http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virgin_births
JCFolsom: It pretty much starts off with utter nonsense, so I couldn't bring myself to watch much further. The connection and resemblance between the stories of Horus and Jesus are so overblown as to be farcical. The very images the film shows in Luxor have a written story they illustrate right next to them, and that story describes anything but what the Abrahamic anti-sexual pathology would describe as an "immaculate" conception. Yes, the story is one of a god impregnating a woman, but quite in the old fashioned way. Indeed, at one point the woman complements him on the godly size of his member. The ancient pagans, apparently, were not prudes. The movie relies on general ignorance for acceptance and to make its points. It's trash.
It pretty much starts off with utter nonsense, so I couldn't bring myself to watch much further. The connection and resemblance between the stories of Horus and Jesus are so overblown as to be farcical. The very images the film shows in Luxor have a written story they illustrate right next to them, and that story describes anything but what the Abrahamic anti-sexual pathology would describe as an "immaculate" conception.
Yes, the story is one of a god impregnating a woman, but quite in the old fashioned way. Indeed, at one point the woman complements him on the godly size of his member. The ancient pagans, apparently, were not prudes. The movie relies on general ignorance for acceptance and to make its points. It's trash.
Agreed.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Indeed, it completely ignores the more well-known version of the myth whereby Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris... posthumously on Osiris' part. See, Osiris' brother, Set, was pissed off at him for breaking his X-Box or some such thing, and so he hacked him into 13 easy pieces. His genitals were eaten by a fish. So, the grieving widow, Isis, gathered up all the chunks and proceeded, Frankenstein-like, to stitch them back together, complete with a brand new golden schlong (doubtless "ribbed for her pleasure"). She then proceeded to have sex with his mangled corpse, and thereby conceived Horus.
Virgin conception. Yeah.
pedward:It was discussed earlier in this thread that one can "vote" with one's wallet. I pointed out that a wealthier person's needs have greater leverage than a poor person's.
Sure, to an extent, otherwise city centers would be full of big houses, instead of high buildings. And car factories would spent their time fulfilling the eccentric orders of the elite.
But the problem here is you are limiting yourself to consumption. The only reason why the car factory investors and its workers are providing that service is because they value what the customers are providing them in return more than what they have to put in. If they're being paid in money, what they really value is the goods and services that money can buy -- therefore, the people paying the rich guy are the ones saying what he provided them warrants him a given fraction of car output, because what the people are giving up is not pieces of paper, but claims of product, like cars, which they obviously considered of less value. If the rich guys was trying to capture more of the car output, he would find himself with reduced input streams as well.
You could say that the people would be better off if the rich guy resources were turned over to the state (unless we're talking of his labor, that would be creepy -- let's say he found oil on his wheat field) -- but that's not what you were originally claiming. Your original claim was that the rich person was actually making people worse off, which is patently false. By the people's actions, it is patent they are better off with him exploring his oil field than if the oil was never found, otherwise they wouldn't be paying for it.
The problem of redistribution is not to discourage people from investing and laboring. Money is only seen as wealth because it can buy stuff; the producers are the ones putting that wealth into pieces of paper. Thomas Sowell makes a good point that after people invest so much into their professions they may support significant levels of taxation (the investments are not only in education, and in the capital goods or building the client base, but social and emotional ones as well). You will probably be able to take a good chunk of their income before they decide to switch to something else. The real consequences of your policies will only come to surface though in years to come, as the next generation is building character and values, and is yet to invest its lives.
Throughout the European Union, the idea of redistribution has long lost its strength. Today, the biggest slice in the tax revenue is from VAT. Consumption taxes in all contribute to at least 2/3 of the revenue in most countries, while production taxes have been reducing (the wealth tax has eventually been eliminated in all EU countries). The USA, it seems, is still under an income-based progressive tax system, but their tax targets are much lower -- much of the USA is financed by selling IOUs and through monetary inflation, so the consequences of their redistributive tax system are still to be seen as income taxes rise to cope with their limited ability to finance government through other means.
Indian people selling their farm land so foreigns can build hotels in them is not why they are poor. In fact, they were much poor some decades ago after independence, suffering of severe famines (dead tolls in the millions), when state control was much tighter -- not that it's a free market now (Heritage economic freedom index puts it in 115th place out of 157 countries). Either way, it's conceptually obvious that if the people were willingly selling off their lands for hotels resorts, that means they are better off now -- and for the foreigners to pay for their land, it would mean they would be selling other Indians more productive capital goods than what they have -- which would mean, in turn, other people want the production that capital makes possible -- and etc.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
I just want to add that if what the Zeitgeist promotes really is the best way to organize a society, then people don't need a Big Brother imposed on them; they'll adopt it. A free market doesn't mean people are out there like lonely wolves. People organize themselves in firms, mutual aid societies, condominiums and all kinds of organizations to improve the common good. Some of them very totalitarian ones like some commune groups. As David Friedman puts it, capitalism is a beach full of socialist sand. The free market position is the most centrist position one can take: people can build whatever social structure they want under it.
I thought Part one of Zeitgeist was pretty good. Parts two and three was nothing new to me.I just saw Zeitgeist today and I could stay awake long enough to finish Zeitgeist addendum.
To those interested in history I recommend you read:
Return to Eden: How an Ancient religious myth inspired a modern political movements
Below Is part of the preface of Return to Eden
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This is a book about the utopians, what their visions entail, and how they try to make them real. Since by definition utopia cannot be made real, the utopians are on fools' errands, in the same sense that traditional religious adherents are. Nonetheless, the history of their campaigns and programs is not just a sorrowful tale of futility but also one of very serious destruction. Explaining the appeal and various forms of human utopian aspiration is an involved and difficult enterprise, neither started nor finished by the book before you. But perhaps this contribution will be of some practical use to someone.
Those who are already, or who go on to become, familiar with my other work will no doubt be confused by apparent self-contradiction. In this book I excoriate utopian socialism and fundamentalistic libertarianism, and by apparent implication radicalism, but a clear-eyed analysis of my platform reveals what might be seen as a sort of bourgeois socialism (albeit aligned with none of the ten point Marx and Engels allege are “pretty generally applicable” “in most advanced countries”). Also featured in my program are consensual eugenicalism and pragmatic environmentalism. I'm an aficionado of sustainability (with a view to sustaining technological growth), a proponent of de facto natural aristocracy, a revolutionary radical, indeed an “idealist” in the layman's sense of the term though emphatically not in the jargon sense, even while I am obviously an ardent free marketeer and individualist, and a dogged opponent of unbridled democracy (tyranny of the majority), not to mention an iconoclast (as will shortly become patently obvious). I make no apologies, for there are no real contradictions here, beyond those inherent to economic and biological reality. In my policy proposals I aim to exploit as many of the salutary institutions of libertarianism and socialism as possible, to as great a degree as possible, while utterly expelling utopianism. In this book, the term “socialism” generally refers to utopian socialism, even when the qualifying term is absent.
Since the time of Rousseau, utopianism — particularly, of the socialist variety — has been eroding and undermining Western civilization like so many angry ocean waves. Utopian socialism — by which I mean chiefly the idea that human welfare can be divorced from economic and biological reality — has for so long been a part of the political landscape of the West that most people have accepted it as the cultural embodiment of an idea that is fundamental to the world. In fact, it is just so much inherited wishful thinking and confabulated flapdoodle, sewn together from fragments of ancient mythology, chiefly those relating to the Eden of the Hebrew Bible and its inspirations. While its roots are ancient, a program that recognizably constitutes a form of modern socialism was first assembled by the Sozzinis of sixteenth century Italy, whose ethic became known as “Socinianism” and set the stage for the utopian aspects of the Enlightenment.
This treatise dissects the psychological, cultural, and historical anatomy of the modern utopian movement, presenting it in ten parts: an overview, an investigation of ancient roots, a survey of biblical parallels, some meditations on the Eden motif itself in modern settings, a discussion of the phenomenon of cargo cultism, a survey of population control programs, meditations on egalitarianism, meditations on environmentalism, a survey of the main players in the invention and institutionalization of socialism, and a survey of occult Edenism.
My purpose is simple, and I don't pretend impartiality. This book is descriptive, not prescriptive, but by way of description and explanation I seek to guide the liberal-minded toward classical liberalism, and away from the utopianism that infests modern liberalism. This book should perhaps be viewed first as a warning to those who, like myself, envision radical progress in the human condition. In the minds of mere mortal men, the perfect all too easily becomes the enemy of the good.
We have likely already seen the high water marks of radical utopian socialism — in the West, 1933-1945, and in the East, 1949-1968. Now it is creeping, moderate socialism that presents the greatest threat to human prosperity and advancement, because the utopian aspirations (and attendant tendency toward totalitarianism) largely remain, concealed within.
It is chiefly on the Enlightenment that this history of utopianism pivots, and the view of the Enlightenment as (at least in part) more religious and less reasonable than advertised, is not new. In 1932, Carl L. Becker (a historian at Cornell) took just such a view, in The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. Here, from pg. 29-31 in the 2003 Yale Nota Bene printing, is the essence of his thesis:
who will protect/defend the Venus Project Utopia and who will run the courts and ect? Will it be a govenrment, a dictator (Jacque Fresco)?
Have a happy Winter solstice/ rise of the sun/Pagan Christmas!
Michael S:Since by definition utopia cannot be made real, the utopians are on fools' errands, in the same sense that traditional religious adherents are.
Because of the planned and tightly run nature of "Utopia", I was unhappy with L. Neil Smith's use of the word in this essay. But I am very pleased to pass it on since the subject of "utopian ideals" has come up:
Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision or I Dreamed I Was a Signatory In My Maidenform Bra by L. Neil Smith
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle497-20081214-04.html
Subscribing
At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.
Mark
------------------
Listen to both sides and I will be enlightened
Jon Irenicus: Anyone seen this? Seems a bit conspiratoid, but I haven't watched it yet. -Jon
Anyone seen this? Seems a bit conspiratoid, but I haven't watched it yet.
-Jon
I am on the zeigtgeist movement site, ready to comment.
First, technology:
"The notion of "leisure" is a monetary invention, created because of the oppressive, fascist basis of the employment institution itself."
Nope! The notion of work and leisure are created by the process of human action.
"In a true society, there would be no such thing as the separation of "work and "leisure", for humans should be allowed to pursue whatever they feel is relevant."
Self-contradictiory. If humans were allowed to pursue what they felt was relevant (such as anarchno-capitalism), there would still be a difference between "work" and "leisure".
"He or she doesn't even know what money is...Do they need to be motivated by money to go out and explore/create? No. They have a personal interest and they pursue it without reward. In fact, the greatest contributors to our society, such as Einstein, Newton or Galileo, pursued what they did without any regard to money. They did it because they wanted to. The act of doing and contributing was their reward."
Wealth can be a motivator for action, an end that an actor seeks to achieve. Anyways, this seems to assert that money as a reward is wrong, without providing adequate justification.
"The point here is that money is not a true incentive for anything"
Which contradicts with observation that certain actors prefer more over less money. That, in itself, is an incentive.
"and to think as such is to assume that humans are inherently lazy and corrupt."
It does not logically follow.
"Laziness and corruption are products of the conditioning our social system creates."
Prove it! Laziness is simply preferring work to leisure. I am still unsure about corruption.
"At the same time, technological development is brought about by a particular train of thought, or process... this could be called "The Scientific Method"."
Nope. It is brought about by the entreprenuer with the right entreprenuerial idea, which may or may not have used the scientific method in its development.
"It seems obvious that technology improves our lives and serves as the greatest liberator of human life in the material realm... so why aren't its methods applied to society as a whole?"
I smell FALLACY.
"It is this interest that has created the concept of a 'Resource Based Economy'. The Venus project has been working on this concept for a long time and its foundation is very simple. We survey, preserve and maximize our use of planetary resources in conjunction with open information and technological development."
I smell more FALLACY!
Schools are labour camps.
I actually talked to VTV on skype once before who was mentioned on another thread but this all has to do with zeitgeist. VTV meets with the Venus Project founder in person, so he told me. I was questioning him about its intentions and so agreed to a skype call since it was getting lengthy and typing was becoming inadequate. We also had other issues that were irrelevant which initiated the call, which had to do with a professional dispute and I was trying to smooth relations between a bunch of individuals involved in the dispute. Anger is something that I find to be very abundant amongst zeitgeist followers.
What it came down to is opinions are heavily demonized. Creativity would near suffocate, though he would disagree of course. They advocate reinventing and thus mass re-educate society even our spoken language to include only scientific terminology. It all boiled down to science should be our only thoughts. I didn't like it. Asked if I would be left alone if this technological city was to be established. He said yes. I was happy.
He said he was a frequent visit to this website before. Yet when I talked about the free market he insisted that we should rid the free market. I asked why? He said it depends on what you mean by free market. I said it means freedom. It means I can do as I want without mandatory institutions dictating to me how I can live my life. Of course this was before the days of my use and very basic ableness to converse in property rights lingo. So I described the free market to mean if people want money they can. If I want to live a self-reliant lifestye, then I can. If I want to go and get a job for a couple months to earn money to buy something I can't make or don't want to make myself. Then I have that option too. That's a free market. He agreed with it, but still had a hard time with calling it a free market for some reason. I don't know why. He said what I called a free market is what Austrians don't believe in. I've been here for some weeks now and thus far I find nothing here that would navigate the free market from meaning freedom in the way I just described it. So I don't know what his problem was. He was always very angry and had a lot of spite about how the Venus Project was not going anywhere. I had the feeling that to implement this Venus Project if given the numbers, they would fight and kill to achieve this dream of theirs. Though he never verbalized such an event. So I'm not saying he advocated this at all. It was the impression I had, but admittingly impressions lie at times.
Lots of anger. Might have been due to his own admittance to resist emotions. That usually causes friction in ones life, but I obviously can't say for sure. My impression after repeated online discussion in a certain forum and then that one skype call and having conversations and hearing others that advocate zeitgeist is their repeated attacks on opinion and their eruption into anger quite suddenly. My assessment of the whole experience put together - danger and take with a grain of salt - meaning I'll see it when it happens. I know he, VTV, ran for a political office, but he tried to assure me that he wouldn't use the State to implement his Venus desires. I had a hard time seeing him separate the Venus Project from his political office cause that's all he talked about, Venus Project this and that 99% of the time on any given occasion. What else didn't make sense was they promise they can get rid of scarcity all together. They would change the whole landscape of the earth if they had to he professed. They would change the culture of people if they had to. I didn't like these ideas either.
I like their effort to support technology. Their perspective is technology is being suppressed by the State and others. But it was how they professed their intentions and that whole scientific way to approach life even if it means to reinvent language to make it purely scientific terminology. I didn't like it at all. But hey, it's just my opinion and I'm glad he said he would leave me alone if I didn't want to join their community. But I don't know if their intentions as a whole would play out that way or not. I became even more leery of zeitgeist after any of those conversations for sure.
"I used to see a mountain as a mountain.. Thereafter.. when I saw a mountain; lo! it was not a mountain.. yet now of final tranquillity: I see a mountain just as a mountain as I used to.." - Master Yuan; molon labe
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