April 2nd, 2008 by Maja

For a long time I was looking for solutions to problems we have in our society within the established ideologies and political parties. But even though this political activism taught me a lot about current issues, and gave me various groups to “belong” to, I was always frustrated over how much energy had to be expended on playing the political game. In a way we had to be more concerned about who solved the problem, than solving it. But if we didn’t play this game, we wouldn’t get the political power to do anything.

These were and still are the rules of politics – play it, or do your own thing on the side, in silence.

Of course campaigning is very important in terms of raising awareness and give the public a choice as to what method, from what party, they would prefer. To give the public this choice is one of the fundamental functions in a democracy. But when this campaigning is not about finding the best method for the greatest number of people, by honestly and openly presenting a solution to the public, but about scoring political points through word-twisting, how can the public make a well informed choice? The public can’t be experts in everything and if they don’t know what they are actually choosing, how is this a democracy?

I feel ashamed for politicians when they are trying to belittle each other, and frustrated when they actively and obviously distract from their opponents’ points. Still, I understand how they have become dependent on this to stay on the political scene and achieve anything at all.

Now I’m not looking to any political party to offer “the solution” anymore. The icebergs wont hold back for the next election, and this political game is not working fast or well enough these days.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I’m sometimes scared I belong to a generation that is about to give up. That we are once and for all resigned to capitalism and egoism because we don’t think we have any real choice. While progress is increasingly measured in minutes on screen, and the feeling of freedom and meaning can be attained chemically, are we distracting ourselves from any existential crisis this development perhaps should infuse, or any real resistance it could inspire?

I’m also scared that the political power has been moved so far away from people’s everyday realities and grown so large, that most political activists will be pushed to challenge it with violence. I’m scared of how this violence is used as an excuse for the authorities to refuse listening to opposing views, making them even more desperate and violent.

Is this a time when we can’t actually change the workings of our society, or is it an era when we don’t feel as though we can? Did the “modernists”, the generation that is now disappearing, have a way to process the world that we “post-modernists” could learn something from? Further, is there perhaps a new language of resistance that is not seen through the normal political channels but on platforms not immediately apparent to most of us?

What’s our relationship to our future? Does the concept of a better future still exist?

mb

March 31st, 2008 by Maja

Once I met a futurist.

When I was a child I had one wish above all. It was always on top of any wish list, attached to every wish-bone or shooting star: peace on earth between humans, animals and nature. It left me with a burning mission; to make it happen. I collected all my pocket money to ‘buy’ tiny pieces of rain forest to protect it from the big companies who wanted to exploit it. Later I understood that these companies would always have more money and therefore more power than me, that my 50p a week meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I started to doubt my ability to change the world and more and more started to live with the same dystopian view of the future that surrounded me in and out of Scotland. To save the world is something you wish for when you are five, not something you work towards a whole lifetime. But then I met someone who had.

Filming my last short film Ottica Zero, I met Jacque Fresco, a 92-year old futurist, architect, inventor and socio-engineer.

Jacque has devoted his entire life to making the world a better place – without putting himself above anyone else or compromising his ideas for commercial interests, personal fame or status. He is a role model I would have loved to have as a child and an inspiration I am glad to have found now.

His ideas also address the two issues that have concerned me the most over the last few years: the first is the ongoing consequences of capitalism, affecting gender politics, world wide inequality, the aspirations and fears of everyday people, to the extreme detriment of our environment; the second is the issue of fundamentalism in a global society. How can we allow tolerance of all religions and value systems without a “clash of civilizations”?

What Jacque presents is a way to address these questions, not providing an ultimate solution in my opinion since I don’t think we can ever conceive of perfection, but a very interesting one that is making far more sense than how we manage our societies today. Jacque’s and his partner Roxanne Meadow’s Venus Project in particular, provides a fantastic metaphor for our collective power, and is a timeless reminder of our potential to change. Jacque has been daring to not only dream about improving the world, but actively inventing solutions to do so – his entire life. He is an uncompromising futurist-idealist of the kind we rarely find within our post-modern skepticism.

He questions why, even when we do have the resources to feed everyone, the technology to create clean energy, and the ability to supply everyone with creative, free and comfortable lives, we choose not to, a question I think we all could do with asking.

Jacque’s view of the future is neither dystopian nor utopian; he calls it a “a practical scientific solution, an unsentimental and non-judgmental collection of facts.”

“It is not enough to point out the short comings of the present day world without offering positive and attainable alternatives.” Jacque Fresco

I believe that Jacque’s ideas now more than ever tap into our desire to create a “fairer,” post-consumer world, where we are beginning to understand that our individual actions have an impact on other people, even if they live far away from us, and that we actually will have to change the way we live to preserve our planet.

March 20th, 2008 by admin

We need to think globally about global matters, and both the economic and environmental crises are global concerns at this point.

Who are we to say an economic transformation will never happen in our lifetime? Many things now commonplace were just as inconceivable 50 or 100 years ago. What ordinary person then could have conceived of “software” or the Internet? And who would have thought green issues would become mainstream one day?

In times of crisis there is both the threat of destruction and the possibility for rapid change, it is ultimately up to us what way it will go.

mb/sh