László Varga

I have to be very careful with this post, because I try to express my opinion on a very delicate issue of our society and I am not exactly sure I will be able to express it in a way that everybody can really understand it. I’ll do my best however and please send comments about your opinion.

The whole idea started swirling in my head after watching the movie Shoot on Sight (Jag Mundhra). It is a pretty good movie, with a storyline discussing the life of Muslims living in Britain in a period when there is a high terrorist alert in the whole country. I am not going to discuss the movie here (I really do not want to spoil it), but as I was watching I think I understood some of the triggers of why we all have this terrorist/racist trouble in our life.

First of all, I think I should point out, that there is no us and them here. If we take ourselves out and look at things from above, there are simply two sides arguing with each other. Both suffer and both make huge mistakes. Those who suffer are generally the ones being less concerned with the ideology of their beliefs. The real masterminds and fanatics are always in the back, controlling the game. Just think about it, has anyone seen a terrorist leader blow himself up? No. He is simply using his gift of being able to influence a few poor bastards to do his dirty job. And this is not just on one side: the great leaders who usually go to press conferences and tell their people that we will respond like this and that, have never actually went to the scene on the heat of battle. The poor soldiers however are being marked for their whole life while doing their duty.

Because of the fighting of the ‘great’ leaders in the back, there is a huge collateral damage: innocent people die in the Middle-East, innocent people die in Europe and America. And there is also the problem of racism. Well, I would not call it that… it is simply: fear. In our mixed world nobody really knows where the problem might come from, so they are afraid of anyone who even remotely resembles their source of fear. We manifest an aggressive reaction to social differences between a human being wearing his clothes in one way and a human being that is wearing it the other way. And yes, that is the terrorists fault: they do not think about their brothers, they just believe blindly their ‘leader’ and cause fear in the ‘enemy’ (well… actually they are not even close to their real enemy). On the other hand, the other side is not without guilt either: it is exactly their stupid actions that have given birth to terrorism, and they refuse to admit it… well, pride is a powerful factor…
The problem here is, I think, that none of the two sides is ready yet, to admit their own failures. It is easier to fall for some fanatic belief and it is also easier to be cautious, rather that try to understand each other.

Words of advice: never follow an extremist and always be understanding. The knowledge of what is good and what is bad has developed in any of us since childhood, we can decide for ourselves. We live in a very nice and colorful world which is being made richer exactly by every difference that we have amongst us. Let us just try to accept that and learn to live in it and preserve it.

Barack Obama officially took power this Tuesday and officially “turns page on Bush years”. And what a great time to become president. We all know the current situation of not just the U.S. but of the whole world… it is not rosy… The U.S. has never faced such a depression since the Great Depression of the 30s, to top that the image of the country was spoiled after a series of bad decisions of the previous government.

Will Obama really be able to turn the page? And a more important question: is the next page better than the current one? A short analysis of the Hoover–Roosevelt presidential change shows a few similarities but also a great deal of differences between the two situations. The ruling government side shifted from Republican to Democratic in those years, too. Roosevelt offered a comforting feeling of change just like Obama does right now. There are some potential similarities also: the New Deal pact offered a real change to the U.S. citizens and there is currently a chance of repeating that move to.
A big difference is that parts of the “New Deal” initiated by Roosevelt still exist. That is, the one change that helped a lot the country still exists, but can not cope with the current problems.
There is, however, an even bigger difference in the current situation from the Roosevelt era: the real solution that meant the full turn-over for the U.S. was WWII. The “New Deal” never really ended until the U.S.’s entry into the war. Much of the real turnaround was provided by the great technological advances the U.S. possessed after WWII, and also turning the country into a great war industry provided jobs for many while keeping the country united against a common enemy. As people slowly get fed up with terrorism, the one common enemy that the U.S. nation has now, is starting to fade away.

All that said, president Obama faces indeed a hard job. He needs to improve the economy and overall good mood in the country without war or without using too harsh measures. If he really manages to turn the page (and I wish him good luck with that… he is is surely going to need it 🙂 ), then the man really is SOMETHING!

Following the first big hit, “Zeitgeist:The Movie”, a second part of the Zeitgeist sequel (now I think it can be called like that…) came along, called “Zeitgeist: Addendum”. This time the facts hit even harder. The monetary system is criticized harshly, even stating, that it is the wrong way to base our society on. Money is presented as the source of all bad things that happen in life, the reason why people steal, kill and do other sins (And I completely agree with that). Even a solution is presented to replace money. The “Venus Project” is a project which experiments with a society model based on resources. It might present the optimal solution to eliminate money totally from our lives…
Well… bulls**t. Here is a very nice quote from their website (http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/):

In a true society, people would follow their natural inclinations and work to contribute to society not because they are “paid” for it, but because they have a greater awareness which recognizes that contributing to society helps them just as much as everyone else.

Can someone please tell me, why nobody from the ex-communist countries has ever come up with this “magical” solution? I wonder why, in our country for example (Romania), everybody went so “joyfully” to work to server “the greater good” (in other words N. Ceausescu 🙂 ). How could so many millions be so stupid, and rise up in the end against the system? And here is another good question: Who is going to lead this society? Or maybe anarchy is a better solution to avoid competition (which is another word Zeitgeist criticizes…).
I have to admit at the beginning I was also stunned by the “greatness” of the idea, but after some thinking I realized that there are very big flaws in this projects. Jacque Fresco (the leader of the Venus Project) even states in the movie, that the concept is not perfect. Well, I say it is much worse than that. In my opinion it is absolutely absurd to state that all evil comes from money… come on, is it that hard to imagine other causes? Competition (which is another potential source for sins) will be excluded? Everyone will be equal? Nice assumption ;).

Of course there are good parts of the whole project: the technological solutions that have been proposed seem to be very good targets to research and implement. They could really do a lot to help our society. Because after all, it is us who will have to be protected from us. Not the Earth, not nature. Earth has been here long before us and will be here long after we disappear. We are nothing but tiny specs on this planet with far too little power to hurt it. What is Earth anyway… are we not part of it? 😕 Why do we think we are so above everything? I do not think we have seen the full power of mother nature, when she gets angry (and hopefully we never will).

There, I have said it 🙂 . Maybe a bit harsh here and there, but this is what I think…

As life swirls around, an innocent bystander can rarely fully comprehend what is going on. It is a challenge we all struggle with every day.  Some people just watch as this swirling event goes by, some try to change it, some try to adapt to it.  In order to make sense of what life sometimes offers us, one has to analyze day-by-day events and draw some conclusions. Then it can be processed, and one can act according to it. But what happens if one does not react as it should to life’s problems? What if one does not interpret things the way they should be? Well, as we say, life is tough, better luck next time…

Being one of the above mentioned individuals myself, I too try to make sense of what I encounter in my day-by-day life. I too will analyze and draw conclusions. I will try to share this with others, maybe it will help them… More importantly, I hope it will help me too.  My conclusions will surely be biased, I will overlook some points of views. Posting stuff here, however, will surely draw the attention of other people, other points of views will be taken into account. For that reason do not hesitate to contradict me. After all, people can best learn from their own errors 🙂