Apocalyptic Jubilee

Build It Bloodless and They Will Come

Perhaps revival is a better word for what we nowadays like to call revolution. The term revolution has taken on a negative connotation, as violence is almost always associated with it. Revival, on the other hand, carries little to no negative baggage and can transform societies just as effectively—if not more so.

To put bloodless into context, let me remind you of Malcolm X’s words from 1964:

“America is the only country in history in a position to bring about a revolution without violence and bloodshed. But America is not morally equipped to do so.”

Later, in The Black Revolution, he concludes,

“Revolutions are fought to get control of land, to remove the absentee landlord and gain control of the land and the institutions that flow from that land. The black man has been in a very low condition because he has had no control whatsoever over any land. He has been a beggar economically, a beggar politically, a beggar socially, a beggar even when it comes to trying to get some education.
In the past type of mentality, that was developed in this colonial system among our people, that today is being overcome. And as the young ones come up, they know what they want. And as they listen to your beautiful preaching about democracy and all those other flowery words, they know what they’re supposed to have.
So you got a people today who not only know what they want, but also know what they are supposed to have. And they themselves are creating another generation that is coming up that not only will know what it wants and know what it should have, but also will be ready and willing to do whatever is necessary to see that what they should have materializes immediately. Thank you.”

The plight of the civil rights movement has been largely assuaged at the ballot box. Yet experience has revealed socioeconomic inequality as an even deeper threat to modern civilization than racial or cultural motives. The hubris of financial persuasion has directly subverted the electoral process—in America of all places—through Citizens United, which granted First Amendment rights to corporations, even those created solely for “electioneering.” Indirectly, the media is awash with irrational bias tailored to every demographic, with advertising often contradicting the virtuous precepts of any respectable philosophy or religion.

 Now, revival, as I mean it here, is the growth or renewed activity of something after a long period of dormancy. That something—actually, two somethings—bring us back to the title: apocalypse and jubilee. I refer to the Greek etymological root of apocalypse, meaning “to uncover” or “reveal,” and the Abrahamic tradition of jubilee, specifically the ideas of debt forgiveness and letting the earth lie fallow. 

The second reason for observing Jubilee, as found in the Jewish Encyclopedia, states:

“The physico-economic and socialistic theories are that rest from labor is an absolute necessity both for animal and for vegetable life; that continuous cultivation will eventually ruin the land. The law of the Sabbatical year acts also as a statute of limitation or a bankruptcy law for the poor debtor, in discharging his liability for debts contracted, and in enabling him to start life anew on an equal footing with his neighbor, without the fear that his future earnings will be seized by his former creditors. The jubilee year was the year of liberation of servants whose poverty had forced them into employment by others. Similarly, all property alienated for a money consideration to relieve poverty was to be returned to the original owners without restoration of the amount which had been advanced.”

Today, jubilee is associated merely with annual carnivals, and apocalypse has become a synonym for World War III. There has been a long period of inactivity regarding the original meanings of these ideas—meanings rooted in the cultures that birthed them. A revival of these concepts is urgently needed in the 21st century, not just as a philosophical exercise, but as a public health concern for humanity and the socioeconomic, spiritual, and psychological well-being of the individual.

Dire consequences can be nonviolently averted. A bloodless revival is possible—one infused with a sense of Apocalyptic Jubilee, where misconceptions, misgivings, and debts are vanquished—not the people who hold them. A world where value and common sense guide commerce, where forgiveness balances revenge on the scale of justice, and where money’s detrimental forces are kept from poisoning the well.

🎆 Independence Revisited: From Founding Fire to Future Frameworks

This time of year, I hearken back to the words proclaimed by men far greater than myself. I write not out of vanity, but to keep this occasion holy, if you will—to draw attention to the future we project onto ourselves, the innocent, and the unborn.

While my fellows plan alcohol parties and fireworks displays, I contemplate the implications of those declarations and the designs of Tyranny they sought to redress. I wonder whether the “train of abuses and usurpations” that once described Despotism has merely morphed—and whether it still persists in America today, in one form or another.

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance...
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures...
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people…”

These words, taken from the Declaration of Independence, echo through time. And yet, I also contemplate the words spoken in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, by a man born into slavery—Frederick Douglass:

“You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors...
Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood…”

And again:

“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed...
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused…”

I contemplate the vassalage of contemporary America—bound by financial instruments foreign to the Constitution, written by men who steadfastly opposed such financing. I wonder if we are not in yet another form of slavery. A slavery perpetrated by consent, evinced by social and economic factors that contradict our technical capabilities. A slavery where men are born not as slaves, but as human capital, governed by a bureaucracy foreign to the Constitution, yet made familiar by the precedents of consent.

I’m not trying to be all doom and gloom. I’m not even trying to accuse—though I have in the past. I’m a father of four. I want to be hopeful for the future. And I remind myself: I have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of my fathers, unless my children are to be blest by my labors.

This Independence Day, a new train of thought has taken hold. I now labor for independence from a status quo that I, for one, am not so sure will do proper justice for all our children.

The Zeitgeist Movement Defined outlines this train of thought. It’s available for all to see—at no cost.

I'll close with it's mission statement

"Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a sustainability advocacy organization, which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of global/regional chapters, project teams, annual events, media and charity work.

The movement's principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems that plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, absolute scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of "human nature" or other commonly held assumptions of causality. Rather, the movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, pollution, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure.

While intermediate reform steps and temporal community support are of interest to the movement, the defining goal is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible resource management, allocation and design through what would be considered the scientific method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.

This “Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy" (NLRBE) is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a monetary or even political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods known, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profit, business and other structural and motivational issues.

The movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. The view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in science and technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications that could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population, increasing public health. There is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crime and many other monetarily-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time. The range of the movement's activism and awareness campaigns extend from short to long term, with methods based explicitly on non-violent methods of communication.

The Zeitgeist Movement has no allegiance to any country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on Earth, not a select group."