The Big Day

So much has been going on, it is hard to be sure where to start, or even where I last ended off. For the sake of expedience, I will begin where I am: I am currently sitting in a warm, wood-heated home in Twin Falls, Idaho with a mother (LeAnne) and two sick kids and a sick husband (Jeremy). I believe it is bronchitis.

If I wanted to I couldn’t leave I couldn’t. My van is still without transmission. But I don’t want to leave. Yesterday a sparkling, strange day. It was peaceful and contagious.

I awoke to go for a sub-freezing run with LeAnne, returned my rental car (which happened to be three blocks away—convenient). Since Jeremy was also feeling sick he stayed home from work, proudly donning a bathrobe all day. We kept the fire up all day, the kids coughed, LeAnne got them prescriptions, and Jeremy and I decided to watch Zeitgeist, or which we had heard whispers of.

This is where things get out of hand. First, just before the movie, Jeremy succeeded in renaming my website, something I have struggled with since 2004. And Boom! it was done. It was so easy in the end. But it mattered so much to me. At last I have a name that is easier and not silly: www.jonahmanning.name. Simple eh? Indeed. The success of it made me glow and this glow carried me right into one of the truly great shocks of my life.

The movie is called Zeitgeist, which means “spirit of the age”. I can say, unequivocally, that it is the most revealing, most illuminating—very difficult not to say most important movie I have ever, ever in my life seen. There are great movies that have talked about American culture, or the nature of human endeavor and spirituality—but these weren’t so dramatic, so shocking. I have been a better student of spirituality than world economics and power.

The Zeitgeist is about two frauds, great frauds, the Greatest Frauds. I will be hard pressed to disbelieve them. The facts seem so well ordered, the stories (there are two, and are separate) so well told, so cohesive; the author has little cause for ulterior motive (that is visible), little opportunity for gain.

In fact, he doesn’t ask for the viewer to believe him. This, he believes, is the biggest problem. Intellectual irresponsibility: people believing things without investigation, without taking the energy to seek out the truth. He is wary of lazy people, people who believe simply what they are told. He therefore wouldn’t expect his viewers to fill this paradigm. He therefore provides a full bibliography on his homepage to help anyone and everyone follow the same story he has so brilliantly delineated.

I will not go into the movie here. I strongly believe everyone in America and Europe should watch it. It is too important and there is little that will be able to stop the inevitable progression that has been long underway. It is shocking, nigh unbelievable. It is the greatest conspiracy theory of them all, and the facts are such that reality holds you mesmerized. After so much American history, the power structure of our country is finally laid bare.

Or is it?

Can you believe? Can I? I do, today, but it is a hard, hard pill to swallow. Unfortunately for us all, it is the only story today that makes sense. We are surrounded by confusion, have been for such a long time. Here is the story of our world, a cohesive—and terrifyingly logical story!—this is the frightful part: as incredible as it all will seem, it fits with everything we’ve already known about human nature, power, and history. The absurd story is in fact the most reasonable.

Are you confused or befuddled? At least curious?? Anyone who cares about this world or themselves should. Have you heard of the similarities between modernity and Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World? My friend, we’ve seen nothing yet!

Be afraid, but don’t be ignorant. Watch Zeitgeist: www.zeitgeistmovie.com

And remember this:

If you don’t believe, what could the author’s ulterior motives be? Does he not first and foremost encourage honest intellectual inquiry?

And secondly, look at the world he exposes in Part II: what are the motives or these men? Power and money! Haven’t we always known that 1) Power corrupts; and, 2) Power is never surrendered by the powerful?

Then who should we believe?

This is an incredible world; incredible things happen. How shocking a thing is doesn’t determine its authenticity. This is determined by cohesion of facts and motivations.

Look closely. It is all here in Zeitgeist. And it is truly terrifying.