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  • The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) ZDay 2012 University of Southern California

  • Areas of Unfolding A Perfect Storm by Jason Lord

  • Welcome to our 4th annual ZDay event in Los Angeles.

  • My name is Jason Lord.

  • I volunteer to take part in awareness activism for The Zeitgeist Movement.

  • My personal involvement has been as a coordinator for the many chapters

  • that have sprung up in California over the past three years.

  • I'm honored to be here today and to do my best to communicate what the movement is

  • and the train of thought that we're putting forth.

  • I've entitled this presentation 'Areas of Unfolding - A Perfect Storm'.

  • The movement advocates the need to move out of a market economy

  • into a Resource-Based Economy.

  • We use this term for many reasons

  • and to this end, I will touch upon four major areas of unfolding

  • in regards to our socio-economic system,

  • describing what can be seen as the social imperative

  • to transform our civilization into one that is sustainable and equitable

  • for all the world's people.

  • As with our usual introductions, the term 'zeitgeist' can be defined as

  • the intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era.

  • The term 'movement' implies motion or change.

  • And thus, The Zeitgeist Movement is an organization which urges change

  • in the dominant social values of the time,

  • specifically the methods and values which would better serve

  • the well-being of everyone through scientific unfolding.

  • Our hope is that the direction we advocate becomes self-evident

  • as the components of what comprises human well-being

  • and social stability are considered.

  • So, in this regard, let's open with asking "What are the underlying dynamics

  • of conflicts and problems that we see in the world today?"

  • "What can we expect as our social integrity erodes?"

  • and "What else can we do that embodies the term 'sustainable'?"

  • To start, we are looking at a huge topic;

  • there is nothing simple about advocating a transition at a societal scale,

  • namely our modern industrialized society.

  • Over the ages, civilizations have developed as complex societies;

  • history shows a long transition of culture and values.

  • As complexity increases with the evolution of civilizations,

  • they become organized around cities; they use agriculture, use writing and mathematics,

  • and they hold the division of labor. They're centralized,

  • with people and resources constantly flowing from outlying areas

  • towards more densely populated hubs.

  • And as described by archeologist Joseph Tainter

  • "When seen in terms of complexity,

  • there have been 24 civilizations from this perspective

  • and all, except the current industrial civilization so far,

  • have collapsed."

  • Tainter describes the growth of civilization as a process

  • of investing societal resources

  • and the development of even greater complexity, in order to solve problems.

  • But complexity costs energy, and eventually a point is reached

  • where increasing investments become too costly and yield declining returns,

  • since available energy resources are finite.

  • And it's at this point where society begins to experience collapse.

  • It's this notion of collapse I'd like to put into perspective.

  • Think of collapse in terms of social systems shedding their complexity,

  • undergoing a contraction of economics

  • and exhibiting decentralization over time.

  • This perspective is more accurate, helpful and probably less scary

  • than imagining the single catastrophic event

  • some of the existing worldly literature would have you believe.

  • But it also opens avenues for reshaping the social landscape

  • that is not offered by the apocalyptic vision.

  • Our society is a dynamic and complex system,

  • and it's in this view that we find where the root cause of our problems lie.

  • Donella H. Meadows was a PhD in biophysics from Harvard

  • and a research fellow at MIT,

  • where she did much to bring the field of system dynamics into the public view.

  • I'd like to read an excerpt from one of her published works regarding systems.

  • "Hunger, poverty,

  • environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment,

  • chronic disease, drug addiction and war

  • persist, in spite of the analytical ability and the technical brilliance

  • that have been directed toward eradicating them.

  • No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist,

  • but they persist nonetheless.

  • That is because there are intrinsically system problems, undesirable behaviors

  • characteristic of the system structures that produce them.

  • They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame,

  • see the system as the source of its own problems,

  • and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it."

  • The problems we suffer in today's world are symptoms of a systems disorder.

  • The root cause of these negative outcomes

  • are rarely identified, in this way, by the public at large.

  • We have language for good and evil and even identify with such words,

  • but most of the public has no frame of reference for systems dysfunction,

  • and that's a problem. Without this frame of reference,

  • without language for understanding a root-cause systemic issue,

  • what do you think we fall back on? It will be whatever is in our frame of reference:

  • politics, religion, nationalism,

  • monetary-isms, the Democrats, the Liberals.

  • In a way, the purpose for the awareness of today's zeitgeist is exposed.

  • And with this cultural zeitgeist in mind,

  • we're operating a value set that is making for

  • a perfect storm of system failure on a global scale.

  • We do not want people to suffer. We do not want a decline back

  • into the existence of labor-intensive survival, and we don't have to.

  • But, as our socio-economic system experiences a loss of complexity,

  • here are the major areas of unfolding that pose our greatest challenge:

  • monetary economics, labor for income,

  • energy resources, environmental degradation.

  • Let's take a quick look at these areas, starting with economics.

  • When somebody identifies themselves as an economist

  • or a capitalist, I have to remember that such identity

  • presupposes the market system as a given by the structure of reality,

  • the same as the law of gravitation or thermodynamics.

  • At the same time, they often construe their asserted 'given' reality

  • as the natural order. Ironically,

  • this is done even when the given structure has to be imposed on a society

  • that has chosen to reject it,

  • such as one can find in the history of military coups or civil wars

  • plotted and financed by the CIA

  • and carried out through US military operations

  • over the last 50 years, to accomplish just such an end.

  • As the market economy has become the world's baseline,

  • the concept of constant growth continues to be ignored by the status quo.

  • The market economy requires constant growth

  • through perpetual consumption to maintain the labor for income game.

  • For many of us, we now understand

  • that infinite growth is a paradox in a finite environment.

  • Cyclical consumption is an underlying premise of the market model.

  • This means that a business owner or employer

  • pays an employee to perform work.

  • This work means the creation of a product or service

  • that can be sold to a consumer at a profit.

  • The money from this transaction then goes back to the employer

  • to pay the employee to continue their work.

  • And then the cycle begins again.

  • Of course, this buying and selling cycle

  • presupposes the need to purchase any good or service on an ongoing basis.

  • So in order to keep the structure from breaking down,

  • it must be perpetuated, regardless of the social cost.

  • Consumption, it's the new national pastime. Baseball, it's consumption,

  • the only true lasting American value that's left,

  • buying things, buying things,

  • people spending money they don't have on things they don't need,

  • money they don't have on things they don't need

  • so they can max out their credit cards and spend the rest of their lives

  • paying 18% interest on something that cost $12.50.

  • And they didn't like it when they got it home anyway:

  • not too bright, folks, not too bright.

  • Another important component is the issue of debt, along with consumption.

  • The more an economy expands, the greater the debt that is created,

  • and this sets up an inevitable system crisis,

  • for the money needed to pay the interest charged on the loans

  • does not exist in the economy outright.

  • Therefore, there is always more outstanding debt than money in existence.

  • And once the debt grows larger than a person or a company can afford,

  • the defaults begin, the loans stop, and the money supply begins to contract.

  • This particular scenario of debt overpowering and nullifying expansion,

  • along with the onset of austerity measures,

  • is unfolding, as we speak, with our European counterparts.

  • And to shed some light on our relationship to the astronomical amount

  • of US national debt that we've all been saddled with,

  • this is debt that you don't see and you don't feel directly, but since 1984

  • 100% of the federal income tax that is taken out of your paycheck

  • goes to pay the interest on the national debt owed to the Central Bank

  • and nothing else.

  • When we can't afford the interest payments on our personal debts,

  • we know this is being broke, or going bankrupt.

  • And as we've seen, it's no different with nations,

  • and I find it insane that when this fictitious bubble pops,

  • we'll run around as if the world is ending,

  • while our available resources, our knowledge,

  • our production abilities and our skills are unchanged.

  • Another part of our economic unfolding is externalized cost.

  • This occurs when a company transfers some of its moral responsibilities

  • onto a community directly, or by degrading the environment.

  • For example, railroads, airlines transfer

  • cost of fuel and noise to a community through pollution output.

  • This is done even with other nations,

  • such as exporting US deforestation to Haiti.

  • As they over-exploit their natural wood resource

  • for import and consumption in the US, we have essentially externalized

  • the problem of deforestation to their country.

  • Many such costs become lost in analysis

  • because the true cost is non-quantifiable,

  • so in a sense, societies collapse as business realizes its profits.

  • Then there's labor and your ability to acquire purchasing power with it.

  • In a monetary system, your freedom is dependent upon your purchasing power.

  • Your purchasing power is dependent

  • on your ability to pull money from the money supply or income.

  • For the most part, we do this through jobs,

  • which is an exchange via differential advantage or exploitation,

  • which we call 'labor for income'.

  • This is affected by your social class

  • and by the displacement of labor through automation and outsourcing.

  • Another way to express this point is to pose the question

  • "What is your degree of advantage to be exploited or to exploit

  • in order to cover your cost of living?"

  • In this context, this is all just a game.

  • Now, before I move forward, the next part

  • has caused a lot of dialog in my email inbox,

  • and it has to do with this concept of employment, or jobs.

  • And I want to express in advance,

  • in a resource-based model there is no need to submit to employment,

  • as we do in our current reality.

  • There is no purpose for a job for money.

  • The point here is that employment is not work;

  • they are separate. Work is work,

  • employment is an economic variable pertaining to markets,

  • and in a resource-based model, your ability to contribute

  • is not tied to your ability to find employment.

  • There has been a long and growing trend in regards to employment,

  • through the needs of the system itself.

  • Companies undertake automation on the basis of cost efficiency

  • in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.

  • This translates to reduced labor costs,

  • but to another phenomenon as well, in regards to productivity.

  • In 2003, a study was done on the world's 20 largest economies,

  • ranging from a period of 1995 - 2002,

  • finding that 31 million manufacturing jobs were lost,

  • while production output increased by 30%.

  • This is a powerful observation,

  • not just in regards to job displacement by technological innovation;

  • it's the remarkable increase in efficiency that is also gained.

  • Here is a simplified chart that shows the relationship of

  • increasing productivity, coupled with decreasing employment.

  • This is a powerful phenomenon showing, among many things,

  • the benefits of our ability to automate.

  • And this is what makes the application of technology so powerful,

  • through the systems approach of a resource-based model.

  • It also becomes apparent how socially irresponsible

  • it is to perpetuate inefficiency and waste as we do now,

  • but it's built into the current market structure,

  • through the need to maximize profits and to reduce costs.

  • Unemployment through technological innovation isn't new,

  • but world unemployment is at an important area of unfolding

  • in the monetary game, and I am going to quote

  • "We are being afflicted with a new disease

  • of which some readers may not yet have heard the name,

  • but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come,

  • namely 'Technological Unemployment'.

  • This means unemployment due to our discovery

  • of means of economizing the use of labor,

  • outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for that labor." ~ John Maynard Keynes

  • Now the third area of unfolding is energy.

  • And this is a huge subject, so this will only be a summary

  • looking at depletion, energy density and the current outlook.

  • Today, it's knowable what our resources are, we no longer have to guess.

  • The current age has brought with it, through innovation and scientific advancement,

  • the means to survey and measure our world.

  • While many corporations keep their data secret

  • in order to protect their profitability,

  • much data on the world itself is available

  • for public view, through such organizations

  • as ASPO, NASA or the USGS and many, many others.

  • If we look at an example of US domestic oil production,

  • we find there is a measurable gap,

  • in this case about 35 years, between the oil discovery peak,

  • which is the blue arrow,

  • and that's the peak of when we discovered the major fields

  • and when we reached the oil peak of production of those fields.

  • In this case, the peak of US domestic oil production happened in 1971

  • and has become known as 'Hubbert's Peak',

  • named after M. King Hubbert, who calculated this 30 years prior to the event.

  • It's important to note that collapse problems start

  • when energy production peaks and the decline sets in.

  • The problems do not come down the road

  • when the resource is depleted, as many may think.

  • That's why we are at such a critical point in the world today;

  • we're at that halfway mark.

  • We can see the coming peak and decline of our hydrocarbon resources,

  • and as this chart shows

  • for all the carbon energy resources compiled on the planet,

  • conventional and non-conventional,

  • we're in a decade of world peak.

  • This is another discussion all on its own,

  • but the question I wish to pose right now is this

  • "What makes more sense,

  • to measure and consume all usable hydrocarbon

  • as a commodity for the sake of GDP,

  • regardless of the ecological cost from burning it all,

  • or find a way to transition into a new renewable paradigm,

  • leaving this monetary systems disorder behind us?"

  • When considering something physical like oil,

  • it may appear that all we have to do is simply divide

  • how much resource there is by how much we use to predict how long it will last,

  • but it's not quite that simple. There is a factor involved here,

  • called EROEI,

  • or otherwise known as 'Energy Returned on Energy Invested'.

  • This is a method by which we determine

  • how much energy can be gained at a significant energy profit,

  • and this is chemical energy output, not money.

  • The first oil well that we tapped in the US was easy-to-extract oil.

  • It was just below the surface and it was under high pressure;

  • it didn't take much to get it out,

  • so little energy was used for the return of that resource.

  • Today, we have to venture into deep water,

  • through thousands of feet of ocean sediment and bedrock,

  • just to extract small pockets of oil, just to keep the world running.

  • The difficulty of obtaining a resource changes the timeline

  • on how much net gain there is.

  • What's really interesting, in this area of unfolding,

  • is a relationship we can see

  • in energy use, in the current monetary paradigm.

  • World GDP and oil production growth-rates have been tightly coupled

  • for decades, as is shown here.

  • Now, if we let this game play out, it's not hard to guess

  • the outcome, of a steady decline in our energy production

  • and watching that economy just slowly grind and contract over time.

  • Probable outcomes of the current system running its course could be surmised

  • from what happened during the last US oil shortage in the '70s.

  • Economically, the first decade of world oil decline

  • may resemble the '70s very much

  • from the US point of view,

  • but only worse, with dramatic increases in inflation,

  • long-term recession, high unemployment

  • and declining living standards, along with social unrest.

  • So, now the big question

  • "What's all this costing us?"

  • Our energy and mineral resources are used neglectfully,

  • and products are designed not to last,

  • wasting human energy and the materials

  • that went into them in staggering amounts.

  • And this constant multiplicity of consumed goods further wastes resources

  • and pollutes our environment; and we depend upon our environment.

  • Pollution of our environment is the major staggering cost.

  • In the United States alone,

  • three million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment

  • each year, contributing to serious health problems,

  • degrading the carrying capacity of the Earth.

  • And on a personal note, I can't help

  • but think of how future generations are going to look back on us

  • as the most corrupt human beings that ever existed,

  • with the ecological mess that we've created

  • just so that we can continue the monetary game.

  • And at the end of the day, nature is not going to care what we do;

  • nature is a dictatorship.

  • Therefore, we have to regard the environmental equilibrium on this planet,

  • which is not currently done.

  • It is possible to understand the carrying capacity of the Earth,

  • which can be changed greatly by how we manage our resources,

  • and which can be changed through the enhanced scientific unfolding

  • and understanding that happens over time,

  • and increased through the application of new technologies.

  • But with the perfect storm currently unfolding,

  • our continued participation in the current system

  • shows all signs of bringing about our eventual demise.

  • Now, I hate to sound so dark about it, but the reality check is all too clear

  • for us to just keep tiptoeing around the issue.

  • And finally, there is the cost to our well-being.

  • As waste outputs pour into our life-support systems,

  • the negative impacts on our collective health are immense,

  • along with the bio-, psycho- and social stressors

  • (which was also touched upon by Nicolas),

  • which today is an epidemic; it's eroding the integrity of our physiology.

  • Now, I know we all like good news, and I haven't given you any yet.

  • So after this sobering review, let's bring it around a bit,

  • before we all feel like this guy right here.

  • Is there a way out of this storm?

  • Let's have a brief look at where we want to go.

  • Here is a hugely over-simplified look

  • at the many attributes regarding the social transition

  • to a resource-based model.

  • In brief, here is a summary of seven attributes

  • so you can differentiate from where we are now, in a market economy,

  • and where we need to get to, a resource-based model.

  • We want to move from a consumption model

  • to one that preserves our resources.

  • We want to transition from planned obsolescence

  • and the breakdown of goods for the sake of profit and consumption

  • towards optimal design.

  • We want to transition from private ownership or property

  • to an access system.

  • We want to transition from an infinite growth economy

  • to a steady-state economy.

  • We need to transition out of the competition-based value system

  • into a collaborative one.

  • We want to move away from labor for income

  • through applied technology and automation,

  • unlike anything we have ever seen today

  • and finally, the transition from scarcity and inefficiency

  • towards an access abundance and social equality.

  • The transition itself from our current system into a resource-based system

  • is a complex thing to consider

  • and the variables beyond our current foresight.

  • The central issue right now is awareness,

  • and this is where The Zeitgeist Movement comes in.

  • If the public's consciousness can be expanded to understand

  • and accept the incredible potential the future can hold,

  • where poverty and war, where 95% of all crimes are phased out,

  • and the mundane, repetitive, meaningless jobs can be eliminated,

  • then perhaps people will most likely adjust their values accordingly.

  • At this point, I think most of us

  • understand how we are connected to the environment and to each other.

  • We often symbolize this in simple ways,

  • such as shown here, just to express the concept.

  • But the reality is that it's not that simple.

  • Here is a map of cyberspace, created at Bell Labs in the 1990s,

  • showing the complexity of the network.

  • As you can see, it is not a mere net,

  • spiderweb or ring of people around the planet; it is complex.

  • And advanced societies are complex social organisms.

  • So to conclude, we have reached a point

  • where our personal self-interest now needs to become the social interest

  • if we expect to survive and to survive well.

  • Our evolutionary fitness, if you will,

  • is now becoming the social imperative, not a personal one.

  • Our self-interest must be social interest

  • because they are actually one and the same.

  • Either we become globally conscious or we perish.

  • We have the ability to avert this oncoming perfect storm.

  • The question to you is "Will you join us?" I thank you for your time.

  • [Applause]

The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) ZDay 2012 University of Southern California

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"Zeitgeist Day" 2012 Los Angeles - "A Perfect Storm" by Jason Lord [ The Movement] ("Zeitgeist Day" 2012 Los Angeles - "A Perfect Storm" by Jason Lord [ The Movement ])

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