What is the Zeitgeist?

Author: Dr. Malcolm Armstrong CC

PART I: Is the Zeitgeist

It's something that everyone breathes. There is something in the world. . . like a fog that obscures our vision. Until we are awake, we live with the illusion that we are immune. We believe that in the control. We believe they are autonomous. But just because we have forgotten. We have forgotten history and forgot to listen to the wisdom of the past. . . our ancestors. They also were there. However, a few enlightened seen through the veil.

Since humans have started to think beyond immediate needs, we have tried to overcome target = "_blank"> Zeitgeist. For better or worse, can make us think and act in certain ways. Unfortunately, we forget that every individual has the power. Everyone have a choice. We may choose to follow blindly the time or we can choose to transcend it. We can continue living in our semi-conscious state, to allow other to think for ourselves and to be myopic and apathetic or we can choose to transcend the spirit of the times. WHAT IS THE ZEITGEIST?

Each time which, as everyone has their own personality. It's the Zeitgeist. This is not an esoteric concept. This is a simple word, but the word very descriptive that everyone can understand. The German word Zeitgeist (often in capitals and italics) is composed of two words in German: Zeit, meaning "time" and geist meaning "spirit. The word refers to the mind of one of certain age. . . midst of a society or era.

In retrospect, we can understand the personality of a given time. . . what he did well. . . where left wrong. . . and people (of influence), which is, for better or for worse. If the Zeitgeist of the 1960s, the Renaissance and the spirit of the times pre-Nazi Germany, after all epochs are influential people who affect the masses and define the personality of each period (eg musicians, poets, novelists, writers, philosophers, essayists, filmmakers, etc.).

Think about your own personality. It was partly determined by its composition genetics, but also by their parents. What parents are children, prescribers have air time. Not everyone in the form and shaped by their parents but also their culture, by the Zeitgeist.

We are a product of our time, ie we are a product of the Zeitgeist. Just as our parents can influence the thinking goes the mind time affect our thinking and acting. Our parents inculcate certain values and ideas and these ideas become part of our system of beliefs, along with the Zeitgeist. The problem is when we are in tune with the times often are not fully aware of developments, how it affects us and how it directs the future. . . sometimes for better and sometimes worse.

Consider, for example, how Zeitgeist is primarily North America promotes the "idea" that women were inferior to men. In fact, the Zeitgeist a catalyst. A Canadian woman, for example, by the name of Emily Murphy asked to be senator, but failed. Why? Because it was a woman. Remember the words of the third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson: "The appointment of a woman in power is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I" (the works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 10, para. 735)

Remember, the Zeitgeist of the time said (under the British American North), women were not allowed to vote because they are not legally "people" so that a woman could not be a senator. Murphy's motion to reverse this "idea" – To reverse this aspect of air time – known as the Persons Case. The constitutional case of the largest in Canadian history. His application was rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada. In the deviation, which bravely sailed for England in 1929 to appear before the Privy Council Judicial Committee of the Empire British, who at that time was the final court of appeal for Canada.

Emily Murphy not like most of us resign ourselves to the air. She lives through her veil and woke up. Accordingly, it has contested and won. Five years later, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King appointed the first Senator. Unfortunately, it was Emily Murphy. It should be noted, however, that Murphy was the first woman judge in the British Empire. Ideas have consequences. ideas are created by people. And ideas, for better or for worse, shape the Zeitgeist.

These are the influential people that is the zeitgeist of the time of Emily Murphy and because most people are followers of women accepted uncritically were lower. We should not be so foolish or arrogant to think we are much wiser today than the past. Everyone occasionally has to be awakened from his dream ideology.

Sometimes when influential to communicate their ideas, they become ideologies. Ideologies affect how we think and therefore how we behave. For this reason, prescribers have important responsibilities. His ideas live on long after his death and possibly affect future generations. Consider, for example, people like Aristotle, Darwin, Marx, Gandhi, Hitler and Martin Luther King, etc. These are people who in one way or the other concerned agencies and formation of the spirit of the times (ethics and environment) of their time.

In retrospect it is easy to understand Zeitgeists past as the 1960s, for example. Because hindsight we can see how some people's ideas, ie doctors, hit the weights and add the zeitgeist of the 1960s. Images can be very powerful. And because ideas can change the thinking, ideas that can affect how it works people. If we examine closely the years of 1960, which connects the dots, so to speak, those who have "created" what we now call the spirit of the era, the 1960s. For example, Michael Lang, co-creator of Woodstock, musicians like The Beatles, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and Jodi Mitchell; Intellectuals like Isaac Asimov, Noam Chomsky, Carl Sagan, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Alan Watts, activists as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mario Savio, Gloria Steinem, and Abbie Hoffman, producers and directors as Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Dennis Hopper, artists like Peter Blake, Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt, and James Rosenquist, poets like Robert Frost and Basil Bunting, The writers like William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Ralph Jules Feiffer, Louise Fitzhugh, John Steinbeck and Betty Friedan, playwrights such as Joseph Heller, Gore Vidal, and Tom Stoppard, religious leaders, like Pope John XXIII, Swami Yogananda, Billy Graham, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Irina Tweedie, Sri Aurobindo, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

This list is not exhaustive, but at least it shows how people's ideas influence the masses and create what is known in the air. In short, ideas have consequences and actions and ideas are born of ideas and ideologies are generated by influential people. If we are aware of the spirit of today, then we can look forward with vision, predict how the future will unfold. If we act wisely, then we could reduce harmful ideologies. That is, the harmful ideas today that can have negative repercussions in the future.

In each age is grown by the people to influence these people to determine the time and yet it is the masses that empower people of influence. For this reason, each person as Emily Murphy, has the power. Each person is like a drop of water and contributes to the vast ocean of our existence. And each person is like a word on a page. . . carefully placed by the dictates of grammar. . . Emergency laws of nature. On every page of history becomes the wind of change that carries the weight of the theme of humanity. Although the plot is different every time, the delicate balance between life and death remains the same.

Each preventive for the future is one of hope and Non-destructive? We're buying our brief existence, in the search for what the ancient Greeks called arete (ie, the pursuit of excellence and virtue) and try to reach our potential?

It is the desire of everyone that as we get older we become wiser and learn from our mistakes (decrease) in the hope that we May working with clairvoyance. From our potential and get to know ourselves is not easy and yet this effort far exceeds the benefits of being and living together in harmony. While it is difficult to know yourself, it is also difficult to capture the spirit of the times when you in it.

When we reflect on our personal history, we often say: "I'd known then what we know today." Is the benefit of hindsight. And if we could apply retroactively in the future? The forecast.

If we are wise and prudent, then it works as retrospective, prospective, but The forecast covers course forward.

Foresight enables us to live with less regret that we can "see" the future if she were to continue on our path current. Unfortunately, too often, we want short term solutions to the problems afflicting society. If we really want to transform society, if we really want a future that is defined by hope, and we should give no attention to the decision Zeitgeist? We understand? Heard? And I wonder, given the current Zeitgeist, which is the future as Zeitgeist: The future is ours to write. We can not erase the past. We have only today. What we do today will determine the future. And although the plot may change, the theme is always the same.

No cease from exploration
And the end of our investigation
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through of the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of the land to discover
Is that was the beginning;
The source of the longest rivers
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And children in the Apple
I do not know, for not having sought
But listen, half listening in silence

~ T. S Eliot, Four Quartets

PART II: A Global Call to Action

About the author:

CC Dr. Malcolm Armstrong is the founder of the Zeitgeist project. Before beginning his career first trip to India to help serve in a Himalayan village for a year. For Waterloo, met his wife, Robin. Soon they began their honeymoon at any time of year, traveling through motorcycles in North America. During their road trip took three months off work in a tall ship, while sailing in the Caribbean before making its way to the Amazon. For After their honeymoon, travel photography, Malcolm completed his first Masters course in Charlotte, North Carolina, Malcolm returned to Canada to continue his studies in Philosophy and World Religions. He earned a second master's degree at the University of Toronto. In 2001, Malcolm and his wife moved India, for four years so he could finish his doctorate in philosophy and world religions. His extensive travels and interactions with people of India have led to develop an original approach to the question of truth that began with a question: why are there so many discrepancies with the claims of truth and why these claims are often the cause of division and sometimes even violence? He later called this response heuristic epistemology – an approach the limit of the division, creating a propensity for authenticity.

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