not a lot of you are probably going to know too much about this guy.

He is the filmmaker and director of

the Zeitgeist film series ...

[Applause]

and he has flown in to come and give you guys a talk.

Here you go, Peter Joseph.

[Applause]

I have given a great number of talks the past

15 or 16 months. I'm getting really tired of hearing myself speak,

and with that comes a kind of a general frustration because

what I've been doing over the course of the past few years

is taking the same information, more or less and

moving it around and trying to communicate it in different ways,

different angles to appeal to different values

and different levels of education.

Those that are familiar with the talks that I've given,

there will be some overlap. [With] all the wonderful presenters we had earlier,

naturally there is going to be some repetition,

so please bear with that.

Overall, to be a little honest,

I'm a little tired of talking about this stuff,

but it is all within good reason and

formulating new ways to make this

more creative and expansive, as I move forward.

In the words of the late great comedian Bill Hicks

"Pardon me as I plow through this shit one more time."

[Hoots and applause]

The title of this presentation is 'Origins and Adaptations.'

Part 1 of 2, I'm afraid. Due to the time restraints here

and the train of thought that I ended up working with

to create this in the form that I wanted,

I had to break it up into two sections, so

there will be, at a later date, probably at the Los Angeles Town Hall

where I live, (we do these monthly town halls)

I will do the second section of this.

It's unfortunate I couldn't condense it enough,

but I ran out of time to make it the way I wanted to.

It will work best I think, in the long run, as two sections.

As a whole, both sections (the 2nd section that you're not going to see today)

this talk will deal with the root origins of our economic system

along with the outgrowth of problems that have emerged.

The focus of Part 1: to present a different angle of understanding

with respect to the problems we see.

The second part will discuss adaptation, change and transition,

the way we interact, a hybrid economy.

But again, that is for the 2nd section. We'll focus on this for now.

The first section of this work is entitled 'Structural Psychology'

which will walk through the evolution of our current economic social order

and work to show how where we are today is not some unexpected anomaly

or some unfortunate detour from a high-integrity economic practice.

It is rather a natural consequence of the basic underlying assumptions

that define the kind of economic model we endure today.

I will also work to show that the value system disorder we have at hand,

as rampant as it is, how the free market economy itself,

as it's politically pitched and defended

is nothing more than an imposed structural framework

that reinforces these distortions and guarantees

not only the reduction of social, environmental efficiency, on many levels,

but also the reduction of human liberty

and the ongoing empowerment of a very small subculture

as a natural consequence.

In the second section, 'Market Versus Technical Efficiency,'

some of the core contradictions between the monetary market economy

and the provable natural order of our physical reality will be assessed.

The argument will be made that the economic system we have today

is really a grand corruption in form

and completely incompatible with the natural order of our physical reality.

Part 1: Structural Psychology

As noted earlier,

a great deal of attention has being paid in the public media

and in activist groups

about the problems that we are facing as a world society

because of the economic system we have.

Issues, many years ago that we started

to discuss, as I've mentioned in the introduction of this event,

have been picked up quite rapidly, in ways that really blow my mind,

which goes to show that the seeds have been planting

and you never know where they're going to take root.

From the wilderness we have been talking about these things, but

it has started to come into the general Zeitgeist

which is kind of the whole point, no pun intended.

Yet, as recognized,

as some of these problems now appear to the general public,

there is still a truncated frame of reference

when it comes to the important root causes of the psychology,

the structural logic that's imposed by this system

and the trends that, when you follow them,

paint a picture that, really, is quite dire

that unfortunately many aren't actually seeing.

It is one thing to comment on

the injustice of having 1 billion people starving

or 1 percent owning the vast majority of the planets wealth,

and it's another to really understand 'why',

and how this is even possible. How has this happened,

and what does the trend actually foreshadow?

The fallback, as we all know, has been the blaming of the infamous 'they'.

Everyone wants to blame somebody; it's the easy way out.

The right blames the left, the economists blame the state,

the poor blame the rich, and so on and so forth.

The psychological and structural pressures

that comprise human motivations are typically ignored.

For example, when we think about the ruling class

and what has now been globally branded 'the 1%',

the most critical question is not what to do

about the injustice of the circumstance; it is too ahead.

The real question is "How is such a reality even possible?"

What mechanisms have set this pattern in motion to enable the condition?

Are the 1% a manifestation of the current system or an anomaly?

Why is it that those in our legislative bodies

seem to always come from the same pool of people?

Is it really any surprise that our elected officials

continue to hold up policies that support

the very class they have been groomed or bred into?

Is it any surprise that in a system based on social warfare,

where the market is driven solely by the intent of personal or group gain

at the advantage and exploitation of others,

that those who are most rewarded by this system ethic

often show characteristics of indifference and elitism?

In a recent study by the University of Michigan

entitled 'Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior',

it was found that the upper class individuals often behave more unethically

than lower class individuals. It appears that the more privileged

people are in this system, the greater the tendency to lie,

to cheat, to take things meant for others,

to cut others off when driving,

not to stop for pedestrians at crossings,

and to endorse unethical behavior,

than people that are in the lower classes. Hmm!

I would contrast this point

that many years ago in the US, a big study was done

that found that the lower and middle classes

would donate their time and money to poverty and charitable organizations

exponentially more than those that are very wealthy.

More money (percentage of income) was donated

and more time was donated,

yet the wealthy have more money and they generally have more time.

Interesting.

John Lennon once said

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.

I think we are being run by maniacs for maniacal ends,

and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that."

I would obviously have to agree in gesture, but the reality is that

those in positions of power today only appear insane

when their restrictive belief systems

are compared to a more viable benchmark.

Within the frame of reference they understand,

they most certainly are not insane.

Rather, they are a manifestation

of an outdated societal reward and reinforcement system

that continues to uphold and protect the structural insanity

we unfortunately still call normality.

So with that in mind,

let's now quickly consider how our economic-political system

and its defining values essentially emerged.

It's safe to say that the Neolithic Revolution

was likely the most profound social shift in human practice on record.

It is in many ways the dawn of applying scientific causality

for human utility, enabling us to better control our environment,

not to mention understand it.

We went from a natural balance

with the regeneration of planetary resources,

to one where we could cultivate and create almost at will.

Consequently, this allowed for the stockpiling of food and tools,

and eventually set the stage for what we know as trade,

as one producer who has corn

might find a balance of demand with another producer of wheat

and then barter would commence.

Then, once our nomadic ancestors slowly began to settle in fertile regions,

establishing city and state systems,

hence emerging the introduction of land rights,

law, property and all the underlying social logic we clearly see today.

Then with respect to trade, cumbersome barter

was replaced by product values being represented by precious metals

and rare materials. It then moved to paper certificates,

then eventually to the introduction of banks, the digital revolution,

where now essentially these abstract,

empty structures house only digits on screens

and pieces of paper that don't mean anything, in reality.

Basically [it's] a religious belief imposed by culture

that gives value to these symbols.

The first thing to point out, one of my biggest frustrations

when I talk to people that deal with traditional economics:

The introduction of money was not just the introduction of

a 'medium of exchange'.

How many people have heard that "Oh, money is just a medium of exchange!"

What does that mean? How is that possible?

The introduction of money was the introduction of a new form of abstract property

which had an inherent characteristic,

excuse me, it had inherent characteristics,

that were never fully realized, many many centuries ago.

Adam Smith and John Locke, those notable economic philosophers,

who essentially formalized the current system as we know it,

likely never imagined

that the most profitable and influential industry on the planet

would eventually be in the realm of stock trading and investment,

where money moves not for the sake of creativity or direct production

but for the purpose of systematic extraction of simply more money.

Likewise, we went from

a producer class, trading the fruits of their labor with other producers,

which actually did enable the unique form of human freedom and abstraction,

to a system where those with high wealth concentrations (money)

are able to detach from the producer role entirely,

and instead buy human labor as a commodity.

Under the metaphysical notion of capital investment,

are able to exploit those who actually invent and produce

for their own narrow, personal gain and power,

even though they produce absolutely nothing.

In other words, we went from a system based on a producer-to-producer merit

empowering the individual and minimalistic simplicity,

to the emergence of what I call,

the ownership investment governance class

(which I'll expand upon later) we see in the world today:

those 'insane maniacs' that John Lennon poetically described.

Sociologist Thorstein Veblen, notable figure,

writing from 1917, made this very acute observation:

"The standard theories of economic science

have assumed the rights of property and contract as axiomatic premises

and ultimate terms of analysis.

And their theories are commonly drawn in such a form

as would fit the circumstances of the handicraft industry and petty trade."

In other words, simple systems of exchange.

"These theories," he continues, "appear tenable on the whole

when taken to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time.

It is when these standard theories

are sought to be applied to the later situation,

which has outgrown the conditions of handicraft,

that they appear nugatory and meretricious.

The competitive system which these standard theories assume

as a necessary condition of their own validity,