Zeitgeist: The Black Perspective #1

Zeitgeist is a documentary that came out in 2007. It is the first of two parts and as time will pass I will add the second part to this blog.

My black perspective is based upon the first Zeitgeist-documentary. Watching this video is necessary to understand the commentary. So please take a look.




Here is the first part:




Around the world most black people are religious and relatively poor. When we set foot on Western ground we tend to work hard for a little money, so we can take care of our families in the motherland. To me this description of black (African or Caribbean) people looks and sounds a lot like mental slavery. While poverty is seen all over the African continent and Caribbean Islands, religion thrives in these regions in a way that hasn't been seen elsewhere.
The belief in institutions besides the religious ones goes even further.

Imagine, you are an African or Caribbean person in Europe. You make a little money so you can help your family and take care of yourself. Eventually you will find out that there are different subsidies that are given out to people with a low income. So you apply for those subsidies and from that point on you partially dependent on the government's money.

Zeitgeist is a critical documentary that takes jabs at religion, the monetary system and the contexts of different recent wars.
I do not consider this film to depict the absolute truth because I need to do more research on every subject to stand behind everything that is said.
However watching the images and listening the information has confirmed a lot of thoughts I already had.

* Religion is the opium of the people (Karl Marx)

If you make a distinction between belief and religion. You're making a distinction between a spiritual level of health and systematical following of rules (or pretending to follow a rule).

The dictionary says about:

Belief:

1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

Religion:

1.
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

As you can see it is not the same thing. Belief is about what you consider as the truth and trust. Religion is about a system, order, set of rules and governance that is brought to you by others.
Which leads me to think it is very well possible that one feeds the soul while the other starves it. For instance when you truly believe in your marriage
it feeds your soul with love for your partner. Being in love or "happy" is such a positive feeling that it improves your health.

Religion however is set on rules and hierarchy. Rules that have been determined by a selected group of people and passed on
through indoctrination. When I say indoctrination I know many people don't agree. What's typical about it is the applicability. This technique can be applied to any movement, philosophy and other life style that needs unfunded blind
trust. When you don't need a good reason to follow a great set rules that affect every aspect of your life, then you're blindly following something that you have been "programmed" to trust.

If you think about it most religious people are religious because they have been raised that way. That's why you have
Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Atheist, Buddhists etc. who strictly follow the rules of their religion and believe that other religions
are completely wrong. Notice how I threw Atheism in there, this religion has scientific rules as the measure and a core belief
that there is no god. Scientific rules are partially based on reason and based on scientific conclusions.
Basically they are funded on facts and the belief that scientists always use the right reasoning to come to a conclusion.

This is however the same science that depicted black people as inferior race based on studies concerning skull size and eugenics. Soon I will
post a video about this because it is an almost forgotten area of expertise that lied at the core of amongst other things the Apartheid, segregation and Nazism.


Even scientific rules can be wrong so this is not an attack on the belief in a god or religious people.
My worry is that people often hide behind religion while starving their souls. Meaning that it is easy to follow a
certain crowd just because you where raised or instructed to do so. That doesn't mean that your spirit enjoys being in that state or that
it has a progressive effect on your community or environment.

For example, see how religion is destroying the childhood of thousands of Congolese children:




And Nigerian children:



* The Western world is the embodiment of capitalism and debt

We recently noticed how the collapse of the housing market in the US had an economic domino-effect on the entire world. It was
Called the credit crunch/crisis. Mind you Zeitgeist was made before this phenomenon became the disaster of 2008.
So to see this film while the sh*t hit the fan baffled me.

A couple of years ago the average person would have called the allegations made in Zeitgeist "conspiracy theory". Now you see
different organizations making a point out of finding out why bankers got high bonuses while average citizens where losing there
homes and jobs in the banking sector. Even though Zeitgeist adressed the US monetary system there are a lot of similarities with
Europe and European countries:

- Every Eu-country has a central bank that loans money to the government. If you would like to know where you can find information about your country just leave a comment.

- Every Eu-country can borrow money from the EU-bank on top of the money they get from there own central bank

- The central bank makes the money based on the demand and calculations (so what is it really based on?)

- The golden standard was removed in the US and in Europe so again the national central banks and european central bank base the value of their money on demand and calculations.

There are more similarities but the bottom line is: We increase our spending and live in debt.

So what is my "black" perspective? We are all human being with feelings a bodies so we all need nutrition and love. It is just ridiculous that many people pay a high financial, mental or physical price because of rules that we placed upon them. In Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean there are enough people suffering without ridiculous rules aggravating the pain. When considering that the poorest states in the world are also the most religious states in the world, one could state that there is a correlation between the two. And when some of our people find their way to the Western world, they suffer under a skewed monetary system. One that is based on nothing and covered by lies.

If any of this is true then Black people should believe in their progress, love one another and let go of useless rules and traditions that are physically, spiritually and environmentally hurting them. You could say that "hurt" or "pain" is a subjective term. That it doesn't clearly define where the line should be.

I say anything that is leading to the abuse and death of innocent people should be banned (painful unnecessary exorcism, war). Once that has been done I am sure we will all do a bit better. I will elaborate on the Sub-Saharan African problems and my view on them in another blog.

As for the black people in Europe: my opinion is that we all need to take a long hard look at the western society and figure out what is positive about it. We often romanticize the West because of our comparisons with our original roots. Every coin has two sides.

Let's not forget that...