ZZeitgeist, the Movie (2007)

ZEITGEIST – WHAT IT MEANS

• Zeitgeist is a German expression for “the spirit of the age”:

• the intellectual and cultural climate of an era

• the experience of a dominant cultural climate

• The film, overall, is an attempt to debunk most of what it considers to be our dominant social institutions

ZEITGEIST ASSESSMENT OF THE TERM “RELIGION”

• Overall, it presents a Marxist interpretation of religion

• Two direct quotes from the film:

• “The religious myth is the most powerful myth ever created and serves as the psychological soil

upon which other myths can flourish.”

• “Religion empowers those who know the truth but use the myth to manipulate and control societies.”

• Film considers the institution of religion the most basic of our currently dominant social

institutions, those “foundational” institutions upon which Western society is based

FILM’S DISCUSSION OF THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION

• Attempts to formulate its own explanation of the origins of religion, and particularly, of the Christian God, Jesus Christ

• Attempts to show parallels between the figure of Jesus and mythologies of ancient gods

• Makes strongest parallels between ancient Egyptian religion and its sun god, Horus, and the figure of

Jesus

• Also attempts to explain the birth of the good versus evil mythology by connecting it to astrological phenomena, the regularity of the seasons (remember the Nature-Worship theory?), and the movement of the sun throughout the course of the year

ZEITGEIST AS A SOCI0POLITICAL MOVEMENT

• Zeitgeist has been described as “a grassroots campaign to unify the world through a common ideology based on the fundamentals of life and nature.”

• NOT an attack on Christianity or any other religious belief system, per se

• Instead, is an attack on the mistaken idea that our belief systems -- whatever they are -- represent our true identity as human beings

• At the fundamental level, all humans are the same

• It is time we start to work together on a global scale to end perpetual conflict and suffering in our current world society