Goodbye Civilization

[Mithra Reborn]

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm

That, my fellow Althanians, is a two-hour documentary that shattered any belief in our government that I had. Don't take this for the kind of 'internet ends on 2012' crap. Everything in it is backed up with hard evidence, and it needs to be seen, before this world and society get monopolized into debt and destruction by the sick bastards upstairs that started wars and killed people just to get rich. Oh yeah, and that's the mild stuff you find out.

Worse shit than that is revealed. I don't care what you comment, but so long as you comment on it after watching the whole thing. We need to stop this while we still can. But its hard to do that when so few people know about it, so spread the word, show this to people, we need to rally for crap sake!

Those two hours changed my life, and a friend's life. please, friends, we have to do something. I know this is a thread begging to be mocked, but PLEASE just watch it with an open mind, and you will see.

Thank you.

[Abomination]

I love this forum sometimes.

[Skie and Avery]

Aww, I thought this had something to do with the Smashing Pumpkins. Another dream, smashed to bits by the interwebs. =(


monopolized into debt and destruction by the sick bastards upstairs that started wars and killed people just to get rich.


How old are you, sweetie? In high school they have this class called History that shows that these concepts are nothing new.

I got about seven minutes in to the movie and realized that you are either just hitting puberty or REALLY HIGH to find this life changingly urgent. It is heartbreaking, especially the images of dead kids they throw in there, but the horrors of war and terrorism are nothing new. Civilization will continue. The Romans didn't destroy it, Hitler didn't destroy it, any number of criminals and selfish bastards who have come into power from the beginning of government to today haven't destroyed it. Now, let's calm down from that speedball high and have a cookie and look at propaganda when we're in a better mental state, okay?

[Heart of Zaga]

I tried to watch this video twice a long, long time ago.

The first time they lost me was when they started ranting about Dionisio being born of a virgin, walking among mortals, having disciples, dying and then resurrecting after the third day.

Another day I was bored so I decided to finish it, It almost felt like a horror movie, something like gore you watch to "WTF" in the middle and giggle-some.

I don't know where they are getting their "hard evidence" from but they sure seem pretty confident about it. All I see in this movie is a bunch of people who took a bunch of subjects that have been a center of polemic scandal, the church, the government, events like 9/11 and the Stock Market crash. And they just somehow connect everything together out of some vain relations between them all, and then slam it down with strong language and words sweetened by some messed-up logic to make people believe it was all part of some greater agenda that encompasses everything.

Throughout, the movie screamed to me "The Jews are taking over the word!"

[Saxon]

I don't know where they are getting their "hard evidence" from but they sure seem pretty confident about it. All I see in this movie is a bunch of people who took a bunch of subjects that have been a center of polemic scandal, the church, the government, events like 9/11 and the Stock Market crash. And they just somehow connect everything together out of some vain relations between them all, and then slam it down with strong language and words sweetened by some messed-up logic to make people believe it was all part of some greater agenda that encompasses everything.

Yeah, there's an actual term for linking unrelated variables such as historical events and forming some elaborate theory of it all. Delusion.

I remember having to watch this before. I thought it was bullshit then and I still think it is now. I think we've made a record here with how many threads we've had on this site in the past couple of weeks that have preached and signified the end of the world as we know it. Can't we all just appreciate life for what it is and not pretend that we are the 'last generation' on the little blue ball we call Earth and we're the only ones to stop the second coming of zombie Jesus?

Seriously, it's getting old.

[Caden Law]

Frak this, for my cynical apathy is proof against your zeitgeist :p

[Lighthawk76]

Well, I was disappointed with it...

I must first give the film the props it most definitely deserves. It's amazing as a piece of emotional manipulation, propaganda, fear tactics, and building an argument. For most of the film it appeared to keep a cool, clear mentality which gave the impression of authority.

It did get childish at some moments. Placing "bull shit" over the newspaper, flippant remarks about "very coincidental, hmmm?" just seem childish and broke their aforementioned use of a fearful theme. The religion part, if it wished to truly scare believers, needed to stay away from childish ridiculing, which it did, but there were moments that this childishness came through, and the believer has been trained to simply tune out and ignore such remarks. Believe me, I'm one of them.

In regard to this use of fear and emotional manipulation, it looks very, well, strange. Why would a piece trying to show the evil that is emotional manipulation be using the same tactic they are disparaging? There could be the claim that what the movie is portraying is "true" and therefore is able to rightfully use these tactics, but that seems somewhat arbitrary.

Now as for the three sections.

The first part is amazing. I have certain problems with there use of myth and disparaging attitude towards Christianity and mythology, but there ability to see the parallels between the Christian myth and world mythology is some of the best I've seen since G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm even surprised they were able to reach back to the church fathers and show that this has been a staple of Christianity from the beginning.

Okay, I can't keep up this facade. The whole first part is doing what the church fathers, and then the recent apologists growing out of a education based upon these church fathers, have known for years. Christianity is a myth, a story meant to relay a truth. What makes it different from other myths, or so Christianity claims, is that it is a wholly truthful myth. The fact that it fits so well with all these other mythologies/astrological ideas will only strengthen the intellectual side of the church.

The following is a small theological discussion based on this idea, which normally gets me in trouble. Skip it if you want.

Christianity is based upon the tenant that Christ is the Son of God and everything that history, past, present, and future, is geared towards. Chesterton portrays the cross as a symbol which opens its arms and tries to reach out to all of creation, rather than the normally used circle, characterized by a serpent eating its own tail, which is finite in what it holds and in fact is self-destructive (snake eating itself). Now if everything is for and from Christ (Christ is considered the formal cause of the world in Aristotelian causal language) then all history, past and future, is going to mimic this in some imperfect way.

Assume an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity who is the source and purpose of life who becomes man in a historical point in time, and the above makes perfect sense. Therefore most, if not all, the movies argumentation props up religion. Assume that god is a myth, and myth is a "story that is false" (any student of myth, theist or atheist, would shoot a person for defining myth as such), then they're desired conclusion stands.

They are assuming the conclusion before the evidence and manipulating the evidence as they want. I would direct anyone curious about this topic to read G.K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man. Christ and the church is talked about in the second smaller half of the book. The first, larger half is a history of the world beginning in the stone age.

As for the Zeitgeist's claims to the horror of religion, John Paul II has apologized for historic atrocities multiple times during his papacy. The Church has accepted that grave misdeeds were carried out in its name and by its own figures of power and has made apologies. There are many, many people not in the power structure of the church who help to guide its people theologically. Peter Kreeft and Joseph Pearce are just two.

William Donahue and the American Catholic League should be ignored. They're nuts. Just go talk to the Vatican, they also ignore the League and actually teach rather than just bitch, moan, and complain about how they're treated.

If anyone is interested further in this topic, I love talking about the history of my church and its theology, so PM me.

Part II & III

This is not new stuff. Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, it's all been done. Even recently with Equilibrium, V for Vendetta, and the Bourne series. The government is big and bad and needs to be fixed. It ALWAYS needs to be fixed. I don't believe power inevitably corrupts. I believe it inevitably draws the already corrupt.

On top of this, the film is completely one sided. Is the motive for the war solely greed? What about the want to bring freedom from oppression? These rights and freedoms the movie is talking about are sometimes the object of freedom. WWI was basically won when we went it, but WWII would have been completely different if we didn't join. Are they saying that we should have sat by and let Hitler go about with his actions? Mixed messages.

Do I believe that some people have bad or even downright evil motives for what they do? Yeah. I'm no nihilist though.

So in summation, the film would have been even better (and much more ground-breaking) if it had documented both sides rather than making humanity seem like a group of stupid retards led by a few sinister men. If this scenario is true, making a film is pointless. The stupid ones are too stupid and the sinister just laugh.

[Taskmienster]

Oh Emm Geeee, the worlds ending.

Oh well. Not that great a place anyway...

Don't take stuff like this too seriously, and I believe Skie summed up everything I was thinkin' personally the best.

Just rp and drift into the fake world of Althanas, it'll help you not freak out about the fake stuff brought into the real world...

[Mithra Reborn]

alright, i've heard enough. I be stupid. thank you for telling me that.

someone please delete this thread so I am no longer ashamed. Someone who aced modern world history should easily know that I was getting stuffed with propoganda. I think being high on emotions(due to finishing with uncle's death and being away from bf for three weeks) kinda left me in a stupid moment.

I'm sorry.

[Arcanafang]

hey don't be so hard on yourself. There's nothing wrong with sharing your views. People may disagree but there's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't make you stupid.

[AdventWings]

Don't worry about it, Mithra. We're not criticizing you.

As for the movie, well, there's nothing in there that I already haven't seen. I don't trust the government to begin with, so it's not much of an argument. The End of the World argument had also been done to death (surprise, surprise) and it's nothing to be surprised about in this age. For many people, the world had already ended. (See: Israel vs Palestine, Georgia vs Russia)

It's more or less a philosophical and religious viewpoint, although the video tried to make itself convincing. I'm a Christian, but I'm also a skeptic in everything saved for human stupidity. That and Global Warming. And Al Gore. (I did not vote for Bush!)

All in all, the above comments are directed at the video and their apparently blatant propaganda. Don't feel bad for making them lose face, Mithra.

[Arsène]

(I did not vote for Bush!)

You shouldn't have voted for anybody. You don't live in this country and I don't think they let people with visas vote.

And it was eight years ago.

[AdventWings]

...Umm, yeah.

Well, no one I knew voted Republican. At least in Oregon, but I had no idea what happened afterwards.

Plus, I was still in America 8 years ago...

>_>
<_<

*Sneaks away to do more work*

[Mathias]

I'm trying to sit through all of this - It's extremely boring, though.

All in all, it's hard to be called a philosopher in today's day and age. Anyone who wants to be one is labeled as a psuedo-intellectual, and is considered presumptuous. And as much as I would like to think that its still possible to be a philosopher, and as much as I would like to be considered one as I figure out shit for myself, I still think that philosophy and ethics and the whole spectrum of human interaction is bullshit.

Pure, utter, and eloquently contrived bullshit. If you care too much about something, you see all the flaws in the world, and all the ways you can't change them.

If you care about nothing at all, then the world ceases to have meaning.

You can be either apathetic and hopeless, or fanatic and useless.

I doubt humanity is going to stop cannibalizing, sodomizing, objectifying, and destroying itself in the near to far future, but I also don't think that it's going to implode because that shit happens.

I COULD care about the Iraq war, and how many people die for stuff they don't or do believe in, or the freedoms of people I will never meet, or the welfare of human beings who AREN'T me. OR on the other hand, I could just enjoy eating McDonald's and bitching about rising gas prices while I have access to the internet and heating in the winter.

Honestly, I don't know whether I care or not. It's hard to draw the line.

[Terminus Mortis]

Aww, Mithra, don't be too hard on yourself. We all still loves ya'!


Sidenote: I'm back from my week long furlough.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I had several people try to convince me to watch this movie before. It seems like a bunch of overblown tripe. I will fully admit that this is not an opinion based on having watched the movie in full. I watched the beginning, came to this abbreviated conclusion, and moved on.

It might be a good movie, but I'm not going to spend my time finding out, based on my initial impressions. People say not to judge a book by its cover, but the saying isn't always true. We don't have time to not make assumptions. Some things need to be judged as worth doing or not worth doing.

I've seen a lot of people rave about this thing, usually in a very fiery, rhetorical way. It's clearly a powerful piece of propaganda if nothing else. The moving picture can have a strong effect on the weak minded.

[Sighter Tnailog]

So can a Jedi!