Zeitgeist: The Movie-- A Review

I can't remember who first told me about Zeitgeist: The Movie, but it sounded a little strange to me, so I generally dismissed it as the rantings of some nutter who put together a movie for YouTube and left it alone. But, last night, on break, I decided- what the hell? People talk about this movie, it comes up in conversation now and again, why not call up YouTube and watch the damn thing?

So I did. And an hour and fifty minutes later (that's an hour and fifty minutes I'm not getting back anytime soon by the way) I came to the following conclusion: Zeitgeist is essentially a big shit cookie, with the chocolate chips of what, if you squint really hard and look at it from the right angles in the perfect lighting conditions might genuinely be considered truth. Maybe. Basically, it's divided into three parts: part one tries to debunk Christianity. Part two tries to sell you on the notion that 9/11 was an inside job. And part three is about how every war we've fought in the past century or so has been part of a vast conspiracy by the international banking community.

Part One: was interesting. There were a lot of interesting parallels that Christianity has with astrology that I had never seen before, so I was willing to take those with a grain of salt. Where the movie lost me was it's somewhat shrill insistence that Christianity is nothing more than a plagiarized religion designed to control the masses that stole everything from it's pagan predecessors. Well, no duh! Tell me something I don't know. Zeitgeist acts like there was some massive conspiracy behind this, while ignoring the simple truth: when you're a 'start-up' religion so to speak, you're going to try and convert people to what you believe. Stressing what's similar between you tends to help that process. So of course Jesus was born on Christmas and died on Easter. Early Christians wanted to convert the pagans! It makes total sense. And was completely ignored by the movie.

Oh and also, Jesus didn't exist. At all. The movie hurries past this point a little bit, because I suspect the filmmaker knows that when held up to the light of day that this particularly brazen assertion is less clear. There probably was a dude called Jesus. Whether he was the Son of God or performed miracles- that's another question entirely.

And finally, Zeitgeist seems to dislike Christianity. It doesn't mention other organized religions and how they might be bunk too at all, just Christianity. Hinduism might be ok. Islam, Buddhism? They too might be OK. But this Jesus guy? Load of crap in the eyes of Zeitgeist. An interesting omission, but one which ignores the larger truth: right now, yes, I would say I'm open to the notion that organized religion has it's downsides. The Vatican is hiding the fact that is covered up sexual abuse, so it's hard to have faith in an organization that covers up the abuse of children, you know? But does that mean I'm willing to sign onto the notion that there's nothing at all out there? It does not. We tend to personify what we want to see in divinity, because it makes it more relatable to us as human beings. That's fine, but it could be that all our warring religions are merely different views of the same, universal, divine truth. (A truth that interestingly enough, the Sikh Gurus based their religion around- the Sufis and probably the Gnostics touch on some of the same ideas.) There will always be, however far we go, something just outside of our reach. Something unknown. Something a part of humanity will always yearn for. Whether that's a dude in the sky or just a universal, divine presence or nothing at all after we die, I don't know. (Robert Browning has a great quote: "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?") But Zeitgeist seems intent on destroying one religion to further its own agenda. Which gave me pause from the get go.

Part two begins with the sound of a low-flying very large plane followed by an even bigger explosion. You're going there? That was my first thought. And yea, indeed, they went there. 9/11 was an inside job. I'm not even going to bother going into most of this drivel, instead I'm going to refer everyone to Popular Mechanics- who, bless their hearts, went through all this crap and debunked most of it. Read for yourselves, here.

Basically, this section of the movie read like porn for Conspiracy Nuts. Do I think 9/11 was a false flag operation to get us into a war and take away our civil liberties? I do not. I have some serious issues with how and why we got into the Iraq War, but overall, crazy Islamic extremists wanted to kill us and on 9/11 they certainly killed a bunch of us. And all this crap about civil liberties? Please- this may be extremely cynical, but does anyone really believe that there's such a thing as privacy anymore? Of course the government is doing all manner of dirty things in the name of securing the Homeland or hell, just propping up their own elite power structures. We only tend to erupt in outrage when they get caught. Anyone who believes that the government hasn't tortured people or tapped phones in the past for various reasons needs to take a deep knee bend and think about that a little bit. America is not perfect. No country is- and all manner of sins are hidden away from the prying eyes of the public. Always have been, always will.

If Part Two was porn for conspiracy nuts, Part Three is pretty much porn for Ron Paul. Basically, the Federal Reserve, World Wars I, II, Vietnam and our current imbroglios in the Middle East are all part of a worldwide banking conspiracy, the final aim of which is to get us all micro-chipped and under the control of one world government. OK: Zeitgeist is correct in one thing- and probably should be lauded for it- most of our freedoms are illusions when you get right down to it. The real power is controlled by the people with the money in this country, whether it's special interest groups, political parties, unions or, as they point out- banks. In the United States of today, money matters more than our votes do, which means our democracy is increasingly irrelevant and will continue to be that way until the system is overthrown and broken down. (I'm aiming for peaceful, people-based revolution on that score, but sadly, given the world we live in, I'd imagine it will eventually be violent revolution that does it.) So, score one, lonely point for Zeitgeist.

However, this massive one world government conspiracy that's behind all the wars? Eh, not buying it... I'll buy that bankers make profits off of big-ass wars- I mean, do the math on that one and someone's gonna be making money, but the one world government thing? Where's the money going to come from? War is, as Zeitgeist points out, incredibly good for business and with one world government, the elites would have no one left to fight. Where are the profits then? I mean, if there are aliens out there we can fight, OK- but so far, nothing doing on that score. As long as elites of all stripes can make money off of war and death, there will never be a one world government. Because if there was, they'd have no one left to fight.

Overall, Zeitgeist implores the viewer to open their eyes and question everything that they've ever been told. Because we are apparently being lied too. But a close viewing of this movie with it's singular focus on attacking the Judeo-Christian tradition and it's slipshod, one-sided conspiracy theories about 9-11 and the international banking community make it obvious that the movie is right on yet another very important point: we shouldn't believe everything we're told- even if it's Zeitgeist that's doing the telling.

So take it with a grain of salt and go and see for yourselves, here.