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vtv
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.
What makes him a cult leader is frankly the fact that its all lies. And let me tell you what a bunch of fibs get told. Jaques claims to be a "modern davinci" He claims to have multiple degrees which he does not have, and then when caught doing that he claims he did private research, and its transparently obvious this is not so. Between all three of the cult leaders they have maybe 5 total virtual (autodidactic) bachelors degrees. Not a batch of Doctorates as they
pretend. This is particularly ludicrous from my pov as I am an Autodidactic aspie polymath, the genuine article. I also sing in 4 octaves, have perfect pitch, play the clarinet expertly... I could brag on and on but i will spare the forum
the details. The point is that he is venerated above his true and real achievements, hes put on a pedastal, they lie about his credentials, they have people on live TV introduce him as "Dr", the list goes on and on. What makes it
absolutely a cult guru situation is its all based on lies. Jaques designs buildings which prove hes never studied enough structural engineering, And passes judgment on social and civil systems beyond his comprehension.
The cult props him up, lies about what hes actually got to offer, and makes him out to be some kind of super genius. Hes actually a really neat fellow but frankly quite a bit more average than all the pomp and noise.
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vtv
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.
This is just plain flat out lying. The cult does everything in its power to prop him up, and he does everything in his power to prop himself up onto a prophetesque pedestal. Jaques himself is the one who asked to be introduced on TV
as "Dr." and jaques himself is the one who claims to be a "modern day Davinci." VTV assumes that we don't know or won't catch him at this. Hes a chronic habitual liar; he has to be; its a full time position,.
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vtv
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.
Whats dangerous is failing to know that tzm/ tvp is in fact a cult. Whats dangerous is not going to look at my links to see that in fact, VTV is a patently evil person, a bully, and ad hominem junkie, and uses ad hominem double standard
in order to run a pack psychology intimidation headgame on the forums and on his radio show.
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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.
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vtv
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.
In this case it is simply true that having secret moderators on the TZM forum is simply the last detail which added to everything else makes the whole scene an internet mirror of Hitler. Secret Police kicking in your doors, banning your
account, deleting the evidence that VTV and Thunder constantly generate of being ad hom junkies, and etc. The entire point of this is that there is then no accountability, no transparency, and no way to confront your accusers.
I will again repeat what vtv now has tried to spam me dozens of times on FB over; The simple fact is that the way in which they have the secret moderators, the work that they do, the way in which they operate, is itself one absolute
proof that its a cult, stand alone, by itself. Its not just that they are secret. Its that they are unhinged from culpability, and they rule without a meaningful rule set and do whatever suits their whims. They enforce a pack psychology intimidation and bully strategy of coercion.
For pointing this out, vtv has spammed his own facebook group now dozens of times with what he thinks is a very clever debunking. Its not. Its just his spam, and distortions of my words taken out of context and removed from depth.
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vtv
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
Any claim they have to be any kind of scientist or even to use the scientific method is completely superfluous.
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vtv
(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.
Thatsa true and fine point, but it doesn't change the fact that they are incredibly verbally violent even to each other, they didn't escape this, they just use it as a neat factoid to make other people wrong while they themselves run around insulting and denigrating and ad homming people at their leisure.
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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.
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vtv
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.
Whats actually true is that they can't handle any kind of real criticism, and the forum "rules" are applied unidirectionally towards new people, not long standing cult members who are free to attack people any time.
The rules they have are patently dysfunctional, they have no valid metaprocess. You can call them rules if you wish but I think its a lot more accurate to call it stacking the deck or shall we say the game of the casino.
The house always wins and the visitors always lose.
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vtv
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.
This is true and more than fair, but its hardly what happened with the majority of people vtv has blacklisted and named as trolls, who asked legit questions, were verbally attacked and intimidated to try to make them submit, and who then reasonably defended themselves.
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vtv
Your statements accusing us of being a cult were refuted more then once.
No, You think so or claim so, but in fact you'd have to have some cogency in the argument to refute anything, and this you have failed and will always fail to do because it is in fact a cult.
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vtv
You based them entirely on the idea that we had anonymous moderators and were not plastering our personal and financial information everywhere.
listen to him spin. No, David took a good long look at many different details, it was quite a bit more complicated than that.
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vtv
You suggested that we were abusive solely for the way we operate our forums.
You are abusive, if only solely for the way you operate your forums.
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vtv
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.
Hes right. Anybody trying to make a positive change or difference in the world has their energy derailed by the cult and this will over the longrun cause millions of people to die because
others were preoccupied with the cult instead of doing something genuine and positive for others.
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vtv
It was utterly preposterous.
whats utterly preposterous is any claim that it isn't a cult, or any claim that you are not abusive.
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vtv
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.
transparency does not include deleting that entire thread to cover the tracks of it.
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vtv
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.
The thing is its an energy cycle of violence. The forum and in particular VTV and Thunder pick the fights, and then the way they mod the forum turns people into hard core anti TZMers very quickly.
Its an utterly dysfunctional way to run a forum, and nothing vtv can say can excuse it.
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vtv
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.
Again, you being abusive to volunteers who come for one thing and end up at the end of your ego trip is not justified just because they are volunteers.
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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.
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vtv
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.
There most certainly is and I will be happy to present that method to this forum.
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vtv
We do set up rules and ask people to follow them. Your claims of rampant name calling and all that are also completely untrue.
Now hes just transparently lying again. Hes gone all out to delete all the evidence, but i still have my long batch of ad homs he tossed at me on record.
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vtv
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.
again, hes just plain lying. It is standard practice for them to bully and intimidate and insult people, pretty much not a day goes by that they don't do it one place or another.
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vtv
We go for months without banning anyone.
If you check they make a nice little list of people that they ban and the time at which they were banned.Unless he deletes it or changes it, I think you will find that maybe they manage a few weeks at best.
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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.
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vtv
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.
David is spot on. Hes absolutely right. They have no real solutions and no real answers, just a lot of amped up panic attacks over the evil evil money system and evil evil religions and evil evil governments and evil evil corporations. The best solution they have provided is that PJ shows in his latest film essentially anti money riots. that and designing arcologies which they have no pragmatic transition plan to have the resources to ever build. (aside from begging at the foot of the united nations, oh, nevermind that they already denounced the government as evil and then they wonder why they can't get a grant.)
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David
They do not allow equal voice in discussion and thus, prove themselves hypocritical in the equality of us all.
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vtv
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.
Again, completely true, David is spot on and dead right. Any attempt to confront the leaders earns a person the same kind of vicious bullying which both Dave and I and many other have now experienced.
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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.
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vtv
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.
again, david is absolutely right. What tzm practices is not self defense from trolls, but active coercive intimidation and bully tactics. They ban people after abusing them.
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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.
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vtv
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.
And see how they feel about it? Its not alearning moment- they resent people asking questions, they don't take the opportunity to walk them through it or talk or be real with people. Back to how to run a forum and not have
trolls. Treat each person with respect and bother to answer the annoying question you have heard 10 times today. Because thats how its done if you have integrity or sense or the first clue about human psychology. Listen to him.
Hes actually HATEFUL towards people who didn't read the FAQ.
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vtv
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.
the claim that people don't understand is again a superflous argument. Most people understand just fine, and the holes they are poking in the logic are completely real. The test is to ensure homogeny, agreement, and
compliance, not to ensure education level.
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vtv
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.
Since i don't know any particulars i can't speak to that other than to say i watched vtv attack person after person in my stay at the forums, i made 700 posts there over a period of 3 months. I never once saw them truly take their time to be present with anyone, and as a side note i don't believe that vtv has the psychological ability to truly be present with other people.