http://www.archive.org/details/JacquesFrescoOnRadiomatica

Transcript:

Kevin Kelso Interviewing Jacques Fresco and Roxanne Meadows from the Venus Project

Kevin: This is the Monday Brown Bagger with Kevin Kelso where we reveal the matrix and empower the people.  We’re here with Jacques Fresco and his right hand woman Roxanne meadows from the Venus Project.  Welcome to the show.

RM: Thanks, we appreciate being here

JF: Yes we do.

KK: So I think the first question that comes to mind is, what is your relationship, Roxanne, to the movement and to Jacques?

RM:  I’m really dedicated to this direction; I feel it is the most viable direction we can go in.  I see nothing else to work towards otherwise you are working towards self centered options and working towards the banks, essentially.  So my relationship with Jacque is when ever people say are you married to him?  I say I’m as good as or better than.  I work with him in whatever way I can work with him, and on.

KK:  So you’re in an advisory and supervisor role?  Jacque, how would you describe yourself?  Leader?  Creator?

Jacque: I’ve been working on it most my life.  And I started during the big depression in the states and the 1929 crash… and that’s when I started thinking of social design.

KK:  Wow, that’s a long time you’ve been working on this then.  How old are you now?

Jacque:  94.

KK:  94!  That’s quite a long life you’ve lead there.  To what do you attribute your longevity?

Jacque:  Just being busy.

KK:  Keeping your mind active?

Jacque:  Yes.  No special treatment.

KK:  I understand that many people, they sort of live their lives with the goal of retiring and then when they retire they have nothing to focus their minds on and they do not keep active and fade away.  I commend you for doing the opposite.  I think it says a lot that you’re still sharp at 94.

Jacque:  Well I’m still working on a lot of new problems and designing a lot of new type buildings and inventions.  Never quit.

KK:  Some of your inspiration for this project comes from the great depression and you saw that there were people going without, as well there were a lot of things going unused or being consumed unnecessarily.  What other inspirations and experiences lead you to this movement?

JM;  I’d say books like “Science and Sanity” by Korzybski, or the “Tyranny of Words” by Stuart Chase.  "Language and Thought and Action" by Hayakawa, or “outline of History” by H.G. Wells.  Or “The Mechanistic Conception of Life” by Loeb.  There are many different books on our site in which we point out many different view points, but they all conclude with social design.  Our language is very old and it is very difficult to communicate with people with an old language.  We need a language that is not subject to interpretation.  That’s why you have the Lutherans, 7 day Adventists, the Catholics… Because it’s subject to interpretation.  Language that is not subject to interpretation is scientific terminology, Engineering language, chemistry, structural of engineering. When engineers talk to each other, they seem to get the same viewpoint, and it’s not subject to interpretation.

KK: It’s more scientific.

JM:  Yes.

KK:  So your movement has been very closely tied to the Zeitgeist films, which were very popular.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s Zeitgestthemovie.com where you can see it for free.  There are two films and they are probably the two most popular films in the history of the internet.  Maybe I will give you the chance to describe how you are connected to those two films because I know those aren’t your words always. It’s the vision of Peter Joseph, who came in contact with you after making the 1^st film.  Maybe you can tell us how your views lined up with the first film.

RM:  Well, the first one as you said was done by Peter Joseph and there is a lot of information out there on how he did it and why he did it, and he put it on the internet as a fluke and he put it up on the internet and it became the most watched major documentary In the history of the internet at that time & I would guess Addendum, the 2^nd film was close to that.  After the 1^st film, I sent him Jacque’s first book “The Best That Money Can’t Buy” and the 2^nd film really reflects the Venus project.  He came down and Jacque spent a lot of time with him, probably every other month during the making of that film and it’s really close to Jacque’s book. It’s almost like putting Jacque’s book on film and he is dedicated to this direction as well, learning about it, and introducing people to it.  So the next film he’s doing is going to be more introducing more of this direction, and backing it up.

KK:  I understand there is also a film coming out that would make a representation of how life would look like in a futuristic Venus Project scenario, but that’s not Zeitgeist 3?

RM:  This is what we’ve wanted to do for a while… we’d really want to do a major motion picture, and kind of entertaining documentary. Kind of a way to show what life would be like in the future, how to get from here to there, help answer people’s questions so people would walk out and ask, why don’t we live like that now? Because people don’t have any other options.  All they know, and they don’t even know that too well, communism, socialism, free enterprise, and fascism.  And the Venus Project has nothing in common with any of those things.  So people really need to learn about it first, and this is now a learning stage.  We need to introduce it to people and if enough people identify with it and work towards it, and take the time to learn about it then we might have a chance… but it’s not up to what me and Jacque do, it’s up to what others do.

KK: I think it’s very important to have a beautiful vision to work towards and I truly hope that the vision you guys have laid out is possible and successful.  Now, going back to the original film, maybe we could just ask a couple questions about Zeitgeist the first one?  I know you guys weren’t too involved, but it does seem to be attached to your name where ever you go- people associate it with you.  Let’s see where you stand on these issues, such as religion.  The first film is quite an attack on religion; it suggests that all religion is based on an astro-theological myth.  How would you feel about that topic?

RM:  I think he did a real good job on showing the history of religion.  Excellent job.  We were surprised to see that film and even more surprised to see that so many people were interested in it, and that it helped turn people around.  A lot of Christians think that Christianity was brought down from god and written as this this “thing” that has no relation to past history and religion.  He did a great job showing how one religion plays off of another religion just like anything else in the progression of invention. It didn’t just come out of the air from the gods of Christianity.

KK:  what sort of future does religion and freedom of religion have in the Venus Project?

Jacque:  That’s up to what every individual and what they believe, they can practice.  You can have all kind of churches and all kinds of religions.  We have a slightly different view, complete freedom of religion.  The only difference is we would put religious teachings into practice.  Larry king once asked me what I thought of Christianity, I said it’s a wonderful idea, why don’t they ever put it into practice?  I never met a Christian, one that behaved in not judging other people or follow the scripture such as “thou shalt not kill.”  It doesn’t say, “thou shall not kill except Wed and Thursday” – it says “THOU SHALL NOT KILL.”  It says “love thine enemy.” It tells people not to judge otherwise you will be judged.  I’ve never met a Christian who practices those things.  The Venus Project is translating all religious teachings into a way of life where we have no prisons, no police, no armies, no navies, no poverty, no hungry, no politics, and no money and when they get off, they say well you gotta have money.  You know there’s a thing called the Lord’s prayer.  Jesus said “thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.”  There’s no money in heaven, no business, no private property, no social stratification. I would say, the Venus Project is the closest thing to the teachings of most religions they stray so far away from it that I hardly recognize anything in it.. Because when war came, the Italian Catholics were blessing war tanks made in Italy and in America they were blessing the soldiers, and their war tanks.

KK:  One of my contacts suggests that the 2^nd film is based off of Alice bailey’s writings, “the Externalization of the Hierarchy” where she says that they will form a one world government, where everyone will have to serve the government.  He is also concerned about being psychologically managed by the state.

RM:  We always think that extremely funny and naïve when they equate us to the one world government… It means that they haven’t looked at our material at all.  The one world government is when the corporations own the earth and everyone is subservient to them and joins together in a one world organization.  The Venus Project is nothing like that.  Money is out of the scenario… It brings people to their highest potential.  Believes that the brighter people are, the more they can think for themselves, the more creative they are, the better everyone’s life is.  It has nothing to do about this garbage of the one world government.  It makes goods and services available to anyone without money, barter, credit, servitude, or taxation of any kind.  For the first time it frees people. They’ll understand what it really means to be human and to be spiritual.  You can’t do this in this culture at all… it tries to free people from work and put automation in so that people don’t have to slave at jobs they don’t like. They won’t be working for people, making some people rich and making others toil as everyone has access to what they need.  Their needs may be different, but they’ll have access to free education, free medical care. It’s their own project.  That’s why people are afraid of the Venus Project- People project things that are not real.

Jacque:  They project their own values.  They picture a lot of scientists in grey, ordering “you will work in area D, you will work in area K” that comes from Hollywood.  Hollywood always shows robots choking the designer, people in spaceships killing each other with laser weapons… We have no armies, no navies, no politics, nothing like Hollywood’s portrayal of the future.  Scientist and engineers do not control people.  All the machines control is the production and distribution of goods and services.  And the system is operated like a public library, where anyone can take out a book.  Next to the pub library you have camera centers, where anyone in the community can check out any kind of camera.  Next to that, you have Musical instruments, free of charge, without any taxation of any kind.  We make things available to people, and when you do that, you put an end to most crimes.

KK:  What if you want something extravagant, something greater than what the resources can allot you?  Such as having a swimming pool and tennis court?

RM:  These would be available to everyone.  Why would someone want their own in their own backyard and maintain it when they have access to things?  Today only the wealthy have these huge yachts that they have lined up in huge harbors and they only use them twice a month.  In the Venus Project, people would have access to these yachts and there would be enough yachts.  People would have a very different value system.  If it rained gold, people today would be putting it in their closets and cellars and hoarding it.  But if it rained gold for months and months they would be shoveling it out of their house.  This is the difference between keeping things scarce, and few people having things, and other people admiring them in these cultures.  These values would be obsolete in a resource based society.  Everyone would get what they want.

Jacque:  It isn’t possessions that people want.  They want access without waiting for it.  They want access, they think they want jobs… jobs are meant today to control people.  You make them work the best years of their lives, they have nothing to show for it.  We do not do that, we allow people to go to school and study what ever they want to study. Music, art, painting, and creative writing – all the things they want to do. They don’t want to go to work. Work is boring and repetitions. We hope to automate all jobs.

KK: I like the point about raining gold.  In Canada here it rains and snows on us and we need to drain it and shovel it away, but in most of the world that IS gold.  So many people are desperate for water.  It just shows what abundance can do to alter your valuation system.

RM:  Right, owning something is a burden.  You have to take out insurance, get locks on your doors, bars on your windows, maintain it.. It’s a burden to own things.  If you like to do bike riding, bikes would be accessible every where you want to ride.  You wouldn’t have to store it.

Jacque:  Or hang it up in your garage.  It’s all there for your use.  It is not there to “make a buck”.  When the money system charges money for anything, I am very hesitant for people that work for people.  I like people like Martin Luther King, or Doctors Without Borders, people that work on what they believe in, aiding people without charge.  When you consider Ghandi putting his life up for the benefit of other people, nobody made enormous sacrifices and put money in the Swiss bank for Ghandi or Martin Luther King. They did it because they believed in it, and that’s the kind of people we have in the future. There is no social stratification in the Venus Project though a lot of people would like to believe that there is.

KK: I do believe we have become slaves to our goods and slaves to our debts.  Another question for you is that it seems that any way you cut it, if you’re administering a system like this, someone has to control the system and be maintaining the system and programming them.  How do we ensure there is no corruption?

Jacque:  It’s a very different answer than what you get statistically.  In the USA, or all over the countries are basically corrupt.  The USA stole the land from the Indians, killed Indians, killed 15 million buffalo to starve the Indians, we took New Mexico from Mexico, we took sections of California from Spain, and after we stole all the land we needed we put up the sign, “Thou shalt not steal”.  That’s true of all nations.  What makes a big nation? Power, corruption, murder, assassination. If you shoot people that you don’t like you’re called a murderer.  If you shoot and you miss by 1 inch, you’re not a murderer.  If you punch a man and he falls on a marble, his brain is damaged and he dies, you are called a murder.  Don’t you see how artificial our society is?  They don’t even know what makes a killer; they don’t even know what makes a person creative. They don’t understand the Bill of Rights or the Constitution.    Recently in High school they read sections of the Bill of Rights and asked the students what they think of it… They said it sounds like communist propaganda.

KK: How do you feel about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

Jacque: It’s words.  It’s verbal hopping.  It is not reality. It’s as real as democracy. You don’t live in a democracy, you never did live in a democracy, there’s no such thing as democracy.  I’ll try to describe what a democracy might be like.

KK: You could also tell us why you recommend that people boycott voting.

Jacque: Well, because you don’t really get the person you want in there. They select the person you vote for. There are two people, republicans and democrats. They can hardly talk to each other and they are skilled at no particular position.  If you get a hold of any politician and you ask them how do you get cars to stop hitting each other? They don’t know.  Can you increase the agricultural yield? They know nothing about that.  They are politicians, businessmen and lawyers. How do you prevent crime? They know nothing about that.  They are not the people that have made our country.  The people that made our country are the people that increased agricultural yield, who devised the electrical generators. All the things that you have, your cars, your airplanes, your homes, are all technical.  A politician never gave us anything.  Please don’t take my word for it.  Look up the history of invention.  You’ll find out that they have never provided anything.

KK: There might be a couple of people who don’t quite fit into that in history, but in general I’ll definitely agree with you.  You said that “they” choose the politicians that we get to vote for.  Who are they?

Jacque:  The establishment.  The establishment means the “in” group.  GM, Large factories and corporations that operate America. They don’t operate America for the benefit of the American people; they operate it for the bottom line called profit.  If they really loved America they would never outsource.  If they loved America you couldn't buy cigarettes.  Cigarette and smoking always produce cancer.  It may take 20 years, 15 years, but it produces heart disease, hypertension and many other deformities.  The reason why the government permits it is because they get a kick back on the profits.  That means that they don’t give a damn about people. When you put up your life to defend this country they oughta conscript all industry so that no one makes a buck out of war, no one sells anything out of profit.  War is the biggest profit in the world and they sell it to the enemy, they sell it to the American corporations. They all make money off of war. War is the biggest, most corrupt business in the world.

KK: do you believe that there is a collusion between the large corporate interest and bankers called the NWO who creates these wars to fund both sides and move towards a one world government?

Jacque: I’d say that “they” are the one world government you have got to fear.  “they” are the people that really do not educate people in school. What they do is they education you to fit in as a cog in the wheel of the establishment.  If you still don’t understand me, we go back to ancient Rome where they used to feed Christians to lions.  The Romans believed in many different gods. The Christians came and said there was only one god.  They were a threat to the system, so they fed them to lions.  But they starved the lions for a week. And then they took the clothes off of the Christians and whole families would come to see the lions kill the Christians. And it was normal for that culture And the kids would say, daddy can we come to see Christians next week get killed by lions?  And daddy would say, if you behave yourself.  Is daddy nuts or insane? No.  That was normal, just like we go to see auto racers, tight rope walkers walking between two buildings or men punching each other in the head which damages to the brain, which is normal in this culture.  Our culture is just as foul as any other culture as it reflects that we are not civilized yet. As long as we have army, navy, prisons, police, and judges. The Supreme Court judges for example would be considered criminals in a sane society because you can’t judge people if you don’t know what conditions they were subject to that made them that way.  Remember, every culture shapes the mores, values behaviors, facial expressions and language.  If you were brought up in the south, an uneducated region, you might grow up to say “I’m gonna’ go get me a nigga and I gon’ kick .his ass” is that you speaking?  Or is that you picking it up from the environment? Think about it.

RM:  Those in the establishment we speak of are those in positions of differential advantage such as the bankers, the corporations, the military… those who make up their own laws to serve their own narrow self interest. They lobby they persuade they have the money and everything today is really managed news.  The establishment makes things, make the laws to keep things as they are. They are the ones who produce the books, the magazines, the TV shows, the movies, the newspapers and the education to keep things as they are, so that they continue to be in positions of differential advantage.

Jacque: No one is a liker to change things.  They want to keep the free enterprise going.  Free enterprise is one of the most corrupt things in the world!  If you don’t understand me, President George Washington, our first president Had 300 slaves, did you know that?

KK: I did not know that.

Jacque: Harry Truman was a hat salesman.  He was a real jerk!  Most presidents know nothing about supporting technology or advocating a system that can increase the standard of living for all of the world’s people. They don’t know how to bridge the difference between nations, that’s why you have armies and navies.

KK: Another contact of mine wanted me to ask you, “Does Jacque know that this system already exists?”  What he means is the American system of political economy that is based on sovereign, national credit, rather than monetarism- as pioneered and fought for by Ben Franklin, Alex Hamilton, Franklin Roosevelt and JFK, and Lyndon Larouche, of whom he is a supporter.  He says that that the USA constitution provides the legal principles for the basis of a credit system as stated in article 1, section 8 in the constitution.

Jacque: Here’s the major difference: those of you that have a bad memory, I suggest that you write down or record this. We work according to a global survey of existing resources. First, you have to observe how much arable land we have.  How much water we have available and that determines the size of a city, not some politician, or Bill of Rights.. The Bill of Rights as based on the carrying capacity of the earth, really is as metaphysical is a fairy tale.  You have to base your population density on the carrying capacity of the earth, and scientific skills of performance, not some political ideals.  Was Benjamin Franklin Ahead of his time?  Yes he was.  But he didn’t know enough about the methods of science applied to government so that no one, no one dictates policy.  The real question is how our decisions arrived at in the Venus Project. No one makes decisions, they take samples of the soil from all over the world, bring it to central agriculture, there they analyze it all.  And by the contents in the soil they might suggest it’s best to grow beats or sugar cane for so many years and then rotate the crop.  This is not opinion, it is a finding.

KK: How would you feel about our civilization reaching out to colonize mars and some of the other ones that NASA has recently discovered would support life?

Jacque: Let me say this, first we have to learn how to live together with one another on earth.  If we fail to do that, we only bring the same problems to the surface of the moon and mars.  People are not wise enough to bring to use the technological age.  And not wise enough to use the developments, for example, Oppenheimer approached Harry Truman and suggested that the atom bomb be dropped off the coast about 30 miles off the coast of Japan to tell them we have a terrible weapon, we’d rather not use it to demonstrate it’s explosive power, to give the Japanese a chance to surrender.  But Truman said, “I don’t want those people coming into my house.  I don’t wanna see Oppenheimer or any of those people.” The man was a jackass, a very ignorant man, and in the future we won’t even make the history books because we don’t know how to solve problems. We don’t know how to bridge the difference between nations.  We don’t know what generates criminal behavior.  It’s all generated by our culture.

KK: that was a very terrible decision.  So let me ask you, I think we were talking about how people project their own feelings about humanity onto your project and give it an evil connotation. Do you think one of the big problems in society today is that we do have this animalistic identity and this belief of the intrinsic evilness of man?  And what can a better self conception and identity do for us in the future?

FM: That all comes from old primitive beliefs, that comes from religion.  Good or bad, right and wrong, we’ll always have the poor amongst us… the children must pay for the sins of their parents… these are ridiculous old myths. Really our behaviors developed from our environment.  In the old days, when they used to feed Christians to lions, the whole family would come to watch.  The little boy might say, “daddy daddy! Can we come next week to see Christians to be fed to lions?” and he’d say, “If you behave yourself”.  Well that little boy was not ill or evil, he reflected the conditions of the times… and that’s the same thing with a pilot today that drops bombs over cities or villages and wipes out the whole village.  He can sleep well at night.  Some people think he can’t sleep well, but he can sleep very well because he’s reinforced and he’s rewarded for that behavior.  They put medals on them and X’s on the fuselage.  So it really depends on the environment you grow up in.  You can become a thief, or you can become a minister, although sometimes they are very much the same.  It’s not in your genes; it depends on the environment that they grow up in.

Jacque: If you don’t understand that, ask an Eskimo whether he ever dreams of walking on a palm fringed beach.  He can’t!    An Eskimo that never saw movies, never traveled… an Eskimo can only think within the range of his environment.  If you ask an American Indian, what’s heaven like? He’ll say it’s a happy hunting ground with a lot of deer and straight arrows.  Don’t you see? It’s not possible for man to think outside of his culture.  If you were to ask an Eskimo, say, you can have anything you want – he never says a Mercedes or a twin engine beach craft.  He CAN’T say that.  People always reflect their culture.

RM:  Parents have some idea of this when they pull their kids away from other children that they think are a bad influence.  If they want their kids to become a doctor, they put him in a medical environment, the medical school.  If they want them to build bridges they put them in an engineering environment.  You can learn how to be smart or you can learn how to be stupid, it depends on who you hang around with.

KK: Our culture seems to be a bit preoccupied with this Malthusian myth that the species always exceeds its resources, but personally I think that human beings are capable of creating their own resources and never really running into the limitations that animals do.  This idea seems to go hand in hand with the idea that global warming is caused by humans and that we are a blight on the earth.  I’m curious after the revelation of climategate, and how the largest institutions propagating the man made global warming idea were revealed to have engaged in a massive cover up and manipulation of data. I understand that you still believe that global warming is caused by man.  Maybe you can give us an idea of your background on that thought.

JF: there are many different factors that are involved in global warming.  Some of this is produced by entropy; some of this is produced by smokestacks without filters on them.  Others are produced by layers of soot in the area that cause the infrared rays not being able to escape the surface of the earth.  They are caused by both, natural phenomena and man made phenomena. In the future, we can only decrease the man made phenomena...  There was a man named Cottrell who around 80 years ago he mad the Cottrell precipitator.  Now this consisted of many metal plates that went above the smoke stacks so that the smoke particles are electrically charged and attracted to other metal plates… that means that there would be no smoke coming out of any smoke stacks, just warm air. I f you take your conditioners and put your hands on the back of the air conditioner, you will feel warm air coming out from a heat pump.

In other words, we don’t use energy efficiently; we use it in ways that will pay with the minimum expenditure of profits to take care of the clean up.  We don’t clean up, but we can life in a much better world, and we can deal with natural pollution.

KK: So as far as carbon dioxide, this is what I understand plants use to live… they breathe that, and of course our ecosystem depends on variety of life and the fertility of the environment for those different things to live.  Do you believe that CO2 is a major toxin and what percentage of the earth’s climate is driven by humanity?

JF:  I don’t have those figures, but I can just say this… we, people, dump stuff into the ocean.  Ship companies pump their bilge out into the ocean.  And according to statistics, bilge pumping is more than all of the spills put together. And there are many different potentials, such a volcanic power, harnessing volcanic power, harnessing the tides, the underwater rivers, wind power, solar power, and heat power. There is no shortage of energy sources that we can use to help get rid of most of the carbon pollutants that enter into our atmosphere. It’s a relatively easy job, especially for technology.

KK: How about nuclear fusion?

JF: Fusion is kind of dirty.

KK: Most people say Fission is kind of dirty. Would you say if we were to work on fusion would you say that would be viable in the future?

JF: Engineers tell us that it’s only about 20 years off. And they tell us that nano technology is only 15 years off. With nano tech we can make anything we want to make without having to worry about scarcity.  Nano tech is taking atoms and arranging them in whatever molecule length, or structure, that we have need for.  That would mean that we can produce food without agriculture. We can produce oranges without orange trees.  Nano tech can give us all of the resources that we need. And they say that it is 15 years off.  Let’s say it is 30 years off.. But if we work towards harnessing the methods of science, if you have difficulty with that, American formed the blockade so Germany could not get it’s rubber from Sumatra, but Germans had enough technicians.  I’m not upholding the Germans, by the way.  They had enough technicians to create synthetic rubber. And they made tires for their jeeps, their airplanes.  I think that if science is turned loose, where labs don’t have to try to pick up nickels and dimes for diseases or research in general. We give every lab what ever they need just as we do with the pentagon.  We almost give them everything they need. We’re giving it to the wrong people. The pentagon is comprised of stupid individuals who don’t know how to solve problems. They don’t know how to bring an end to war. They really don’t know how to bridge the difference between nations.  I’d say we need a pentagon in Washington, comprised of sociologists, people who study human behaviors, people who study the history of cultures; those are the people you need in Washington.

KK: How about the issue of overpopulation, there are so many people who are starving and going without…

JF: When you ask the Catholic Church about overpopulation, they will say “the lord said go forth and multiply.”  I’d ask the Catholic Church, if we have the population in excess of the carrying capacity of the earth, would you say that if the lord will not provide, you will? The carrying capacity of the earth determines the size of the population.  Education is required to help people understand better, if the population exceeds the carrying capacity, it won’t work.  You will have disputes, killing, asassinating, land grabs. If you don’t maintain the population in accordance with the carrying capacity of the earth.  Not Fresco’s opinion or anyone’s opinion.

KK:  What about the idea that the population can decide the carrying capacity of the earth and beyond that, the solar system and the universe?

Jf:  Well that would be after education, assuming that people are educated in the meaning of science or the scientific method.  They are not educated in that area. Most people have no idea how the government works, they don’t know the story of money. There are many wonderful books that they don’t even know exist.  So I would suggest that you look up venusproject.com, there are many questions and answers that will help you understand the world you live in.

KK: Maybe you could tell us your view of the monetary system, what are the pitfalls and how that can be replaced with your system?

RM: The monetary system creates an elitism, it creates social stratification. It’s a tremendous waste of energy and resources. There’s really no scientific planning, overall global planning. We’re plundering the earth for profit.  It’s based on scarcity; it’s based on continuously having to buy and making ridiculous wasteful projects.. For instance, changing the fashion on women’s clothing so they will continuously buy.  You and I in this system are merely consumers.  It’s not based on the well being of people; it’s based on money, profit for just a few, for wealth, property and power. When the bottom line is money, then all decisions are not made for the benefit of people or the environment.  But as I mentioned, for just a few, for wealth, property, and power. It’s extremely different in a resource based economy when you take money out of the scenario then everything is based on the well being of people and maintaining  a very good environment. People would understand how they relate to one another and the environment.  They would understand that they don’t want to destroy it because they would be killing themselves.

KK: So the system right now seems to be destructive and parasitic.  Everything seems to be going towards taking from others and destroying. What about the idea of instead of loaning money for profit to a nation being able to create money for themselves and then invest that money in the people in the same sort of socialistic way?  I know this is going to disagree with your view a bit, but I think it also agrees with your ideas as well.

JF:  I would say that, if you conscripted all the money in the world, it’s not enough to build hospitals. Because there’s more than enough resources.  Money does not represent resources. Money does not rep arable land or water shortages.  Money, if you’re on an island with 100 million dollars and that island has no arable land, no water and no fish, you will no survive.  With as much money as you’ve got.  Do you understand? It’s not money that people need, its access to the necessities of life.

RM:  Money is really just interference between what you want and what you and get.  As long as you can keep money in the scenario, all through history they are trying to have government make their own money, and it’s gone up and back, but it’s always won over by the banks. They always have the money and people owning banks and their own self interest, they’ve always had the money to win politicians over, to persuade people. And today it’s even tighter because people know even less about how the system is run.  It’s more monopolized and there’s even less information in all of the media.

KK: I definitely agree that people need to be awakened to reality, and they need to have their minds free and that would be the most powerful driver to any economy is the creativity of the human mind.  So how about this Venus Project? I noticed when I was looking into it a couple years ago, I saw that it was for sale.  What was that about and what is this thing in Venus, Florida? Is this something you’re inviting people to come and build outwards?  Build the project outwards from there as a test site or is it just for a few select people?

FM: We have 21.5 acres, and Jacque and I started it in the early 80s.  It’s a place where we work, we produce books, and we produce videos. Jacque has built hundreds of models there. We shoot our own footage, edit our own videos, and we produce them, we do our own books there, we publish them because we had no backing from anyone. We always backed and funded our own work.  We back the whole research centre, we built ten buildings there.  Those are all Jacque Fresco's designs.  We experimented with architectural processes. It’s not a community, some people think it’s a community, right now there are 4 people on it.  Most of the time, it was just men and Jacque doing the work.  We do have tours on the weekends there people come from all over the world; you can find the info about it on our website.  Jacque usually talks for 4-5 hours, introduces his direction, we walk around the grounds and we show people the models and possibilities of what the future can be like in a resource based economy.  That’s pretty much what’s going on there. We had it for sale, because just like anyone else we got caught up in the system when the crash came, when the mortgage crisis in the USA. I had my own business doing architectural renderings and models and I helped support the project. Jacque did the lectures, and sold his books and things too, but when the mortgage crisis hit, that was the last time I had any renderings or models, so we put the place up for sale.  Just supporting it ourselves, you know?  We have no outside backing.  After Zeitgeist Addendum came out, we had some nice donations, but again as we have a non profit organization as well, with those donations we updated our video equipment and our editing equipment so that we could make more books and videos.

KK: so there’s no one major organization, corporation, or anything like that which is helping you guys keep going?

RM:  No, nothing.

KK: It’s all grass roots donation and stuff?

RM: No, we get very few donations any more. Not enough to do anything with.  It’s all appreciated, but that’s one reason why we’re on this world lecture tour, to get the word out, to get the Zeitgeist towards this direction. But also to help support the research centre.

KK: How can we see this thing develop?  What is the timeline, what are the next steps and where are we going? How are we going to get there?

RM: Well that’s not up to us.  People always ask when we are going to have the first city, the first movie. We would like to do this major motion picture. It depends on what everybody else does.  It depends on how much effort they have put out towards it.  We are really afraid of the way society is moving and we feel that we have a viable direction to move towards that would help everybody, it does not hurt anyone. Even the wealthiest of today would be happier in a resource-based economy.  They would have more goods and services, really.  It depends on what everyone else does.  Unfortunately, things are going to have to fall apart before most people look for another direction. It’s going to have to hit their own pocket books. They’re going to have to lose jobs, lose confidence in their elected leaders and lose their house before they turn around and say, this isn’t working, what else is there? If we have enough people who know about this direction and talk to other people, it really depends on numbers, or just meeting the right people who can make something happen.  Peter Joseph made that one film, zeitgeist addendum and within a year we had chapters all over the world of people who are supporting this direction and who are working towards it.

KK: One of the goals is to have the first city. Are they any other goals on the horizon?

RM: Even before the first city, if we had funding we would make the movie. We look at it as social therapy. It gives people a direction to work towards. They have no idea what to do, what’s missing, what’s possible with our science and technology.  Today science is a scapegoat, they are afraid of it because of the way that it is presented in science fiction movies. They think that they will be subservient to technology, that “they” will be running the show.  Well they don’t want to run anything, its people who make bombs. Its people who do torture chambers.

JF: Machines don’t seem to have a gut reaction.  Machines don’t have ambitions.  Machines don’t take over.  If you smash your laptop in front of 30 new lap top computers they don’t say that “we will get you for this Wednesday, or this month, or next month…” machines don’t have a gut reaction. They don’t want to take over. They don’t have ambition.  If you run your computer Sunday and Saturday they don’t say “give me a day off”.  That is only done in Hollywood and movies.

RM: Today people are afraid of machines and rightly so in a way because today machines take over people’s jobs and they put them out of work. In the resource based economy we would have a machine that displaced people, people would have more purchasing power they would be able to go back to school they could spend more time with their family and travel. They would not be cast out of their home and have less access to goods and services as they have today, when jobs are displaced by automation.  Today, technology is used to abuse people, it bombs people, and it destroys villages and cities.

KK: And these things are not intrinsic to man, man can outgrow things like war I believe… But I think it’s about time to wrap up the interview.  So let’s just ask if you have anything like an event coming up, or website or book to plug and maybe you could tell us a bit about your trip to Vancouver which is coming up.

RM: We’re doing a world lecture tour. Its 7 months all together. We’re in the last few months and during October we’re going through Canada -5 places in Canada. On our website, venusproject.com one of the little blue buttons you can follow the tour and also see where we will be throughout Canada and purchase a ticket on the site as well.