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My name is Henry Brade and I am from The Zeitgeist Movement in Finland.
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I am from Helsinki, the capital of Finland.
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I'm a co-founder of the movement in Finland.
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I heard about the movement first time when I saw Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist:Addendum
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In the end was a text suggesting to go to
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www.TheZeitgeistMovement.com
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I went there and there was a Finnish community
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There was a forum in Finnish already
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There I got to know other Finns who were excited about the idea.
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Then we met and founded the movement in Finland.
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That's how it started.
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The reason why I joined is that
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I've been generally interested in societal matters even before these
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Zeitgeist films.
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The Zeitgeist:Addendum was something that
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somehow connected the dots
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and gave reasons behind the
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world gone mad.
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That sunk in really nicely.
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The awesome thing about the resource based
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economy is that it's thinking outside the box.
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I've been generally interested in political issues before this movement and
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somehow the proposals that the politicians are suggesting as solutions
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are ridiculously narrow and something that are not going to inflict real change
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They focus on symptoms rather than causes of problems.
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This resource based economy focuses namely on the root problems.
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That's the starting point.
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I find it wonderful that the starting point is human needs and well-being of the environment.
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This kind of real and meaningful matters,
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unlike in market economy
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where we just follow the circulation of money and that kind of things. Human needs are disregarded.
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Wants are more in the focus: how can we create new wants?
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This doesn't exist in resource based economy.
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The Finnish Zeitgeist Movement started a couple of months after Zeitgeist:Addendum was released.
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It was January 2009.
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It started from Helsinki.
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We were about 15 people
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and it spread out really quickly
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The whole Southern Finland was covered
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and even Oulu joined later.
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We've had activities in more than 10 cities.
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A big challenge has been
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to figure out how to maintain the activities
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while everyone is doing this on voluntary basis,
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voluntary cooperation.
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The work that people do for The Zeitgeist Movement
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competes with rest of the life.
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There might be a paid job, family life and the like,
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which get prioritized, when for instance livelihood is needed.
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There's a tiny motivation problem:
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How to keep the people active?
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It feels like old members are resigning at the same rate as
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the new members join.
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The net growth in the movement is fairly small.
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That has been problematic.
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On the other hand we've achieved a lot here in Finland.
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We've had a lot of events.
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We've had stunts on the street.
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We have made a Finnish
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Zeitgeist film and now
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a Finnish Zeitgeist book came out.
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So, in that sense, this has expanded and grown a lot.
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So, all in all, during these past
few years we've developed quite a bit.
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We had the fourth annual meeting of
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The Zeitgeist Movement in Finland
and it went pretty well.
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For the first time it was in the capital, in Helsinki.
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Previously it has taken place in Tampere.
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It was really well organized event.
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There were all sorts of lectures, covering many topics and not much repetition.
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All practicalities, such as catering, functioned perfectly.
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Very nice event indeed.
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These national meetings in general have been something that
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brings together ther whole Zeitgeist Movement in Finland.
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People come hundreds of kilometers, all over Finland, to meet others
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who support the movement.
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It has been just awesome.
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These lectures were really well planned
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in a sense that they brought up
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many highly interesting topics.
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For instance, we talked about time banks which is a very interesting topic
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and food: the quality of contemporary food and organic food
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this kind of things.
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And one lecture addressed the power of the media
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the way the agenda of the media guides people's opinions.
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Then there was a really good lecture about communality and
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of course I held one lecture
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about the thoughts and solutions suggested by
The Zeitgeist Movement.
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Very diverse and
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interesting lectures.
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As for the participants:
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we had - like in all national events - people from all over Finland.
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We had one person from all the way in Rovaniemi and a bigger bunch from Oulu.
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Most were from Southern Finland though.
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The movement is focused in the cities in Southern Finland,
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but it's good that we had people from the North as well.
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The fact that they care to come all the way to Helsinki
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is of course really nice.
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We have had all kinds of meetings in
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The Zeitgeist Movement in Finland.
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Apart from the official national meetings
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we've had more informal
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get-together weekends.
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For instance two summers ago we spent the whole weekend together on a cottage.
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We were some 10-15 people there
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convened in Central Finland from all over the country.
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It was a very interesting weekend.
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It was mainly getting to know each other and spending time together.
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Then we had this extempore idea to go and spread out flyers and DVDs in
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the centre of the small town.
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It was really fun and nice,
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we chatted with people and it was
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more like physical contact and communication,
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rather than just internet activism.
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Last summer we visited an ecovillage.
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We spent the whole weekend in the only
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ecovillage in Finland
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where they wish to live sustainably
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It's a lifestyle there:
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all the people long for more sustainable way of life.
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In that sense our values were really close to one another and
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they also digged the thoughts of The Zeitgeist Movement a lot.
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The most rewarding thing in this activism is
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probably the fact that you meet like-minded people
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and you can have discussions at the same wawelength.
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You don't have to talk about superficialities.
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It's rare to have shallow discussions with the people from The Zeitgeist Movement.
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It's good contrast to
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every-day conversations that I have with my other friends.
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You can go really deep in the conversations with these people.
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That has been really rewarding
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and also the fact that you see new people awaken to reality and
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see that due to your work in the movement new people spring up and they say:
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"Your work enabled me to even find out about the movement"
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For sure that's rewarding.
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It's great.
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Probably the most challenging thing in the movement is to get people do things proactively.
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We have tried to function so that
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people would do everything on their own
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but we've had to acknowledge the fact that in practice
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people do need, not necessarily leading, but some sort of guidance
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Some people are proactive and do things on their own and
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some people won't do anything unless there is someone guiding them.
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In the Finnish activities we have learned this the hard way:
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we do need more guidance.
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Many people who are more active might get frustrated
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in the whole thing if it looks like that people are not
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doing anything if you are not holding their hand.
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It requires right kind of approach,
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right methods,
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to make it function properly.
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Finland is, per capita, one of the most active Zeitgeist chapters
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We have a big bunch of people taking into consideration how small the country is.
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One reason for achievements like the film and the book is
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that we have a lot of active people
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who are both proactive and competent.
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Ajan Henki (Spirit of the Times) film came about just because
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The Finnish Zeitgeist Movement had a lot of competent
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people in the field:
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we found an editor
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we found a director
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we found the cameraman
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Of course we couldn't find some things
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for instance a script writer
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so we had to learn it on our own.
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But filmmaking is not rocket science. Not at all.
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I hope that Ajan Henki film functions as a role model to other countries,
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so they could do something similar.
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It's completely possible.
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It doesn't have to be that
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everyone is a professional.
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It only takes a bit of motivation and interest
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to learn all the things that filmmaking requires.
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Of course it helps if you have a few professionals in the crew.
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Then this Zeitgeist book...
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That is largely an individual triumph of the writer.
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In reality there was no one else involved
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apart from the author Jani Laasonen.
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That's how it started.
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It seems that the Finnish movement has a lot of people who are able to do things on their own.
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Even if we've had troubles in organizing the work
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I have to admit that we've had these great accomplishments as well.
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In that sense I think we've done a pretty good job in the end.
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This film process took about
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half a year all in all,
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to make the actual film.
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We had planned this kind of video project for a long time already
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It started out with the idea to make a 20-minute
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introductory video of The Zeitgeist Movement
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and then the whole thing just got out of hand.
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It turned out that we are making a full-length feature film and
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then it turned out that we are making a little bit too long full-length feature film
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and the end result was a humongous 3-hour piece.
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Indeed, it took us half a year.
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We first structured the whole thing on a large flip chart.
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That took us a few days.
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It set the script writing in motion and
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finding and contacting all the interviewees followed.
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That sort of thing.
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That took a long time.
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Then we got to carry out the interviews,
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while we were writing the script on the go.
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Once that was done
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- it took about 3-4 months -
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we still had to use a couple more months only for editing
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That was a big process:
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editing, music, mixing, all these
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It took us almost as long as the rest of the film
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After all, we had tens of hours of material from the interviews
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and we had to fit the film in three hours
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or rather less.
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That took a while.
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We had seven people in our team.
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We had a couple of editors, one cameraman,
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a few scriptwriters,
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one who kind of took the role of a director.
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We all had our own roles,
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but we all did pretty much everything.
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Even if I was the main responsible for the script
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I was also being interviewed and interviewing
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as well as partly doing the editing.
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I helped in that as well.
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It wasn't just one person doing one thing but
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everyone doing everything.
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One of the problems with Ajan Henki was that
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it took us ages to get it translated.
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We had to get it translated into English
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but the process was super slow.
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Our translation tools were perhaps ill-equipped
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and we didn't have enough people to do it.
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It came as a bit of a surprise.
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For two months nothing much happened.
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We couldn't even get the transcription done.
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Once it was transcribed it came to a halt again.
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Two months later one of the
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Ajan Henki team members wrote a pretty
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nasty message in Facebook:
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"Isn't this movement capable of doing ONE translation?"
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That woke people up and they were like:
"We can do this."
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It took like couple of weeks to get the whole translation done.
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People just needed a bit of guidance and encouragement
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and that led to action.
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That's a great example of the fact that sometimes
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you need to offer guidance to people before they get anything done.
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We always talk about critical mass:
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How can this movement reach a critical mass?
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How do we get enough people along to inflict real change?
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That's really challenging.
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I do see a bright future for The Zeitgeist Movement
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but the growth is not going to be anything close to exponential
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but what happens in the real world
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largely dictates
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how we can grow.
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And of course the media attention we attract:
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that also plays a significant role.
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We have had some major media hype lately and
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there have been for instance actors who've come out of the closet and said
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"I support The Zeitgeist Movement".
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That has been remarkable.
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Then again, the way we've been portrayed
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in the media is in the large part
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that we are a cult of some sort
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and we haven't been taken very seriously up till now.
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Then we've had a few articles that do take it more seriously but
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even those most people receive with suspicion:
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that it's too futuristic or something.
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Yet the issues that The Zeitgeist Movement deals with
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are not going to go anywhere.
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We talk about energy crises, technological unemployment, inequality
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and environmental problems.
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As long as these are in a
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near-crisis or even crisis state
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The Zeitgeist Movement will be in demand.
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I see that it has to grow.
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Of course what we internally do in the movement
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and how we portray ourselves externally dictates
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our possibilities for growth.
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And there are quite a few other movements
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who are concerned about similar topics.
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Are all people going to join this very movement?
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That I don't know.
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That's why I'm really fond of for instance The Occupy Movement.
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The Occupy Movement has been in the forefront also in Finland and
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it could function, in a way, as a top-level organization for the smaller
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organizaitons such as The Zeigeist Movement and
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all sorts of movements could gather under its
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umbrella and together drive the change forward.
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That, in my mind, is one potential direction for development right at the moment.
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The transition phase poses a problem:
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If you think about what motivates people
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to change the system
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then one could say that Finnish people are too well off.
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They don't want to change things.
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My view is that as long as capitalism
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works, to an extent, for the Finnish people
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- as it seems to work currently,
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most people here are not facing dire adversity -
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so as long as it works it's hard to see that people would radically want to change it.
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That's why, to encourage a system-level change
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here in the Nordic countries
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it does require a certain drop
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that shit first hits the fan.
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We can advance to an extent via
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the harder situation.
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How hard should it get?
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What is too hard?
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I don't think anyone wants that the
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situation becomes really bad.
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Where does the line go?
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But some sort of disaster is needed
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so that people want to have a change.
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As for the time scale
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I've figured that in 50-100 years
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it would make sense to think about resource based economy, the global kind.
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Perhaps the transition phase means that
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we start implementing those thoughts:
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resource-based thinking,
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self-sufficiency, caring
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and communality.
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We begin to make it happen on a smaller scale and start networking.
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If we think of it as some sort of global system that replaces exchange
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and free trade globally
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then we are talking about quite long-term transition.
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But there are no obstacles for us to start implementing
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that line of thinking on a smaller scale, right now.
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It can start from here and slowly expand.
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And once the value set changes
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- once people start valuing different aspects than nowadays -
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then even a larger system-level change becomes possible.
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But the whole thing starts from
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people's values.
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The time has passed
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when we look up to a leader
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and listen obediently what media tells us.
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We now have to take responsibility of
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our own lives and lead the change through that.
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We have been accustomed to
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follow political leaders
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and media and so foth
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but now that time has passed.
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It's time to take responsibility
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of our lives and lead the change
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through that.