The Great Jacque Fresco
Jacque Fresco
By Maj Borg, Minttu Mäntynen, Andrea Miconi - http://futuremylove.com/images/photos/Full_size/FUTURE_MY_LOVE_stills_from_the_film/FUTURE_MY_LOVE_Jacqu
Jacque Fresco was introduced to many through the Zeitgeist films
I learned of Jacque Fresco through Peter Joseph. Peter Joseph is a pseudonym. I've no idea who the man really is, and I don't really care. That Peter Joseph introduced me to Jacque Fresco is enough for me. I learned of Jacque Fresco through Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist films.
Jacque Fresco is hardly the only fine mind, hardly the only scientist you get to be introduced to for the first time in the Zeitgeist films, there are many others - but Jacque Fresco is one of the more prominent persons you get to see. You get to hear Jacque talk a lot about the problems he's seen, and experienced in this modern world. Jacque has some real ideas about how to fix the problems modern humans face. What Jacque knows for sure is something a lot of others also know for sure, and that is that the human population is far far too large, and there's no way it can continue growing at the clip it is or has been growing. We're trashing the planet, and we invest too much of ourselves and our work, too much of the fruits of our labors into things like killing other humans.
We're not living right. Humanity is not doing what is optimal for its own best interests. We waste ourselves, we trash our planet, and we spend a huge amount of time and effort at it all. It's wasted, we could be doing productive things. We could be enjoying vast spaces of unpolluted beauty, but instead we're sprawled all over the world, trashing up the Earth as though we can just order another planet through a drive through window or something.
These are the kinds of problems Jacque Fresco talks about. These are the kinds of problems Mr. Fresco wants to provide solutions to. He's the creator of something called the Venus Project.
Jacque Fresco and Zeitgeist, Moving Forward. This is a great introductory film for Jacque Fresco
Jacque Fresco knows that as a house divided, humanity can not stand
Zeitgeist, Moving Forward had a big effect on me. I think if you take the time to watch it it will have an effect on you too. Fresco goes at length to describe his disenfranchisement from societal norms, as the man was born in 1916, and he saw the great depression and the second world war, and all the seemingly worthless ideals the two big events were based upon. Nationality? Who needs it? Are we not born citizens of planet Earth, and how do these lines on the maps define us as human beings? Why should it be we dislike someone from another nation, when we don't know that individual, and all we do know is the nation we were born within is for some reason having little to do with us, in a state of conflict with the other.
It is a poor reason to shoot someone you don't know, that he is from some other geographical location, and some overlord or another has told you via military orders the other guy is your 'enemy.' This other soldier couldn't possibly be your enemy, you've never met. Ridiculous.
What was the Great Depression, if not a total failure of economic norms? All the resources were still there, so why was it persons were going without food? It wasn't for there not being resources to provide that food, so what was the problem? our economic paradigms must in and of themselves be flawed if they collapse causing random persons to starve, or to be without care, or to lose their homes. How could it be otherwise? The homes people were removed from during our more recent housing crisis have sat empty, how could that possibly be helpful to humans, or to non human entities such as banks. Clearly our human institutions are failing us, and they've failed us before, they'll fail us more, if we let them.
As Jacque Fresco points out in Zeitgeist, Moving Forward, since the ending of World War II, a conflict where so many resources were wasted - that had they instead been used to provide, could have provided all needed for all mankind, we've set the stage for our own extinction. We've got the ammunition, the weapons to destroy all humankind, and what for? For arbitrary lines in the sand, for the ridiculous notion of nationality. Humanity must consolidate itself, and its resources, instead of wasting so much time, effort, and materials in this never ending game of geographical distinction.
A much younger Jacque Fresco
Jacque Fresco - he didn't fit in with communists, or aircraft engineers
Jacque Fresco is thought to be either a futurist or some sort of social engineer. He was born over one hundred years ago, in March of 1916. So he was born while the great war, WWI was raging. So he came of age, or was a young man during the Great Depression. Then, he got to witness the horrors of World War II.
You could perceive Jacque Fresco and all his talk as negative. You may think he's a pessimist. I think those conclusions are inept, for Jacque has bore witness to the worst of the human experience. So his life's work has been some effort towards redressing the things he had to live through. Jacque wants the future to be a lot better than the past, and he's been thinking out how we should go about making certain that the future is better. The first and the second world wars were futility. The great depression didn't have to happen. There were things that weren't done that caused all of these terrors, and there were things that were don which were based in wrong thinking, causing the three big terrors to come about.
Jacque Fresco was born and raised a Sephardic Jew. He was born and raised in New York City. Always interested in science and philosophy, Jackque had joined in with some communists in the USA. His association with the Young Communist League was short lived, as he was physically removed from a group meeting after standing and shouting during discussion that Karl Marx was wrong!
So Jacque hit the road, this was the great depression, and he wanted to travel and see things. He started hopping trains, bumming rides. He went to California and went to work for the Douglas Aircraft Company. He was brilliant, self taught, and very headstrong. He quite the Douglas Aircraft Company for his designs not being put to use. They were deemed impractical.
Jacque Fresco's Trend Home
Jacque Fresco as an architect in the post world war two era
So Jacque went to work designing homes. He went from an airplane engineer to becoming an architect. This is where he became as successful in the world of business as he would ever become.
The year was 1948, and Fresco, vividly remembering the great depression, helped design these houses mostly made of aluminum and glass. Efficiency and affordability were his design goals, and insofar as the climate of California was concerned, the homes were likely efficient and affordable. The home was view-able at Warner Bros. studios for one dollar, the proceeds of that went to the Cancer Prevention Society. Clearly Jacque wasn't in the game of doing things for profits in the traditional sense of it all.
He'd spend the rest of the decade lecturing and freelancing as a designer of various and sundry things. He'd have problems getting funding, and general financial concerns all the way around.
Jacque Fresco at middle age
Jacque Fresco attempts to act as a psychologist, and then a white supremacist
Jacque Fresco was never adverse to taking risks, he'd hoped trains and bummed rides from the East coast to the West as a younger man. How he went to Florida isn't known by this writer, but he indeed moved from California to Florida. You'd think he'd seek work as some sort of engineer or architect while there in Florida, but one won't get far trying to guess what Jacque is up to.
Point of fact is that while in Florida he attempted to make a living as some sort of psychologist or another. Was he qualified for this? In this case, your guess would be as good as mine. Jacque claimed to have a degree from an institution, but no degree has been verified. He stopped practicing psychology due to pressures from none other than the American Psychological Association.
Jacque then did things which could be thought to be either ahead of their times, or insane, or whatever you wish. He joined some white supremacist groups in order to see whether or not he could pull it off, and for whatever other reasons one can imagine an inquisitive intellect such as his may have for doing such things. Myself, I admire these things; although I will concede they are both dangerous, and likely a huge waste of time. Fresco says he joined the racist groups to see whether or not he could change the views of the extremist of extreme mindsets found within.
Jacque Fresco talks about sociocyberneering on Larry King Live.
Jacque Fresco in cybernetics, sociocyberneering, and 'Looking Forward'
Despite the wild and varied careers Jacque Fresco had been a part of. Despite the chaos of what he was doing during his initial residency in the state of Florida, it was just after all of this he became the philosopher and novel thinker he'll likely forever be remembered as. He began to co-author some books on the future of mankind, and how it should be. He wasn't so different from Karl Marx in his goals, or the goals of his thinking. Not that he was a communist, he found communism lacking, and so he set about studying and defining new areas of thought in futurism.
Besides co-authoring a visionary book about mankind's future, he delved into the realms of cybernetics, and then this became Sociocyberneering. What is this all about? It was about Jacque's ideas for the future of mankind, and the future of mankind is what he's still, here in his 100th year on Earth concerned most with.
What is cybernetics? Well, it is a study with the attempt at exploring ways to regulate a system while also exploring the system's possibilities and structures. This is a very short definition for the term. You can explore the vastness of cybernetics in a wide array of systems, using virtually every sort of system you can name, and then some. Cybernetics is liken to or most similar to system dynamics. Is Cybernetics the same thing as governance? Only in the history of the word, as the term comes from the Greek term for governance.
What one needs to realize before delving into cybernetics is one can't understand any single system outside the context of the other systems the first one interacts with. A human is a system, is it not? He or she is no island, and so one can never understand the individual human outside the context of the dynamic of the humanity with which the individual human operates, and this involves other humans. No system is an island either, all systems are inter-related. So the study of cybernetics is a study of infinity.
The wiser person is never the person who can answer the most questions, but is rather the person who can ask the most questions. So the study of cybernetics is something only ever seriously done by the wisest of individuals. It's something to challenge the finest of human minds from the date the term was coined on out to the ending date for humanity.
Because Jacque Fresco had been born during WWI, lived through the great depression and WWII, his concern with cybernetics was the optimization of the human life through the optimum management of the resources of the planet Earth. He seems to be a humanist, in this way. His goals are the betterment of human lives though efficient use of resources for all, not just the luckiest of the humans, but all of the humans. In this manner he could be likened to the Karl Marx he once was ejected from a communist group for disagreeing with. He could also be likened to Jesus Christ, in any event, Jacque has labored long and labored hard towards further understanding of how these ends, the betterment of all through allocation of resources within the human system may be attained.
Jacque Fresco - a never ending source of terrific quotes
Jacque Fresco - a true futurist and visionary
Jacque Fresco, and the Venus Project
Jacque Fresco never even finished high school. He's attempted all these various and sundry forms of intellectual pursuit without much at all in the way of formal education. It's the same thing as me not having any sort of journalism degree, you are reading this just the same.
Clearly, Fresco is a brilliant mind and a visionary, and he's convinced enough persons who've got far more in the way of formal education with following him or taking him up on his ideas, that Jacque Fresco may as well be considered a prophet of sorts. This is what a futurist ultimately must be regarded as, is it not? He formed a group of like minded sorts and called it Sociocyberneering, Inc but this amounted to little, or at least it amounted to the precursor to the Venus Project, and the Venus Project seems to be the thing we will forever associate most closely with Jacque Fresco.
What is in the name? It has nothing at all to do with the planet Venus, it has to do with Jacque Fresco taking up residence in Venus, Florida. This is where he's based his operations. His design for the future is the Venus Project, and he's got more minds than his own working on it all, because Jacque may not have a doctorate degree from anywhere, but he's got a visionary mind the likes of which only a few persons with such a high and mighty formal education can compare.
No mistake about it, Jacque Fresco was never a part of accepted means of society, he abhors the structures and stratification of our world. Persons who are professional academics have a real distaste for Fresco, and loads of criticisms are heaped on his head by such. None of this bothers Jacque Fresco overly much, he's 100 years old, and I, personally, would be pleased were he to live a hundred more years.
'Peter Joseph' of the Zeitgeist films is the chief proponent of Jacque Fresco today, and Fresco's vision is living on within him, and all who contribute to his work. Fresco, alas, is an individualist to the hilt, and his association with the man with the pseudonym of Peter Joseph do also find themselves at odds at times.
The ideas of Jacque Fresco are completely in rebellion against both capitalism and communism. His resource based approach to sharing seems to require something first be done about the exploding human population in order for it to work at all. Then again, something must be done about the human population and its impact on the destruction of the Earth and its ecosystems regardless of what sort of economic paradigm ultimately takes root.
Jacque Fresco is no revolutionary in the sense of revolution in the 20th century.His ideas are for the evolution of humanity, and all systems within which humanity finds itself. He's more a visionary than a person who's ideas have come to fruition. Perhaps his ideas will not seem so far fetched in the future, they are certainly idealist - and if Jacque is guilty of any crimes, then it is the crime of having high and mighty ideals we can find no way to make workable at present. Lets wish him and his ideas the best, for they are in and of themselves seeking the best for us all, each and every one. Thanks for reading.
© 2016 Wesman Todd Shaw
Comments
Wesman Todd Shaw (author) from Kaufman, Texas on March 19, 2016:
Thanks Alicia. I had kinda forgotten about him. Then I saw the other day on Facebook that he'd turned 100 years old. That's quite an achievement itself for anyone.
I'm sure some think of him as something of a crank or a cook or whatnot, but he's a visionary for sure, and we can all see how our culture is so very wasteful of resources. So I think Jacque is important.
Linda Crampton from British Columbia, Canada on March 18, 2016:
This is very interesting. Though I've heard of Jacque Fresco before, I knew hardly anything about him before reading this article. He sounds like someone who's worth investigating. Thanks for sharing the information, Wesman.
