Zeitgeist Toronto

MOVE

Lawrence — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:49:43 +0000

Please forward widely:

Dear Friends,

Zeitgeist Toronto will be moving from the blog, www.zeitgeisttoronto.wordpress.com to it’s new and official home at www.zeitgeist-toronto.com.

On the site will be an active forum, centralizing our local movement on a platform for sharing idea’s, meeting details, and group activities. Future newsletters will arrive via webmaster@zeitgeist-toronto.com (Please add this to your safe list). To be added to the new mailing list, please e-mail subscribe@zeitgeist-toronto.com.

Please take time to register with the forum, explore the site, and browse through the Community Content page.

Thank you for your time. In solidarity,

Zeitgeist Toronto Web Team

www.zeitgeist-toronto.com

UPDATE: A Robotics/Automation meeting will be taking place on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009, at 777 Warden Avenue, Unit 1. This meeting will have a technology focus, agenda content will be with that in mind. Link to details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120205747598 For more information on this event please contact Adam at aplavins@gmail.com.

Ecovillage

Lawrence — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:06:43 +0000

Paul Wimbush with model of Lammas Ecovillage (UK)

http://www.wholevillage.org/

The road up to Whole Village was empty and passed through fields and meadows, hailing an exit from the polluted populous of Toronto. “Most of the world is like this,” said Jonathan from the front, “we just see the city.” An interesting point to ponder as we turned onto the packed earth road leading to the village…

The low buildings came into view just above the rise, a large expansive bungalow with what were later confirmed as sky-lights, one in every room and hallway to allow natural light into the building, solar-south facing, reducing daytime electricity use. Large drums collect rainwater from the eaves, irrigating the little islands of greenery spotted around the parking area.

The welcoming atmosphere of the house, from Brenda (one of the founders and resident in the main house) and Natasha (first gardener of the village) greeted us with biscuits, lemonade and smiles; The kitchen, fit to feed the 17 inhabitants of the house, and the handful of others, is where community dining takes place, 5 nights a week, where the village consumption is 25% grown on the land, 75% from the localized area. There were around 30 people sat comfortably in the living room area, sprawled on couches and rocking chairs and Shane (property manager) and Brenda retold of the inception, conception, reality of Whole Village, where they came up against zoning laws, by-laws, building permits, and where they triumphed in the working community we saw around us. Introductions exchanged and why’s were asked (many an answer outlining a desire to learn of sustainability, and how one can create their own ecovillage), community living was spoken of (conflict resolution using the “Formal Consensus Process“), as well as the work-load on the farm, how it is shared, and how it is enforced, all culminating in a tour of the building proper and surrounding lands.

Ecovillage is not off the grid, that is something they are looking at (and in fact at the time of this writing they are in the process of installing a series of solar panels), at the moment all their energy comes from Bullfrog Power. The house, because of the square-footage (massive) is required by law to have an air purifier recycle the air – this is a huge machine that uses a lot of power and would be a barrier to energy self sufficiency on the farm (do alternatives for air purification for huge structures exist?). When building they did substitute a tar covered roof for one covered in a foam membrane, and are now looking at a green roof (the structure was planned with one in mind).

The village is filled with strawberry fields, an orchard filled with beautiful and growing fruit trees, green houses with tomatoes, asparagus, an apiary, maple forest, even a log seeded with mushroom spore in a canopied forest off a path.

The land is beautiful. The hills roll and invite you onto them. The people are friendly, they are sharing a common goal, as are we as The Zeitgeist Movement. Their differences pale when compared to their similarities, as do ours, as a species.

Some noted topics for further research: Engineered Wetlands, Masonry Heater, Clivus Multrum, Heifer International, Petroleum, products from Petroleum…

As we look at a resource based economy, a sustainable future, the Ecovillage movement is in its infancy. We are responsible for its growth.

TZM Toronto Meet-Up

Lawrence — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:19:42 +0000

Hello everyone,

Zeitgeist Toronto will be meeting this Thursday, August 13th, at 7:00pm

Location: Victory Cafe (581 Markham St. Toronto – 416.516.5787)

All are welcome!

Thank you, and take care,

TZM Toronto

Whole Village Visit: Aug 2 09

Lawrence — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:46:04 +0000

Update by AM:

Over the past few meetings it has become clear that there is some interest in the idea of building the first Resource Based Economy research centre/test city. To pursue this initiative, the Barrie, Toronto and Ontario Zeitgeist Movement chapters are planning to take a tour of Whole Village Eco-Community at 1 pm on Sunday August the 2nd. This is a great opportunity to see an Ecovillage in action and to learn what would be involved in starting a research centre/test city of our own.

I have heard great things about Whole Village, they have a successful farm operation and have built impressive accommodations using green building techniques. The tour starts at 1 pm and should go to 3 or 4 pm, then we can sit and meet as a group for another hour or so if we like. The tour costs $10 per person and includes snacks and refreshments.

Check them out at www.wholevillage.org and directions here, google map at here.

It is close to Orangeville, they say it’s about a 1-hour drive from downtown Toronto and about the same from Barrie. There are car-pooling options from Downtown and Barrie – let us know if you have a car you can take a few people in.

We will have Tiffany Crawford, a reporter from Canwest Global in Ottawa, and an avid Zeitgeist Movement supporter, joining us to document our efforts and write an article on our pursuit of setting up a Resource Based Economy research centre. She wrote a fantastic article about Z-day 09 that was up on Canada.com and she has been following and supporting the movement from the beginning.

Let us know if you will attend by commenting below!!

Positive Reinforcement – #1: TED talk Clay Shirky on Media

Lawrence — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:00:42 +0000

TED talk Clay Shirky on Media today (video)

In a recent TED talk (TED releases amazingly informative videos of their conferences everyday on their site http://tedtalks.com) Clay Shirky discusses the power of the vast changes we’ve seen in our media. In his own words, we’re experiencing the “largest increase in expressive capability in human history”. So what? Well, there are a number of implications to this paradigm shift .

Information becomes freely available. Consumers become producers. New uses for existing technology emerge. The conversation, the information, becomes global, social, ubiquitous and cheap. No longer is it a one-way dialogue between media producers and media consumers. The Internet has provided a means of collaboration, and a means to share creativity freely and easily. The potential for growth in its application seems boundless. The creators of Twitter (Evan Willams gave a TED talk as well) worked on the software as a side project, on a gut feeling. They had no idea what it would be used for, or where the users would see opportunities to use it. Twitter has been wildly successfully thanks to the innovation of its users, and the wise decision of Twitter to create an empowering product (allowing third party’s to create different apps for Twitter).

While Clay does not explicitly describe the ways big business must change to survive, he is convinced that “the old way of doing things has gone, never to return.” The kind of change Clay describes happening to our media allows for fresh new ideas or old ideas that previously never had a voice, to be heard and discussed. The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project that it supports, rely on this open exchange of ideas to awaken the public to the possibilities of a better future for everyone.

The most exciting implication is the evidence for an incentive other than a profit motive. These open-source models display levels of efficiency unheard of in typical business models that hire employees to do all the work. What provides incentive to people in an open-source model? Contributing of their own volition to something that the individuals care about. How can you contribute?

Chris Martin

Civilization

Lawrence — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:44:51 +0000

Civilization, broken into:

The potential for humans to cooperate with one another on the basis of social structure (nationality, ethnicity, kin, other ties) like today,

The potential for humans to live with no cooperation or civilization,

And the potential for humans to cooperate and act as one planet without boundaries,

For positive progression we must learn it is much more cost effective to work without profit as the incentive and motivation.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

“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.” – Jacque Fresco

eLucid www.resourceeconomy.org (coming soon)

11th Hour

Lawrence — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:45:16 +0000

Watch the full video here.

New site up!

Lawrence — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:35:29 +0000

www.ZEITGEIST-CANADA.com

New site up – go and register your chapter if you are not already registered on it!

ZEITGEIST TORONTO will be meeting MONTHLY in YONGE AND DUNDAS SQUARE – stay tuned here and in the forum for more information on dates. (www.thezeitgeistmovement.com and www.thezeitgeistmovement.ca)

Thanks.

“Be open to new information even if it challenges your existing belief system.”

Back online

Lawrence — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:29:24 +0000

Dear All,

The inactivity on this blog is a result of a busy time. There is the opportunity for many of us to update this blog with Zeitgeist Toronto information, please e-mail zeitgeisttoronto@gmail.com if you’d like to help out.

There will be a networking and connecting meeting tomorrow at 5:00pm, Sunday May 31st 2009, please e-mail the same address for location Downtown.

This week’s bi-weekly radio address will take place tomorrow (May 31st) at 3:00pm

The radio broadcast on 5/20/09 was very interesting; Peter, Jacque and Roxanne talk about language and its interpretations, and Peter touches on Nanotechnology and its broad implications (highly recommended if you are not a regular listener). The radio address is also the most popular radio show on Blogtalk Radio 85% of the month, let’s keep it up there.

Take care all.

NEWSLETTER: March

Lawrence — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:21:30 +0000

Greetings Friends,

Thank you for attending Z-DAY 2009. The turn out was phenomenal! We had during the course of the day over 80 in attendance. This exceeded our wildest expectations, and we are thrilled to see that there so many people in Toronto who are aware of and looking for real solutions to our society’s most fundamental problems.

Thank you for your support! Remember that we are people just like you who merely took the first tiny step. We are embarking on a huge endeavour that requires all of us to work together in order to succeed.

This will be the primary e-mail for communication through these Newsletters (ZeitgeistToronto@gmail.com). Our primary website will be zeitgeisttoronto.wordpress.com. The previous website zdaytoronto.wordpress.com will ONLY be used for Z-DAY planning and information dissemination on any Z-DAY related preparation.

Zeitgeist Toronto is looking to stay connected. We are all in this together. All of us are part of a diverse, dynamically incredible city and have an opportunity to uniquely position ourselves as an arm of The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project in Toronto.

Having said all that, please stay in touch, get involved.

We would greatly appreciate it if you would provide us with feedback to the following questions. We will use this feedback to help determine what our next course of action will be.

1. What did you think of the Z-DAY Toronto event? What worked and what didn’t?

2. We are building a bank of resources that could be useful to the movement in the future, which may include for example meeting space, access to printing, an automobile, or blank DVDs. We are also looking at innovative ways to get the message out that could include street theatre, flash mob, etc. Let’s connect and build a solid base of resources in our city we can draw upon together.

3. Would you be willing to attend and/or help organize periodic (e.g. monthly) events throughout the year, culminating in a yearly Z-DAY event? The goals of these events will be to: 1) create awareness in the Greater Toronto Area about the ideas put forth by The Zeitgeist Movement, and 2) discuss ways in which each of us can take steps to accelerate and implement the transition from our current monetary economy to a resource-based economy or other possible future societal design.

4. What kinds of events would you be interested in having under the Zeitgeist Toronto umbrella? Some ideas for events include formal or informal discussions or debates, conferences consisting of theme-based seminars (discussion/information sharing sessions), lectures, and video showings.

5. We are considering forming teams to tackle different aspects of the movement. Which kind of team would you be interested in joining? Do you possess any special skills (e.g. artistic, technical) that you could contribute? Some ideas for teams include:
External Communications - responsible for awareness and advertising in the GTA and the Internet
Internal Communications - responsible for keeping Zeitgeist Toronto participants organized and informed of current projects and events
Information and Transition - responsible for researching the tenets of the movement regarding current society with the goal of verifying/refuting information released by the central Zeitgeist Movement team, countering skepticism from economists, lawyers, etc, and working with global teams to create a transition plan away from current society
Science and Technology - responsible for working with global teams to create prototypes/models of technologies proposed in The Venus Project and other possible future societal designs with the goal of building a scientific basis for the movement and countering skepticism from scientists and engineers

The Zeitgeist Toronto team is looking at trying to bring The Venus Project (Jacque Fresco, Roxanne Meadows) to Toronto for a speaking tour of perhaps one or two venues in this city, with possible other cities being involved. What are your thoughts? Do you have contacts in organizations that could help fund this visit?

Thank you and take care,

The Zeitgeist Toronto Team (this means you)