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DavidWish
I know this for Prometheuspan, but I would like to give it shot to see if I understand correctly.
1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power.
Jacques Fresco is such a charismatic leader. On his web page for the Venus Project, it is specifically noted that, “The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project”. Clearly, these are one and the same.
This is one of the reasons I find the cult distinction to be problematic. By this guilt by association logic your using here people could of said that Martin Luther King or Ghandi were cult leaders. Where is the distinction drawn between an activist leader and a cult leader? As I pointed out in my own article about cults the definition alone can be stretched to apply to anything if you are not careful. Jacque Fresco does have admirers but that does not automatically make him a cult leader. It is possible that individuals may take their admiration of him too far but that is true of public figures all over the world. And it is not the fault of a person who did not solicit that level of devotion. The Virginia Tech shooter listed a Megatdeth song as one of his inspirations, this did not make Dave Mustaine a cult leader, or in any way liable for his behavior. You might say that he doesn't have a movement, but Megadeth does have a fan club. So that could also be construed as his "movement". This is what I feel is being done here. Cults are dangerous but misusing the term is equally dangerous.
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David
Throughout their movie, Moving Forward, they state that transparency is important. They also state they believe in, the scientific method, a resource base economy, and that all people are entitled to the fruits of the earth or some inherent right of birth. I forget exactly what they call it. They also say they believe those that lack morals and ethics are brain damaged.
Transparency is important. But that does not have to include the moderators on the forum. As demonstrated by the fact that this forum itself has anonymous moderators.
As for the discussion about the resources of the earth being a birthright, it is not unusual for systems of economics or government to make distinctions about that. "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" is a statement along that line. It doesn't make the people of the United States a cult. Different economic systems have different views on this topic. And yes, we like many behavioral scientists (like the ones at the begining of Z3) do feel that violent behavior is a result of environmental conditioning to the brain. This is not a metaphysical or religious belief. It is based in science. You may not agree with it. But that does not make us a cult.
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David
The general principals have lost power in the actual movement.
Transparency, which they say would have stopped certain bad economic issues from occurring, is not present when they themselves are questioned. In fact, it is difficult to have any sort of conversation within the group to peruse transparency. They privately control the only reasonable medium to effectively to speak to the entire group at the same time. If they make a mistake, they have been known to delete and hide the offending material pointing to their lack of transparency.
All of our meetings are recorded and archived. They are publicly attend-able by anyone using the Team Speak service that nobody charges you for. This as far as the national level. The meetings of the movement itself take place in public places almost always. Usually public libraries. And are also open to the public. There are many mediums for people to communicate with us on so your statement is incorrect. The reason the forums have rules is because we have found that people with their own agendas can and will waste enormous amounts of our time derailing topics. I again use the analogy of someone holding a civil rights meeting, and a racist arrives and starts de-railing the meeting and making it unproductive. If the person owns the building the meeting is taking place in he has every right to ask people to leave. Your statements accusing us of being a cult were refuted more then once. You based them entirely on the idea that we had anonymous moderators and were not plastering our personal and financial information everywhere. You suggested that we were abusive solely for the way we operate our forums. And then you went on with appeal to fear fallacies suggesting people could be hurt, or killed based on the way we use our forums. It was utterly preposterous. And when it was clear you were not going to do anything but spam already refuted points, you were banned. Not because we are some super secret cabal. But because conversing you was clearly becoming a waste of time. I would point out that membership on the forum is NOT required to read it. So again, transparency.
I also gave our very solid reasoning for anonymous moderators. And that is that internet trolls can and will engage in harassment campaigns for their own amusement. They are not doing this out of any concern for anyone. They do it for their own fun. And so we protect ourselves from that just as people on MANY forums with anonymous moderators including this one do.
Also, the forums are not even a way to address the whole membership as not even a fraction of the over all membership even use the forum. This is another reason why I feel your fixation on the behavior of the forums being the sole proof that we are somehow abusing people in the organization is silly. Participation on the forums is completely voluntary.
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David
They state that the scientific method, something not of opinion, is to be used to direct their goals. I have found that they have little expertise in the scientific method and that it is not deployed to solve internal situations within TVP/TZM. Given the amount of name calling and fighting between members, no one had deployed or requested the help of those in science known to have an education in social sciences. As a result, the claim of the scientific method has become something that is a lost principal.
I also feel this statement is entirely false. If there was some super scientific method to prevent trolling that would be different. There isn't. We do set up rules and ask people to follow them. Your claims of rampant name calling and all that are also completely untrue. We have rules against it and we have been asking people to understand why such behavior is wrong. The culture of the forums themselves is actually rather peaceful most of the time. We go for months without banning anyone.
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David
The idea of a resource base economy sounds great up front. Yet, when people try to find a way to get there, it is your resources that are being requested and they give nothing back, but unanswered questions of how to actually accomplish it.
This again, is not true at all. There are no membership dues in the Zeitgeist movement. There is no charge for participating or using any of our mediums. Any donations are given freely and with no obligation. And what they are used for is obvious. Nobody is ever coerced or manipulated into donating. And in fact Peter really avoids asking for money at all. If people wish to buy his DVD's he offers them at 5 bucks when he could easily charge far more then that. And gives away all of the content on the DVD's ABSOLUTELY FREE including the ISO burn file to just make them yourself. Peter has spent far more money on this then he will ever make back from it.
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David
They do not allow equal voice in discussion and thus, prove themselves hypocritical in the equality of us all.
Again, completely untrue. There are rules on the forum just as there are rules on this one. Anyone can join the Teamspeak server and talk to us though again if your going to spend your whole time derailing our conversations eventually you will be asked to leave. This is only reasonable. And is true everywhere that I have ever seen. If someone has a forum for a specific purpose then it is clear that derailing conversations about that purpose is going to be a problem. See again the analogy of the meeting I suggested above.
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David
Their choices to ban people from their forums when they themselves are in the wrong is ethically and morally wrong. So all the talk they make about us being the result of our environment is not practiced with any positive result on their own turf, in many instances.
Hogwash. It's his forum. Just like this is Mr. Ross's forum. He has every right to set rules for it's use just as you have every right not to use it. It would actually be immoral of you to insist that he allow you to use his forum any way you wish. And that is basically the attitude I am seeing here. "You better let me talk on your forum any way I want to, or I will just run around the internet calling you a cult." Which is the ultimatum you offered here.
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David
2. A process [is in use] call[ed] coercive persuasion or thought reform.
Many of those that have asked hard questions and disagree are told that they do not understand the movement. They are told they must read and watch more. Their legitimate issues and questions are not addressed, but instead, told they are confused. If they object, they risk being kicked out.
The reason for the test is that we found ourselves wasting huge amounts of time answering the same questions over and over again that people could of easily got the answers for by reading the FAQ. It is not unreasonable to set a standard for people doing research before they come to our forums starting threads in all capital letters talking about how our ideas are flawed when they don't even understand them. I also feel your claims that the issues are "legit" requires more burden of proof. These situations are looked at on a case by case basis. We had a guy on our TS3 server for about seven hours talking to him about his concerns. If we were the evil regime your talking about we would of banned him right away. It did eventually become clear he was just repeating himself in a filibuster, and then started insulting people so we banned him. I don't apologize for that. And it was not abuse to him to remove him.
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David
3. Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
They ask for donations of time, equipment, expertise, money and do not clearly state the inner workings of their financial system. I point to the BOINC project and D-Wave, that they support, trying to make a sale to Google, using the resources of TZM members personal computers, as proof. Others have noted that there are at least three different company names involved in The Venus Project alone and that the current membership is unaware of what is in these financials.
Already been over the donation issue. I would have to look at the BOINC project and the D-wave project but as I understand it these are both independent projects that are not being run by the Venus Project or TZM itself. People are allowed to do their own projects because we are not in fact some evil coercive element. We just ask people not to ask for donations on the forums. (Yes, ironically that is one of our rules.) And are very specific about what projects people can ask for donations for. I would challenge you to find anywhere on our website where some aggressive donations request campaign is. I get emails constantly from "Campaign for Liberty" and in every email they are asking for money. I have yet to get an email from TZM ever asking for my money for anything. And I have been there since the start.
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David
I look forward to reading Prometheuspan's reply.
Thank you.
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I still find it dubious that your fixations are almost identical to his. I would be interested to know if your IP address and "his" are the same. But that aside, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and stick to refuting your points. Which I just did.
As Mr. Ross pointed out, cult abuse is defined by things like the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, Scientology, do to their membership. And I have yet to hear anyone claim they were "abused" by being banned from an internet forum.
I will also take this moment to point out that the same "Campaign for Liberty" group I get emails from asks for donations for their activism all the time. I have yet to get a financial report from them as to what they do with the donations they get. They don't have that information posted all over their site either. And they are not a cult.
Again, our organization is an activist organization. In the same thread as groups like Green Peace. We do not hold any religious doctrine. There is no abuse taking place. And the more I debate your points the more I get the feeling that this is someone who has the same agenda as some of the people we have banned ironically for being abusive to us. They are certainly monitoring and bragging about what is taking place here:
This is the cyber-stalking/harassment/bullying that has resulted just because of these conversations alone. And proof that there are people with an interest in doing just this:
[
thezeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com]
[
thezeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com]
I also have screenshots of Prometheus Pan who is now participating on this forum pointing out that his entire reason for calling us a cult was to get revenge on me for banning him from the website. And he made it clear he was going to come here and that my only way of stopping him was to get on my knees and beg forgiveness.
If you want an idea as to what sort of person he is ask him how many textbooks he has read, what his IQ is, and about his experiences with astral projection.
You can see some of his harassment here: [
www.facebook.com]
There is an effort right now to try and hijack this forum to be used as a tool to defame The Zeitgeist Movement by a small group of people who are angry that their abusive behavior was not tolerated and that for that they were removed from an internet forum.
Not long ago they tried to do the same thing by creating fake "Anonymous" accounts on youtube in the hopes that they could turn that group of internet activists against us as well.
Honestly I wish this was more complicated then that. But at the end of the day this is just a petty feud. And I find it disgusting that people are cheapening the very real suffering that some people have felt at the hands of cults all so they can get attention for their displeasure at being banned from an internet forum.
I have also seen a disturbing tendency in the debate here to just use google and find as many negative articles about TZM as possible in an effort to try and claim it was an "investigation". If you put "TZM is a cult" into google you will find it. If you put "TZM is not a cult" you will find it. The internet is full of useful information but it is also full of noise. And I often see people linking to blogs done by anonymous people on the internet as "proof". I could go write on my blog right now that this forum was a tool for an abusive evil cult. That alone would not make it true. Are you seeing any articles about how we are actually abusing anyone? No. Your not. There are people calling it "abusive" but they are saying that banning people from a forum is abusive, and that is absurd.