This documentary details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.
The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world’s people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.
Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today.
If you would like to help with the creation of a translation for this and/or other TVP videos, please write to LinguisticTeam@thevenusproject.com
Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows traveled to over 18 Countries and gave more that 20 presentations about the Venus Project. The lectures were a vision of what the world can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable New world civilization.
View a video of all the locations visited on our tour. We want to thank Christopher Madden for all the work he did developing these videos for each location and Luke Wonderly for his participation as well.
This was an amazing adventure and it was thrilling for us to meet all those who worked so hard to help make this tour such a success.
We deeply regret that we could not do the last four lectures In Canada due to physical difficulties that Jacque was having.
He is doing much better now and we are now resuming The Venus Project Tours in Venus, Florida.
Germany was a rewarding stop. Early in our visit we went to a Geo Thermal plant. While this plant was not hot enough to produce steam to convert into power, it did use the heat of the earth to deliver hot water to about 4000 homes. A company drilling for oil was disappointed when, at over 2,000 meters down, water came gushing out. Now it is put to good use and converted to Germany’s two most advanced geothermal projects, which are highly automated, and only require three people to manage.
We spent a lot of time doing interviews in homes, parks, and our hotel room, and of course there were a lot of meals taken together. One of the members suggested printing a portion of a 10 Euro bill and folding it in such a way that you can only see the ends. The bill would look authentic, but when opened it would show information in the middle about The Project. When left on the ground, it doesn’t take long before someone picks them up and reads them. They certainly attract people’s attention.
Often the question comes up, as it did in Germany as well, how are we going to “get rid” of the monetary system? We are not trying to get rid of it but to eventually surpass it. It has to go through its evolutionary stages and die of its own accord as it is doing now. Trying to superimpose a system before it’s time will not work. Those upholding this system have been at it a long time and they are good at squelching those who oppose it. We are not advocating revolutionary tactics of burning banks or physically destroying large corporations. This would not bring about social change. If the existing system does not provide human needs such as healthcare, housing, education, etc. people will seek another direction. People have to be informed of another possible alternative and work at introducing it to others to help bring that about.
For people without the luxury of being able to analyze social conditions and their causes and the factors that shape behavior, or who are unable to ask correct questions concerning our predicaments, it will take a direct hit to their standard of living to interest them in better alternatives. This may take the form of the loss of their jobs or homes, but this doesn’t mean they will recognize a more beneficial direction either.
No one is pointing out the real culprit of our decaying social conditions in the mainstream media so most people have very few tools to evaluate with relevant information. Questioning the system itself is never done on such shows and has always been taboo. What we have in managed news.
The job is to introduce another direction to work towards. People who have new inventions have to explain to the public the advantages of that invention. This is true for new social ideas as well. As this system becomes inoperable, the job is to explain to others the advantage of this new social direction in a way that makes it seem feasible to them.
As in all of our other stops, our German presentation was very well received.
The people of England were very socially concerned and forward thinking. This was true at every stop. It is very rewarding for us to find so many people open and searching for new ideas while also anxious to understand the conditions shaping human behavior and the forces influencing our present inhumane social patterns.
There were a lot of questions in the Bristol lecture, but many were not questions but rather statements about how things won’t work because of conditions in today’s society. These represent misconceptions about the direction and methods used in The Venus Project. For instance, there was a statement that some will always want more than others and that there will always be greed. This statement assumes that people are born with the behavior of greed, perhaps a greedy gene, which as a concept is very amusing to me. Some prominent scientists are even claiming there is a republican and democratic gene. Perhaps some have a Gucci gene while others have a Chanel gene. I am waiting for them to come out with the wealthy and poor gene.
Actually this concept is similar to the cast system idea in India where those who are born poor are that way because of past life experiences and have to suffer through their given position in life as a result. In other words it is their karma. Many of these “predestined” people catch rats and eat them as their main staple because that is all that is available to them. This may have been a very good control device over those who are extremely poor in India. This philosophy helps to keep the wealthy comfortable with their positions, prejudices, and bigotries. In other words, blaming genes, like karma, functions as a scapegoat so that one does not have to look at the society that perpetuates and generates these behaviors.
Greed, like other behavior, is acquired from our experiences and the society we are raised in. The monetary system that fosters competition and self-centeredness also reinforces greed with rewards of wealth, property, and position. There is also scarcity and the threat of scarcity that make greed a useful behavior when each person or family has to satisfy their own individual needs. Greed then is one manifestation of insecurity.
When one behaves greedily, one can acquire more material rewards, and the more material things one has, the more admired one is in the monetary system. The name Donald Trump is known all over the world, but how many know of Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield? Many would be dead were it not for their work in helping to develop the MRI machine.
People think of greed as an inborn trait that will always be with us despite environmental influences because it has been so all through history. But there are records of people who where brought up communally who did not manifest this behavior because there were no benefits derived from it. Actually, it is the condition of scarcity or the threat of scarcity throughout history that has generated greed. People have the capability of a wide range of behaviors. What is necessary is to identify the conditions in society that are responsible for shaping certain behaviors.
When things are abundant there is no greedy behavior associated with it. The air we breathe is vital to existence but we don’t regulate the number of breaths people inhale because it is abundant. But on a submarine where this is a fixed commodity, no one would allow another to light up a cigarette because it is clearly understood that clean air is limited.
Of course abundance is not desirable in the monetary system because keeping things scarce enables one to raise the price of goods and services. Even food crops are destroyed in order to keep prices higher.
The direction of a Resource Based Economy is to make goods and services so abundant that greed becomes an anomaly of the past. It would become as unnecessary as still reaching for the gearshift after one has acquired a car with automatic transmission. This reaction soon becomes modified. The behavior of greed will disappear when one takes away the conditions that support it.
The Ireland stop went very well. We had about 4 radio interviews. There were, like everywhere, people who were filming almost everything we did. They intend to send some of the footage to Luke Wonderly who is going to do a major documentary on our World Lecture Tour. This is possible with the help of so many who have been filming at each stop. Those filming in Ireland are also going to be doing a video piece of their own and we look forward to seeing it because we are told they do beautiful work with music videos.
We had our first heckler in the audience in the Ireland Lecture. She kept yelling from the upper balcony and I tried to listen to answer because it was obvious she was putting forth her own projections and misunderstandings of what she thought The Venus Project was with little understanding of the holistic approach. After shouting statements and questions she started reciting passages from the bible and the audience broke into boisterous laugher and that was the end of that – for a while. She made her way down to the mic in front of the stage being the last questioner to ask something about the tower of Babel and started to describe this event. The bible story tried to account for how different languages came about when people were trying to erect a tower to god but he got annoyed with this and made each person speak a different language so no one could understand each other and nothing could be accomplished.
Jacque tried to explain how the progression of language most likely developed as sounds uttered in relation to happenings one experiences in the world. He tried to show how no one could sit down and say they have to improvise a language to communicate. This is the same with any new invention they are serially developed over time. She asked defensively “were you there” and Jacque asked “were you at the tower of Babel?” People found this very amazing and laughed at her childish remarks.
The lecture in Scotland was in Glasgow but we got to see a little of the lovely countryside staying in Laurencekirk, with Myra Graham. It was wonderful staying with her and she worked extremely hard arranging the lecture and our visit with her.
What we are finding at every stop is that people are saying that we have helped them change their thinking process in a short time. There are so many people that are extremely grateful for our visit to their country and they tell us they would not have missed our lecture for anything. They state that after learning more about The Venus Project that it has changed their entire outlook. So many people explain to us that it has given them hope that they did not have before being exposed to these ideas. This is all very overwhelming and rewarding to us.
Myra’s husband was a diver for an oil company in Scotland, now a supervisor. I found it interesting when I was informed that about ten years ago he stopped diving in the waters around the US because they did not adhere to the safety regulations for oil exploration that the rest of the works complied with. The recent “accident” that BP had was something that others in the business felt was bound to happen. They told me that the US propaganda campaign is now pumping out the story that they are doing everything to make sure this does not happen again, but I was informed that they are now agreeing to about half the safety precautions that are typically practiced and mandatory by the rest of the world.
A question we often get in the Q&A at the end of the lectures is how do we get the industrialist to give up what they have. It is not a matter of giving up anything. They go broke just like every other industry. If they have something to sell and the public does not have purchasing power they cannot survive in the free enterprise system either. When things fail even the wealthy are effected. But this is not always the case for the upper one percent.
Even if The Venus Project does not become effective the shear advancement of automation will render this system obsolete. Industry and manufacturing have to compete with those factories that go abroad for cheaper labor. Automated systems give them the ability to do this. When automation displaces enough people they no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services turned out. This is the end of the free enterprise system, as we know it.
There are other scenarios as well. But we call this the march of events or bio-social pressures. No social system can remain the same, all things change. Even the wealthy industrialist’s well being depends on the success of The Venus Project.
As in all the countries we visited, we made many close friends in Denmark.
We took the subway a few times and as you can see in one of the photos we were sitting in the front section to show that they have no human operators. These automated electric trains are relatively silent, clean and efficient.
There were three events in Denmark, one at Christiana where I delivered a presentation on human behavior and Jacque and I answered questions. There was a large gathering in a park with music and a good meal, and then there was the main lecture. Jacque also addressed a group of young people at a local community-gathering place.
One of the questions Jacque and I frequently hear is ‘Can we just start building something?’
What we are proposing is an entirely new social design that entails new values and a way of looking at how we relate to the world and one another. The biggest job we have right now is introducing this direction to others since it is so different than anything that people associate it with. This is the job that has to be taken on if we intend to arrive at a saner future. If people identify with this direction we ask that they learn as much as they can about it. There is plenty of free information on The Venus Project’s site. Study the FAQ in order to answer questions you will get from others.
Many chapters are collectively reading the books on the suggested reading list and discussing them. This could also be done with The Venus Projects materials. People are then going out and giving lectures about this direction and spreading the word any way that they can.
Many people want to build something immediately without an understanding of what is required to develop a sustainable global system. This approach will most likely fail.
If we did have funding our priority would not be the building of a city but a major motion picture to introduce this direction to the general public in a way that they can identify with, realizing that there is a possible alternative to work towards. It is not necessary to gain the approval of everyone but we need enough people to accept it and work toward its realization.
Another wonderful stay was Sweden, as it has been with every stop. I am including several photos of the city we stayed in, and other sights along the way, so you have an idea of what we are seeing at each location of our journey.
We always try to spend as much time as possible to meet with our members and others who help to make the lectures possible. Very often we all squeeze into the hotel rooms Jacque and I are staying at or move to a restaurant for meals.
The lecture in Sweden was a success and just a few seats from being sold out.
There was one member of the movement who worked as a chef hired out to private homes for larger parties. His boss, although we never met him, is a supporter of The Venus Project, and twice hosted over 40 people for dinner in our time there. The food was amazing and the conversation was always significant.
Besides meeting fantastic people from Sweden, a friend from Uruguay was there who had been to Venus, Florida for one of our Tours.
A local science museum had an exhibit about the history of aircraft and space travel. This being of interest to Jacque and myself a group of us went to the exhibit. Like many museums we see the displays did not explain much to the general public.
What we found significant were a few very small monitors showing the first attempts to fly. I have seen several of these before but here they showed about twenty variations of early flight attempts.
Several people viewing these flight experiments were laughing probably thinking they should know better but this is not the case; this is how all invention is arrived at through people contributing little by little in order to make progress. It started with what looks like very crude attempts in the beginning because people did not know anything about it. These were people who were curious and put their own lives on the line to find out. There were thousands of attempts at flight before the Wright Brothers got off the ground. People don’t really acknowledge the work of those who went before the Wright Brothers as being just as important. The Wright Brothers learned what didn’t work from all those who went before and took it from there.
Instead of showing these first attempts of early flight on small monitors lost in the middle of the room, this would be a wonderful teaching exhibit if it showed progressively many aircraft designs and what the influences were to arrive at each successive phase. This would show children especially that there are no great men or women. All developments were serially evolved, and many people scarified their lives at an attempt to achieve flight. Children would have a better understanding of what it takes to advance ideas and the effort that is exerted to arrive at new inventions.
Graz, Austria was a last minute lecture. Leo Da Silva took this on almost by himself three weeks before the event and despite all the obstacles he encountered along the way, including the ones we seemed to have when we arrived, the lecture went well.
There are many people we meet while lecturing in one country who travel to another to attend the lecture there, and visit with us again. This was certainly the case in Graz, so you may see some familiar faces in the slideshow.
Leo is working on an interesting idea to help support the direction of The Venus Project. Graz has a university that he is attending and he is planning on opening a Venus Project co-op coffee shop. Here is the concept as he has described it to us:
“The main idea of this café is to present TVP to more people and grow the number of supporters and build a network in the city, and world wide. The café will hold lectures for new people, do discussion evenings, holding conferences / meetings with other TVP-Cafés around the world via internet, video and Beamer organizing events and music sessions with stars and musicians who are criticizing the monetary system, but who may have no solution to offer. Doing interviews / lectures / meetings with Roxanne and Jacque via Internet / Video and Beamer present and sell books, t-shirts, posters, cups and DVDs of Jacque and TVP, inviting politicians from all parties to present the TVP to them.
Financing and membership:
For example if we open a café with € 1200,- fixed cost per month for rental, electricity etc.: we would need 60 persons who agree to pay the membership fee of € 20,- per month and each member would work 1 hour per week in the café; help with cleaning, serving the guests, ordering and buying the products etc..
The members of the café would not pay more for the products they consume than in the supermarkets in the city (in other words wholesale).
Guests who are not interested in a membership would pay the same price for the products they consume as any other normal café in the city.
Design and look of the Café
The theme of the café would include only The Venus Project designs, and pictures from Jacque’s and Roxanne’s lectures from the world lecture tour 2010, as well as other cafés that we would open around the world in the future.
Imagine if we do this in Graz and other cities too, how much recognition and publicity we would get and how many people we could reach who would like to join us, just because of the new concept of the café. We can build a real network world wide with this and I think this would help to get money to realize new ideas and events to promote The Venus Project!”
It sounds like a great idea to Jacque and me. If you would like to discuss this further with Leo you can reach him at Leonardo Da Silva <999.lds@gmail.com>
Valencia, Spain was an amazing stop. There was a large group of people that came from all over Spain and surrounding countries to attend the lecture. But this seems to be the pattern at each stop in Europe; People often travel long distances to attend the presentations.
There is always a diverse group of people within each chapter who have many different skills, so a lot gets done. This was particularly useful in Spain. Many of the members stayed up for three nights in a row before the lecture putting together our Spanish translation of Jacque’s book “The Best That Money Can’t Buy”, which they printed, then spiral bound themselves. They also took our video that we show at each lecture and did a voice over in Spanish, then added music of their own creation. After so many nights up they had to redo an audio section because they picked up someone who had fallen asleep and was snoring in the background! Their hard work paid off as they produced a wonderful piece.
The lecture was sold out ahead of time with standing room only. It felt like a success, and like each lecture people stayed engaged throughout, and afterwards.
One dedicated member who helped with the lecture was the head of the police department in an area of Spain. His stories were very interesting, and his approaches were compassionate.
We took some time to do a little sightseeing of a complex designed by two of Jacque’s and my favorite architects, Santiago Calatrava and the late Felix Candela. The City of Arts and Sciences is a large-scale urban recreation center for culture and science, which also incorporates L’Oceanogràfic, an underwater city designed by Candela. Their work was very extravagant, and finished at a tremendously overrun cost, but the large complex was a refreshing divergence from all the other cities we have been visiting. They explored new methods in design with their inspirational architecture.
Jacque’s approach is different and is what we call social architecture. Architecture today is mostly monuments to the architect’s ego. Within a Resource Based Economy design criteria would support the direction and aims of this new system, which is to produce abundance as quickly as possible, and achieve as high a standard of living as possible, for everyone. With this in mind, ostentatious waste just to impress, and therefore the waste of resources, would be offensive, and impossible. Instead, one would consider expending a minimum of materials for maximum convenience, serving the needs of people by using the efficient and economic use of resources. Cities would require a minimum of maintenance, with energy efficient planning that is capable of undergoing constant modification with new advances. It would not be a static environment but instead stimulating and ever evolving. The main concern is for the well being of people, and making the surroundings pleasant and convenient to meet the need of the occupants. The cities would be immersed in as natural environments as possible where one would feel like the city is an extension of the natural surrounding.
People have been asking if this traveling on the World Lecture Tour is difficult, but the most difficult part about it is saying good-bye to so many extraordinary people we establish a close relationship with at each stop. This was certainly the case in Spain as well.
