After a decade of activism, did we fail?

Originally sent in Lounge
SteveTess

With more than one decade promoting this train of thought and being very active in social media, TZM still didn't breakthrough to a bigger audience, so to speak.
The little kids of TZM's early years don't know who and what we are.
Where did we fail?

Kees

for sure we need a broad evaluation of where things went wrong on a global scale. but i think it would be better to evaluate this on a chapter level. every chapter has their own mistakes and triumphs.

for TZM NL i would say that the issue was that we had too many passive people considering themselves active. they sometimes brought up highly ambitious goals outside of the chapter's ability. when those ambitious goals didn't materialize, i.e. done by others but not really themselves, they got disappointed and left the chapter.

so i think people were too much focused on the big picture. we should be realistic and mostly work on ideas we can finalize, and do ourselves.

4 Likes

One response in over a month, yes Kees I think your right not enough engagement with the community. My experience is “where do I start?” So of the concepts are so large its hard to see where one person could have an impact. Activism like this also has its fair share of opposition, could it be quietly stamping out groups that might be getting somewhere?

3 Likes

Welcome to the forum :tada:

People in general seem lost about how to change the system, not just TZM. Sure we can look at Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion and think, look they are actually “doing something”. I agree that they are more organized, set goals and do them. They also have had their successes. However, none of them propose systemic change. Any change or progress made will be wiped out as soon as things get tough such as environmental laws or social programs.

I was recently at a systems change meetup in Amsterdam. Although we in TZM have our struggles to find a starting point and find meaning in the things we do, it can be worse. Action is great, but action without analyzing the structural reasoning behind it is futile in the long run. Some of these activist groups may seem successful, but in the larger scope, what effect will it actually have if we keep a system of infinite growth regardless of the social and ecological consequences?

I’ve talked to many different movements, organizations and political parties. All have something to contribute for sure. But none really talk about real change. I still think TZM has the most to offer, us or TVP.

Where to start? Well, what gets you out of bed every day? What do you enjoy doing without feeling forced? What are your skills? How much time can you spend on TZM? We’re still sort of in the first phase of the movement, which is organization; creating a strong grassroots backbone. So depending on your skills, the things we need most are chapters, worldwide. I’ll release next week or so a new chapters map which will hopefully assist in this endeavor. Depending on where you are, start building a presence, locally and online. Connect with your local environment. Create an inventory of issues, possible solutions and who’s already working on that. Network with these people and put those problems and solutions in context of the train of thought. That’s a beginning. From there, restart the exercise and increment the progress, based on new people and experience. If you can’t find new people, connect with other international chapters and work on ideas on how to make a bigger impact to network.

2 Likes


Ok I can understand that changing the hole world is a not as easy as it seems. Getting the idea to people, making them understand the idea despite of whatever the hell society has already programed in their heads and actually making them do any real work, is so hard that it may seem impossible to some. But at TZM we know that logically it’s fully possible.
My problem is that it’s literally been 14 years, damn! since TZM was founded and also Zeitgeist Addendum was published at that time. If anyone just see that documentary carefully they will understand what’s wrong.
Why even after that documentary being 14 years old we are still in making website, trying to show videos to people, writing books etc? Why big figures like Elon, Bill and others didn’t noticed the flaws in our system? They perfectly knows how it all works, why didn’t they took any big actions like who Bill thought about poor’s and diseases and opened Gates Notes, Elon opened Open Ai to save us from Ai and so on… Forget about them taking any big actions, why the hell they even never talked about it, they never mentioned this problem which Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement is giving solution to. They only mentioned a few words about universal income which is just a really really tiny part of Zeitgeist Movement.
Ok if not that, even at least we should had got some recognitions from big or at least middle YouTubers who covers the topics of technology, buisness and economy. There should be TV shows and much more things about Zeitgeist Movement in this 14 years. There should be more recognition than what we have now in this long 14 years right? But sadly many parts of the world don’t even know anything about the movement :slightly_frowning_face:…
I am really confused why didn’t we got the recognition that we should have? Where did we gone wrong?

1 Like

@Kees thanks for moving it here

1 Like

Hi @md_azizul_bari, I moved your topic into this thread because it overlaps quite a bit. There are already some replies here. But the bottom line is that we lack organization and we struggled in the beginning with our identity. It had to sink in what and who we are and what we can do. I hope I can contribute a bit as well with my Zeit-Talks videos soon.

We need focus and orientation. The island creation within the movement has slowed that down as well. We need a “group mind”, where we share ideas and transform them into projects. We didn’t really had an environment to exploit that. I believe this forum can make that happen though. So if that provides better focus and organization, the next step is what are our goals and how do we arrive at them? And that last one is not a central decision, just guidelines we can arrive at as a whole. We’re a grassroots movement after all. But by talking about it, launching Projects and communicate our progress via Reports we can create the motivation to do more, hopefully.

But I don’t think the short attention span platforms we use now will get us any further then where we are now.

2 Likes

I highly appreciate your efforts kees… now I have a better understanding of where we are. thanks again :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Honestly, before creating any topic I feel hesitated thinking that it this really worth creating a topic?;I think that many ones have the same problem as me. for this reason we many times don’t create topic and just chat at random… I think that many valuable things get lost because of that… Admin dose review all the topics and set each one in it’s best place, right?

So can we make topic about anything without any second thought or hesitation?

The suggestion is always to look for similar existing topics and continue the conversation there :slight_smile: This question would’ve been great for in the lounge channel, since it doesn’t require a topic :nerd_face:

Also, the 3 topics you created basically could’ve continued this thread. Because your question is about how active are we and what can we do, and did we basically fail? There are already answers for those questions here.

The other one can be an addition to our wikis, which about if there are more RBE movements out there.

1 Like