"It's impossible to get the world to change"

This has been a very common objection since the release of Zeitgeit: Moving Forward. My responses to the comments have been as follows:

The only way it can happen is if it happens inside every one of us first.  When it does, it affects your actions on a day to day basis. People take notice and the information begins to spread. This is the very nature of social networking and the viral effect. 

Historically only 40%-60% public support has been needed for successful social movements to reach a tipping point. This is the point where some power holders begin to shift their resources to philanthropic endeavours. It is not necessary to convince the world, only a small portion of it.  Successful social movements also require a catalyst in two stages, one to ignite the core supporters into uniting, which has already happened with the 2nd movie and the formation of the movement, the second catalyst brings attention to the cause with which the movement uses to gather more support. This is the global economic crisis we have been seeing since the tech bubble crashed last decade.  A great study by Bill Moyer lead to the publication of an article entitled History is a Weapon - The Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements. If you study these eight stages you’ll see that we are in the middle of a global social movement that cannot be stopped. 

The more information people have the more they start aligning with each other in terms of values and motivation. The following video by Daniel Pink on Human Drive sheds an eye opening look into what really motivates humans.  Previously, information was limited to local, community, or regional broadcast methods so the information spread slower than needed in some cases to generate critical mass.  With the internet, information exchange around the globe has become literally instantaneous.  This is why the world new about the earthquake in Haiti as it was happening before the USGS could officially report it.  The world just got really small really fast.  National borders have all but disappeared in the world of online social networks. Global support for international inhumanities now has an ally in online social networks which is why Tunesia and Egypt are being discussed by a global conscience.  The technology is here, the need is as great as ever, and the catalyst is here.  Never before in the history of mankind have these elements lined up properly, especially the technology component.  A portion of the population has the ability to contemplate the potential of the movement as being able to achieve maslows hierarchy and are thus motivated to work towards this direction in order to simply satisfy these needs.  This is just a matter of information transfer. Over 2 million people have seen this message in just over a week. This rate of information exchange is unprecedented for such a controversial and fundamentally life altering concept.  We have everything to lose if we don’t change, and we have everything to gain if we do. The question everyone must ask themselves is simple, will you change?

We are in an emergent global symbiotic relationship with the planet. This fact will render any socio economic system that does not recognize this, irrelevant and destined for failure. We live in such a system today.  This monetary economic paradigm will go down in history as one of the shortest social experiments in our 150K years on this planet. Historians will look back on this time as a learning process for humanity, a bump in the road.  We are the only species on this planet who pays rent. We are the only species on this planet whose waste does not contribute to the ecosystem. These are unsustainable paradigms that must be changed or we will parish as a species.