Today I watched the sequel to perhaps one of the most popular online documentaries in history, Zeitgeist, The Movie which Project Unity had a screening of last spring.
Zeitgeist Addendum addresses an extensive, but selective set of issues and problems we face as students and citizens of the 21st century. What I was most fascinated by was the director's decision to directly challenge the validity and sustainability of the monetary system we all currently subscribe to.
We live in a day and age flooded with media which is without question carefully engineered to manage public perception (nice example: go to this webpage and try clicking on the AP link). Recently I have grown to question what all the hype and talk about sustainability truly means.
As you can see by our college's website, Skidmore considers itself "sustainable", but I wonder is this really true?
Some of us who have been here in the past have experienced power outages, underlying a major fault in Skidmore's definition of sustainability. We now have eco-reps, but I am wondering if the eco-reps go through all of the college's waste making sure everything that can be composted is composted, and everything that can be recycled is recycled.
I have always wondered why there are not solar panels on the Tang Art Museum, and why doesn't the school doesn't have a fully-functioning, permacultural organic garden?
How can we be sustainable, when there is not even a major designed to teach and discuss sustainability and sustainability ethics?
These are the more commonly discussed issues regarding the world of "sustainability", but I want to go back to Zeitgeist Addendum. Peter Joseph is directly challenging the validity of the monetary system. As he illustrates, money it seems is falsely created and in turn creates false needs - essentially enslaving populations by putting them in debt.
If money is so real, how does the United States currently owe $10,228,624,401278.26?
It is not worth it for me to spell out this entire situation, when Mr. Joseph has wonderfully explicated it all beautifully in his movie and issued it to the public for free. But you're probably wondering how this relates to Skidmore?
I thought after watching Zeitgeist Addendum - if all the students at Skidmore currently paying for their $50,000 tuition with the help of student loans suddenly got a call from the bank saying their interest rate on their loan was set to increase as a result of recent activity in the financial sector, and the students and their families felt they could not meet these requirements, could these students still attend Skidmore College - or would Skidmore leave them out to dry?
Further....if all the students of Skidmore College decided to stop paying the college in United States "legal tender" would it survive?
These are the things I am thinking about, and these are the things I think we should all be thinking about. I am convinced that we will forever have excessive violence, poverty, corrupt politics, and destruction to our sacred natural environment as a result of a monetary system. While it may seem completely out of reach, keep in mind that the present moment we live in today - was unimaginable in previous epochs (with the exception of Hopi prophecy :).
It is up to us to help weave our present dreams into future realities. Otherwise it could be more Facebook, more alcohol, more bad sex, more torment, more worthless degrees, terrible jobs, corporately configured democratic (s)elections, spiritual voids, loss of freedoms, and more and more and more debt.
Please leave comments, vote in the poll above, watch the new Zeitgeist and befriend me on Facebook if you find this to be interesting. My name is Jason Takahashi - I am a senior, studying Government at Skidmore College.
A movie I made last spring as a current event...without doing anything received 1,544 views (that's 1,524 more than just presenting it to my class ;)
