A Better Calendar Is Being Held Back

The following is a typical example of how the scientific method of problem solving would be able to provide us with a better, more consistent, and accurate calendar with which to synchronize the globe.

As our knowledge of the solar system and it's perennial occurrances increases with each generation of astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians, we have gained enough information to improve the accuracy, reliability and predeictability of our calendar system.  The current western calendar system, the Gregorian Calendar created in 325 A.D., was adopted based wholly on it's ability to track religious observances. Several proposals for new calendar systems have been submitted that eliminate many of the inefficiencies of the current calendar. Inefficiencies such as:

• It is not perpetual. Each year starts on a different day of the week and calendars expire every year.
• It is difficult to determine the weekday of any given day of the year or month.
• Months are not equal in length nor regularly distributed across the year, requiring mnemonics (e.g. “Thirty days hath September…”) or knuckle counting (ridges are 31, valleys are 30 except first valley [February] is 28 or 29 in a leap year) to remember which month is 28, 29, 30 or 31 days long.
• The year’s four quarters (of three full months each) are not equal (being of 90/91, 91, 92 and 92 days respectively). Business quarters that are equal would make accounting easier.
• Its epoch (origin) is not religiously neutral. The same applies to month and weekday names in many languages.
• Each month has no connection with the lunar phases.

The benefit of utilizing a calendar is to be able to schedule, track and document events with accuracy, consistency and reliability.  If there are ways to improve these three attributes they should be tested, analyzed, and the superior method should be utilized until a better system is available. This is the the scientific method.  Case and point, the World Calendar created in 1930 was proposed to the united nations and rejected by the U.S. on the sole basis of religious tradition requiring a 7 day week.  Another shining example of established institutions (namely religion) holding back civilization from emerging out of the dark ages based on newly discovered information.

History, Animals and Frontal Lobes... Oh My!

So I was having a conversation with a colleague about human nature vs human behaviour and the difference between humans and other animals, and as i started delving into the uniqueness and result of the evolution of the human frontal lobe, they kept inquiring, "what caused the first man to behave like a sociopath?".  I postulated that it was the scarcity of the basic needs of life, quality of life, and sound mind and social state. The list of which looks like this:

Basic Necessities of Life (Biological)
· Air
· Food
· Water
· Sleep
· Medical Care
Additional Necessities For A High Quality of Life (QoL)
· Shelter
· Clothing
· Education
· Energy
· Transportation
· Communication
Necessities for a Sound Mind and Social State
· Personal Purpose (Passion, Hobbies, Pursuits)
· Recreation
· Community (Family, Friends, Colleagues, etc.)

By definition, it is mankind's search for this "List", in an environment where these items are not in abundance,  that causes biological issues, low quality of life and unsound minds and social states.  So let's revisit the history of the first sociopath.  People tend to describe human history as "just the stuff that happened to us". This is true for all other animals, however, it is the way our frontal lobe developed that seperates us from all other animals. Ours is the only frontal lobe that can envision alternative outcomes thus allowing us to design a strategic path to the future we desire.  If humans are the only animal that can design and seek out a desired outcome it means human history was the result of our attempts to design our own future. The problem is, the information available is only as good as the science, data, and information technology at the time. So without sufficient information we are destined to seek the future we always wanted before we know what is good for us. Therefore, human history is merely the collective result of insufficient information being available at the time we made decisions on what we wanted our future to look like. As mentioned earlier, in order to design a future free from sociopathic behaviour we need to discover a way to achieve The List, in abundance, for all mankind.  The only truly reliable tool we have available is the scientific method of discovery and problem solving.  Therefore life must simply become a progressive set of social experiments whose hypotheses are continually tested and analyzed until a better hypothesis emerges with the end result being The List.  This all sounds great except that politics, religion, and money, even though they should be regarded as social experiments, were designed to be exempt from testing. All three require faith for their existence. Faith is defined as belief without evidence. Rejecting these established notions is a revolution of the mind we must first achieve.

Computing in a RBE

So, after yesterdays blog, exploring crowdsourcing as the method of problem solving in a RBE, the topic of interface arises.  By interface i mean the user interface that would be required in order to retrieve the latest problem that needed solving, the platform on which we would be able to work on that problem, and then eventually upload the solution back into the system.  At first glance this seems to be a problem in a RBE because nobody owns any property.  So what do we do about personal computers, your programs, your files, do they not belong to you anymore? In order to think about this problem we have to remove our notions that our computing ability lies in some form of property, when in fact, it is all software driven.

This brings me to my second web 2.0 term of the week, cloudcomputing.  Simply put, cloud computing uses 100% web app based operating systems (OS), web applications, and internet based processing power.  Cloudcomputing can be compared to todays energy grid.  You can plug in an appliance anywhere there is an outlet, and voila, it turns on!  Cloudcomputing is exactly the same.  You can log into your desktop from any machine with a browser and operate it as if it was your very own desktop sitting at home.  However, the OS, the applications, and the file storage is all virtual.  This, is in fact, how we live the majority of our lives today. You may not have realized it because it crept up on us without any warning.  Cheers to cloudcomputing, another important step towards a RBE.

Crowdsourcing: Problem Solving in a Resource Based Economy

Good afternoon readers.  Today's entry addresses a concern often voiced by people when first introduced to The Venus Project and a Resource Based Economy.  The objection goes something like this, "Well, if no one has a job in a RBE who will solve the world's problems?" The answer lies in a modestly simple web 2.0 term,  first coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired magazine article entitled "The Rise of Crowdsourcing".  I've highlighted the term's wikipedia article overview and it's relevant portions below:


"Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. In the classic use of the term, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—also known as the crowd—typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones." "... the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded...with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts ... which were unknown to the initiating organization."


In my humble opinion, this evolution toward a crowdsourced problem solving paradigm, is key evidence that an RBE is not only possible but inevitable. Proof of concept can be found in a joint venture between Sony and WWF at www.openplanetideas.com or at www.openarchitecturenetwork.org . The question is, can mankind recognize it before the final collapse of the monetary economic system?

Jeff Howe on Crowdsourcing

Terra Incognita

Tonight's blog is a simple one.  Often i find great examples of how established institutions limit mankind's ability to improve the quality of life of his/her fellow human.  Today's example comes from the PBS documentary, "Mapping Stem Cells: Terra Incognita". The documentary follows Dr. Jack Kessler as he journey's to find a cure for spinal cord injuries using stem cell research.  His research is being opposed by religious activists and political agendas due to the fact that stem cell research requires human embryos to be harvested and thus destroyed. The debate surfaces when the question of whether or not this embryo is consider a human life or not.  Even though the senate voted in favour of funding stem cell research, George W. Bush then commander in chief of the US, vetoed his first bill as president because in his opinion, stem cell research "... destroys life in order to save life". This is the perfect example of a single religious institution, namely the Christian church, as well as the established US political institution using opinion  to egotistically make a decision instead of using the scientific method to logically arrive at a decision through discovery. The irony is that the very scientific discovery needed could come from the research work that Dr. Kessler is trying to do.  Science is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance and established political and religious institutions are keeping us ignorant. The current system is broken.

Harvesting Stem Cells

No... This is Not Socialism

Good evening my faithful readers.  Today's blog entry was enthusiastically inspired by the 3 part PBS documentary, "Heaven on Earth - The Rise and Fall of Socialism" (watch it on YouTube here).  This topic is of particular importance as it is one of the most commonly raised criticisms of The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement and a Resource Based Economy.  Now in the interest of maintaining the attention span of the 21st century public, I have committed to keeping these blogs shorter than a couple of paragraphs.  This means i will be sparing you from a 300 page thesis on the pros and cons of socialism and communist political parties.  Instead, i am going to deliver in very simple English, a direct comparison between socialism, as described by The Communist Manifesto, and a Resource Based Economy, as described by The Venus Project. The differences are self evident.

Socialism VS A Resource Based Economy

• socialism is the ideology of a communist political party VS RBE is not associated with any political party
• policy determined by controlling elite VS decisions are arrived at using the scientific method
• territorial resources are state owned VS global resources are common heritage of all mankind
• banks are socialized VS banks do not exist
• production through human labour VS production through mechanized cybernated automation
• social problem solving is state governed VS problem solving is democratized
• society is guided by Utopian ideology VS society is emergent and ever evolving
• national economy competes with globalization VS global RBE is symbiotic with planet Earth
• national scope VS global scope
• national military VS military does not exist
• national communism VS global community
• progressive/graduated tax VS money does not exist
• centralized credit VS debt does not exist
• centralized communication VS wiki based/user generated communication
• state owned production VS no nation states exist
• state controlled technology VS open source technology
• equal liability of all to labour VS  no labour class - production through mechanized cybernated automation
• equitable distribution of the population VS freedom of movement across the globe

 

VS

The Root of All Evil

Today's commentary is based on the TED Talk by Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo, titled: "Why ordinary people do evil ... or do good?" Professor Zimbardo was the past president of the American Psychological Association, and the Western Psychological Association, and was the lead experimenter for the The Stanford Prison Experiment, in which they exposed 12 normal average college students to perform the roles of either a prison guard or prisoner.  Surprisingly within only 36 hours of the experiment, the students began suffering emotional breakdowns, and psychological imbalances, despite knowing full well that they weren't actually in a real prison. His findings from this experiment and the clinical trials of other similar experiments led him to submit expert testimony on the Abu Graive torture trials where he concluded that the system in which the soldiers were exposed, just like the students, was the root cause of their behaviour.

A common criticism of a RBE is that without laws, police, prisons, or government, evil doers would go unchecked and run rampant.  The evidence is to the contrary.  People are born empty slates with an evolutionary propensity to cooperate for survival. It is society that distorts this natural tendency and the persons values and behaviour are influenced by their environment.  Change the environment and you change the behaviour.

Artificial Borders

Today marks the first official media commentary, the format of which this blog was created for.  The film in question is "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey". A documentary tracing the earliest human migration on this planet, as shown by our genetic roots based on the work of Spencer Wells. He and his crew scour the world for indigenous people with deep roots in one place, asking for samples of DNA to test, in order to piece together our “big family” genetic tree.

Wells tracks down common ancestors and comes up with some surprising candidates. Every time he returns with DNA results we see the diverse ways in which people and tribes react to the news of what science says about their arrival and relations.

This documentary illustrates in a nutshell that nationality only serves to divide and discriminate mankind.  We are literally, without exaggeration all part of the same family migrated from Africa, and as a family the natural tendency would be to share with and care for one another.  A resource based economy is based on the simple strategy of sharing all the worlds resources with all mankind, free from labour, free from a ruling class, and free from debt. The current monetary economic system is inherently driven by profiting off the differential advantage between the controlling elite and the working class. A formula that has only resulted in the global economic bankruptcy we see today.

Modus Operandi

So I should probably mention quickly, the inspiration for this blog. I'll be the first to admit... i was in "The Matrix". I was a blind consumer. I was a social lemming.  I used to believe that the pursuit of happiness was levered to the ability to "live the life", the "american dream".  I was the child of immigrant parents who only wanted to escape the poverty and tyranny of their homeland and it's dictatorial rule.  Fast forward to today.  I find myself extremely conscious of the worlds operating forces, namely government, politics, military industrial complexes, big pharma, big oil, big banks, the federal reserve/central bank of Canada etc...

My days are now consumed by the relentless pursuit of knowledge.  TED talks, documentaries, social activism causes and independent news media have given me a completely new level of awareness. Awareness of our place on this planet, our symbiotic relationship with the earth, our common ancestral links as a human species, and our definitions of happiness and well being.  Now I know that sounds pretty flowery but there really is no other way to break it down other than in plain English.

So where does The Zeitgest Movement come into play here?  Well it was simply the first step that i encountered in my journey. The awakening from a sleep ruled by slavery of debt, acceptance of the status quo, and not questioning established institutions.  If you haven't yet watched it, i highly recommend watching this quick summary.  Knowledge of a solution concept that has been termed a Resource Based Economy is a rational and compassionate solution to the worlds problems that truly is, "beyond poverty, politics, and war." I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with all of you. Till next time...

Jacque Fresco's circular city design

A Brand New Outlook

A warm welcome to all my new readers. Today marks the debut of my blog dedicated to the exploration and analysis of todays current issues from "A Zeitgeist Point of View".  To put it simply the purpose of this blog is to share my personal thoughts, opinions, and analysis of todays current affairs as seen from the eyes of a Zeitgeist Movement member, Venus Project supporter, and a Resource Based Economy promoter.

As a quick introduction into my background, i'm a formally educated business commerce graduate with a major in marketing and a minor in finance.  I've worked in the automotive after-market industry, the entertainment industry, the advertising industry, as well as the manufacturing and distribution industry.  My experience has given me an inside look at the production, distribution, and marketing of products and services to a global audience.  Why does any of this matter? Well, this is my chance to use my first hand knowledge of the market forces, corporate motivations, and consumer behavior patterns that pretty much define many major aspects of our society as we know it and to help shed some light on the worlds issues, in hopes i can help wake up a few of my fellow brothers and sisters on this our small planet, we call home. I hope you come back again. Thanks for your time.

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