My experience with The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM)
I’m on a group of RBE’ers — Resource Based Economy advocates and activists. Today a member (Mark) posted in the group’s facebook Messenger app, a link to a TZM meeting that was going to be held today at 4pm. Not much notice, but I knew I could fit it in after a walk for with my furry friend, Ajax, if I did it right away. No not much notice at all I thought and that it wasn’t a very good way of managing a group. But it’s a good way to keep us nimble I thought again, good practice for when things get really hot which they’re about to get.
We don’t know what could happen in these days of covid grim-reapering. Most people realize we are at the convergence of time where we are shifting. From what to what, we’re not sure of but we all feel that our world is shifting very rapidly by what is coming out about happenings that have heretofore been hidden from our purview. It’s like a whole other world was going on that we knew nothing about. We have been living in a sort of hypnosis where we have been led to believe what is presented on the media as being true, when the media only broadcasts half truths or whatever it takes to keep the hypnosis ongoing, even if it’s outright lies.
I could talk about this till the cows come home but I’ll stick to the incident that happened today.
Oh uh, the call was being held on discord which is not one of my favorite platforms. I can’t understand why it is so popular although I can if we consider that it’s more a site for “techies”. I personally find the interface quite ridiculous — one cannot tell who is talking; the chat has a different screen so the user has to keep switching from one window to another. Plus the site is so busy and it’s hard to tell what clicking on an icon will do. That is mainly my fault as I have avoided commenting on discord because of its confusing arrangement. Also what kind of a name is that for a conversation killer hey — discord! If words have power, what is that word doing there?
I knew it wouldn’t take long before something would piss me off. I see patriarchy deeply ingrained in every conversation. In all my life, I didn’t recognize it but now when it happens it really pissed me off. Before I was still pissed off but I didn’t know why. Now I do.
We are used to hearing from men almost exclusively. When women speak, it is only tolerated so much and then she is accused of taking up too much time and must quickly end what she’s saying. The content of her speech is rarely acknowledged. Often it wouldn’t have made much difference if she didn’t speak at all, although it seems like it’s fair if she gets to say something, even though men don’t really believe what a woman has to say is of much importance. That’s ok they’re entitled to it but I’m just pointing it out. Yet men can be the only ones speaking throughout a meeting and nobody calls them on taking up too much time. For centuries we have become used to hearing men talk but we are not used to hearing women talk, this is a new phenomenon. Especially when a woman is saying things that are not normally spoken about. It makes people feel uncomfortable.
When a woman speaks, patriarchal men barely address what she says, if they address it at all. On this call, that was done but subtly, before resuming the discussion about the bot, as if I had said nothing. Usually it switched almost immediately to a subject men think is more important, which was about the technology — the bot they installed to weed out undesirable comments.
They didn’t ask anyone else about what the bot was going to do they simply went ahead and decided that this is what would be done. They made a bot that would weed out undesirable discourse. They believe in good faith that this will make things easier for group members to speak. I tried to get across to them that these ideas are totally patriarchal. The way we speak too is patriarchal, the style of speech. I call it the “block style” where you have a spiel, then someone else has a spiel, etc, etc. A kind of “blocky” way of talking where if someone wants to stop at a point to ask a question on that particular spot, the speaker keeps talking because he hasn’t finished his block talk yet and you would be considered to be interrupting. But real conversation is made up of interrupting. If we had to wait for permission conversations wouldn’t be worth having at all. They wouldn’t edify us.
Women were in the home while men created the society we have to live in. This has always been the case and still is because we’re still going by the same methods. Women’s talk is very different from the block style.
The feminine is different as we all know but what exactly is it when women have never been listened to? Who decides what is feminine? Notice when there are talks, men don’t notice that they’re doing all the talking or most of it. When this occurs, a good way of moving towards equality is to invite women to speak. Same with men who may have not spoken. Invite them to, notice others but you don’t have to think for them. It is up to them to speak. Just make the conditions ripe for them. It doesn’t mean some people will have something to say, sometimes they may just want to listen. That’s what we do when we are learning something new. I do that too whenever I am in conversations where I am unfamiliar with the subject.
Proper conversations — you know — conversations between equals, is done in a more fluid way than the block style. It’s more the meadow style, like wildflowers growing in a meadow. They don’t grow in straight lines or boxes or neat rows. They don’t grow in any discernible pattern. Well that is the feminine tendency too, to be spontaneous and “in the moment” and not follow any particular pattern. A woman is used to speaking from her heart. This is something our society is very deficient on.
In this society everything is scheduled and controlled. It’s like everyone is scared that something might happen that may offend someone. However that only applies about offending the orthodoxy mind you. Because the non-orthodox is offended manifold with the charade of this culture but nobody cares about their offense in that case. Personally, I find it highly offensive to see any form of censorship. But nobody cares about my offense. They prefer censorship to dealing with matters as they arise. People don’t realize what they are doing when they block someone from expressing themselves. It makes the blocker weak and it stagnates our evolution.
What they are doing is continuing to code the patriarchal programming. If we truly believe in individual sovereignty and equality, then we must allow everyone to express themselves in whatever manner they choose. If it is too unpalatable, then express that unpalatableness to the person directly, dealing with things as they come. But oh we don’t like to do that. No need to tell adults at the very outset that certain speech will not be tolerated. This is supremacy. They blocked me on the grounds that they interpreted as aggressive. They said it as an accusation and didn’t discuss it with me, I had to fight to object to their interpretation and they wouldn’t have it. They blocked me from everything, the chat as well as the video conference. They even kept me blocked to this very moment, and so I couldn’t participate in the discussion that was held after the meeting ended. This is tyranny in our midst. This is tyranny dressed up as cool.
The patriarchal programming is so regular that I can usually forecast it. The only other woman to speak (and I don’t know how many women or men were on the call but there were about eight people all told) was a young woman who spoke only to side with the men, which is exactly the way of the programming. Women feel sorry for men and think men need defending against another woman, even though I was one woman “versus” three or more men. This is a program too. Women do this a lot. I am not downgrading anyone I am simply stating what happens on a regular basis. It is something that I feel is so insidious that it corrodes us from the inside out.
It was nonetheless and interesting conversation but the interpretation of what I was saying still eluded them all. I was against the bot that was going to be used to censor and I asked what is being done with the comments that the bot removes. I never got an answer. I don’t think they have thought of that yet.
The answer to all this is we must change from sticking only to the time factor or always rushing out talks or limiting them or boxing them in. Or talking on certain subjects or for a certain period of time. When the subject arises we must talk then. Ideas can’t always be scheduled. If we want to make inroads into another paradigm, we need to be flexible and nimble. The ones who are going to get through to the other side are going to have to embody these new traits. We have been taught to be just the opposite. We need to relearn everything. TZM ignores all that and drones on about technology as though that is going to save us.
What galls me is the way activist groups squander other activist’s time. They don’t value that everyone is there of their own free time. Nobody is being paid for this time, this time is important to them. Some activists work with their whole heart yet the group tyrants abandon people as though they were ballast.
I had a lot to say at this meeting because I have worked on solutions. The TZM has been going for a good many years and it has done barely a thing. I can see why. They use the same old techniques, the same old attitudes that keep us grinding away at re-coding the diabolical programs that we need to abandon. They think if they are flavored with a contemporary patina of civility that it means progress.
At no time do I use ad hominen or speak aggressively because it simply isn’t in me. Must people like myself, who are passionate about the world, have to speak in block style too in order to be acknowledged? Of course I won’t be doing that any time soon, but I have no animosity. I simply want to say things that have not been brought up before. I have studied them and I don’t know of anyone else who has. You see I closed my bank accounts. That cleared my head to be able to see reality and notice what money does to our thinking and to our psyche. Not many people can put their money where their mouth is like I have. I’m not bragging just stating that effort has meaning. You can’t get the same results by pretending to do the cutting edge things.
TZM talks about a no-money world but it keeps capitulating to capitalism. At one point they were talking about a no-money party which will go through the political system. That isn’t an ironic joke I assure you. At one point they spoke about how they don’t want people debating on this forum, they want it to be a safe place for everybody. So there we have it — tyrants deciding what is good for everybody.
Until we address the unconscious belief systems that churn out the barbarity and supremacy of this culture, TZM will simply be shifting the deck-chairs, nothing more. They can pat themselves on the back as being the coolest thing in town but they need to realize the programs they continue to perpetrate will get us nowhere fast.
The change needs to come from within, from the heart not just from the head. We are not robots we are humans. Don’t make it hard to be able to tell the difference. Honor your humanness. I am not waiting around for someone to program me, to specify how I must express myself. I speak what comes from my heart and I speak from experience and observation and examination. Because my style doesn’t fit the mold, tyrants want to censor me. They did it to me for very feeble reasons, reasons that give in to ego — reasons that put them in a power-over position. Imagine what they can do to others. Pity the only woman that spoke, did so to oppose one of her sisters, not realizing that the world we have, always had, and the one we may end up hurled into, is a mercilessly misogynistic arrangement. It doesn’t cater to women and children or to “minorities”. To support patriarchy is to sentence women and children to a world of abuse. It’s very rooted, it won’t come out easy. It’s something that has to be mined and dug out. I’m still seeing it in myself even though I have been training myself out of it. That’s why I am able to pass my knowledge over to others.
Yet I am aware that I must raise my game and get the new attitude out in a way that can be synthesized by a population that has been exploited and hypnotized by patriarchal thinking. So much rests on this. So much rests on the way men and women relate to each other and to children, to their own bodies, to animals and insects and plants. This is how we teach our children — by demonstration. We need to be fully cognizant that humans are not the only creatures and that every being has as much right to be here and to express itself as I myself do. Talk about a no-money world is hollow without addressing the grotesque belief systems we have lived under for generations and indeed thousands of years. Patriarchy is at the root of almost all our problems, money being an offshoot of patriarchy as well as wars, pedophilia, competition, greed, self-aggrandizement.
Together now — male and female — we are able to lay down the conventions for a new attitude. This attitude is one of moving towards equality — that you are another me and I am because we are. Follow the Golden Rule and simplify our lives as well as make this earth a thriving and stimulating and fun place to take this kaleidoscopic ride.