This is a response to a friend about a post on her blog about the movie "Zeitgeist". I couldn't get a comment to save on blogspot to save my life, so I decided to just post it here.

Amy and I went ahead and watched both of these movies. I think for me, none of it was anything totally new. I was glad to see it all brought together and condensed into a format that anyone could grasp and understand (and possibly even agree with!).

I think there are important points that need to be understood in order to move forward that are explained very well in this movie, namely:

1. Our currency system is based on debt and since we are forced to use it, we are sucked into this same debt cycle. We should be able to freely use other currencies, especially goods-based currencies like silver. Ron Paul has been fighting for this for a long time, but if the Federal government ever let us off the hook, everyone would flee the dollar and the whole government-owned monetary system would crash. When you can't print your money and force people to use it, you can't spend like crazy anymore.
2. A powerful government is not our friend. Government is run by people and power corrupts people. Many people seem to believe that only selfless people run for government, but there is no such thing as a selfless person. Anyone who has tried to become a better person knows that it's a hard thing to do and power over others is the ultimate tempter. Even if only good people ran for office, once they have the power to basically do whatever they want, they would fall victim to believing that ends justify the means. Ends never justify the means. There are no ends, the only thing that matters are the means.
3. The influence of bankers in our society is at dangerous levels. The illustration of fractional reserve banking was very clear and shows just how fraudulent the current system really is and how fragile it's become. With most of the wealth concentrated and magnified, there are a lot of "too big to fail" corporations out there. But it also goes to show that most of the "wealth" we think we have in this country isn't even really there. It's a mirage and it will eventually fade, and most people aren't prepared to deal with that reality.
4. Most people have religion all wrong. Things are taken too literally when talking about religion and we really need to step back and re-look at what religion is really trying to tell us. I think the movie unfairly picked on Christianity, but it was an illustrative example. All religions can be perverted to serve a group's self-interest. We see that all the time with Christianity and Islam. Even my poison of choice, Buddhism, is the reason for war and strife in Sri Lanka and Thailand. The problem is that people need to see that underlying themes, interconnectedness and impermanence (called emergence in the movie, basically that nothing ever stays the same). Religions were designed with allegories and stories to help us understand these concepts on a very basic level and help us integrate them into our lives. Even though these concepts are truth, we don't have the ability to see it on a day to day basis and religions help us to integrate these concepts into our daily consciousness. To take religions literally does a great disservice to ourselves and the world, and we see where it's gotten us.

I do have a problem with the proposed solution in the second movie. First, the solution requires that everyone become enlightened to the world all at once for it to work. Buddhism's been trying to do that for the last 2,500 years, so I don't see it happening any time soon. It will also require a huge amount of central planning and very directed work, which of course is the dream of Socialism. I think that Socialism has been fairly proven not to work simply due to what I said about large, powerful governments. Something will need to be set up to run the whole thing, and that something sounds like a world government that we were warned about in the movie. Should we set something up to force people to live in this world even if they aren't "enlightened" enough to appreciate it? No, simply because of the means and ends argument.

What we need to do is get back to having responsibility over our own lives and, in fact, demanding that we have responsibility over our own lives. And I don't just mean having governments leaving us alone, but taking direct responsibility over what we do. If you buy meat that was grown unsustainably, you have directly contributed to that business. Don't like how Wal-Mart destroys local economies? Stop shopping there and if you do shop there because it's "cheaper" (for you, not for the markets the good come from) or convenient, then understand that you directly have destroyed your local shops. Wal-Mart can only offer low prices, it's you and you alone that chooses what to do with your money. Same goes for banks, restaurants and other large corporations. Sadly, the same does not go for governments since they can take your money by force. Hopefully a change in that arena will help, but I'm not holding my breath.

What we need to do it figure out what's important and get back to that. Profits aren't important. Having more food than you need isn't important. Video games and a wide screen TV isn't important. Living longer just to live longer isn't important. Money isn't important.

People are important. Making sure future generations can live on this earth is important. Having freedom over yourself and your choices is important. A child's laugh is important. Life is important. Love is important.

You're important, and what you decide from all of this will shape everything to come. Choose with wisdom.

The young human being responds to the challenges of its environment by turning to its parents for advice, support, and protection, and before it can be trusted as an adult, this patterning must be altered. Accordingly, one of the first functions of the puberty rites of primitive societies, and indeed of education everywhere, has been always that of switching the response systems of adolescents from dependency to responsibility--which is no easy transformation to achieve. And with the extension of the period of dependency in our own civilization into the middle or even late twenties, the challenge is today more threatening than ever, and our failures are increasingly apparent.

A neurotic might be defined, in this light, as one who has failed to come altogether across the critical threshold of his adult "second birth". Stimuli that should evoke in him thoughts and acts of responsibility evoke those, instead, of flight to protection, fear of punishment, need for advice, and so on. He has continually to correct the spontaneity of his response patterns and, like a child, will tend to attribute his failures and troubles either to his parents or to that handy parent substitute, the state and the social order by which he is protected and supported. If the first requirement of an adult is that he should take to himself responsibility for his failures, for his life, and for his doing, within the context of the actual conditions of the world in which he dwells, then it is simply an elementary psychological fact that no one will ever develop to this state who is continually thinking of what a great thing he would have been had only the conditions of his life been different: his parents less indifferent to his needs, society less oppressive, or the universe otherwise arranged. The first requirement of any society is that its adult membership should realize and represent the fact this it is they who constitute its life and being. And the first function of the rites of puberty, accordingly, must be to establish in the individual a system of sentiments that will be appropriate to the society in which he is to live, and on which that society itself must depend for its existence.

-- Joseph Campbell Myths To Live By

Emphasis mine and are parts that really jumped out at me as I read.