modern life vs. human nature

This was just sent to me from my friends at Adbusters.  God bless them for seeing the humor and opportunity in this latest economic crisis.  Of course, Adbusters has been publishing the wrongs of North American society for years and they generally come off as a little negative.(the truth hurts!)

In this case, I laughed out loud when I saw this spoof cover of the Economist because it makes a few things very apparent; mainly that humans really can’t understand the global or even local economy because it is natural and fallible.(just like humans)  Any one philosophy of the market, human relations or even religion is never absolutely right because we are all different.  It’s seems apparent that multiple economic theories can and must work together in order for us to have a healthy, flowing economy that involves more than one nation.

Global economies… global communication… global religions…global citizenship and global survival means working together…kind of like a team…hhhmmm..novel idea; team work. It is something that Bush and Cheney don’t understand. It is also something that greedy people don’t understand. They don’t understand that it is us and us…not us vs. them.  As Bush tried to say once at the wrong time and for the wrong reason…if you fuck someone over again and again…over time you are going get fucked over yourself.  You can call it justice, karma, revolution or even market adjustment but it comes down to irresponsible behaviour on the part of mortgage brokers, regulators, banks and the US government.  The only problem with this is that a lot of people were duped. a lot of people jumped onto the greed wagon so they could get more money for retirement or for bigger houses with bigger tvs.  Now there is a general panic among those fearful of financial failure.  Of course, the easy way out of this mess is to let it all go.  Maybe go for a bike ride and take in nature.  After all, it’s only zero’s.

Enjoy.

I watched the movie Zeitgeist the other night and besides being very long it was also a thorough indictment of religion, government and the monetary system.

The movie starts out by saying that the Bible, and specifically the story of Jesus, was sort of plagiarized from the ancient Egyptians and other cultures. From there the movie shifts into discussing how the money system in America is intended to create debt and imprison citizens within an endless cycle of debt. I can identify with that.

Somewhere in there….because when the licorice sugar buzz wore off I started to fade…they start talking about how 911 was a set up as was World War I, II and Vietnam. Ok. They do a convincing job of asking some important questions and pointing out a lot of facts that make their point seem quite plausible. Just like another movie Loose Change which also points out some glaring inconsistencies in the government’s version of events, Zeitgeist does a good job of making you think that some very powerful people are doing some very bad things in order to make a lot of money.

While I generally enjoy being informed I really enjoy this type of film because it is a call to action of sorts. The suggestions in these films are always a “don’t trust what the media says find out for yourself” message. As a strong believer in independent thinking I enjoy being reminded of why I like to know. Whether or not you believe the complete story is irrelevant as long as you open yourself up to hear another side of events from an alternative source. There is always another side to every story.

For example, one of the most interesting tidbits was the fact that George Bush’s grandfather sold oil to the Nazi’s during W.W. II which allowed them to conduct the London bombings(aka The Blitz).

Lastly, even though it is a long movie it’s a lot more interesting to discuss than American Idol.