Brandon Kristy - Unifying Threads of a New Paradigm - Los Angeles Z-Day, 2014

ZDay 2014 Los Angeles CA Let's give a warm welcome to Brandon. [Applause] Hello everybody. Welcome to Zeitgeist Day, our annual awareness event. The title of my talk is ‘Unifying Threads of a New Paradigm.’ I’ll be talking about the train of thought here today that we hear a lot about in the Movement. A train of thought: a unified worldview for activism. How this worldwide activist community that we see throughout the world is beginning to share this common unifying worldview, unifying around early seeds of it, if you will, and how this worldview can further unify our efforts. And I'll be talking about how this unifying worldview points toward what we advocate here: a new paradigm based on reason and resources, and how this train of thought can be established in that new paradigm as a foundational approach for human society and economy, which defines our times. Lastly I'll be talking about how the last great task remaining in embracing this new paradigm is a humane shift in culture, a conscious shift within ourselves, for we are the ones who ultimately create our society. It can come from nowhere else, right? These are the two parts: Identifying this common train of thought is kind of the first section, and the last section will be about the social value shift: changing ourselves, changing culture. There is a common life thread that runs throughout all of nature. Some call it survival, some call it sustainability. There are social and natural awarenesses and actions for the all-out quest for life support that all life engages nearly everything with. I want to break these awarenesses down that comprise this unifying worldview. The growing worldwide activist community is beginning to take hold of this common life thread, a unity of activism like never before seen in history, a global finding of common ground through shared oppression, shared values, shared awareness of structural flaws within our society, and through a general shared interest in a better world. Ideas like equality, democracy, sustainability, human rights, freedom from oppression, ending war, ending corruption, have become early seeds for common ground from which to unify our activism. This early stage common ground must further root and continue to be specified and understood, for the purpose of building that global community that can continue to share and build upon common goals towards a more ecologically sustainable and life-supporting social system. So we dig into this working train of thought, this unifying thread that we see emerging under the surface of our collective activism. We hear a lot about it, we advocate a train of thought, or the scientific method applied for social concern; concepts within the Movement. And I want to get into that here and the various concepts that make that up. Let’s start with nature's universally shared innate strategy for sustaining life. I don't know what it's called throughout nature or in the cosmos but we here, we call it science. How does science relate on the everyday community level? or to social changes even? Science is highly intellectualized, highly methodical. Theories, calculating things, testing things, dry lab work, indulging in repetitive processes of studying random intricacies of nature. Too abstract to be applicable on the personal or societal level, right? However we all use science constantly, acknowledged or not, continuously taking in information and feedback from the environment, processing it and adjusting our actions accordingly, everything from timing and beating a lunch rush, to avoiding contact with a substance with which one develops an allergic reaction to. See, the core purpose of science for living things is to gain awareness, awareness of ourselves, and of the natural world, for the purpose of getting better and better at living, at sustaining. To fulfill our life needs in an ever-changing natural environment, better mastering nature's challenges for improved species sustainability. A bird learns the best source for food and will return to that source until conditions change. It's about the nearly automatic natural adjustment to environmental feedback for improved quality of life. Science is this simple, and our potential to flourish through this kind of natural world mastery is truly profound, as we are seeing in the modern society. When we step back to view the relevance of science to society, how we harness the Earth, how we organize our species survival from a baseline context, science is of pinnacle relevance, yet to fully rise to its proper societal and economic roles. As there could be said to be a science to everything, from survival, to intuition, to diet, we appropriately extend it to our economic and social institutions, where this foundational ... life-sustaining strategy can become a central origin of influence with respect to how we reason and orient society, leaving us with a common ground train-of-thought approach. This strategy here, this scientific approach, is the only true life-sustaining approach we've ever known. Science and its methods have been recognized on and off throughout history, fighting again to remain at the heart of our society, among all other false constructs that we have built on top of this natural inherent strategy to sustain life. A strategy that is there to be utilized and cooperated with. Moving from the umbrella of science presented here will be a core set of awarenesses, concepts that could be said that comprise a unified worldview for activism. An encompassing adaptive train of thought that is unified by the very nature of its reasoning, purpose and awareness set, from which to further unify our global activism around, and identify as a foundation for economic thought and action in a new global paradigm. So let's jump into it. Let’s start with the life ground. This is about actively identifying and acknowledging our basic life needs and essentials, bringing them forward and keeping them established as the central primary focus to our society. Life needs may seem obvious but they currently play secondary to business survival. We need food, water, clean air, shelter, health care, safety, security, culture, play, a way to participate and contribute in the world. And we need a healthy ecosystem which we exist and rely upon. As we look honestly at our society and go about changing it, as the issues at hand are seemingly too complex with no grounds for resolution, we return to these core guiding requirements of what sustains us. And from there, priority and resolution becomes clearer, eventually giving way to a more valid life-focused social system. From the life ground, we have universal human values. Naturally there's a commonly shared set of human values that runs consistent throughout the world cultures, common threads like health and well-being, social bond, self-improvement, empathy, trust, fairness, responsibility, knowledge, life over death, low stress environments. These shared human values in combination with the prior life ground awareness stands powerfully above all divisions and relative viewpoints to bring a unity to our perspectives and worldviews. And then interdependence and symbiosis. Interdependent meaning we are mutually dependent upon each other as a global community. And symbiotic meaning our long-term interconnected life-supporting relationships between human society and with the planet. Our world is highly interdependent and symbiotic, whether recognized or not. We have populated and industrialized all corners of our world, having the ability to alter our Earth system dramatically. And since all social and natural systems feed across each other as one interconnected system, negatively impacting behaviors or events affect the whole planet, making this interdependent symbiotic awareness a core component to our worldviews for activism and change. We live in a world community now, and it's about embracing that global relationship. Transience is our next thread here. Another important awareness in our unifying train of thought for change: the idea that life is always changing. The only constant is change itself. Our collective practices and outlooks on reality have always undergone change, as new awareness and abilities come forward. Through the recognition of this transience, it's important to be real with ourselves that present awareness, ability and outlooks will likely be altered or entirely superseded, to some degree at some point, by new knowledge and ability, as our long history of culture and technical changes clearly shows us. And so we go to adaptation: an integrity, or respecting and aligning with the leading edge of our ever-improving intelligences, abilities, and natural changes. To avoid getting stuck on current ways that may be inhibiting such progress. We’ll always be confronted with new opportunities to adjust society for the better. And we want to be sharp and honest in recognizing those new and better ways. Activism and social change is all about adaptation, and any resulting paradigm should be oriented around this strength, likewise. Efficiency. The concept efficiency is another core attribute relating to human society at a common core level. We want to be efficient in our economy and society. All life and living communities seek to preserve as much time and energy as possible in pursuit of sustaining life itself. This is built into life. We as a society also want to sustain ourselves as best we can with the least time and energy expended, and our emerging potentials for this efficiency are truly amazing and transformative. So we can begin to further root this everyday life-relevant principle as a primary role in our thinking and approaches to social management, as a new sustainable era draws near. Then we come to the concept of ephemeralization, another core awareness integral to our collective activism and way forward. This concept of ephemeralization, a term coined by futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, to describe the trend of doing more and more with less and less, in the context of sustainability and economic life-supporting processes. How we harness and convert energy, how we produce materials, how we channel those materials and resources, transportation, communications, construction, how fast and accurate information is processed. All with less effort, less time, less material, less waste, less space taken up. We're talking about technical adjustments and improvements that simplify, optimize and minimize economic operation to better and better fulfill human life. This is a key awareness for society in our growing worldwide Earth movement to understand as our emerging technical abilities bring about a new world. And then we come to sustainability, predominately in activist community today, almost passé. What is sustainability? Sustainability quite simply is the web of life itself, on which our long-term survival depends. It is life support over time. And so in the human and ecological context here, that which is sustained, as a sustainable communion between man and nature, does not come through endless employment, economic expansion, and self-interested competitive advantage. What is sustain in the broad sense is the proper ongoing integration with this web of life, accounting for, supporting, and combining with its innate life-supporting processes. Our ability to sustain and interlink with nature is a defining goal for our species and it can't be understated that our activism continue to find a common pursuit and awareness in sustainability within its proper ecological context, as the term has been largely coopted and hence trivialized and misunderstood. And then the natural-world natural-law train of thought, the next concept here, that works to support our unifying thread awareness. The acknowledgment of the natural world, aligning our way of life and methods of economy with the governing physical laws with which we are bound. For an ongoing failure of our human society has apparently been to leave out and override these natural law awarenesses. Yes, we've been able to utilize nature, we've evolved ourselves, evolved our tools, but human society has often struggled to respect and understand nature’s science and limits. Even in indigenous cultures who were typically known for their deep connection to nature, historically there have been cases that where such communities have failed to fully respect and align their methods with their immediate environment, overwhelming its limits, causing die off and division and violence, and general regress. And then we have technology and the technical relationships of everything. When we come to this, technology can be described as anything with utility and function. Like the human body itself is made up of various technologies, each executing specific functions. A tree is made up of its technologies, its roots suck water from the earth like a straw, channeling it through its trunk to its branches, and its leaves act like little solar panels that collect the sunlight for energy. There's an inherent technical order and use of technology in nature. Technology for us has obviously developed from our use of fire, to language, to maps, to life-saving medicine to learning how to harness the Earth system in its entirety. This basic use of technology gives proper warmth and humanity to our technological ability, and to use it - all financial affordability aside, and assuming we work together as a world team - to use that ability in preserving all of humanity by transforming our world economic way of life, to provide the necessities of life to the global population. Relieving us from the labor obligations we have, transitioning our toxic energy practices to clean abundant energies, along with the resulting peace and balance that comes with such a global cooperative world. The real technology though, the real technology is our application of it: how it's applied, the system through which it can be applied or not. Through this humane, direct technical view of possibility, a much more common ground approach to society and global activism emerges, where a self-realizing coercive action presents itself on its own, ultimately transcending variance of opinion, politics, affordability, or any "isms." And then we have the concept of systems or systemic thinking. This is about seeing and understanding life in terms of living systems that make up the whole, integrated whole, of life. Organized into an infinite, almost infinite, apparent seemingly infinite regressive nesting systems, a seamless unity of which none are free and independent, patterned throughout nature as these interconnected networks. (This is the pattern.) All organisms are systems, a tree, an animal, a human being, which themselves are made up of smaller systems like organs or leaves, and then into smaller systems still, like cells. And of course we recognize larger community systems, like an ecosystem or a social system. A system's structure and purpose are the sources of its own behaviors. And so the strongest leverage point in this sense within a given system would be to change its underlying structure and purpose, which aren’t typically very noticeable, but it’s where significant change happens. And significant major changes are less to do with altering its surface elements or parts, which are actually more noticeable. And so our activism for change can tend to only look at the surface expression of things rather than underlying structure. This systems awareness gives us a common framework naturally for understanding how our social environment systems, social and environmental systems, work and interrelate, where we can look at our social problems as a whole, instead of treating them independently, each needing their own solution, bringing a needed simplicity and unity to our frame of reference for activism and transforming systems. Causality, this is our next thread here, is about cause and effect relationships. Causality: cause and effect, feeding forward from the awareness of systems. It's about looking beyond the problems that float in our face every day, to source down, source down and gain as close an understanding as possible to the true root origins and causes of our issues, so we can correct and remove it. This way of reasoning our social problems is critical to exercise as the course of action we do or don't take are nationally based upon and dictated by whatever we establish, as the cause of something. So, developing a shared work ethic ... towards understanding causality can be influential not only in finding proper solutions, but in getting on the same page as a worldwide effort, with respect to root causes to social and ecological problems, as it’s easy to stop short, or become lost with respect to where the problems really lie. So we want to take due thought and effort to get to the bottom of our common issues, to be as effective and as unified as possible; we don't want to waste our time. Synergy and cooperation. The next thread in establishing a unifying common ground is the idea of this synergy and cooperation: working together for added benefit to the whole, as opposed to working independently for less of a benefit, for an individual or a group. We have of course evolved through synergy and cooperation; life and nature demands it. The difference going forward is that this cooperation and synergy take a global context, and that they become core premises of our global economy, instead of this slight and indirect cooperation we see today which is dominated by layers and degrees of competition, as the power we have to transform and elevate society through the momentum of synergy and through the mutual advantage of cooperation is truly profound when we connect the possibilities. And then there's the open source concept where we begin to transcend our current restrictive paradigm of patents and property rights and self-interests, to openly share improvements, ideas and designs, learning from each other and collectively developing and building upon each other's ideas and technologies for the benefit of everyone, accelerating our collective ability and awareness. And then there's inequality, or rather equality as a value, to unify our efforts with. Our inclination towards greater equality, trending throughout history in various stages of more equal rights, ever-present in many regions of the world today, bringing unrest and activism together around common awareness and goals. Equality is fundamental; it's part of our biology, beyond the obvious physical effects for those with less access to means of life. We humans have evolved as highly social, empathic creatures and so at the end of the day, whether advantaged or disadvantaged, the imbalance is psychologically destabilizing on both ends, from the highest affluence to the lowest of the low. And current research clearly shows this strong relationship, as Jason just gave a talk on, between inequality and social problems; the relationship is very strong. Now validated with a scientific basis, we can continue to unify ourselves economically across society. Highlighted here was a core group of understandings - that I thought were a core group understandings - that comprise a unifying worldview train of thought for activism across the world, which are all basically trains of thoughts in themselves. You could drill down and they connect to each other. They all kind of make up this connection of understanding and a unified common-ground train of thought, that could very well serve as a potential foundation for new human life - for a new human life system in future society. And so we could view it this way: a train of thought, a concept, rather a connection of understanding, a connection of awarenesses, of what each imply in relation to one another, how they support and amplify a larger picture, and a more accurate context for activism, human sustainability, and progress. With this connection of understanding, when we observe causality and how to source down problems, when we recognize the patterns of transience and adaptation, when we understand all known methods and awarenesses are in constant state of change, with new developments exponentially increasing, when we take a global systems view of life, when we understand our potentials to elevate the entire world population, when we look at our basic scientific unifying awarenesses, and when we reference our human sustainability from these scientific awarenesses, a clear path and course of action surfaces before us. Social change and transforming our world won't be easy but brought to the surface here is a unifying thread from which to center ourselves around, which is ultimately nameless, belonging to no one, sourceless, existing as a self-evident logical connection of understanding again, that presents the way forward on its own really, which ultimately transcends, again most divisions and parties of thought, views and allegiances to find value and meaning in unifying with a group thread of awareness. Gone are the days of “isms;” there is only an ever-expanding connection of understanding on behalf of the collective consciousness, an evolving, unified common ground approach. In turning ourselves back towards our world with this unified worldview to look at our global way of life, with new eyes and clean awareness, we see how forgotten these guiding basic threads are in our global way of life as a whole. We see a system that is unfit going forward to fulfill our pattern of evolution. We see a world system attempting balance and progress through self-interested competitive advantage and see the structural flaws of this, not based on reality. There are inherent structural issues with our life system that not only perpetually provoke problems and conflict, has a toxic incentive system and class divide built into it, but actually restricts progress and solutions overall, by design. That striving up in a competitive survival environment breeds corruption and problems no matter what class you find yourself in, that our condition of greed, status, corruption, violence are not to do with any human nature but are in fact being provoked by the current system. A new way of life is coming to the surface through our collective common ground awareness of ourselves, of our planet, our current system, and of emerging possibilities, where we can now trust to work together, we can trust each other to work together, to share resources and meet human needs directly, doing much more for ourselves as a whole with much less complexity, struggle, and suffering. Significant vision on what a new human life system would be would be like, from its intricacies to is broadest structure and intents, are detailed in the new TZM book, which is available at cost, across the room, over there. (6 bucks at cost) As the current paradigm erases itself through installation of new technologies for greater cost efficiency, eventually eliminating most jobs, giving way to a new paradigm, we will see a new paradigm... we will see a new paradigm one way or another as the system kind of erases itself. It's just a question of whether it will be sustainable, or humane. The path is clear, merges again on its own. We have the vision, we have the technology, we have the awareness. We have the energy and resources needed for a new sustainable paradigm. So what really is missing here? Of all our great achievements, of all the great possibilities and potentials we have to create a better society, there is one achievement yet to come forward in which the application of all our achievements and discoveries hinge upon, in order to be put to use towards a better world. And that is us: the social achievement. How do we change our society? We change ourselves: how we think, our values and perspectives, which we support such a system with. For a society is enabled by none other than the people who inhabit that system, and the worldviews they maintain. Conversely we are born into and under the influence of such a system from the very beginning. So the haunting aspect of this is that a circular reinforcement is at play, where the very system we walk and come to expect and are influenced and shaped by, we feed forward right back into itself, creating a culture-to-system, system-to-culture chain of causality, rolling us onward or downward by its own momentum and existence. So it falls to us, to stop and think and look around and start being at the cause of a better world, and less at the effect of a culture in decline, breaking this never-ending chain of influence. This shift in consciousness is initiated through new awareness of ourselves, of each other, of our interdependence, of new possibility. These new awarenesses are brought on by broad educational awareness efforts, whether through grassroots activism, personal passive activism. The arts are a great way. Or through live every day reinforcement of more humane values and actions, both on a personal level and in our social environments. Achieving an inner balance is great, achieving well-being and inner balance is great. But going beyond that even, beyond the internal landscape, to have an active influence, active influence on our fellow man, right? It's about having more empathy, receptivity and trust, patience, honesty, compassion, acceptance, connecting more with others, daring to connect with people. Being more aware of our surroundings and the kind of impact we're having in our social environment. Being aware of our own ingrained behaviors, pausing more before we react, non-violence in the face of aggression, living with passion, purpose, but also being present and vulnerable and flexible, thinking for ourselves, valuing a common ground also - it’s very important here - valuing a common ground communication and understanding. Now widening our circle of concern to that whole of society and learning to override our patterns of fear and impulsivity, self-interest, self-destruction, anger, division, blame, revenge, while inspiring and educating each other through a common ground thread of awareness and values. These concepts are recognized worldwide, running throughout the fabric of society if one looks close enough: in social groups, communities, various subcultures, and lie at the core of world religions, again if you look close enough. There's a very practical direct book actually out there about this science of transformation, this value shift. It’s called ‘Mindsight,' it’s by Daniel Siegel, ‘The New Science of Personal Transformation.’ It talks a lot about this personal shift and hence cultural shift. It has a lot of positive information about there, about modern brain, how our modern brains evolved around pro-social behaviors, and really details the process of behavioral changes. It's hard; there's nothing more sacred and rigid than one's views at the end of the day, or identity and sense of self. This sharing of awareness along with one's personal changes and reinforcement of new values through social interactions may seem basic and minor or even insignificant amid the global picture, as one hardly sees any kind of tangible or immediate return reciprocated on such efforts. But this involves culture itself: a living breathing machine that drives us essentially, that drives essentially every aspect of our society. This involves who we are, what we are, what we're aware of, what we think. There is no greater origin of influence for change, as our human awareness is naturally what all tangible physical change ultimately comes from, right? We're all part of a great evolutionary shift in our world, and I'm not talking about some creepy internal delusion, some self-indulgent cultish thing where we subject everyone to our mission as something were imposing here onto history. Anyone can see our time is marked by a great turning point that we'll either take or not. Not to say that there haven’t been turning points throughout history, there obviously have been and will be, and our time is marked as such. If there's anything I wish to leave us with here today it's that there is a common ground worldview emerging amid our world activism and scientific aware- scientific communities, a foundational train of thought based on the fundamentals of life and nature, from which we can work in unify from, that is beginning to take hold overall relativism of thought. It's time to move beyond the chairs of excessive pontification, and theory, to stand and work together in a unified understanding, towards a new age of species sustainability and enlightenment. We're not doomed to infinite differing outlooks of points of views. It's important to be honest about our real tendencies to take up positions simply for the sake of having one. The real value at this stage of endless division and debate is in coming together on common threads, as our roads will eventually meet. At the end of the day... remaining positional over finding our common threads, at the end of the day, within our dialogues isn't going to get it done with respect to collective changes and collective shifts in our values and thinking. Unacceptable. All hands must begin to grasp a common compass of awareness and values, a common worldview, and begin to unleash the power of our humanity, stirring not so far beneath the surface of world cultures. Finding this unifying thread along with the continual humane shift in culture outlined here, is what social change really hinges upon at this time. Until then, solutions and advancements will sit on the side as near novelties, only to be slowly absorbed in the old dinosaur of the established order. And so I stand here today with the purpose of not to introduce anything new, or to get you on some side or anything like that but to bring about an awareness and a common ground unified focus, laying foundations for our collective activism towards a new social system. The Zeitgeist Movement is a global activist group working to bring about this empathic shift in culture by inspiring a socially conscious global perspective within the individual, and educating through this unifying train of thought about the new sustainable and humane paradigm possible, should we find it within ourselves to come together as a global community for the common goal of peace and well-being. So let's continue to put ourselves out there with integrity regardless of reciprocation, and shift our world one day and project at a time. It's up to us. It's one life as far as we know, let's make it count. We’ve got a great opportunity, let’s seize it. Thanks for listening today. [Applause] The Zeitgeist Movement www.thezeitgeistmovement.com