This is a summary of the movie Zeitgeist: Moving Forward by Jacque Fresco.
Before going ahead with my summary of this movie, I would like to touch upon the meaning
of this German word "Zeitgeist" that sounded (to me) like a thing that is horrible. But when I
looked up its meaning, I realized that this word Zeitgeist meant "the spirit of the time", "the spirit of the age". It refers to the popular climate (including ethical, political, spiritual, intellectual, etc)
within a nation or a specific group of people living together.
I was suggested to watch this movie by a Physicist who had a very individualistic and subjective/personal way of looking and interpreting at things he saw in his surroundings. It sometimes made me wonder, are all Physicists have their unique way to seeing things.
This movie starts off like many of the ones with similar cerebral genre. At the opening the movie has a mixture of background score with varying scenes showing the materialistic engagement of the current world along with the other harsh realities of the have-not world. Jacque stats off from the recollection of his school days and refers to his "questioning nature" in the school days, It perhaps made him quit school and learn by himself using the existing literature of various fields of study. A personal analysis of Jacque concludes that the rule of the economic game here inherently invalid. Humanity since its beginning has worked in a way that is aimed at mindless consumption and using up all the resources given at man's disposal by nature. Jacque makes a comment "This shit's gotta go" and refers to a change that needs to come in the direction where humanity is headed.
Human Nature:
A professor of Neurological sciences at Stanford Dr. Robert Sapolsky is interviewed to talk about the influences of the external environment on the human behavior, that ultimately gives ise to differences in the personalities of all individuals. Dichotomy of things that nature is built around the thought of nature of being deterministic at the very core. Causality of human behavior is driven by the DNA. The professor does not agree with this view and says that Bio;logu is too complex to be understood by the reasoning of Genetics alone. Does it gives rise to a deterministic approach to life: genes equal somethings that cannot be changes (destiny ?) inevitable. Perhaps its worthless and inevitable to change that's already been determined. Dr. Sapolsky strongly disagrees with such a disposition. In another interview by a physician Dr. Gabor Mate mentions that many medical conditions like ADHD, Schizophrenia are not genetically programmed, the truth behind that many things are not genetically programmed, except for very few conditions. A predispositions due to genetic conditions is different from predeterminations of a conditions solely based upon the genetic factors. For example in the case of breast cancer, out of 100 women only 7 would be carrying a breast cancer carrying gene. Out of a 100 people having such a breast cancer carrying gene not all will get cancer. Nothing is predestined as far as breast cancer is concerned, at least due to genetic conditions (peer-disposition) only. Another example is given of the scientific reason why only children experiencing child-abuse have a higher tendency to commit suicide, its due to the affect of surrounding environment on the individual that is responsible for how a certain genetic condition can convert from a pre-disposition to pre-deterministic condition. Such an influence of external conditions on the behavior of genetic pre-dispositions is called Epigenetics. Epigenetics studies the area of genes where certain genes can get on or off (activated or not) depending on the interaction of the carrying-individual with his/her environment.
In another interview of Dr. James Gilligan of the Harvard Medical School, he mentions about an Australian research that points that a child with an abnormal gene can have a normal rate of violence as long as they are abused during their childhood. Coming to the experiments involving mouses that have a learning genes knocked-out, taking such genetically knocked-out mouses and providing a nourishing stimulating environment (than a wild/regular mouse) lead to a normal learning by the mouses whose learning genes were knocked out. Looks like providing a much caring and nourishing environment to learning gene knocked-out mouses can result in normal learning ability being developed by such mouses also. "This behavior is Genetic" is a valid statement to certain extent only, ant not written in stone. The genetic argument allows in ignoring the influence of the environment and can be potentially handicapping in attaining progress and giving-in to the deterministic way of living.
In an interesting argument by Dr. Mate, addiction is referred to as a generic attitude of craving, temporary relief with long term negative consequences, it is also accompanied by an impediment towards stopping such an addiction. In general things like shopping, addiction to power, electronics, video games can be considered as addictions. Various addictions have varying degree of negative consequences. An addiction towards earning money by tobacco corporations are in denial about the impact of their products, Such an denial addiction is highly respectable by society. Such corporate board members are respected by the society, in contrast to drug related individual addictions
What makes a person addicted. In short its not an activity or a drug that is addiction but instead its the susceptibility of an individual to being addicted to a particular thing. Addictions are due to genetic pre-dispositions is not entirely true, scientifically.
Pre-Natal Environment Effects:
It has been seen that if expectant mother undergo stress during pregnancy, then their children are more likely to have tendencies that predispose themselves to addictions. The environment does not begin after the birth, its begins as soon as there is an environment for the fetus to stay. Abhimanyu's case from Mahabharata?
An historical example of pre-natal is the Dutch Hunger Fetus Syndrome that lead to metabolism affects in children born during the famine in the Dutch country. Another logical reason that there is a high possibility of pre-natal environmental effects is that the brain on a human fetus occurs after the birth much of that under the effect of the child's environment. Its called Neural Darwinism.
For example, if you were to take a a child with perfectly normal eyes and put him in dark room for first 5 years will turn out to be blind in future as its surrounding environment in the dark room does not help in the stimulation and growth of vision-related neural circuits in the brain.
Mention is also made of infants cases where a human touch has been found to be essential for
normal child development. Infants who stay in artificial incubators only without human touch are more prone to emotional distress that get stored in their emotional memory. Scientifically, no human child ca remember the first 18 months of their experiences as the hippo-campus in their brain isn't fully developed in the first 18 months,
Te movie mentions that the most violent persons have them selves suffered abuse in their childhood. Such people were mostly the survivors themselves of some violent history. The biology of a human depends on their interaction with their social and psychological environment in their lives. Interpersonal Neurobiology is a new term invented to explain such dependence of neurological aspects on the environment.
Our society that includes theology, metaphysical, linguistic influences, etc shapes us to whether we think life is basically about sin or basically about beauty. By definition, the more stratified a society is, the fewer people one has as peers, and consequently the a world full of people with a lot less altruism.
Human Nature:
The nature of our nature is note be constrained by our nature (wow, that's an awesome statement to come up with). Just as a human body needs physical nutrients, the human brain demands certain forms of positive stimulus from its environment at all stages of development and the brain needs to be protected from the negative stimuli from the environment.
An historical example of pre-natal is the Dutch Hunger Fetus Syndrome that lead to metabolism affects in children born during the famine in the Dutch country. Another logical reason that there is a high possibility of pre-natal environmental effects is that the brain on a human fetus occurs after the birth much of that under the effect of the child's environment. Its called Neural Darwinism.
For example, if you were to take a a child with perfectly normal eyes and put him in dark room for first 5 years will turn out to be blind in future as its surrounding environment in the dark room does not help in the stimulation and growth of vision-related neural circuits in the brain.
Mention is also made of infants cases where a human touch has been found to be essential for
normal child development. Infants who stay in artificial incubators only without human touch are more prone to emotional distress that get stored in their emotional memory. Scientifically, no human child ca remember the first 18 months of their experiences as the hippo-campus in their brain isn't fully developed in the first 18 months,
Te movie mentions that the most violent persons have them selves suffered abuse in their childhood. Such people were mostly the survivors themselves of some violent history. The biology of a human depends on their interaction with their social and psychological environment in their lives. Interpersonal Neurobiology is a new term invented to explain such dependence of neurological aspects on the environment.
Our society that includes theology, metaphysical, linguistic influences, etc shapes us to whether we think life is basically about sin or basically about beauty. By definition, the more stratified a society is, the fewer people one has as peers, and consequently the a world full of people with a lot less altruism.
Human Nature:
The nature of our nature is note be constrained by our nature (wow, that's an awesome statement to come up with). Just as a human body needs physical nutrients, the human brain demands certain forms of positive stimulus from its environment at all stages of development and the brain needs to be protected from the negative stimuli from the environment.
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