Roxanne Meadows - The Venus Project World Lecture Tour

[Roxanne Meadows] We live in the world where our social systems are old. our language is old, The way we acquire goods and services is outdated. Our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic, and a tremendous waste of energy and resources, and our politicians do not provide a way out of these problems. In other words they do not serve us. But our technology is racing forward. We're trying to adjust to the rapid advances in technology with obsolete values, that no longer work in our technological age. What is needed is a change in our sense of direction and purpose, an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike anything in the past. This is what we are presenting here and we call it The Venus Project. And the activist arm organized by Peter Joseph is called the Zeitgeist Movement. When I refer to sustainability, I'm not referring to sustainability for the banks, the corporations, or the obsolete social system that we live under. By sustainability I mean the well-being of all people in a new system that would help bring them to their highest potential, while protecting and preserving the environment. What I'm talking about is intelligently managing earth's resources by using the methods of science to organize and manage society. I'm not referring to scientists running things but the methods of science applied to the way we live and achieve a more humane society for all. Almost everyone prefers using scientific means when it comes to surgery, the building of aircraft, skyscrapers, bridges and automobiles. Over the centuries we've developed a consensus that when it comes to matters of personal safety we choose science and technology rather than primitive belief systems or politics because science has been proven to work. Then why don't we use scientific scales of performance when it comes to planning our societies or our cities, transportation systems, health care and so on? If science has a lot to do with what works then clearly there's much about today's social and economic systems that are not scientific, because things aren't working very well for the majority of the world's people and the environment. If they were, war, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and pollution would have been solved long ago. Unfortunately our social structures evolved when there was no overall global planning, or an understanding of what shapes human behavior, and these are not being considered today. The Venus Project, on the other hand, wants to apply an intelligent method of planetary ... of planning for planetary survival. If we don't apply the scientific method to the way we live, unnecessary human suffering will continue. We have the technological ability and the resources to feed, house, and educate everyone on the planet. But our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods never provided the means to do so. Then how do we ever begin to solve our problems using the methods of the monetary system that we all live under? The use of money is hardly ever examined, but let's consider it, along with how much it influences our behavior and our values. Money itself doesn’t have any value at all. There's no gold or anything to back it up. It's just a piece-... it's just a picture on a cheap piece of paper with an agreement amongst people as to what it will buy. And I would say a forced agreement because we really don't determine the prices of things. If it rained hundred dollar bills right now, everybody would be thrilled except the bankers. So let's look at money. Money is just an interference factor between what you want and what you're able to get. People think in terms of wanting a job to get the money to fulfill their needs. But if they really thought about it, it's not the job that they want or the money, but they want access to the necessities of life. The use of money results in social stratification and elitism. They say in America that people are equal, that everyone is equal. But most people don't drive the kind of car they'd like or live in the kind of house they want. They buy what they can afford. Many cultures tell their people they are free. But one is really as free as their purchasing power. Watch out when some people tell you that they’re free, when the countries and the politicians tell you that you're free. If you really were free, they wouldn't have to tell you. How can someone have freedom when they can’t buy the best medical care or education for their children? Most people are slaves to jobs that they don’t really like, only because they need the money. Many laws are enacted for the benefit of corporations that have the money, that can persuade government officials to make laws to serve their own self-interests. People say that the monetary system produces incentive. This may be true to a limited extent, but it also produces greed, corruption, war, poverty, and tremendous unnecessary human suffering. We really have to look at the entire picture. The monetary system is based on artificial scarcity. For example, food products are sometimes destroyed just to keep the prices up. There’s an enormous waste of energy and resources as a result of frequent superficial design changes ... in order to have a continuous market. This is really evident in the fashion industry. You can be assured if the fashion style for the skirts are up here, the next year they'll be down to your ankles. Our system is based on the need to continuously buy so you're never in fashion in regards to clothing. You and I are merely consumers in this system. There's also a tremendous environmental degradation due to the higher costs of more appropriate waste disposal. In other words, the Earth is being plundered for profit. The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a really good example of this. But one of the greatest wastes of resources and lives is the military. How shameful that it's one of our biggest industries, second to our banking systems. And the armament industry makes their living off of arming all sides. They have no loyalty to anything or anybody other than the need to make money. It's really little understood just how much our values are shaped by the monetary system. Our values are influenced by the media for the benefit of the establishment. We call them “The Unholy 3”: the corporations, the military, and the banks. (Not everybody gets that.) [Laughter] For the most part they determined the public agenda to serve their own narrow self-interests. They perpetuate the illusion that society's values are determined from the ground up and they do this through notions and empty words such as freedom, democracy, and patriotism. What we have all over the world is managed news. They produce the books, the newspapers, the TV shows, the movies, the entertainment, the education, which in turn helps to shape our values and our behavior. In other words, we have an established society that works for just a very little amount of people; it works for just a few, and they influence our values and behavior to keep things as they are. Most important though, when the corporation's bottom line is profit, all decisions are made not for the benefit of you and I, or the environment, but primarily for the acquisition of wealth, property, and power. For instance, if your country really cared about you they wouldn't outsource jobs for lower wages elsewhere. What if all the money in the world suddenly disappeared? As long as we had arable land, factories, technical personnel, and other resources existed, we could build anything we wanted to fulfill most of our needs. The Venus Project advocates that with today's ingenuity we could easily overcome scarcity, which is the cause of most of our problems such as war, corruption, and aberrant behavior. We could accomplish this through implementing a resource-based economy. This is a very different concept than anything that's gone before. It has nothing to do with socialism, communism, capitalism, or fascism. To put it simply, a resource-based economy uses resources rather than money, and all people have access to their needs without the use of money, credit, barter, taxation, or any other form of debt or servitude. All the earth's resources are held as the common heritage of all the earth’s people. The real wealth of any nation is not its money but its resources, and the people who are working toward eliminating scarcity for a more humane society for all. If this is still confusing to you, consider this. If a group of people were stranded on an island with gold, money and diamonds, but the island had no arable land, no fish, no clean water, their wealth would be irrelevant to their survival. Money is not what people need; rather it's the access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy, resources are used directly to enhance the lives of all the world's people. If we managed our resources wisely we could easily produce the necessities of life and provide a very high standard of living for everyone. This may be hard ... to believe but even the wealthiest of today would have a much higher standard of living within a resource-based economy. When science and technology are unleashed into society directly to improve people's lives, without the restrictions of money and the marketplace or patents, we could then begin to know the real meaning of spirituality. Today it's a verbal hobby I’m afraid. In a resource-based economy children would be taught to be problem solvers instead of the parasitic professions that the monetary system produces. These professions do not contribute anything to the well-being of people. These would be fields such as advertising; you don't need it when you eliminate or surpass the need for money; and insurance, and sale and real estate, and law, banking, politics, stockbrokers, and sales just to name a few. I hope I haven’t disturbed too many people here with that. When all the earth's resources are shared there would be no need for the military. This savage profession could easily be surpassed in a resource-based economy. These people are trained merely to be killing machines, to support the establishment's directions. How wonderful it would be if they were trained to be a problem solvers and sent back to school and taught how to bridge the difference between nations without violence. When all the earth's resources are managed and shared as the common heritage of all the world's people the artificial barriers that separate nations would no longer be necessary. Invasion of countries purely for resource theft would be a thing of the past. And that's really why we invade other countries. It's not to bring democracy and freedom, as they tell us in the United States, but it’s to get resources, cheap labor, or access to strategic locations. In a resource-based economy, instead of fighting one another for scarce resources, people will be working towards problem-solving and problems that are common to everyone. People would be working in this highly automated system, but they'd been working at things that are threatening to all of us such as tsunamis, or heart disease, or cystic fibrosis, or earthquakes and things of this nature. Remember that almost every new concept was ridiculed and rejected and laughed at when presented, especially from the experts of the times. All new ideas for social betterment, including women's rights, black rights, and child labor have always been met with great resistance. During the time of the Wright brothers, the distinguished scientists of the times were writing books exclaiming why man can't fly. The Wright brothers didn't read their books and what right ahead and built the flying machine. When science is applied with human and environmental concern to the way we live, we can easily create abundance for all. We will eventually understand that most crimes that fill our jails are a result of the need to acquire money and property in an age of often contrived scarcity of the monetary system. Children will look back and wonder why we couldn't see the limitations of this obscene system. Being civilized is an ongoing process. There are no utopias and there are no final frontiers. You can never create the best laptop; that's the same scenario with our social designs. All things change and are in a constant and continuous process of social evolution. Those countries that try and freeze things and keep things as they are- they will be surpassed. Thank you. [Applause] The Venus Project | World Lecture Tour 2010 Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows traveled to over 18 countries and gave more than 20 presentations about the Venus Project. The lectures were a vision of what the world can be if we apply what we already know to achieve a sustainable New world civilization. TheVenusProject.com