Designing The Future

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Permalink Reply by Rubén Peña on March 15, 2010 at 1:03pm

Konstantin:

Aloha!! I meant to post this video as well as the entire family of The Venus Project videos on TechHui many months ago -- the Venus Project and its founder Jacque Fresco have ingenious visionary ideas for a future civilization on Earth where we live in harmony with each other and with the environment -- but I opted not to, for two fundamental reasons:

1) "The Venus Project" takes their inspiration from The Zeitgeist Movement, which seem to be fanatical conspiracy theory zealots. Their rationale is that the reason we are in such social, environmental & economic predicaments now is because there is some highly organized Great Global Conspiracy Plot thats been systematically contrived & executed at the highest levels of government & society for the longest of time to keep the entire world populous enslaved socially, geopolitically and economically. This belief of a systematic conspiracy theory from The Zeitgeist Movement seriously undermines the credibility of The Venus Project and its Social, Scientific and Engineering genius for the future.

2) In studying all the public domain literature, WEB site and videos from "The Venus Project", their ideas are great and even revolutionary, except for one important detail. They NEVER outline specifically exactly how to execute on any of them. At first glance their proposals for a future Earth society are intriguing and ingenious except when you look at them more closely with some scrutiny, then it starts to fall apart of exactly HOW to accomplish their vision.
. According to The Venus Project, the "monetary system" has become outdated and should be replaced by a socially responsible "resource based economy". They explain a "resource based economy" in such grandious fanciful language making it sound absolutely great to solve all of our worldwide economic, social, geo-political, environmental and fiscal problems for a better more unified symbiotic world in harmony with nature, an entire new paradigm for living but it almost sounds too good to be true, like pie-in-the-sky. It would be fantastic if a socially responsible "resource based economy" could actually be implemented across the globe, but I don't see Jacque Fresco nor anyone else from The Venus Project ever explaining an "execution strategy" on this at all anywhere in their literature or videos.
. I have given The Venus Project the benefit of the doubt and have tried to come up with an execution strategy on my own of exactly how this would be implemented in practice, because it is after all a fascinating concept if it could actually be carried out, but I just don't see how it could be done. In all my analysis I always wind up coming back to the fact that we need a "medium of exchange" for goods and services between the multitude of different facets of society and countries to be able to function, but once a "medium of exchange" is introduced into the model, you wind up back to where you started with the same basic "monetary system" and all of its flaws (excessive profit, greed, fraud, financial manipulation, speculation, exploitation, etc.) which inevitably results once again in depletion of the Earth's resources to maximize financial profit & monetary gain at the hands of a few, that trump the greater good at the expense of the environment & majority of the population.

For these two fundamental reasons, I opted not to introduce the ideas of "The Venus Project" & their videos onto TechHui many months ago. Otherwise, if Konstantine or someone else can figure out how to actually make a social "resource based economy" functionally work, or at least post some information here on TechHui on how it is actually executed, that would be great.

Check out the following video where Jacque Fresco is grilled on answering the criticisms of 'Point 2' above, and he just simply can't. He has been working on The Venus Project for almost 6 decades, this interview taking place just a few months ago, yet he can't answer the most basic fundamental questions of exactly "how" to implement his Venus Project "resource based economy" ideas and vision -- here he continues dodging the question for the entire segment lasting over an hour by the interviewer Theo Chalmers on a British TV Show called ironically enough "On The Edge" (maybe thats why they invited Jacque Fresco for an interview in the first place, to put him on the edge in the hot seat on this point, in an attempt to get a straight answer from him) .....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rLpHt3bL4&feature=PlayList&...

Mahalo,
Rubén

Permalink Reply by Konstantin A Lukin on March 15, 2010 at 1:36pm

This belief of a systematic conspiracy theory from The Zeitgeist Movement seriously undermines the credibility of The Venus Project and its Social, Scientific and Engineering genius for the future.

Right. For me, an important take away from this video is that there is a way to unite environment and technology into a viable structured alternative. Whatever inspired these guys to create this vision is up to them.

At first glance their proposals for a future Earth society are intriguing and ingenious except when you look at them more closely with some scrutiny, then it starts to fall apart of exactly HOW to accomplish their vision.

Agreed. But the problem is not the vision, but our lack of understanding how to implement this vision given our present economic & societal structure. Does this mean that we should discard this vision all together? Or does it mean that we should look at current societal problems and understand what's wrong with what we have now that inspires others to have visions such as this one. Or in another words, are we ever capable of using technology in an environmentally-friendly way? If so, then how? If not, then why not?

My intention for posting this video is not to 'advertise' Venus Project, but to look at green technology alternatives that are currently available today in order to inspire 'green' thinking.

Check out the following video where Jacque Fresco is grilled on answering the criticisms of 'Point 2' above, and he just simply can't.

IMO his job is to design, not answer implementation questions. He might have an opinion about it, but ultimately it is up to us get inspired to actually implement his visions. His designs will still likely be here till we are ready :)

Thank you, Rubén, for raising valid questions/concerns.