Peter Joseph, the creator of Zeitgeist, has a new release, Zeitgeist Addendum, which presents some astounding thoughts to consider. Some of his concepts and revelations appear brilliant and compelling. Alternately, they may be bizarre, unrealistic, incomplete utopian fantasies. Or the concepts he is promoting may simply be so far ahead of their time that we simply are not ready for them.

The first portion of the DVD documentary is perhaps the most concise, comprehensive and comprehensible video dissertation on the nature of the Federal Reserve monetary system yet compiled. His compelling review of the monetary mechanics we presently live under graphically portrays the absurd, fraudulent and corrupt FED system of economic slavery. Using the FED’s own published material, Joseph explains how money is created from debt; how debt is designed to be unpayable and how it enslaves those who use it until the entire system collapses as, eventually, it must.

The expose’ of our national monetary scam is followed by an interview with John Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins unravels the history of the commingled activities of the World Bank, the IMF, clandestine intelligence agencies and corporate interests as they overthrow governments, assassinate leaders, plunder resources and impoverish people in Iran, Central and South America, Iraq and Afghanistan. Perkins presents an entirely new perspective of why the U.S. invaded Iraq. It centers on the ultimate weapon of mass destruction—money—and submission to it.

A central theme of Zeitgeist Addendum is that all systems of government are corrupt. Even though they may pretend to be otherwise, they are not about societal well being. Whether the form of government is fascism, socialism, capitalism or communism, they are fundamentally the same. The underlying mechanism of these systems is the control of society with money, labor and competition. Joseph refers to the various governmental systems collectively as "Monetary-ism," claiming that the inevitable result of these systems is corruption, a wealth gap, class stratification, exploitation, limits on technology and government dictatorship by an elite.

The monetary system, according to Joseph, is all about the control of resources for profit. Profit can only succeed when there is scarcity. Profit-based systems are based on self-interest and limited resources. Efficiency, sustainability and abundance are the enemies of profit and never occur in a profit-based system.

Jacque Fresco, an industrial designer, social engineer and director of the Venus Project, is featured prominently in Zeitgeist Addendum. Fresco proclaims that the institution of politics is irrelevant to what makes our world function. It is technicians and technology that solve our problems, not politics, not money, not religion. The pillar of promise in Zeitgeist Addendum is the abundant and sensible use of technology, unfettered by money and governments.

The Venus Project is an ambitious idea to re-engineer society with advanced technological systems and architecture; to intelligently manage Earth’s resources, creating a condition of abundance for all; to eradicate the conditions that create socially offensive behavior, eliminating the need for prisons, welfare, police, cruelty, law and professions like stockbrokers, bankers and advertisers. The Venus Project proposes to accomplish all this without money. Yes, that is the idea.

Money creates scarcity. Money is a barrier to liberating technologies because they threaten profit. If there are enough resources, housing, transportation, etc., in abundance there is no need to sell anything. If technology relieved humans of labor, there would be no reason to have a job—no reason for money at all. Or so the theory goes.

Zeitgeist Addendum portrays some of the possibilities for an abundant, sustainable, efficient future. Only 1/100th of one percent of the solar energy hitting Earth is enough to power our present energy needs if it were harnessed. The wind energy in three states could power the entire U.S. if it were captured. Tidal and wave generation systems have great potential. Geothermal, an even greater source of renewable energy, has the potential to provide 4,000 times as much energy as the world presently consumes.

Zeitgeist Addendum portends a future with electric cars once suppressed battery technologies are released and other technology emerges. The MagLev train, a high-speed train that travels without wheels on magnetic rails, are part of the futuristic vision. Already operating in Japan at speeds up to 361 MPH, Joseph predicts a 4,000 MPH potential speed in tubes spread around the globe, revolutionizing travel, as we know it.

Instead of traffic laws and government controls, technology will govern our travel according to Fresco. Radar and sonar in our automobiles will detect other vehicles and obstacles, adjusting travel accordingly. Intoxicated driving will be detected by sensors that read erratic driving patterns and the trip will be cancelled by the vehicle. Technology is to be our savior under the Zeitgeist Addendum paradigm.

Joseph presents an interesting explanation of the contest we find ourselves in today. The systems we presently live under resist change to preserve themselves. The majority of humans follow the programs laid down for them by the systems they live under. We are the self-appointed guardians of the status quo—a self-regulating herd that ostracizes those that don’t fit in or would otherwise threaten the status quo. Such caged thinking promotes societal stasis and fails to be aware of the emergent and symbiotic nature of life—our potential.

Under natural law, all systems are emergent—fluid and ever changing. The history of humanity is one of emergence but the history of the various "isms" that dominate humankind continually suppress that emergence for their own self-interest. We will eventually move beyond the folly of allegiance to the "isms"—if we survive them—and into a symbiosis of nature and technology.

As Joseph states, "All natural systems are emergent, for there is no such thing as independence in nature. The whole of nature is a unified system of interdependent variables, each a cause and a reaction, existing only as a concentrated whole."

Perkins follows with, "Success depends on how well we relate to everything around us...Joy comes from that bliss of connectedness, that’s our God spirit. That’s the side of ourselves that really feels it—and you can feel it deep inside. It’s this amazing, wonderful feeling and you know it when you get it. You don’t get it from money. You get it from connection."

Joseph challenges each of us to be "Weapons of Mass Creation." "Change must occur first inside of you. The real revolution is the revolution of consciousness. Each one of us first needs to eliminate the divisionary, materialistic noise we have been conditioned to think is true, while discovering, amplifying and aligning with the signal coming from our true imperial oneness."

Zeitgeist translates from the German as "spirit of the times." The soon to be enthroned occupant of the Oval Office campaigned on "change." Zeitgeist Addendum urges for real change, not mere surface alteration of the "monetary-ism" paradigm. Joseph says, "It’s time for a new social system. The monetary system is a product of a time where scarcity was reality. Now, with the age of technology, it is no longer relevant to society."

Joseph, in addition to encouraging our abandonment of the monetary system, suggests we depart from our alignment with organized religion: "Religions exist as barriers to personal growth. ‘Faith’ is a psychological distortion where logic and new information is rejected in favor of traditionalized, outdated beliefs. Hopefully, through time, religion will lose its materialism and basis in superstition and move into the useful field of philosophy."

Zeitgeist Addendum is a great expose’ of the FED fraud and presents some valuable insights into how our present "ism" works. Joseph gives us some compelling theories of an alternate reality to contemplate and consider. But we are left with gaps in our understanding. The "vision" portrayed is well beyond the belief systems that are currently central to our collective worldview.

How, without money, without government or any other "ism," can "we" the people of this world, harness technology to efficiently and intelligently manage the Earth’s resources so as to create sustainable abundance for all? Do you have friends and neighbors that can leave the "ism" they’ve known their entire lives—the "ism" that has programmed them to be what they are—and get on with our great new future?

We are more familiar with a humanity that is focused on self-interest and personal accumulation of desirous things; a humanity that is broken down, walled off and rendered dysfunctional on many fronts. Can we grow past the damage that has been done to us by a multi-layering of outdated "isms?"

During our transition away from money, government and religion, where will the "abundance" come from? Take the money away and most Americans will perish before radish seeds can sprout and grow, never mind tomatoes and corn.

Joseph and Fresco paint a picture of technology serving us: Flying machines, automatic cars, bullet trains around the world and cities of innovative design. Machines replacing our labor so we don’t need a job. If machines do it all for us, what will we do?

Who will plant the gardens and run the farms? Robots? Who will build the cities, and how will Earth’s resources pop out of the ground and turn into building materials? Technology requires very exacting products to function properly. Can robots be trusted? Who will build the robots?

A MagLev train is an interesting idea, but who will build MagLev tubes for the train to run in across oceans, through mountains and over prairies? Who will inspect and maintain this supersonic wonder? Who will drive the train if no one needs a job? Who, in their right mind, would ride on a supersonic train that has no driver?

Geothermal is an underdeveloped energy source with great potential but even water wells are a relatively spendy proposition. Geothermal requires a large diameter, deep drilling operation and a technologically advanced generation system to be installed over a successful well. Under the present "monetary-ism" it costs several million dollars to drill, build and put into operation just one geothermal plant. How will this just "happen," without money and laborers?

Another way to look at it, which isn’t expressed in Zeitgeist Addendum, is that the entire world modern man has built since the FED began in 1913, has been built by people who believed in the power and value of FED dollars. Granted, they were redeemable in gold or silver for the first 20 years of the FED’s existence but, if you look objectively at the facts, "we" have built this modern world with money that is literally worth nothing. It came from nothing. When the FED system collapses, as eventually it must, it will return to nothing.

If we can build a technologically-advanced society with money that is nothing, can we build an even better society without money and the powers that create and control it? All we need is to believe in the power and value of something even better than money and work towards it. Peter Joseph may be onto something after all.

Joseph’s vision of a mankind selflessly donating time, tools and effort to build a benevolent, abundant society doesn’t comport with my social experiences. His visionary project requires some kind of evolved beings that are presently in short supply.

Most people, one way or another, are damaged goods. We can only live "together" because we have our own houses to retreat to. True cooperative communalism has a repetitive history of failure in this modern age. Most of the various "experiments" in communal living from the 60s and 70s have fallen by the wayside. Hippies became yuppies. Good ole’ boy culture left the farm, moved to town and now spends more time trying to appear better than its neighbors, rather than help them out, like good ole’ boys used to do.

Perhaps "monetary-ism" has ruined everyone and the coming depression will be good for us—time to reassess and recreate real values.

There is another human factor, which Joseph has yet to address—psychopaths. Government and corporations are filled with them. Television, video games and public education surreptitiously transform more and more of our people into psychopaths who gravitate toward positions of power and are responsible for much of our social ills. How does Joseph propose that we deal with the increasingly psychopathic element living amongst us without laws, prisons or guns?

Zeitgeist Addendum can be properly criticized, even dismissed as a utopian fantasy of perhaps delusional proportions. The proposition, afterall, is building, possibly for the first time ever, a civilized and technologically-advanced society where we can all live happily ever after in peace and abundance—without money, government or religion. A fairy tale?

Can such a thing be worse than the corruption, fraud, treason, oppression, servitude, genocidal pogroms, mind-control and systemic delusion that most Americans find themselves living under—if only they would step back and take an objective look at the world around them?

As far out there as Zeitgeist Addendum may be in its futuristic concepts, it does propose some short-term, practical actions to do our part to bring down the current "isms" and start a new beginning:

One: Expose the FED for what it really is and boycott its member banks: Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, et. al. Close your accounts; quit if you work there; move your wealth to another form or another place.

Two: Boycott the news networks. Use the alternative press and the Internet for your news sources.

Three: Boycott the military. Don’t join the corporate, mercenary U.S. army/air force/navy. If you are in already, don’t re-enlist.

Four: Boycott the energy companies. Work to get off the grid. Make your home as self-sustainable as possible. Find an efficient car and seek to convert to alternative fuel and power sources.

Five: Reject the political system. Work to dissolve the outdated system of politics—an insult to our intelligence—in favor of technological redesign.

Six: Join the movement—create critical mass.

Go to TheZeitgeistMovement.com.

And what a movement it is. March 15^th of each year is "Z-Day"—a day to promote the Zeitgeist Movement worldwide. In 2008 there were over 1,800 events in 70 countries on Z-Day. They are working to expand this year and incorporate the vision of the Venus Project.

In February, the Zeitgeist Movement plans to release free Torrent files (peer to peer file transfer mediums which allow large file sizes to be spread quickly and without restriction) on the Internet, which will contain:

1) "Zeitgeist, the Movie" DVD in 17+ different language subtitles for burning.

2) "Zeitgeist Addendum" DVD in at least 10 subtitles for burning.

3) The 2009 Zeitgeist Movement Manual in .pdf.

4) A 30+min. Digital Slide Presentation, which can be translated into any language (they will do their best to cover the top five initially). This presentation can be utilized by anyone who wants to present the ideas of this new direction to their area. The presentation will be supported by the 2009 Zeitgeist Movement Manual.

5) Promotional Flyers / Trailers.

TheZeitgeistMovement.com website, available in numerous languages, has what is essentially a mission statement, a plan of action, a communication network and a substantive F.A.Q. section. There is also a free, downloadable, 72 page .pdf file, Designing the Future, on the Venus Project. It is well worth the price of "admission." Interviews with Jacque Fresco and a Google video about the Venus Project are also viewable there.

www.Zeitgeistmovie.com will sell you a DVD of either the original Zeitgeist or Zeitgeist Addendum and allow you to download the videos for free, for those that want to see what Zeitgeist is about.

Our world appears to be sliding into a global depression. General mayhem is possibly on the horizon as the global elite attempts their final coup against humanity. Technologically, we may appear to ourselves as an advanced civilization, but socially, politically and economically, we are still clinging to upgraded feudalistic structures originating from the Dark Ages.

A new paradigm has been presented, however bizarre it may seem to us today. Zeitgeist Addendum and the Venus Project deserve some serious consideration by everyone who wants a future worth living. The two greatest problems with these concepts is the average person’s infantile understanding of the world around him and the fact that the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project are at least a century ahead of our time.