- I will add one more thing since I don’t want to pass this up;

it’s a very dramatic statistic.

In one of the more seminal works in structural violence in 1976,

public health authors figured out that

back then there were 18 million deaths that were caused a year.

I suspect it’s much higher now. 18 million deaths a year.

And that’s what, 34 years later?

That’s about 700 million deaths that have been caused unnecessarily.

That outpaces the deaths of every dictator,

every war in the 20th century. This is-...

I mean we talk about terrorism when people are freaking out right now over ISIS.

And, as you know very well,

the statistics of any American or any in the West