It is a great privilege and honour for us to be able to interview today one of the brightest minds alive. Righteously called by many “the Michelangelo of our time” this 94 year old self-taught social engineer, inventor, scientist and humanist has dedicated most of his lifetime to the design, research and scientific and technological application of the Resource Economy alternative, through the widely-known Venus Project.
Documentaries like “Furure by Design”, by the award nominated William Gazecki, about Mr. Fresco´s life or the worldwide known “Zeitgeist: Addendum” by the award winning Peter Joseph, (which can be watched FOR FREE at www.zeitgeistmovie.com), in which Mr Fresco participated, are must-see pieces for objective and powerful knowledge.
On a barren scrap of land in central Florida (originally a flat tomato patch), Jacque Fresco, his collaborator for over 30 years Roxanne Meadows and a few other friends began to build what today is widely known as The Venus Project, named after the tiny nearby village of Venus.
Occupying some 25 acres (100m2), 10 buildings have been constructed, each utilizes design, construction and lifestyle concepts integral to developing a working model of harmony and high productivity, integrating both nature and advanced technology.
They have also planted palm trees and dug out streams, to show how the outskirts of the real cities would look like. The cities would be beautifully integrated with nature.
Within this scenario, the model of the monetary system would have been replaced for a resource based economy.
With a resource based economy humanity would also be liberated from labour as technology would take care of tedious, mechanical tasks.
1. MDM_ Jacque, first of all, thank you again for granting Wonderlance this interview, it is an honour for us. Our first question would be the following: How could we use our current scientific knowledge and technology to harvest and manage efficiently the types of clean energy that we have in abundance?
1. JACQUE_
Wind energy on roof tops
In and out flow of tides with underwater turbines.
Wave power
Heat concentrators. These are parabolic reflectors that concentrate the sun
Photovoltaic’s
Wind farms
Temperature differentials harnessed
There would have to be a global survey of potential energy sources.
Great rivers cross the oceans of our planet set in motion by Earth’s rotation. These immense oceanic currents travel at varying speeds, at different depths, and even in opposite directions. It is estimated that the Gulf Stream carries about 30 million cubic meters of water per second past Miami, Florida. This is more than five times the combined flow of all the fresh water rivers in the world. If this potential energy were harnessed, it is estimated that the project would deliver close to a thousand million watts on a 24-hour basis, or as much as two large nuclear plants without environmental contamination or radiation danger.
Powerful winds, waves, and currents provide enormous potential for the generation of electric power. The vast potential of the seas can also be realized by the production of energy crops from biomass by converting waste organic materials into gaseous or liquid fuels.
2. MDM_ How is the monetary system destroying our society and ultimately our world?
2. JACQUE_ Money is just an interference between what you need and what you are able to get. People think in terms of wanting a job to get the money to fulfill their needs. But if they thought about it, it is really not a job or money they want but access to the necessities of life.
The use of money results in social stratification and elitism. They say in America that all people are equal. But most people don’t buy the kind of car or home they want, they buy what they can afford.
Many cultures tell their people they are “free” but one is only as free as their purchasing power. How can someone have freedom when they can’t get the best medical care or education for their children?
Most people are slaves to jobs they do not like because they need money.
The majority of laws are enacted for the benefit of corporations that have the money to lobby, bribe, or persuade government officials to make laws that serve their own interests.
People say that the monetary system produces incentive. This may be true in limited areas but it also produces greed, corruption, crime, war, poverty, and unnecessary human suffering. We must to look at the entire picture.
The monetary system is based on artificial scarcity. For example food products are sometimes destroyed just to keep prices up.
There is tremendous waste of resources as a result of frequent superficial design changes in order to create continuous markets. This is very evident in the fashion industry. The monetary system is based on the need to continuously buy. You and I are merely consumers.
There is tremendous environmental degradation due to the higher costs of more appropriate waste disposal.
But one of the greatest wastes of resources and lives is the military. How shameful that it is one of the biggest industries in the world.
The Earth is being plundered for profit.
It is little understood how much our values are shaped by our monetary society. Our values are influenced by the media for the benefit of the establishment – the banks, most churches, the military and the corporations. For the most part they determine the public agenda to serve their own interests while they perpetuate the illusion that society’s values are determined from the ground up. They do this with empty words such as Freedom, Patriotism, and Democracy. What we have all over the world is managed news by the establishment. They produce the books, TV shows, education and entertainment, which in turn shapes much of our behavior, and values.
Most important, when the corporation’s bottom line is profit, all decisions are made not for the benefit of people or the environment, but primarily for the acquisition of wealth, property, and power.
3. MDM_ We have always thought that we have enough scientific data and obvious experiential proof to realise that a future Waterworld is very likely. What solutions do you have for this scenario?
3. JACQUE_ Colonization of the oceans is one of the last frontiers that remain on Earth. In the redesign of our cities, prodigious oceanic-city communities may evolve. To fully utilize this bountiful resource, the way of the future embraces the development of large marine structures designed to explore the relatively untapped riches of the world’s oceans. These cities in the sea could provide improved mariculture, fresh water production, power, and a variety of mining activities, which could offset land-based mining shortages. They could provide almost unlimited riches in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, fertilizers, minerals, oil, natural gas, sweet water, and tidal and wind power, to name a few. Ocean-based and space-borne sensors will constantly track tidal flow, marine life, water composition and temperature, atmospheric conditions, and other vital signs.
The development of ocean communities will greatly relieve land-based population pressures. The population of such cities would vary from several hundred to many thousand, and would be located throughout the world. These will eventually all be controlled, managed, and operated by automated systems, and will be part of international communications networking.
Some of these cities can serve as universities and research centers where students from all over the world study marine sciences and management. They could also monitor ocean currents, weather patterns, marine ecology, pollution, and geologic phenomena. For additional marine exploration, robotic submersibles would be available. The oceans are, after all, essential to our survival and a critical part of Earth’s carrying capacity.
Cities of the sea could offer new and fascinating lifestyles for millions of inhabitants while easing land-based population pressure.Some of these cities in the sea could also serve as underwater international parks where visitors could observe the great protected reefs of the world. Massive ocean structures would be both above and beneath the sea. These structures would represent a spectacular engineering achievement with aircraft, sea craft, and submersible access.
On these and other floating cities or platforms powerful wind turbines could capture the ocean breezes. Solar and wind power generators would be located on most of the upper decks. Cold water from the depths of the ocean can also be pumped up for various uses such as the conversion of this heat differential into electrical energy. This process could provide a continuous supply of electricity far in excess of the cities’ needs.
With our dwindling agricultural space, ocean farming offers an area for unlimited energy crops. Biomass and processing of waste organic materials into liquid or gaseous fuel would provide additional energy from the fermentation processes.Mariculture, the planned cultivation of marine crops, and fish farming communities can be designed to support more than one type of marine life. Many of these communities could maintain a balance of species in a mutually supporting, symbiotic relationship, while emulating natural conditions as closely as possible.
These floating ocean platforms could also be equipped with solar-operated desalinization plants to extract fresh water for hydroponics farming and other uses. Upwelling can also be harnessed to extract deep-sea nutrients to supply aquaculture farming. Of course any attempt at aquaculture or mariculture must be subject to the international monitoring of ocean farms.
This would not only provide fish farming complexes, but could introduce the most advanced principles of poly-culture to maintain the reproduction and natural balance of species. Every precaution must be taken to avoid disrupting or spoiling the spawning grounds that have sustained the human race for countless centuries.
All marine development must be in full accord with the total carrying capacity and sustainment of the ocean environment. Before initiating any of these major projects, it is imperative to take into account the possible negative impact on the entire hydrosphere – the rivers, estuaries, lakes, and oceans.
In a project of this magnitude, it is imperative that benefits be shared equally by the entire global community. Eventually mineral wealth of the oceans and the other resources of our world must be shared by all nations as the common heritage of humankind. If we fail to adopt these measures the rapid exploitation and deterioration of the ocean’s resources may not be reversible.
4. MDM_ You have dedicated most of your life not only to think of scientific and technical solutions to everyday problems but also to design a cultural and educational system that would eradicate many of the sources for criminal and aberrant behavior. Could you tell us a bit about it and why you do not believe in natural evil?
4. JACQUE_ To answer this question one would need a brief description of The Venus Project. It is an organization that proposes a feasible plan of action for social change; one that works toward a peaceful and sustainable global civilization. It outlines an alternative to strive toward where human rights are not only paper proclamations but also a way of life.
It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old problems of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems found in today’s world.
The Venus Project is unlike any political, economic or social system that has gone before. It envisions a time in the near future when money, politics, self and national-interest have been phased out. Although this vision may seem idealistic, it is based upon years of study and experimental research. It spans the gambit from education, transportation, and clean sources of energy to total city systems.
As global challenges and scientific information proliferate, nations and people face common threats that transcend national boundaries. Overpopulation, energy shortages, global warming, environmental pollution, water scarcity, economic catastrophe, the spread of uncontrollable disease, and the technological displacement of people by machines threaten each of us. Although many people are dedicated to alleviating those conditions, our social and environmental problems will remain insurmountable as long as a few powerful nations and financial interests maintain control of and consume most of the world’s resources and the monetary system prevails.
Even if the most ethical people in the world were elected to political office, without sufficient resources we would still have many of the same problems we have today. If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems, we must declare Earth and all of its resources the common heritage of all of the world’s people.
Earth is abundant and has plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival. Today we have highly advanced technologies, but our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities. We could easily create a world of abundance for all, free of servitude and debt based on the carrying capacity of the earth’s resources. With the intelligent and humane application of science and technology, the people of the earth can guide and shape the future together while protecting the environment. We don’t have enough money to accomplish these ends but we do have more than enough resources. This is why we advocate a Resource-Based Economy.
Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources - rather than money - to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.
In regards to your question as to why I don’t believe in “natural evil”: We are trapped with inappropriate terms like malcontents, evil or agitators when we should be looking at conditions in society that generate these behaviors. We should look for ways to change society so it could outgrow them instead of just suppressing them or making laws to try to eliminate them.
James Harvey Robinson believed that the proper study of man was man. There is no evidence to support this statement. A plant cannot grow of it own accord. It requires an environment of soil, nutrients, sunlight, etc. Any plant put in the polar regions will not grow no matter how well endowed it is genetically. Human beings are subject to the same physical laws that govern the entire evolutionary process. Human behavior and values are not self-generating; they are byproducts of culture.
Perhaps future historians will look upon us as deviants with our artificialities, violence, and superstitions, a society that spends a great deal of its income on military expenditures when the methods of science could be applied to bridge the difference between nations. Deviant and socially offensive behaviors are byproducts of deprivation or the fear of it.
The Venus Project proposes the redesign of education in which people will be provided with the interrelationship of living systems as a symbiotic whole. Children brought up without bigotry, racism, or greed, will no longer manifest patterns of behavior that are socially offensive. For example, even the most sophisticated of German families were fighting over food in garbage cans near the end of World War II. Mass lynching in the south was also a byproduct of indoctrination.
The question that remains is how much of our value system is programmed by our society's values designed to perpetuate existing and established institutions. It is not human nature but rather human behavior that we have to be concerned with, and that can easily be changed by an appropriate and relevant education and environment, which coincides with the carrying capacity of the earth.
If you elect honorable, ethical people to office but there is no support in the environment to implement the decent laws passed, they cannot be adhered to. For example, if there is not enough arable land to grow food, then behavior will revert to steeling, and corruption to attain what food there is.
5. MDM_ Not many people know that you have invented thousands of useful devices, within a wide range of technologies, from health and dental instrumentation to 3D motion picture projection systems. You also hold the architectural record of designing one of the first mass produced homes, the “Trend Home”. Many people are afraid that technology only eliminates employment and believe in the technocracy scenarios that sci-fi books and movies portray. How would you dissipate their worries?
5. JACQUE_ Whether we like it or not, we are depending more and more on technology. Our concern is about whether technology will be used in a society like the one we have now, which is abusive to people, or in one where it can free people and provide them with more constructive options. The dictatorial futures are put fort by artists who they know little about technology. If The Venus Project does not generate a warm, loving, and supportive environment, it will not work. Society would not be organized so as to be subservient to machines but rather, machines would enhance people's lives. We view machines as extensions of our human capabilities. You don't see people getting mad at their washing machines or refrigerators because they are afraid they might take over. Massive construction machines eliminate the need for thousands to toil with low-tech hand tools. I don’t think anyone would object to that unless it meant, as it does today, that some may lose their income.
The system we advocate may never be perfect, but it would be a tremendous improvement over the way we organize the provision of goods and services today. It would be an emergent system continuously improving and developing new resources for research to further the process.
6. MDM_ It has been pointed out in some of the interviews or lectures that you have held that you require money in order to build a city that would show the sustainability of a resource based economy; but we still live within the monetary system so it is only logical to think that this would be the case to start with. However, what other means do we, the people, have to help the Venus Project to develop fully, and hence show the entire world that this is no utopia, apart from monetary donations?
6. JACQUE_ Please check our website for other suggestions:
www.thevenusproject.com/get-involved
Learn as much as you can from our books and videos:
www.thevenusproject.com/store
We also need funding and contacts in the film and television industry. We feel that a feature film and television show would allow us to present this direction to the public on a massive level. The ideas already exist, but we just need connections. Contact studios, production companies, producers, mainstream media sources, businesspeople, all of those individuals and groups who could help us with these goals.
If you have not already done so, please join our mailing list. You can join the mailing through our webste.
Also, please visit The Zeitgeist Movement for additional ways you can get involved:
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
If you are an engineer, architect, cad designer, animator or any other professional please sign up on our data base and see what is needed now:
www.TheVenusProjectDesign.com
We also hold tours at the research center:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/get-involved/tours
Sign up on our home page.
If there is something specific you would like to help initiate to further this direction where you would need our participation please let us know. Right now our main aim is introducing and educating people to this new social direction and value system so just speaking to others about The Venus Project is a tremendous help.
7. MDM_ You have been developing this project of over 70 years and have been working with Roxanne Meadows, on the Venus Project for over 34 years. Both of you are in a World Lecture Tour covering over 20 countries in 7 months. Where can the general public get the necessary information in order to attend one of your lectures?
7. JACQUE_ Thank you for mentioning this. The list of lectures can be found here:
www.thevenusproject.com/world-tour-lecture-dates
Those places that are now selling tickets.
There is more information about the tours on our home page www.thevenusproject.com and please view our blog to follow our travels http://www.thevenusproject.com/blog/ It has been a tremendous success so far and it is rewarding to see so many people along this tour are so well versed about The Venus Project and
The Zeitgeist Movement and are dedicated to introducing this direction to others. It will take this kind of effort to help make it a reality.
8. MDM_ Mr. Fresco, you are hoping to make a motion picture that would enable the general public to understand how we can make the transition from our current monetary based economy to the resource based economy. Who do you think would be the most qualified filmmaker to take on this project?
8. JACQUE_ There are many people who are competent filmmakers who could make this film to introduce this direction to the general public. But it would have to be someone who identifies with the direction of The Venus Project’s aims and proposal and would be willing to work with us.
MDM_ Thank you again for taking the time, within your busy schedule, to grant us this interview Mr. Fresco. Here in Wonderlance we fully believe in the Venus Project and will do all we can to spread the word about it.
JACQUE_ Thank you for this opportunity. I deeply appreciate it.
--- Edited by Fraser Ingham for the MDM at Wonderlance
