I would like to get your feedback on the relevance of this upcoming movie called 'THRIVE' to the Occupy movement. Both are related to money and the economy. 

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A new movie called "Thrive" carries a message that is both scary and profound – A WAKE UP CALL into hidden dark truths, and a chance to create real thriving change. Please watch it with me and millions of others who will be viewing it on the day of its release on 11:11:11.

Access the movie here: http://ThriveMovement.com

Vic Desotelle

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Rob did finally publish my post. No foul. I was a first-time poster and so needed moderation. To think he didn't get up in the middle of the night to publish...

Here's my last response to complete the thread.  Many of the posters seemed so out of hand dismissive of the possibility that the movie had any credence at all.  My impression was that this is a relatively progressive community being about Transition.  I suppose I wouldn't have been so provocative, but I don't believe we can afford to be so impervious to being curious.

I wrote:

Jitendra
11 Jan 4:25am

Would you laugh and think me a conspiratorial fool if I were to write a wild story of how our government trained and funded a Latin American rebel army to brutally attack its own citizens while overthrowing a government unfriendly to US multinational corporations by selling arms to Iran and crack cocaine on the streets of LA?

I suppose if Ollie North hadn’t been convicted and Ronald Reagan made to make mealy-mouthed apologies to the Nicaraguan people, you’d be laughing at the above as well.

I am boggled by the willingness of the majority of US citizens to be so complicit with the most outrageous actions of our US power brokers. I was in a room with an Australian fellow 4 days ago discussing the NDAA action of indefinite detention with one of the primary attorneys who prosecuted Oliver North (and has intimate awareness of much of what you laugh and scoff at). This Australian fellow was purple in the face because a decidedly progressive group of people (a good # of whom were Transition-ites) couldn’t grok how Americans can be so blind with regard to the actions of their own government.

Even though the Fed advertised their bank bailout at $1.5 trillion, which we thought was staggering, a congressional committee now reveals the amount of the bailout was actually $29 trillion. That’s TWENTY-NINE TRILLION DOLLARS. If you’re not gasping, check your pulse.

But, you know, I don’t want to be negative. I don’t think anyone in particular is trying to deceive anyone. I think income inequality just happened because of a flawed system. It’s too complicated to believe a group of people could actually orchestrate the current situation. It’s too hard.

I might as well step off the cliff altogether while I’m at it with “FREE” energy.

All of you physicists who have spent your life proofing the laws of thermodynamics step up here. Get in line behind a long list of distinguished debunkers, brilliant men who knew so many things weren’t possible…until magically they were.

Those original crazed seafarers that headed off to their doom at the teeth of dragons lurking over the edge of a flat earth…what were they thinking??!!

And that buffoon who worked in the patent office…I can’t even remember his name…Al something, muttering something about his relatives.

I suppose I wouldn’t be moved to sarcasm, which I admit is inelegant and crass…but come on…

Why would you believe our current technological understanding of energy source and flow is at its apex after every scientific paradigm before us has fallen like a dead weight to its “unbelievable” successor?

I find that unbelievable. Anyway, back to growing corn.

Peace.

PS: The point of the “negative” backdrop is to acknowledge that we don’t operate in a vacuum. There are external forces and influences at work. The better you measure the breeze, the better your arrow will make the mark.

Fascinating is my compulsion to extend this conversation.  I feel a profound identification with Foster and his mission to share a picture of what is, so that we can create wise and effective strategies implemented via intelligent tactics to effect the changes we envision.

Jitendra
11 Jan 8:44pm

I realize my commentary has not been pointed in detail toward specificity regarding Rob’s critique or the film’s content per se.

I am unabashedly a member of the choir from which Foster Gamble sings. Labeling eugenics directly was a bit of a stretch for me until I listened to Amy Goodman reporting directly from the global warming conference in South Africa just last month where representatives of island nations were literally pleading for their existence in the face of rising sea level acceleration. Amy’s point throughout her reporting was to illuminate that the US was not simply being uncooperative, they were being blatantly obstructive to other nations coming to a meaningful accord to curb global warming. (BTW-I’m not sure how some posters here derive that Amy Goodman is at all far from alignment with the essence of Thrive.)

I sat and thought. Why would the great and beneficent US of A, defender of the weak and oppressed, be deaf and obstructive to nations pleading for their very existence? One delegate was pleading on his knees for action to save their country from extinction. Why would our lawmakers, supreme judges and highest executive succumb to the pressure of psychopathic multinational and military-industrial corporations and their lobbyists (Google the definition of psychopath if you think I overstate) to allow Keystone and a tar sand debacle, repeal of EPA restrictions, declare war on American citizens via NDAA (do thorough due diligence before you even think about refuting this), unchecked and deregulated proliferation of GMO monopolization, privatization and devastation of our global food & seed sources along with foisting fracking on communities against their will that will insure increased disease via poisoned water tables and air?

Many top-tier multinational corps (I don’t say all) don’t care about human lives. I think it’s spectacularly dangerous to not fully grok that there are indeed “They”s that hold the bulk of humanity as chattel. Collateral damage. The “cost” of national “security”. We’re all familiar with the encyclopedic collection of euphemisms that distance our minds from our hearts and minimize the physical impacts and realities of actions in the name of national security, aka financial and political supremacy. (I’m new here, so those words may be a stick in a hornets nest. Don’t know.)

When I see an entity of means (however faulty) choosing to spend $650 billion to wage wars against “enemies of their own creation”** while holding humanitarian actions and support at bay; backing systematic health degradation via big agriculture and pharma; while simultaneously stripping human services of people they allegedly represent and topping it off with the suspension of civil rights via NDAA (for our own protection, of course), I begin to deduce that something more insidious than Hitler’s genocide is occurring in plain sight, under our very noses. AND WE ARE BARELY REACTING!!! Foster used the boiled frog analogy and I wholly agree. If you throw a frog into boiling water it will fight to get out. If you put him in nice cool water and slowly bring it to a boil, he’ll calmly hang out—complicit with becoming soup.
___________________________
**[i.e.-if a bully with extraordinary power and means were to habitually come into your house, beat up your family, take everything you work for, lay claim to all your inheritance and indenture you to forever work as their peons...what would you do? Sadly-many Americans are finding out first hand.]
___________________________

The purpose of Thrive as I see it, is not the content per se. It’s purpose is to evoke a reaction, to poke you to think about things you may have let slide or never considered. What I think is most dangerous, is to dismiss out of hand, information that’s produced with source material to back it up.

How many of you did your own investigative discovery by referencing the source material given on the website, much of it in the form of links? Or have you taken the Fox News tack of attacking anything remotely challenging your point of view with sophisticated buzz-words and phrases you picked up but never really digested through a prolonged process of individuated critical thinking?

One of the things that differentiates fundamentalist thought from progressive thought is the willingness and capacity to access beginner’s mind with new information. I can be as opinionated as the next person. I also LOVE discovering what I don’t know I don’t know. Hyperbolic opinion alert ==> Only here can we truly progress!

I see Thrive’s purpose as to instigate conversations such as this — to get people talking about the possibility that we are in a pot that is slowly coming to a boil (global environmental, financial and governmental warming). Not as many people are as CRITICALLY aware as we like to believe either we, or those around us, are.

Why are people not tripping over themselves to participate in Transition towns? It’s not hot enough yet?

Why is there relatively so little collaboration among groups rowing in the same direction? It’s not hot enough yet?

Why did #Occupy flare with such force but then dribble to the side of mass consciousness again? (This one is a little more complex, and no, #Occupy is far from fizzled). It’s still not hot enough yet?

Why is this forum so intent on highlighting the minutia of difference? We divide ourselves with vitriol when we could be choosing to acknowledge and respect the unique contribution we each are by being our authentic selves.

As I write that last sentence I have to chuckle, because I recognize my own reactivity to some of you. If not for the dissent and expression of all colors here, this conversation would not be taking place. In speaking personally with Foster, one of his primary missions is to ignite conversation. He seems to care a bit less about WHAT people say and more that they’re saying SOMETHING.

Things are rarely what we think they are. I love Bucky Fuller’s concept of precession. As we travel straight ahead in thought and deed, our higher purpose is actualized 90 degrees perpendicular to our path, just beyond our periphery.

I prefer to gauge a work by its effect. The greater the ripple, the greater its effect. As with “What the Bleep…”. I didn’t agree with it entirely, but I LOVED the effect it had, and still has, on the collective narrative. It was part of this larger shift in people’s empowerment to take responsibility for where we are.

Being that 1.5 million people have seen this film to date, via word of mouth, and it engages stirring conversations that include those who have no direct knowledge of the film’s experience, I’d say it’s a rousing success.

If it pissed you off. Great! If it pissed you off and inspired you. Greater! If it catalyzed one dormant synapse in your neural net. Greater yet!

I have a deep certainty that if you spent 3 minutes with Foster, it would be harder to be as negative as some are here. Interesting how our human values can fade through a keyboard. The man is deeply in his heart and simply believes what he believes. He was willing to risk a lot to be authentic even when many of his own production team disagreed with his content. But one thing every member of that team I’ve met has said, they stayed because of who he is and for what he has sacrificed because he cares.

Thrive is an alarm clock. I think it’s working.

I agree with Anna Harris. I'm of the "live simply, so that others can simply live," school.

Technology is the problem, not part of the solution. In order to "thrive," western civilization needs copper, cobalt, coltan, uranium, industrial diamonds, and other natural resources from Africa, and since Africans do not wish to allow these resources to be stolen, they can only be obtained if the colonialist powers of the world continue to install brutal dictators and fund proxy warlords to keep killing millions of Africans. But even if every last ounce of these natural resources were obtained, there is not enough of them for everyone to "thrive," so only the most powerful and privileged would benefit.

The industrialized countries have spent trillions of dollars on space programs while millions of people here on earth starved. The problem is an inequitable distribution of wealth, not any lack of abundance. In order for some to "thrive" others are murdered in cold blood. This is not done nonviolently. And the survivors of genocide have an absolute right to their anger and to self-defense. They have no obligation to submit passively, nor does anyone have any obligation to support the capitalist imperialist governments engaged in genocide and recolonizing Africa. Supporting such governments is supporting violence, even if the people thriving don't do the actual killing themselves.

Once everyone on the planet has their basic needs ensured, I'd listen to suggestions for thriving, as long as they would be guaranteed to everyone, not just to the fortunate. The US has always thrived on inequality and exploitation. The 1% thrive more than the 99%, of course, so the 99% are indignant and want a bigger cut of the spoils. What I want is an end to inequality and exploitation. I want no more for myself than it is possible for everyone on the planet to have, and no more for anyone than for everyone else. This is a finite world. If you take 30% of the world's resources and give them to 5% of the global population, that 5% may thrive but the other 95% will suffer. And they'll try to defend themselves, so you'll have to create multi-trillion-dollar weapons systems and militaries to enforce such unequal distribution.

It really isn't the 1% who are the problem, it is the 5% who benefit from and thrive on the proceeds of capitalist imperialism. To believe it possible for everyone to have everything in a world where none of us even have clean air or water, all are subject to global pollution, and billions exist in the most extreme poverty imaginable, isn't just magical thinking, it is callous indifference to and disregard of reality.

Foster Gamble and Daniel Pinchbeck will chat January 30.  Register to gain access to that and more for $20.

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