Global chapters & introduce yourself šŸ‘‹

Excellent! I created the group @chapter_se_michigan, anyone can join that group by clicking on the group and then select ā€˜joinā€™. People can also message that group. The group info links to your social-media page. For tagging you may use the country tag us.

I added you already to the group! :slight_smile: And I added this new chapter to the global chapter map.

As for promoting the social-media page, thatā€™s indeed not easy. Especially since the movementā€™s popularity has declined over the years. But you could ask the admins of the TZM Global Facebook page to promote your page. @bjk could you please help @BobSacamano out with this?

And you can promote your own page in all the social-media groups out there. Also donā€™t forget to promote it on Twitter, Reddit, etc. We scattered all over the Internet :slight_smile: One of the reasons why I started this forum, now we can have a common place to meet, share information and stay connected.

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Sorry I havenā€™t got back to anybody the last a few days. Iā€™ve had a lot of family issues to deal with. Obviously a lot of people have had to deal with deaths in their family in the age of Covid and Iā€™m no exception. My grandmother died of Covid last spring and by the time we can arrange a funeral service, my aunt died earlier this year and I found out my grandfather died of old age the very day I started the website. Sometimes starting a new chapter in oneā€™s life can happen in the most inopportune moments.

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Sorry for your loss :frowning:

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Donā€™t worry about it. Just do your thing at your pace and donā€™t push to hard or youā€™ll burn out quickly. Good to have you aboard!

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Thanks for the support. Itā€™s been quite an emotion few weeks for me and this month proved to be a lot busier for me than I initially thought. I will see what I can do about promoting the chapter on other social media. Iā€™d say reddit is the best option instead of twitter as twitter embodies the worst aspects of [anti]social media and is not based around group discussion and networking.

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Iā€™m Marcia. I live in Angier, North Carolina, USA. Our TZM project is called: Inatosha which means Enough is Enough. We are growing gardens to provide free food in the hopes of informing more people about RBE.
Next we hope these people will volunteer with us to make more food and create share libraries.

We know all of you smart people are working on ready-made blueprints to install complete cities, but we can not sit around and wait for that. It frustrates us. Not to mention there will not be any public land left if we do not try and acquire some.

Your map feature would be great to find people as opposed to TZM chapters. People who want to be involved in any RBE project.

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Hi @Marcia_Everett, welcome and thank you for your introduction! :slight_smile:

In TZM we use the chapter structure to have a decentral hierarchy where people in a local area (city, province/state or country) can promote the Zeitgeist train of thought. Do you have a chapter? If so, then please provide us with a URL to your website/social-media page so that people can connect. I would also like to know the scope of your chapter, as is described in the top post in this thread. With that information I can create a forum group for your chapter and add you to the map :tada:

You can of course use the map for the purpose of finding like-minded people. Although Iā€™m not sure if anyone has ā€œready-made blueprints to install complete citiesā€. Such a grand project wouldā€™ve caught my attention I think. Only The Venus Project comes to mind.

Please create a topic in Projects about Inatosha with as much detail in the top post as possible. That way people can join in, give feedback and share it as well. Thanks! :slight_smile:

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The group with the plans is called One Community for the Highest Good. And no, I do not have TZM chapter. I thought I said I have a project where we create gardens. Iā€™ll have to go back and look to see what I wrote.

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I noticed that I havenā€™t introduced myself. So my name is Kees and Iā€™ve been active in the Dutch chapter since about 2008. Itā€™s been a fun ride. I met a lot of interesting people over the years. This includes Jacque and Roxanne in 2010 when they came to nl for their Venus Project Tour. That too was very exciting. The Dutch chapter was not only helping with that event, but for a week we guided them through the country to all kind of appointments. Including the Philips headquarters in nl, Wubbo Ockels (former astronaut), and many other people that work on sustainability projects.

TZM NL also had many successful ZDays (not all of them were recorded). We also organized the European Meetup in Rotterdam which was one of our most successful international events.

There are many more highlights of course, but Iā€™ll keep it short. My activism routine is basically that I do something every day. Either here on the forum, or for TZM NL itself. Later this year I want to pickup some more content creation projects, but life is a bit busy now at the moment. So Iā€™ll just do the low hanging fruit stuff. Create topics here on the forum and social-media to promote the train of thought and organize online events.

I started this forum because we created all these islands in our movement. Which has caused fragmentation. Which also makes it harder to inspire each other. We also need more focus on our goals and message, which the forum allows as well since itā€™s not like Facebook where you compete for attention with other pages. Also the footer of the forum contains all basic information needed for any activist. Which keeps the conversation and goal on topic. At least, thatā€™s my goal with the forum. So far things are going okay in that regard. But we do need more (active) people! :slight_smile:

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Donā€™t exactly understand the ā€œchapterā€ concept yet, ill read up on it.
But as far as introducing myself, hello :slightly_smiling_face:
Iā€™m from Israel, I currently study cinema or as they call it here ā€˜arts of sound and screenā€™.
Iā€™ve been following The Zeitgeist Movement for probably 10 years or so, or since I saw the first film and it smacked the innocence out of me.

Wish the community was a bit more thriving, so Iā€™ve finally joined the forum to see whatā€™s going on here.
If anyone from israel (or globally) wants to work together in creating art or share ideas feel free to contact me.

Iā€™ve always been thinking about social change and activism in different ways, but now that Iā€™m studying I want to try and form for myself a new concept of how to create true activism within the art world. I believe as of today that much like political or different forms of activism, artistic activism needs to take a hard look at itself and change tactics. Especially film (because of its inherent need for outside funding and big production values).
Our lecturers will often lean towards teaching us how to make meaningful and even politically oriented art, which i appreciate. But they seem to fail, like every activist organization out there except TZM (in my opinion) to hit the nail on the freaking head. To understand that the structure needs to change or weā€™re just farting in the wind.
This tactic im talking about is still in development, but in essence its making art that is truly Incentive Free. Meaning from the very beginning you are not only not trying to create something in order for it to be successful, you make sure from the start that it cannot possibly make any money. (sounds fun i know xD)
If the film is from the very start incapable of producing profit, it is true to its artistic intention only and has ā€œpure incentiveā€. Again, the idea is still in development so i hope i makes any sort of senseā€¦
This because all art - even the lefty kind of films that claim to be socially aware or subversive - are all actually just playing the game in one way or another, and still can be called in-system activism or in-system art.

A good example of the prior would be of course the Zeitgeist films themselves, open to all on youtube for free. Imagine the hypocrisy of having to pay to watch addendum, it would render the works hollow.

good chat :sweat_smile:

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Hi @SivanM, welcome! :slight_smile:

First of all, the term ā€œchapterā€ has like many words different meanings. In the context of group organization the term chapter means ā€œlocal branchā€ of an organization. Political parties, open-source projects and hobby clubs also use this term.

To learn more about Zeitgeist chapters and how they are organized, check out this PDF.

Your background sounds very interesting and also very useful. This movement started because of artivist projects, such as the Zeitgeist movies. You could join the @media-team and in case you want to start projects here with other people, you can create a topic in Projects.

There is no harm in making content and get some money in return. I mean, weā€™re not in a resource based economy, yet :wink: We need to survive, and if you can survive while making these artivist projects, then why not? But this is of course up to you. If you think that direction is more effective, then by all means. But please, donā€™t make your life harder than it could be. Activism is a luxury for which you need the time and often also the money.

The latest work of Peter Joseph was for sale. To be specific, The New Human Rights Movement and InterReflections. Especially the last one depended on donations as well. This is really OK. We still live in a world where stuff costs money and to get things done you need financial resources. Of course you can make the choice to not do that, but again, what will make activism harder than it already is. :slight_smile:

By the way, if you want to start your own chapter, let us know here. Then weā€™ll create a group for you and put you on the chapter map so that people can find you. Please also create a social-media page for it (if it doesnā€™t exist yet) or website. Then you have a platform you fully control and also talk in your native language, which helps growing your chapter in your local area.

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Thanks for the warm welcome
Starting a local branch might be a bit much on me right now (although I am always blabbering about the movement to my fellow students and some seem to actually be interested). But as far as media stuff and other projects ill be sure to look out for opportunities and notify my ideas too.

Sure, youā€™re right, and I know what I proposed might sound a little impractical and radical, ill write about how it goes for me in developing this as I go with it :sweat_smile:
Of course Iā€™m not judging any artivists(Iā€™m gonna use that) out there, we all have to live and if I like it or not Iā€™m participating in the market system in one way or another if not in art then my clothes and food, I am aware of this. Everything is funded in one way or another, its just a proposition and an extreme method that I want to test out. (and fund it by working minimum wage :grin:)

Glad to see the quick reply :v:

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The suggestion to start your own chapter was only based on the assumption that no Israeli chapter exists. A quick search revealed this FB page, it seems relatively active. I sent them an invite for the forum :slight_smile: Hopefully more people will join here, I also left a message in the Israeli TZM FB group. Then we could add Israel to the chapters map as well with a social-media page :tada:

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Introducing myself. I neither belong to a chapter nor feel able at this time to start one. I live in the greater Philadelphia area, so the nearest chapter is NYC, too far for local activity. Iā€™d love to hear of a Philadelphia chapter.

I am a retired software developer. After decades of commitment to capitalism, the last two years have persuaded me to reject it. My recent influences include Peter Joseph, Kate Raworth, and Andrew Yang. These three have disagreements, but would be better served by looking at their commonality than their differences.

Iā€™ve listened to all the Revolution Now podcasts so far, watched the first Zeitgeist film, read extended twitter threads between PJ and Kate Raworth, watched the youtube where PJ poses The Three Questions, read both of PJā€™s medium posts, and am halfway through The New Human Rights Movement.

I am biased in favor of PJā€™s views. I recognize this as bias in myself because, in his work, I find confirmation bias, circular reasoning, and unsupported inference of causality in the face of correlation. PJ posits causation chains that are appealing, but other causation chains are also plausible, with no rigorous research to support his or discredit others.

I offer these critiques, not to tear down PJ, TZM, or the ideas they represent, but rather to challenge the community to shore up their reasoning. I would not support an argument that 2+2=4 because 2 pigeons flying over my deck twice equals four pigeons, even if they leave 4 pigeons worth of droppings. A conclusion may be correct even if the argument for it is not.

However, I can agree that a holistic systems view, taking complexity and chaos theory into account, is necessary to creating a sustainable socioeconomic system. I can agree that automation, properly applied, can relieve misery, and maybe even lead to happiness. I can also agree that Capitalism has failed miserably, although I cannot agree that it has failed as profoundly in the past as PJ makes it out. Until recently, life expectancy and quality of life used to be increasing, but the combination of inequality and planetary overshoot is reversing earlier gains. We are now in a world where the past is no predictor of the future.

I wish to join the TZM community in order to continue learning about the movement, to help me reformulate my ideals, and expand my horizons of what is possible.

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Thanks, @CarrollLewis for the great introduction! There is no requirement to be a member of a chapter. We also have a few teams which you may consider to join. Those are mostly focused on Projects.

There seems to be an inactive Philadelphia chapter. But in case you have Facebook, there might be active people in this Facebook group. Or maybe via their Twitter. In case you find some like minded people there, then we can use the existing social-media as your website and add you to the map for others to find you.

Those are new to me, but Iā€™m not much on Twitter. Feel free to share those here one time. It would be interesting since Amsterdam wants to implement the doughnut economy by 2030. Would be good to know Peterā€™s view on it a bit better.

TZM is not dogmatic at all. Please be critical! That will keep us sharp and factual.

Again welcome to the forum, if you have any questions, let us know in Support or join the discussion in Train of thought :slight_smile:

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Thank you, Kees, for the warm welcome, and the invitation to be critical. Itā€™s funny. Most people think that criticism and argument are anti-social, but I actually view them as a form of honor. If you provoke me to think hard enough, and to value your ideas highly enough, to incite me to challenge you, you have accomplished something.

I actually have a google doc where Iā€™m creating a sort of PJ-RevolutionNow-TZM curriculum for myself. Iā€™ve popped your message in there. It may take time for me to explore all those links. First, Iā€™ve got to read TZM Defined now that Iā€™ve finished TNHRM, and watch ZG Moving Forward and Interreflections now that Iā€™ve finished the first two ZG films.

Iā€™m so obsessed with PJ-TZM-RN that Iā€™m slacking on my primary volunteer responsibility of creating a plan to transition my little borough community-wide to clean, renewable energy. My hope is to utilize the Social Network Theory presented in Change: How To Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola to give the borough a bit more change than they bargained for.

To find exchanges between PJ and Kate Raworth, search twitter for ā€œ@ZeitgeistFilm @KateRaworthā€. One of their threads is here.

Youā€™ll see more of me. :wink:

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To be proven wrong means youā€™ve learned something new. That should be considered a gift rather than an insult, indeed.

Thanks for the Twitter link! And good to see youā€™re reading so much. That inspires me to pick up a book again, Iā€™m slacking on that part a bit. :slight_smile:

Hi there! Iā€™m not (yet) affiliated with The Zeitgeist Movement in any way. I signed up for the forum after learning about the movement while searching for others who may have similar interests and goals to those of my own, and to those of an organization which I hope to one day register as a not-for-profit and eventually an NGO. During my search, I came across a documentary, Mind the Matrix, which featured The Zeitgeist Movement if I recall correctly, along with others such as the Venus Project. Iā€™ve yet to post to these forums due to a number of constraints on my time and availability. Iā€™m looking forward to getting to know everyone! Thanks!

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Welcome to our community.
To be fair, the first Zeitgeist documentary is not exactly related to the TZM.
But now that you have watched Addendum and read TNHRM you probably have a better understanding of our train of thought.

Oh and did you know about The Venus Project before you watched Addendum? RIP Jacque

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