We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us.
Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.
Perhaps the most significant thing a person can know about himself is to understand his own system of values. Almost every thing we do is a reflection of our own personal value system. What do we mean by values? Our values are what we want out of life. No one is born with a set of values. Except for our basic physiological needs such as air, water, and food, most of our values are acquired after birth.
The future is our responsibility, but change will not take place until the majority loose confidence in their dictator’s and elected officials’ ability to solve problems. It will likely take an economic catastrophe resulting in enormous human suffering to bring about true social change.
We have more than enough to take care of everybody on earth at this time. If we have a shortage of anything, it's very easy for science to make a substitute material. There's no shortage of anything except brains in Washington.
I am afraid to live in the society we live in today. Our society cannot be maintained by this type of incompetency.
Science and education, when devoid of a social conscience or environmental and human concern, are meaningless.
When you live in a false society, that bases its wealth upon money, then that society itself will collapse eventually. Not because I say so, because it's not based on physical reference.
Merely complaining without proposing an alternative offers nothing.
There are no bad people, there are people with insufficient information to make appropriate decisions.
Architects are mostly self-centered and their buildings express their ego. [They are] not social buildings to make it more comfortable for people - to make life better for people. The cities have to be designed so people can get together and talk with one another.
If you took the profit out of war, there would be no war. What the hell do you think war is? You think we go to another country to bring democracy? We go there 'cause there's oil, resources or something we need.
You know that you can't go out there and change the world tomorrow morning. It just takes time, and the realization of that does not produce frustration. What produces frustration, is when you expect the world to join with your cause it's so reasonable. It is not reasonable to unreasonable people.
We accept, without sufficient consideration, a system that breeds inefficiencies and actually encourages the creation of shortages.
We must learn to outgrow our egos in exchange for constructive dialogue rather than debate. In addition, we must be capable of stating problems and proposing solutions clearly and succinctly, without distortion of meaning or misunderstanding, even when these solutions are radically opposed to accepted norms.
People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask.
You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator.
LOVE is to stop making demands on people and give them room to grow.
I don't believe in Gods and devils. I think it's man-made stories to try and help people understand where all this came from. They said 'Where did the world come from if there's no God', 'Where did life come from'. Just say 'I don't know'. Don't say some guy made a man and a woman. You have no business doing that, you know what I mean? And then He got mad and flooded the whole world; told Noah to build an arc. These are terrible stories.
We don't know how to live together on Earth, how the hell are we going to live together on Mars?
Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, the Free-Market .... What good are these approaches for? These attempts are made by men who are cerebral insufficient. I'm trying to give you back your brain, which they took away from you in schools and in your upbringing. I'm trying to show you how the world works. So if you want a better world, you have to get up off your ass and make it better
We have more than enough resources in the world. The only thing we don't have is brains in Washington.
Politics was good a hundred years ago. Today, politicians have no ability to solve any problems because they are not students of behavior. They are not students of agriculture, oceanography - they know nothing about the factors that operate the world.
As long as superstition and ignorance prevail, humanity will fall short of eradicating war, poverty, and hunger.
When education and resources are available to all without a price tag, there will be no limit to the human potential.
You don't need to get rid of religion; you have to outgrow the need for it. In other words, instead of hoping for the good life, you make the good life.
The Venus Project is a translation of all religions: The end of war, the end of poverty, the brotherhood of humanity. If that isn't spiritual, like I've said before, I don't know what is.
The system you're brought up under tries to make you like the people that succeeded in that system.
The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.
War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. That is, there will be very little significant change. It’s going to take the redesign of our culture and values.
In our search for more, we have blinded ourselves to our personal responsibility for challenging these absurdities. A resource-based society considers us all equal shareholders of Earth. We are responsible both for the planet and for our relationship with each other.
What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said ' I'm the most important organ, and the liver said 'I am, and I want to go in a free enterprise-system.' You would rot away in a month, if every organ of your body, were out for itself.
If you love someone and they want to leave, you help them pack. That's love
Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.
War is the supreme failure of bridging the differences between nations.
If you want your children to relate to the culture you live in, if you want to train them outside of the general system, you have to tell your children that ordinary children tend to say things like 'I can run faster than you; I can draw better than you; I know things you don't know'. You have to tell them what normal children are like. Normal children are messed up and you have to tell them about that. But if you instruct your child in high correlation with the physical world, they won't be able to relate with normal children. Normal means mixed up as I use the word.
Crime is based upon need, making money. People sell drugs to make money. But if everybody is cared for, they don't sell drugs and if there's no money you can't sell drugs even if you wanted to. There'd be no such thing as gambling, prostitution, or selling out, or paying off a senator or a governor. There are no senators, there are no governors so you can't pay them off. If you take away the basis or the condition that generate abhorrent behavior, you don't have abhorrent behavior.
We must get away from this limited *I did this and I did that* and the self-centeredness, that dominates our society Today. It must be a privilege to serve members of society. Not that we want rewards or medals or honor for what we do, because it is just an honor to do it, if you cannot work for that, than you missed the boat. You don’t understand the teachings of the wisest men ever lived.
When they say all men are created equal, that bothers me. I told you some are thin, some are heavy, some have better eyesight than others. I don't know what that means. I think they're trying to talk about equal opportunity and I know that doesn't exist. If you don't have the money to go to college, the word 'equal opportunities' mean nothing
We have the technology to build a global paradise on earth, and at the same time, we have the power to end life as we know it. I am a futurist. I cannot predict the actual future - only what it can be if we manage the earth and its resources intelligently.
It takes a different value system if you wish to change the world.
We talk about civilization as though it's a static state. There are no civilized people yet, it's a process that's constantly going on... As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization.
Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality.
During the thousands of years of monetary system, most workers have been paid just enough to make it necessary that they return to work, even when higher wages have been possible. How else can the wage-payer keep the workers coming back?
The entire money structure and materialistic society is a false society.
The more intelligent our children, the better our lives and the richer our culture will be.
The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.
Let's teach our children to be thinkers.
Wiser, never wise. Smarter, never smart.
We will never know what anyone is really like, until everyone has economic security and doesn't have to answer to anyone else.
At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.
A Resource-Based Economy is in the application of the methods of science with human concern and environmental concern. If we used the scientific method throughout the world, the probability of war drops to zero. The probability of human suffering disappears. Deprivation, poverty, crime - all those things tend to disappear because there's no basis. I'm strictly concerned with the environment that people are raised in and if that environment is altered, so will behaviors be altered.
It is not that people are evil or greedy. The conditions that socially support the system force us to behave in socially offensive ways.
Take off all the masks, manners, fancy clothes, all the devices you use, and be the most honest person you can be with yourself. Then, whatever love you get then is real. All the false approaches, like trying to be a player, only bring false results.
Notions of Good and Evil depend entirely on social context. It is not that people are good or bad, they are raised in an aberrant or twisted environment.
Every system tries to get people to conform to support that system. That goes for communism, socialism, free enterprise, or any other civilization. If they don't demand loyalty, they can't keep their civilization together. So what they do is they teach things that would support an established system. We do not advocate an established system. TVP talks of an emergent system into state of change. So that we always prepare people for the next changes coming ahead. So that people will not cling to the past.
We are all victims of culture.
So your having trouble with your partner. Well ask yourself, if you were in a relationship with a replica of yourself how long would it last?
Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival.
The original intent of laws was to get the masses of people to accept the limitations superimposed upon them as being the result of their own misbehavior.
Armies are created to protect an established system, not people. In the future, an educated humanity will not stand for war.
It's hard in a monetary system to trust people.
Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt.
Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such.
If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world's people.
I have no notions of a perfect society, I don’t know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we’ve got, I’m no utopian, I’m not a humanist that would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony: I know that if we don’t live that way, we’ll kill each other and destroy the Earth.
People say that the monetary system produces incentive. This may be true in limited areas, but it also produces greed, embezzlement, corruption, pollution, jealousy, anger, crime, war, poverty, tremendous scarcity, and unnecessary human suffering. You have to look at the entire picture.
So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?
Don't get mad at me cause I call something a 'nothing thing'. I mean it's nothing in terms of the majority of people.... I'm not that concerned with my son. I'm more concerned with all people. I look at all people as brothers and sisters. I have no priority for members of the family.
Our universities today are better equipped than ever, and the wars keep getting worse.
Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.
The uncreative mind can spot the wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot the wrong questions" The question has never been: Do we have the money? The question has always been: Do we have the resources?
Only when science and technology are used with human concern in a world in which all of the earth's resources are held as the common heritage of all of the earth's people can we truly say that there is intelligent life on Earth.
If you had a free society you couldn't get people to go to war, if you had an intelligent type of upbringing in ones children. They would say; There must be many other ways of solving problems other then killing people.
The fact that cultures are failing all over the world means that they don't know how to operate a society to make it work. Politicians have no real knowledge of technology; therefore, they are not capable of increasing food production, designing transportations systems that are safe… They have no knowledge in that area. Therefore it's senseless to talk to them about anything of significance.
If we are genuinely concerned about the environment and the fellow human beings, and want to end territorial disputes, war, crime, poverty, hunger, and the other problems that confront us today, the intelligent use of science and technology are the tools with which to achieve a new direction – one that will serve all people, and not just a select few.
The majority of the people of the world today are unsane, not insane, unsane meaning having been exposed to methods of evaluation that have long rendered obsolete, our language in the future will change to a saner language where we have no argument in it, 'can there be such a language?' there is, when engineers talk to each other, it's not subject to interpretation, they use math, they use descriptive systems, if I interpreted what another engineer said in the way I think he meant it: you couldn't build bridges, dams, power transmission lines. The language has to have meaning
Everything that you've learned: 'Make a lot of money, have a nice house'. But they never teach you at school how to relate, how to communicate with others, how to share values with others. ...They teach you how to make a living. You become an optometrist, he becomes a physicist, she becomes a structural engineer, he's an architect. In the future, none of that. Everybody is trained to be a generalist, so they understand different cultures, different values, how we get to be the way we are. So no-one can ever use you for war or killing anybody or hurting anybody
No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns.
Working with drug addicts, alcoholics, and so-called juvenile delinquents in New York City convinced me that instead of working with individuals, more effective methods would deal with the societal conditions that create dysfunctional behaviors in the first place.
War is not the only form of violence imposed on people through inadequate social arrangements. There is also hunger, poverty and scarcity. The use of money and the creation of debt fosters economic insecurity, which perpetuates crime, lawlessness and resentment. Paper proclamations and treaties do not alter the facts of scarcity and insecurity, and nationalism tends only to propagate the separation of nations and the world's people.
In a society where every man works for himself, individual incentive, working for one's self. If people worked for one's self, there wouldn't be the electric light, there wouldn't be engines and powered vehicles, there wouldn't be electrification and reservoirs and water purification. These are processes that help all people. And processes that help single people is a very primitive value system carried into this century, which is really not necessary.
We have to learn how scientists arrive at decisions. Once you use the scientific method, it doesn't mean that your decisions will be perfect. They'll be far more accurate than just opinions.
If nations join together now, before the big collapse and share their resources, they can maintain a level of sustainability. Sustain the people that is, and not banks and businesses.
There are no negro problems, or Polish problems, or Jewish problems, or Greek problems, or women's problems, there are HUMAN PROBLEMS”.
If you make people uniform, you can control them. If you teach people to read, and think, and question things, you lose control. So, the best idea is to separate people if you wish to maintain a monetary system. It's called divide and conquer. By dividing people, they're not a threat, you can control them.
We can work out anything if we put our mind to it, study it, do hard work instead of finding simple answers
Politics is an obsolete way of doing things. Although it was good a hundred years ago, it has no place in today's high tech society.
There is no such thing as beauty. If your culture says, 'This is a beautiful girl,' that's within the framework of your culture. If you're brought up in an island where people have pointed heads, that would be 'beautiful' in your terms. All these mythological structures is what gets us into trouble; the artificiality of our values that get us into trouble.
In my work, I am not attempting to predict the future. I am only pointing out what is possible with the intelligent application and humane use of science and technology. This does not call for scientists to manage society. What I suggest is applying the methods of science to the social system for the benefit of human kind and the environment.
The difference between a serial killer and a saint is environment. That's a very hard thing to accept because that raises a lot of questions
I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part. He said, “What happened then, daddy?” I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out. I'm too tired to read. I'll read to you tomorrow.” So, he had a need to want to learn how to read. Don't teach children how to read. Don't teach them mathematics. Give them a reason to want it. In school, they're working ass-backwards.
What will drive people if they don't have money or reward? The reward is the end of war, the end of poverty, most crime, and the end of begging for medical care. Everyone will be cared for and educated. There will be no taxation, and no advantage group. No technical elitism, or any other kind of elitism. If that isn't incentive enough, then I don't know what is.
Opinions are very dangerous, because they aren't based on scientific studies.
Truly free people do not need to be told they are free.
We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design.
You really don't want a job. What you want is access to those things you'd like to have.
Lack of education turns soldiers into killing machines.
You cannot approach people who think differently with reason and logic if they don't know what that means. First, you have to appeal to their values to start with. If you attack them, you lose them.
The question is not whether there is intelligent life out there, the question is, whether there is intelligent life down here. As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization.
We're running into a lot of new problems today because of what we emphasize in this culture. The word 'success' to the average person means earning a lot of money and having a home, two cars, children in college. Success to me is entirely different to what success is to the average person. Success is being a successful human being in terms of pursuing what you believe in. If you believe in making paintings, writing poetry, writing music. If this is what you really want, you're successful to yourself. But to be successful to your culture means to sell yourself short of what you really want
You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal.
We are not taught to be thinkers, but reflectors of our culture. Let's teach our children to be thinkers.
Very few people can communicate with one another. The only language that's not subject to interpretation is mathematics, chemistry, basic science, engineering principles, and applied agriculture. But other than that, many systems today are subject to interpretation.
We're not sane enough yet to enter space until we learn to live together in peace on Earth.
If you're shipwrecked on an island with 10 million dollars and your wife has gold and diamonds, but there's no water, no arable land, no fish, you have nothing. Money is a 'nothing' thing.
The only hope for developing a new civilization is to accept responsibility for improving our lives through knowledge, understanding, and a deeper comprehension of humanity’s relationship to natural processes of evolution. Our future is determined by effort we put forth to achieve this transition.
All things change. The automobiles change every year. [Your] television set gets lighter and smaller and higher definition. All things in the scientific world change. But politicians do not change. They carry old values and they don't even know it.
It’s your own expectations that hurt you. Not the world you live in. Whatever happens in the world is real. What you think should happen is unreal. So people are hurt by their expectations. You know , you’re not disappointed by the world, you are disappointed by your own projections.
If technology does not liberate all people for the pursuit of higher aspirations in human achievement, then all its technical potential will be meaningless.
In the future, in a saner system, we would design products not to wear out and break down; to last as long as possible, so that the responsibility of the service sector would not be overloaded.
Social change cannot come above the intellect, it comes about by people suffering. And the more people are related to that, the more they lose respect for an existing government. They will seek another direction. If there are too many people who seek a new direction, then the existing government calls upon the army and police to manage society – that is called fascism.
We must look at alternatives objectively, and not try to fit the future into our present social mould.
Anthropology studies different cultures; mainly primitive, but it doesn't think its own culture is primitive, unfortunately. There is no field that you can study today that isn't trapped in the culture in some way. It's hard to escape your culture.
We have to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to live in.
If you remain conventional and don't change, you'll get along. You'll get along in the limited forms of insanity that exist out there. You'll never be able to keep a marriage together, you'll never be able to keep anything together, because the whole goddamn thing isn't together.
As man reaches out toward the twenty-first century, he will learn to be suspicious of all ideas that are not formulated so that they can be tested by observation. He will realize that the history of human thought shows that the ideas of which we are surest are the ones we most need to test. He will realize that his common sense only mirrors his training and experience. What seems natural and right to him is usually a reflection of the conditions under which he spent his first decade of life.
I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say.
To be human is to care for your fellow human beings and protecting the environment.
The government means industry, if you know what I mean.
If you think we can’t change the world, It just means you're not one of those that will
You have to tell your children about the world they live in, about the discrepancies, about the things that don't work… So you have to bring it up with a scientific orientation so they learn to ask questions, and learn how to say the most difficult thing in the world: 'I don't know'.
In a monetary system, most of us live near our work with a house, car, and lifestyle we can afford (or, all too often, cannot afford), rather than the one we prefer. We are only as free as our purchasing power permits. Even many wealthy people today select a residence mainly to impress others with their status. Lacking a true sense of self worth, many live to impress others.
If orange trees grew all over the country, you couldn't sell oranges. Do you understand that? So, all our decision making is based upon scarcity or the availability of resources. If we have a shortage of any kind of resource, we put all the labs to work on making substitute materials. People always worry about 'What if we run out of a certain material?', but we have enough technology today to make thousands of different substitutes.
Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions.
