Peter Joseph is the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, a grassroots, worldwide organization that advocates an alternative economic system based on sustainability, cooperation and human need. His most recent book, ‘The New Human Rights Movement,’ delivers a startling exposé about the violent oppression that defines our economic order, while issuing an urgent call for global activism to unite to replace it. Abby Martin sits down with Joseph to talk about the contradictions and crises of capitalism and the solutions he proposes in order to avoid future environmental and economic catastrophe.
Peter Joseph & Abby Martin on Abolishing Capitalism
Abby Martin sits down with Peter Joseph, the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, to discuss his most recent book, ‘The New Human Rights Movement’ and his urgent call for global activists to replace the violent oppression that defines our economic order.
Founded in 2008, the Zeitgeist Movement is “a global sustainability activist movement presenting the case for the needed transition out of our current unsustainable economic model and into a new sustainable socioeconomic paradigm based on using the best that science and technology have to offer to maximize human, animal and environmental well being in accordance with the natural world.” The movement utilizes a network of regional chapters, teams, events, charity work and media to conduct community based activism and increase awareness.
Having a background in advertising and equity trading has lent to an informed and unique perspective on capitalism in the U.S. According to Peter, without advertising, a necessary piece to our consumption based economy, “you wouldn’t have people aspiring to things that are highly irrational.” Our susceptibility to advertising is written into our biology, it is a matter of social inclusion. We identify by how others see us and therefore desire things that others have and desire, causing this need for material things to spread like a virus. Advertising thus manipulates this primal biological human desire to belong, in order to make a profit.
A false sense of progress has emerged from our hypercapitalistic society– an abundance of production and ownership is perceived as a sign of progress despite it being detrimental to human psychology and the environment. The term “cultural violence” applies directly to this manipulation of human psychology for the benefit of the economy. Cultural violence helps justify structural violence so that it feels “right” and acceptable.
Capitalism supports the destruction of the environment and promotes significant structural violence, creating an ingroup-outgroup system of those that can afford desired goods and those that cannot. We see this phenomenon magnified in today’s culture with a sitting U.S. President maintaining a lavish lifestyle that has been praised and lauded by the media for years. We now have a President that profits off the primal desire of humans to need and want material goods in order to belong.
This ingroup-outgroup notion of material desire has been purposefully magnified in order to normalize control of the economy by the wealthy and elite when, in reality, the economy should function to benefit and provide for all Americans. However, a system controlled by the rich lacks the sympathy to function in this way as profits remain the sole focus instead of basic human welfare for all.
Abby and Peter go on to discuss the purpose of the stock market — a system that creates profit for the rich, yet no material goods for society at large, how the concept of debt is viewed throughout the world, Wall Street’s covert control over U.S. politics, the ability for automation to free humans from labor, and proposed solutions to change our current unsustainable economic system.
One human family living on one organism. Yet man is embroiled in a war against himself.
Unfortunately this blatant truth hasn’t yet been realized by the vast majority of humans living on earth.
The wars against ISIS, Russia, and now laughably Venezuela are dominating headlines in the latest front of the information war, but a far more deadly battle is being carried out against the organism we all share.
We face the most severe environmental crises in history with deforestation at a rate of 36 football fields per minute, floating trash islands the size of Texas in the Pacific, and half the world’s species being wiped out in the last 40 years as a result of habitat loss and pollution. In just the last 30 years, climate change has already caused a tripling of natural disasters, with scientists predicting an irreparable tipping point around year 2020, the same year Obama pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 17%.
But how can climate change solutions be taken seriously without a massive overhaul of the agricultural industry and complete termination of the military industrial complex? The Pentagon is the largest polluting institution in the world and is exempt from all international climate treaties.
The climate change disinformation campaign has gotten to the point of such absurdity, that Florida’s State Environmental Protection Department has banned the use of the terms climate change and sustainability in all emails and reports. It’s an issue that should supersede politics. But a corporate controlled press run by oil and gas won’t dare undermine its sponsors.
Of course the establishment showcases an alternate reality. Media hysteria abounds about missing planes and Iran’s non existent nukes, yet there’s an eerie calm about the issues that most impact us, and what we can do to fix them. The population remains dumbed down, complacent and willfully blind.
Maybe the CEOs, lobbyists and politicians are shortsighted because they’re building their own elysium and don’t give a fuck if we all die, but the majority of them are inevitably just changing deck chairs on the Titanic – and they know it.
Deep down everyone knows the truth. Every last vestige of this precious planet is being pillaged without consequence. Endless consumption and unfettered capitalism cannot and will not last. And every empire falls. That’s just a matter of time.
The system blatantly protects the bottom line and resists all substantial change with military force and police aggression to keep the old guard. The elites at the helm will never capitulate their security for the good of humanity.
Once a system doesn’t work for 99.9% of the people, it might be time for a new one.
Abby Martin at Zeitgeist Day 2015 in Berlin
I’m more than happy to be a part of an annual event that showcases a different future than the dark path humanity is bulldozing down. So thank fuck for Peter Joseph’s not only incredible three part Zeitgeist documentary series, but also for his follow up work with Culture in Decline – all of which dismantle the toxic conventional wisdom that strangles our mental development.
Seeing the power of video to shatter religious, political and economic dogma inspired the hell out of me. But I was also moved by the trajectory of the series, which first deconstructed systems of control and then presented an entirely new realm of possibilities.
I used to be an anti-war organizer. But once I saw the media selling the Iraq war I realized something was very systemically wrong, and it crossed all party lines. Media became my number one battle, because if you don’t have a platform to tell your story then no one will hear it.
I started Media Roots as a hub for censored information and it grew into a multimedia citizen journalism project, which eventually brought me to RT and Breaking the Set. It was a dream job to attack power on an international platform, but I decided I want to be meeting the people behind the stories and telling them independent from any state or corporate entity.
I don’t just want to react to the mainstream media’s circle jerk of fuckery.
Bush lackey Karl Rove once brazenly told New York Times reporter Ron Suskind in 2004 “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality… judiciously as you will… we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you – all of you – will be left to just study what we do.”
Unfortunately, Rove’s right. Reality is dictated by an out-of-touch war mongering elite that doesn’t apply to the reality we live every day. But it’s only able to sustain on fear and war. And there’s nothing that terrifies the establishment more than a populace not living in fear.
People are rightly disillusioned after being called crazy for wanting more than two parties or questioning ludicrous paradoxical foreign policy. They also want sustainable energy.
Clearly I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone here claims to. But a resource based economy is one of the most thought provoking and groundbreaking solutions I’ve seen to the crisis of civilization we face.
We don’t have to wait for anyone but ourselves to start implementing the ideals either, because we are all agents of change and vessels of truth that can push our communities towards seismic sustainable shifts in the way we live right now.
Other countries already have a different approach. I recently had the chance to visit Cuba, and not only does the country have an organics renaissance, but there aren’t commercials telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are, or corporate chains eviscerating local culture.
But most spectacularly is Cuba’s medical internationalism. Cuba sent the world’s largest contingent of medical professionals to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to fight the ebola epidemic, and has healthcare workers operating in 66 countries. The country also has a medical school that trains international students to become doctors for free.
Of course, this wasn’t out of pure altruism, the long imposed embargo on Cuba forced it to become self sufficient and fiercely community oriented. The country is far from perfect, but the obvious takeaway remains the tremendous amount of good that can be done with such little resources. If that’s what an economically crippled nation can achieve, what can the richest one in the world do?
If people came first.
Every government that has tried to incorporate different economic models gets systematically undermined with regime change attempts. USAID is still spending $20 million dollars a year in Cuba to undermine the government despite the normalization process. 56 years after the Cold War, and the US government still can’t let a small socialist nation live in peace.
In socialist Venezuela, Obama just announced the country poses and quote “extraordinary threat” to national security and that he has quote “deep concerns” about its human rights abuses. Meanwhile America’s biggest ally Saudi Arabia summarily carries out beheadings and public floggings to bloggers who criticize the king.
Clearly these issues are deep rooted and deeply interconnected. This is about hegemony, and the clutches of capitalism won’t give up easily. The system can’t afford alternatives, and we’ve seen how far it will go, with no remorse. It’s a machine that runs on death and destruction, having institutionalized structural violence that kills millions of our brothers and sisters every day.
No one has to go without water in the streets of Detroit, or freeze to death in bombed out Gaza, because we have the resources to provide everyone. Would you let your mother or brother starve on the streets? No, because we belong to the commons and the commons belongs to us.
The revolution of values is the extension of empathy, understanding, compassion and humility – globally. Which means shattering the illusion of me as separate from you or us as separate from the dirt underneath our concrete jungle. It comes with expanding consciousness and media literacy. And most importantly, it’s about building alternatives ourselves. That’s why I believe that this movement is unstoppable and the ideas it’s spawned will create our reality of a sustainable future.
Because if we don’t, we’ll just become casualties in the war being waged against us and every living thing on this planet.
On this pale blue dot.
As Carl Sagan said, “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
Art is not just about catharsis, self-expression, and relaying powerful messages through symbolism – it also entails our imagination to mold art in its most natural form. By actively engaging with each other and harmonizing with the earth, we can cultivate a better path for future generations.
The Zeitgeist Media Festival is an annual event that bridges art and activism together in order to inspire and unify alternative communities. Being both an artist and activist myself, it was an honor to relay my political beliefs and artistic philosophy to such an open, energetic crowd.
Some of you may already be familiar with Zeitgeist, a controversial documentary film trilogy that challenges everything you think you know about the world. If you aren’t, do yourself a favor and get acquainted.
The first movie release, Zeitgeist, analyzes the social constructs that keep humanity’s consciousness stunted; Zeitgeist: Addendum dissects the unsustainability of the current economic system; The epilogue, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, outlines the notion of structural violence, mechanization and the blueprint for a new system – one that can exist harmoniously with nature.
The viral film series has since spawned a global collective called The Zeitgeist Movement or TZM, an international initiative of activism and awareness pushing the notion that the current social and economic structure is inherently flawed, and must be transformed in order to ensure a sustainable future for all.
The Zeitgeist trilogy, as well as its follow-up Culture in Decline series, have challenged many of my preconceived paradigms as well as greatly inspired my activism, so it was awesome to sit down with Peter Joseph, founder of The Zeitgeist Movement Global, for an in-depth interview. Whether or not you agree with his philosophy, it’s undeniably thought-provoking and deserves to be heard.
Abby
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Peter Joseph Breaks the Set on The Zeitgeist Movement
One human family living on one organism. Yet man is embroiled in a war against himself.
Art is not just about catharsis, self-expression, and relaying powerful messages through symbolism – it also entails our imagination to mold art in its most natural form. By actively engaging with each other and harmonizing with the earth, we can cultivate a better path for future generations.