because the majority of my work surrounds the Zeitgeist Movement

or things that are related to my film series

but I've tailored this very carefully to

what I felt the audience of this event would find interesting.

The working title as noted in the program is:

'When Normality Becomes Distortion: Reflections on a World Gone Mad'

but as the talk developed I experimented with a few other

less sensationalized titles to see what would work better.

The 2nd one I came up with was

'When Intuition Fails: The Inevitable Breakdown of Human Assumption

and its Social Consequences'.

Not bad, a bit too wordy, though

so when I finished the presentation

it struck me to have a little more intellectual one

'Limited Dimensional Thought in a Multi-Dimensional Reality'.

All right, annoyingly intellectual but still OK.

Regardless, I point this out so you can make your own decision

which title you think is more applicable

because they cognitively highlight different context

of what I am going to present here.

As far as myself, as introduced, it's usually at this point

I might say something about who I am, my credentials and experience

as though frankly, any of us should care.

One of the great failures of critical thought

is the assumption of authority around a given data set.

People might think "This person's considered an expert in a given field

due to the standard set forth by culture, so therefore

I can just trust blindly anything they say

without critical evaluation."

A rather ominous perspective and I think most would agree

a large number of atrocities historically can be found

sourced to this blind dedication to the statements

of supposed authority.

Who am I? I'm just like you.

I'm a compiler and a messenger.

You should have no faith in anything I say here

and rather be prepared to critically assess

whatever issues noted on your own accord

within the bounds of your logical reasoning and training.

As I will expand upon later in this talk

there is actually no such thing as the origin of any information.

I view knowledge as a life form in and of itself.

There is no empirical source

and it evolves and multiplies just like any other organism

utilizing the vehicle of our collective human experience: transference

and like biological evolution it is self-correcting.

Any false thought will eventually

(even after long struggles) be seen by the environment and

selected out by the collective awareness

or what could also be called 'The Group Mind'

which I will talk about again a little bit later.

Furthermore, the premise of this talk regards

not the specifics of any discipline of knowledge or understanding

but the mechanics of it

specifically the nature of its change.

I'm less interested in what people think and more interested in

how they came to think it, and how they maintain it as valid.

This talk will not only consider such frames of reference

as they're often called

frames of reference individual people utilize

to generate and support their decisions and beliefs

but also the larger order institutions

that arise from those referential assumptions

once they are shared by a large enough group of people

to define social normality

which is the status quo that we all know.

Then the status quo practices will be qualified or even quantified

against what we could haphazardly call 'Our Objective Reality'

which will draw its assumptions from a completely different referential benchmark

than most of the population of the world is familiar with

a frame of reference we have come to know as 'The Scientific Method'.

You'll notice I said haphazardly termed an objective reality. Why?

Because the concept of objective can only be hyperbole, right?

How could we possibly be so arrogant to assume

at any point in time in human history

that we have ever been empirically right?

It simply hasn't happened yet, if you take the broad view.

It wasn't until the past couple of hundred years

that The Scientific Method has barely been taken seriously

with respect to human affairs and society.

What is the core mechanism of the Scientific Method, really?

Self-correction.

Self-correction through testing and logical calculation and hypothesis.

The self-correction attribute of science is what enables its evolution.

There is no recognized phenomenon

that isn't undergoing a constant change of definition

as the evolution of knowledge continues.

Truth itself is an emergent distinction.

It's not a noun; it's more of a verb

which constitutes an approach towards reality

but never, ever, getting there.

That said

it's obvious that we're doing something right.

The fact that this building we're in hasn't collapsed upon us means

we have been able to come in harmony with some kind of

natural physical law that exists beyond our control.

The fact that we understand to a certain degree how our bodies work

creating medicines that can help us

in positive ways over statistical time

shows that we are indeed in some kind of alignment

with what we call nature

as opposed to blaming our sickness on gods and demons

as we did in the past

as this organism of knowledge continues to evolve.

There does seem to be a pre-existing logic

(this is important to note because people take this for granted)

a logic which dictates our reality

doesn't give a damn what we think of it and impose upon it.

It appears we can either be vulnerable and align as best we can

and engage this harmony, or we can walk against it

fight it, to our personal and social disadvantage.

The unfortunate thing is

(as I will continue to address later in detail)

our basic social construct

as a whole, top to bottom

along with the dominant human values inherent to it that support it

appear to be firmly walking against

the natural order that exists (that we are slowly discovering)

becoming more and more decoupled from reality as it were

and hence, really, our life support.

For the sake of argument, I would like to quickly reduce human perception

into two basic modes of operations: emergent and traditional.

Today the traditional element is clearly the most dominant.

The cultural zeitgeist (no pun intended) is always based on

institutions that are tending to perpetuate themselves

non-emergent thought processes and their consequences.

Why? Because they're forms of psychological security, aren't they?

They're also forms of financial security.

Our whole society is actually based upon

institutional self-perpetuation

whether it's the preservation of a political administration

a corporation's market share and dominance

or even a religious demographic.

The traditional notion is so powerful

that the very act of questioning

is often met with disdain in the culture today.

Some, in their defense, have even gone so far to suggest

that all beliefs and values must be equal and respected

and they must be tolerated in the same element of quality.

Is that true? Are all values equal?

Does everyone have the right to believe

and act upon whatever they choose?

Are we all to respect everything others want us to?

If I put a gun to your head and have the value and belief

that you should die, is that acceptable to you?

Are you a bigot for not allowing me

to express my freedom of belief?

Obviously, values are not equal.

Some work and some don't

or more specifically, some represent a closer approximation

to reality and others do not.

The farther those values are from this natural order

the more destructive they often become

not just to the individual or group

but to all of us as a collective society.

There rests a distinct, social imperative

that is often ignored or feared.

The taboo associated with challenging what others think

under the still convenient notion that all values are equal

is simply not tenable.

You are partially responsible

for the thoughts and values of others

and they are responsible for yours.

There is nowhere to hide from the collective consciousness

and an underlying thesis of this presentation

is that until human society is able to

find and share a basic, common

working, responsible, near-empirical value set

we're basically doomed.

My hope here is to generate

a personal and social reflection

with respect to what you believe and why

eventually to be framed within the social context I keep alluding to.

It will be argued that the failure of emergent perception

to be open and listen to the world we live in

rather than impose upon it

with these traditional assumptions we blindly hold as empirical

is the psychological root of the problems we see in the world today:

environmental, social.

It is a value system disorder

that is continually created and reinforced

by the social system we inhabit and share ideologically

and if uncorrected, it could lead

to the collapse of human society as we know it today.

A collapse which (if you're paying attention)

is accelerating right now across the world

fueled again by a set of detrimental

perspectives that go largely unrecognized

like cancer cells go unrecognized to an immune system.

In 1884, a unique book was published called 'Flatland'

and apart of some very clever social commentary

the work gave a perspective of

what it would be like to live in a 2-dimensional reality

as opposed to the 3-dimensional one that we share.

One can go left and right, forward and back

but there was no such thing as up and down.

Perspective was hence restricted.

If something from the 3rd dimension was to come

and visit this 2-dimensional reality

the perception of that object would be confined

to the properties enabled by the 2-dimensional view.

A 3-dimensional object moving up and down

through the 2-dimensional plane, would be perceived by the inhabitants

as this mysterious mutating 2-dimensional line.

I would like to use this abstract notion

as a very loose metaphor with respect to cultural perception.

What if those in the 2-dimensional flatland

had actually always been in the 3-dimensional space

but their frame of reference was so limited

by the tools of measurement they had

their experience so consistent with the 2-dimensional world

their associated values so ingrained and stubborn as generations past

that they were simply unable to reconcile its presence

even though it was obviously there?

They might have even established whole philosophies

and institutions based on the appearance of their world

perhaps 'The Church of Squares'

or 'Linear Economics' or the party 'Line of Politics'.

But as time went on and their tools and education grew

the consequences of their perceptual folly started to manifest

and the beliefs and institutions they had created

started to draw a confusion and disorder as a natural evolution.

They might have thought "How could the very fabric

of our assumptions that we all share of this reality

that seem correct and almost provable over long periods of time

how could they actually be wrong?"

Around 200 BC a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes

estimated the circumference of the planet Earth

likely the first mathematically to solidify that it was truly round and not flat

a rather dramatic finding since, it certainly looks flat, doesn't it?

In Psalm 93 of the Bible it states "The world is firmly established.

It cannot be moved. " In another passage it states

"The sun rises and the sun sets and then hurries to rise again."

That would make sense too, wouldn't it?

After all, when you look at the sky it appears to be moving around us.

We still use that premise of thought in our language:

We still say 'up and down' when it's really 'out and in'.

We even still say 'sunrise' and 'sunset', interestingly enough.