Money, happiness and eternal life - Greed (director's cut) | DW Documentary

I had a strange dream I was walking through a golden temple beneath the dome of glass and through chambers of splendor filled with so many objects that the heart so desires I saw miracles of human skill and artistry and flawless beings who seemingly lacked nothing but it appeared they were all searching for something [Music] such strange creatures [Music] the whole world is in a big mess the more they get the more they want president Bush after 9/11 said I urge all Americans to go shopping this print would still make me money it's the thing in me I grew up in a way that I will still make money even if I was left in the desert there is someone who tries to say you need this there are enough people who think they need that that's what the marketing strategy is is that it always tells you you shouldn't be content the minge is not humans are by nature greedy evolution has shown us that as long as this mechanism doesn't become too dominant it serves the goals of the individual perfectly individuals each mujuy to survive today I go so far as to say it's a symptom of an illness catastrophe is on its way catastrophe you and I we cannot even imagine I wonder if we're a viable form of life maybe we're just an evolutionary flash in the pan and we'll be sitting right next to the dinosaurs at the cockroach Museum one thing I would love to say that you must always think of your death [Music] [Music] I kept asking myself why are we like this we're caring and compassionate but we're also egocentric and reckless we give and reward we create and destroy what is our problem what drives us I went in search of answers [Applause] humanities at the crossroads I think a historical moment the physical environment is undermine to the point where we need to attend to it war is something that we ought to think about what why does that happen people are pervasively unhappy on top of all of that we keep building Walmart's I see insatiable greed as inextricably connected to all of these other difficulties that if we don't recognize and come to terms with we're literally putting our species at risk you know you might ask to talk about Darwin well if you're asked to talk about Darwin it has to be about evolution and what's the word evolution mean change and so so evolution is an idea that Darwin is trying to understand and what's his strikingly original proposal natural selection suit [Music] Cubans are on the one hand very similar to all other forms of life in that we share a basic biological predisposition you know towards survival but on the other hand we're so smart that we actually recognize that we exist [Music] and the point here is that being alive and knowing it is grounds for great joy [Music] on the other hand it also carries a very terrible existential burden if you know that you're here you know that someday like all living things that you won't be here if that's all we thought about I'm gonna die I may walk outside and get hit by a meteor we would literally be paralyzed by abject terror what human beings did is to construct and maintain what the anthropologists today call culture and all cultures offer some recipe for immortality either literally through the heavens and after lives and reincarnation z' of all the world's great religions or symbolically through the belief that some vestige of our identity will persist over time nevertheless [Music] that's why you want to have children that's why you want to build pyramids that's why we want to write great books and symphonies that's why we want to have a lot of money human beings are motivated to have a lot of stuff because psychologically speaking it gives them a sense that they may be able to live forever desire greed and the struggle that brings about anger and aggression from the philosophical Buddhist philosophical perspective are all resultant states of a person consistently trying to look at what is not true we talk about three fundamental truths that things are impermanent secondly the fundamental principle of everything is said to be emptiness [Music] but now what happens is we try to build something that makes us forget about this we try to make things permanent and that struggle creates the third truth of this suffering we begin to then hang on to things I'll give you an example you know if I have a shirt and every time I go out to do some shopping you buy another shirt you may have 12 in your closet but you'll buy the thirteenth just so that you have a sense of you'll live long enough to wear altered in shirts or perhaps even more than that so there's a sense of every day consistently doing something because of which we may be able to more solidify our sense of immortality our sense of living continuously not changing and that struggle consistently builds up all these neuroses and the prominent one of them becomes the greed [Music] death is a very real physical phenomenon and it doesn't matter how good your symbols are your religion your politics your money there's still symbols and none of them will be sufficient to minimize death anxiety or rather to eliminate it you can reduce it but you can't get rid of it and then finally just really to make matters worse we also don't like the idea that we're animals from a starkly biological point of view we're not all that much more significant or enduring than lima beans or armadillos an animal takes only what it needs but the human animal is different more than seven billion of us populate the planet and each of us desires something desires more is this perhaps the secret of success [Music] [Music] the UM mess instrumentally now developed instruments to measure greed as a personality trait and also to elicit a state of greed in people mentioned in Ireland social context of a citizen associates this is the balloon task we use it to measure our test subjects willingness to take risks the subject has to try to keep inflating of the loom the larger the balloons the more it's worth the punch period in each round the subjects play for real money every time they inflate the balloon they're risking that it might first and then their money would be gone as pets I incur nest we've been able to demonstrate that people who tend to be greedy are more likely to take risks when performing this task so they inflate the balloon further than do normal test subjects and we see that people who tend towards greed also demonstrate an altered brain response in this archaic see in this graphic we see how our brain responds to rewards and a punishment so far we've been able to demonstrate that the more greedy the test subject the weaker are the punishments signals so she has indeed wished - technology GABA is this interesante that's that what is interesting is that these people also tend to want to maintain night State the classic experiments of old Simula on the brains dopamine system are very interesting in this respect the amine cysteine indium if electrodes are implanted in exactly this region of a rat's brain and the rat is then put into a situation where it can stimulate that dopamine system directly by pressing a lever the rats will continue pressing the lever until they die is a test equipment and this is presumably one of the biological mechanisms that helps explain excessive breed [Music] [Applause] come on Ren there you go bloom we go oh you can have two okay where's my lead oh you already have two [Music] most primates are highly social but these guys are atypical in that they're also highly tolerant there is a hierarchy and everyone knows who's on top and the individuals at the top get more males get more matings females get more access to resources but you don't have this really steep hierarchy where there's one individual at the top who gets everything and you also see some things that you don't necessarily see across the primates like respect for possessions so we can look for instance at how do you respond when you get more and I get less how do you respond when you get less and I get more and that's tractable to study experimentally hey guys so the experiment itself is very simple it take two monkeys or two Apes set them next to one another and you interact with them sequentially and what they have to do is a very simple task so we give them a token they return it and give them the food reward for having completed it but then the critical component is how does this individual respond to that medium preferred food like a cucumber or a piece of bell pepper when their partner gets something much better [Music] see this that could be due to inequity it could be due to hey look my partner got something better than me or it could just be due to general sort of greed for lack of a better term hey there's a better food out there and I wanted from an evolutionary perspective the behavior that we consider greed which is acquiring as many resources as possible is important most animals live more at the margin than modern Western humans do so not acquiring as many resources for them is a real risk of death in human societies so my perspective is that Green has taken on not just acquiring as much as possible but acquiring as much as possible explicitly at the expense of other individuals and I don't think that that's something that you can apply to animals one day narcissus came upon a spring that was so clear that he could see himself in it as if in a mirror when he saw his own reflection he fell in love with its beauty we too like to see ourselves as the center of the world the individual is now the measure of all things and so we yearn for recognition and self-esteem we collect relationships photos and likes SUVs shoes records are we like narcissus addicted to our own egos [Music] [Music] being successful in business is an art and when you have it you can be able to take things to a level that people would be surprised how much you describe me to price this we'll talk about that the International price this talk about our prices 700 square metres fifth floor x eight floors x our logo price one thousand one thousand two thousand it will cost you five point six million yeah I rather do those types of videos cuz that's exactly what it's gonna be I will tell you my philosophy is very simple there is a thin line separating a businessman and a criminal why because anything I do somebody's bound to self cheated him so all of us as businessmen throughout the world whether it's Bill Gates its Richard Branson we are all viewed the crew knows but it's because we think beyond other people think President Mugabe is my brother from a European perspective or the nephew from our African be a brother we cannot have the world full of critics we went there and by the shrinked there are fewer critics more duels that way the world economy will be nice to live welcome to my house I want to show you around as well as the achievements I've had for for so many years and yeah you know it's cool which is near my old offices they gave me an award for building a school block and then an organization help us help ourselves honored me for my work for humanitarian reasons so they gave me this award where this award from BAFTA its main focus is to recognize those who have done a lot of work in human rights affirmative action and empowerment issues you know internationally that's me in here with my main lounge where him if you come in and friends and family we are we we do meet and toss around you know have conversations of sorts political economy and family [Music] the property has a helipad on top so when it's cold here we did we do put the heaters so it really has you know heaters over here and this room is called him that the dining room if I'm refurbishing this house this is the only room I don't refurbish because it gives me that sentimental relationship with the president and yeah the man that money can buy [Music] this is it I know where I came from I came from being a vegetable vendor my bed was their floor the grand elliptic floor that's where I used to sleep with a very poor linen blanket that goes beneath me and one on top and that history is why I want to you know be able to show I got a live well [Music] [Music] things like the racetrack and all other forms of public spectacle are of interest to folks for so many reasons one aspect of the racetrack is gambling another part of it is to highlight one status relative to one's fellow human beings somebody is quote better not by how big or strong he or she is but rather how one dresses how you conduct yourself and how you establish that you are richer than more worthy than and therefore more immune from death than all of the other folks who surround you in some ways this is no different than dominance hierarchies and primates [Applause] we love heroes and therefore have become preoccupied with being the best at something even if it's how many hotdogs I can eat in ten minutes in America we're number one not in science or literacy or anything important we are number one in depression however how could this be what you have to do is look at cultural values to see if there realistically attainable by the average individual if you're a male you're basically valued by how much you have and this is the so-called American Dream if you work hard enough you can have as much money as LeBron James or or Warren Buffett or Bill Gates [Music] but realistically for every millionaire there's got to be hundreds of thousands of people working part time at Walmart without benefits same for women but they have a different cultural burden we teach women that in order to be beautiful you have to be ridiculously thin your breasts excluded of course so if I can't floss my teeth with you you're too fat and you have to remain perpetually young which of course is biologically impossible Wow we cherish values that are simply not possible to attain [Music] if you say I want to be true to the world you got to get rid of all your aims and when I say your imes I'm talking about I'm this and I'm that I can do this and I can do this oh yeah I did this last year oh I can do that oh I'm better than him so all those times it's egos [Music] there's a lot of people in South Africa both black and white who carry the Eagle page on them and they carry it high as a flag you see and and those are the people who we would see as the future bureaucrats of the country if you are driving into a poor neighborhood where you know people are starving to death and you're driving down with your mercedes-benz or your rolls-royce that is the worst thing you could ever do driving with this ego to say I'm better than you you know you'll never be where I am those people are lost [Music] then each terminal if I believe I have to assert my ego the only way I can do that is through greedier I'm forced to constantly cooperate something into myself that lends stability to my ego those can be material things but they can also be spiritual things for example ideas like I'm important for example or and somebody due to money or fame of my title or something like that our entire modern world is based on this here for the picnic green destroys people's of the earth why because it isolates us and because greed is something like a drug you know I have a more I want to have because whatever I have no longer satisfies me so it's not what I actually possess that satisfies me it's the constant striving for more religion has known for centuries that this drive lies within us humans but this drive is also our ruin a playlist [Laughter] [Music] since time immemorial there have been stories of people who could never get enough people like King Midas he asked Diana says to grant him a wish but everything he touched would turn to gold but even his food and his drink turned to gold it seemed he might starve or die of thirst gold and riches have always been cast under the spell of omnipotence and a whisper of eternity what I ask myself gives money such a powerful allure [Laughter] the coupla poof's coming out Spanky Karev I chose banking as my career I'm a trained accountant and I worked with the Ullaeus bear & Co our gay bank first in Zurich I on the Cayman Islands which is a tax haven job I was promoted to compliance officer waning I was the legal conscience of the company name ins [Music] ina give me security a certain amount of greed is instilled into you that was true for me too I have to imagine you start to think only in monetary units I think what dollar signs appear before your eyes and in your heart then they're there and they're the only thing that matters feed poor feed a lot of profit and making sure you don't get caught bands the way I operate out to the course in minor functionals in my function as compliance officer I determined that we had criminal clients tombi been lower names like bin Laden I was a Mexican drug box it became clear to me that I was working for a criminal organization and that the bank was a participant in tax evasion and fraud we 12 industry hint at some of the talk I ended up feeling morally and hunted given took the matter up with management McDonagh management Anjali evolve it or we were threatened the entire family ended up leaving the Cayman Islands very suddenly try to bank had been Swiss bankers in the Cayman Islands who have been killed their house key custom suits to an extent my decision to leave the system was a moral issue but what was more important I think was that I realized the system had turned against me theme Keegan for example the threats that were made against me in the Cayman Islands the way I was fired and then threatened again the bank would destroy me if I tried to file charges against them on Tiger where the dog fell on the rocky bank the bank sent private detectives after us I was followed on my way to work I had to change the route I took to work change my workout is the site of a black car would upset me I was completely smoked I even considered suicide I wanted to drive me crazy they involved in pipe these darts and volkov top estate prosecutors had all the information but they did nothing with it but the son Pony it's a politically but it would make the criminal clients uneasy they would realize they're no longer safe and protected either so with that in mind the authorities don't go after the bank without the bonk they go after the man who made the truth public laws they're evolved tightly I spent 217 days in prison the first 30 days were in 2005 the rest in 2011 by those times I was in solitary confinement spending 23 hours a day alone in my south there were prisoners who flipped rapidly started banging against the doors screaming this right sort of Switzerland and basically every country they protect their golden calves the golden calf in Switzerland is banking secrecy that's why no one had ever investigate the Yuliya spare Bank even though the state prosecutors know that yulia's bear might help deceive the US tax authorities so forth for political reasons the state prosecutors who never investigate we could be a flower question was how could we create test conditions that would approximate the behavior of a stockbroker for example our loss Meteor functional and magnificent we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activity in our test subjects it is currency 9 we can look deep into the brain without including into the structures responsible for the reward response our subjects play a stock trading game and have to decide whether they want to invest a large amount of money or a small amount then they get feedback during the game as to whether the share price is rising or falling we've been able to determine that people who are especially greedy they display a more muted response in regions responsible for punishment and loss of money this mechanism enables a kind of disinhibition I'm making this monster an art in Tamil under their Quinta naama bay ston the assumption that ordinary and average people will be risk averse is that it makes sense for the finance industry which is optimized for outcome to hire people who are more inclined toward risk yeah R Biden they achieved that with bonuses and with targeted hiring practices an efficiently person allows five Flaubert dozen I believe it's just a matter of time before the next finance crisis will hit [Music] yeah we'll watch it Jeanette okay tonight what in exchange what you did great okay thank you very much [Music] when I started hearing about Warren Buffett's and Bill Gates worth it was run about the 3040 billions but now it's 70 billion you know in life if you have only a billion dollars you can be able to leave for 273 years and eat or spend ten thousand dollars a day how many of us live for 233 years so if you have got a billion that means you can even spend thirty thousand a day because you're not gonna last that long but still other people make much more you know nobody can say I don't want more if people like me don't make money there is no taxes that enables government to function so therefore people who make money enable things to happen and I'm all of those people [Music] more growth more affluence more contentment this is the promise of those who mean well with us and we're only too happy to believe them we do our part are we hoping to buy ourselves happiness many Western Europeans and Americans they no longer really have a firm belief in God but you have to believe in something you know we have these belief systems that reduce death anxiety but there's always going to be a rumble of panic beneath the surface of consciousness we're gonna take this death anxiety and we got to do something with it and one thing that we can do is by oddish [Music] by the time you can talk you have already been pelted with commercial images like the Nike check and the golden arches we know them subliminally [Music] our children are growing up in a world that is radically different from the ones that you and I grew up and their brains have been modified accordingly manufacturers of consumer goods they are spending literally billions of dollars to ensure that no child is left behind in the commercial rat race we're basically in a sense no different than amoebas we are attracted to anything that fosters life and pleasure and we're repulsed and afraid of anything that threatens that state of affairs shoes shoes and their shoes everywhere shoes sometimes you don't want to let go of something you keep it for instance this shoe I've never won it but I think it's been sitting here for like prayers still brand new and it's the same thing with this one still brand new that's one still brand new this is a designer shoe I don't want to be limited because in in the Bible Genesis says you must have dominion over everything that gives me that strength nobody in the Bible I can open it for you nobody is poor Abraham Moses everybody he's a rich man in the bible bible does not talk about poverty the Bible is the biggest money machine everywhere each verse talks about money that is something that people need to realize and I'm happy that there's something like this I think the key for the material society is that it will always tell you that there's something missing you need something else we're all contributing I don't think it's only the you know you can't just blame someone who's trying to sell you something so demand and supply you know we're all sort of supporting each other in it and we've all gotten into this cycle that we are unable to find ourselves free from [Music] talking about 24 hours I would say 23 hours and 55 minutes samsara is saying come you're missing something and by samsara I mean the habitual patterns and you keep thinking they're calling me samsara is calling I need to go there have a car have a house have a partner be busy be neurotic that's what I would say of course you don't call it that way you call it being someone being capable finding your identity [Music] whether it's discontentment you're always looking for more you're always looking for more that struggle brings about so much insecurity and unhappiness [Music] one of the reasons why people acquire so much is because it feels good there are both neurochemical and psychological feedback loops it causes you to continue doing it well beyond what you actually need it's one thing when you go out and I can get a cup of cool warm coffee on a cold rainy day it's completely another thing when you buy a you know 75th pair of shoes you really really don't in any stretch of the imagination need those shoes but they're still gonna make you feel good there is this drive to as we say in the u.s. keep up with the Joneses in our wealthy set on in Park Avenue everybody's 16th birthday party last year everybody handed out iPods well this year we're gonna hand out iPads well this year we're gonna do this and so there's also this sort of ratchet effect there's nothing wrong with being a consumer I mean to stay alive we have to consume things but that we literally surrounded ourselves with stuff to the point where we become imprisoned in a gilded cage we became consumed with consumption we gonna keep buying stuff until the last drop of petroleum has been burnt [Music] a Flemish proverb holds the world is a haystack and each man plucks from it what he can we humans wish to have to possess but the question is can we have anything without taking it away from someone else [Music] in 1657 the Portuguese came through Mozambique they were the first people to be here exploiting gold Africa is like a thumb so anybody who sets himself up somewhere it would just extract the minerals and take them away you can imagine a country ten times bigger than the map was colorized by one person in Belgium who called it is from this was absolutely unfair on the African continent [Music] that's it you stand by principle we have the right to ownership of our resources our land policy was right the man has done a lot for me Mugabe ensured that the masses got land which they got for free and they are producing we may not have kicked off or at the best of how things should be but people are catching up and that particular movie met people must be equal must be treated equally all of them [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] when the Christian missionaries got to Africa how long had the Africans been there forever they were the first humans and when they got there did they say oh we would like to learn about the customs that you have used for hundreds of thousands of years what did they say you're Catholic now or we kill you all right so they just said we are the best the rest stop doing that and you're Catholic now let's play bingo [Applause] in the back of our head we know that the current Western approach to life requires that we directly and indirectly take advantage of other people's war and stuff go together and they always have our ability to consume wanton Li requires the involuntary subjugation of large swatches of the rest of the world you cannot be an American in less you can have a banana anytime you want it or coffee anytime want it well for that to happen I need people to grow bananas and I need people to grow coffee and they may like to have something else besides banana and coffee but we're just gonna send our military and install our businesses there instead the military and the leaders of the fortune 500 companies are literally and symbolically inextricably connected [Applause] this whole place is full of minerals you know so yeah I want to take you down so that you can see the David Livingstone the man who discovered this force we can say doing business this colonialism if the Americans the British the Germans take away their money Chinese man amass c'mere a Russian man I'm askin the thing is if we do not have capital as big as the one the Chinese are bringing into Africa we will not be able to exploit those minerals and should we created arrogancy towards money to say that exploitation only happens in Africa is wrong most European countries have got slaves even in Europe America there's two people who take people illegally keep them and keep them as slaves and are using them pimping them and all sorts of things so that must go because it isn't the right you know thing to do the on on a human being regardless of what kind of bondage you are in you can break that bondage [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] in the biblical story of Babel mankind wanted to build a tower that would reach to the heavens God punished its bride by creating a confusion of languages the Tower of Babel the ultimate symbol of self-indulgence and excess when humans aspired to be gods of bad things happen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] who'd of Emma had a nose at funerals in 1994 who - Velma started working for the barre banking establishment he soon discovered some strange things and tried to speak with management about them the dark stiff it was above board but the bear management weren't all too pleased about that would it and he was fired and then he became a whistleblower passing on a CV tax data to the Swiss tax authorities he figured they'd take action given dimensions and find somebody a house in victory but offshore to be ninja players like to talk about fall shoring today offshoring I mean not only tax havens but also what I call havens of collusion and concealment this is Ugland house in the Cayman Islands the registered address for nineteen thousand different companies as President Obama said neither it's the biggest building in the world the biggest tax scam well it's not the biggest houses Disney current estimates say about 21 or maybe 31 and billion US dollars are hidden offshore offshore fistic say Joe behind I'm afraid because I was part of this sister and I know how these people end up the some ancient sister named tweak on their path is strewn with corpses is imagine Gare de Lyon he's been a gay ignore might become an opponent of capitalism because I see what terrible things it's done to the world the West has embraced itself at the expense of third-world countries on a massive scale or thief in a manner that I believe is contrary to all humanity Giga near the mention CAI que tu - office the arrogant those who currently hold power will use every means of their disposal to ensure the system remains in place unchanged fish day until us be as high tastes the hubris of the lords of Finance is explicable in a few ways one is that we have the highest regard for people who appear to have the capacity to generate infinite amounts of money I think another reason that we venerate them is that it just appears to be magic money makers make money out of making money and then finally I just think money has become the new God and kind of a secular universe [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm not saying people shouldn't be rich you work hard to get there and it's your right but there are those who don't actually care they just take and take and it causes problems when we have the Kings who are running the world from their palaces they knew the value of gold the more I have of this the more I could have of whatever I want and that's how it grows and they'll make sure that the poorer people gets poorer we saw that back then and we starting to see today again I don't need a Lamborghini I don't need a mansion I just need simple things like hi hi talk talk you can't live a life without money and you can't live life without love because you have to love other people so that they can love you back and you're to it to make to have man so that you can give life they were the way you want it politicians most of them are greedy because they say especially heinous or Africa there's a lot of corruption yeah [Music] poor people who are surrounded by poor people for the most part they're not depressed it's when there's poverty juxtaposed with inordinate riches that's what fosters depression and unwellness there are people who say this is a good thing that self-interested people acquiring as much as they can or that they would like the rising tide lifts all boats then some people are gonna have more that's fine well the counterpoint though is that I don't think it is fine [Music] [Music] I wonder is mankind perhaps not an error of evolution nature is bizarre experiment on a small blue planet are we really mentally incapable of looking ahead [Music] there's been any number of great civilizations the Aztecs the Incas that have from time to time imploded on themselves if you look back historically at societies that have collapsed they often do so right after they appeared to be at their most auspicious moment if we think we can just keep increasing the number of humans on the planet and provide each of them with the lifestyle that we in the West currently enjoy without turning the earth into a humanely uninhabited smoldering heap I think we're deluding ourselves our frenzied desire for infinite amounts of stuff will have the paradoxical consequence of being the first form of life to be responsible for our own extinction it's very ominous I would argue [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] this is a ground zero for climate change for this is where we can get closest to the big ice and this is why it's happening in 1978 as a runner for the elders I gave a talk at the nominations that the big ice is melting so when I finished I got the standing ovation and and then they say that that love is a well-spoken young eskimo for nobody heard the message whoever go be in India in South Africa in Tokyo in Hong Kong in Rio de Janeiro New York Copenhagen Paris Berlin [Music] no matter where go nobody cheats nobody [Music] at the time of my birth this ice was only averaged 5 kilometers thick but now on the average will be about 2 kilometers that means 3 kilometers of ice is melted when it gets warmer and it is getting warmer every single day with one Celsius the water will literally expand more than 2 meters handbook is only 75 centimeters above the sea level London is less than a meter as well I wanted you to see these big eyes to feel her energy [Music] this big ice on the top of the world carries a wisdom because everything what happens on mother earth will end up in the North hemisphere for in the antarctica south hemisphere we drive on tires made of rubber but addabani lost eating rubber so all that tiny pieces of rubber had to go somewhere so the wind would catch it and he goes off to the jet stream and the end here and it becomes too heavy here they fall down a snore but when the Sun comes back rubber loves Sun so it melts the ice only faces only figures is telling you something [Music] mankind is like a teenager they don't care about what's going to happen tomorrow this big ice will melt in your lifetime you before you become all like me most of this one will be gone catastrophe is on its way catastrophe you and I we cannot even imagine water will always win [Applause] [Music] Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans in punishment Zeus created the seductive Pandora and gave her a box as a gift even though she had been warned not to bend or opened the box and all the evils of the world escaped only hope was left inside the [Music] human race we have a tremendously decent track record so far of extra cating ourselves from profound difficulties once we understand what produces them we have to evaluate all values is this important to me because I'm a cultural meat puppet that's just having my strengths pulled by the society at large or have I really systematically questioned what I want and why I do what I do [Music] so you either give up and despair and do nothing or you do something and you do it with passion and conviction [Music] [Music] the cult of les was a project that I started for myself to try to get rid of everything that I owned because I found that the more things I owned the less happy I was [Music] as I was traveling I noticed that I didn't really miss all of the things I had owned when I got back I couldn't really tell you you know what those things were so rather than continuing to keep them I decided to get rid of those things the cult of les was like a website that I put together and I listed everything that I owned at the time and I put a description next to it and a price tag and then over the course of about a year I sold all that stuff with the goal of trying to get everything down into two boxes and two suitcases [Music] and kind of my rule was if I couldn't remember kind of the last time that I used something I would get rid of it I find myself not worrying so much about what I'm going to buy next but more like what I'm going to do next or where I'm going to go next [Music] the idea of minimalism manifests itself in our work in a lot of ways but mostly I guess what we're known for is really how our product looks [Music] sustainable growth is good because that implies that the thing that you're building into the world is replacing something that is obsolete and it does it better and more efficiently whereas unsustainable growth in a lot of ways is something that is often very toxic to the market or to a lifestyle to me wealth isn't just measured by what you own or how much money is in your bank account it can also be having experienced a lot in your life I think it's very important for even having some very solid relationships with your friends like there's nothing better than a good friendship and it makes a lot more sense to invest in that than it would be to invest a new couch for your living room or anything like that it's very difficult to describe when something just feels right but that felt very right for myself [Music] [Music] if somebody could take one clever use in every country in this world a person who's got vision a person who is honest if every president of every government could say for one day get someone out of the society to be a president for their country just forward that one day it could make a big difference [Applause] the manifesto of the world in order for us the three billion youth of the planet the climate crisis is a matter of survival you world leaders have known about the climate catastrophe for 25 years we cannot simply sit back and watch let us work together the climate clock is ticking the main problem of this planet is the mindset people know the consequences of what can happen what they do people know what is right in people who know what is wrong and still they don't do the right thing I want to ask why so it makes me both angry and sad like I'm a you know I'm a human being too like why can't you listen to my decisions about my life like who appointed you ruler the world and allowed you to decide to take away my future so we're now here because we're frustrated and we want to make sure this gets done but just never straight what [Music] in Malawi more than 70% died young people so kind of like okay if they if young people we don't act now then when is it going to be the right time in Hong Kong there is there are a lot of youth teenagers they start to think to change their society by their own Mexico for example has large petroleum reserves because the politicians are only interested in the money they're exploiting the ocean and don't care that it's being polluted by oil and that species are dying out they don't care as long as they make a profit but the Mexican people aren't profiting from it at all oh no no legaia nada they'll keep getting and getting and that's what greed is born people are confused and they don't understand so if they were come somewhere else and they were to be taught something different they could probably step out of that and then look back at how their life wasn't be like oh my god if like my life was not actually that good even though I have all this stuff [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the choices we all make I speak for those that stand by and say this is my continent it's not too late the time has come we'll go fight and make a difference [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] if mankind is truly the crown of creation and also comprehends his own impermanence where does this endless desire come from what about the saying you can't take it with you [Music] everything in my life had been going pretty normally my work as a neurosurgeon and all that and then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with severe back pain and soon thereafter had grand mal epileptic seizures and was driven into coma and then I was taken to the hospital and at that point they determined that I had a severe and very rare form of a gram-negative bacterium meningitis that destroys the neocortex the part that is responsible for all the detailed awareness in our consciousness when I first got in the hospital I had a 10% chance of survival by the end of the week in Qom I was down to a 2% chance of survival no chance of recovery it's a perfect model for human death and yet it was more like the blinders coming off so when I came back to this world on day seven all of my memories of Evan Alexander's life before coma were completely gone all language any concepts of humans earth this universe any knowing of the beings around me you know my mother my sisters my sons I had no clue who these beings were before my car I was very much a modern conventional scientist what's called reductive materialist the journeying soul who comes back from the near-death experience knows there is nothing to fear about death it is actually an awakening to a far grander existence that is who we truly are and that changes the way one can see oneself and how one self then interacts with other beings I would say that any perception of of greed and selfishness and accumulation of material goods in this material realm is really a symptom of fear a fear that we in and of ourselves are not worthy and so we try and accumulate physical goods and kind of build up our little pile as if that will draw people to us or draw that love that we deeply want it's a bottomless pit we've separated ourselves from the phenomenon of death [Music] anytime death is on our mind there's a process that kicks in to get it out of consciousness my wife is a therapist in the local hospice and she says look you have to sit with deaf it takes courage to say this entity that is me and was here yesterday and is here today may not be here tomorrow and will not be here in some vaguely unspecified future that that takes takes some guts [Music] we're just starting to study what happens to older people as they become more aware of death some people become wiser become more compassionate and now the trick is how do we metaphorically speaking pop that in a bottle and get young adults to start drinking it I'm very much afraid of my own death [Music] I'd having said that though I would like to think that I'm making slow but steady progress to coming to terms with the fact that I will someday die it is something that I don't look forward to at the moment let me leave a bit and make more money and let it visit me at some point with my little cousins and grandchildren are you know growing up so I need time before that [Music] it can happen anytime one minute you hear the next minute you've gone [Music] do you have to go to the school of anxiety in order to ever become a mature human being if we could accept with grace and humility the fact that were finite creatures we need to do that we need to let go humans appear to be the only creatures from existence without purpose is meaningless I believe there are two exceptional days in every life the day we are born and the day on which we understand our purpose what is important what is essential what do you live for I think happiness is vastly overrated being happy is not unimportant but happiness in and of itself does not ensure that life is meaningful it does not stop us from tranquilizing ourselves with the trivial [Music] if you're just out to be happy there's a lot of ways to do that but it doesn't render you any more mature and it certainly doesn't render you in a position to sincerely confront the fact that you're an ephemeral entity destined to die I would argue that there's got to be more than two life than the singular pursuit of happiness you need some stuff you know I like shoes and my bicycle in my house but I'm still with Mary Poppins in the long run enough is as good as a feast to me oftentimes happiness is found in the things that you didn't expect to find positive so just to give you an example recently one evening I was out with my kids we've taken a walk to the park and we were walking home and we've had lots of what we call fireflies lightning bugs little bugs that light up in the evening and so we spent 45 happy minutes catching fireflies we played with them for a while before we let them go it's those quiet moments but everything seems to be working well together you're enjoying the people you're with you're enjoying the activity you're doing and oftentimes it's found in those situations that you can't buy yummy - Gucci oh gosh Buddhism flourishes best wherever there is a society of people who have cost materialism and consumerism found it to not be the answer of happiness and peace and perhaps that will be the first gate that opens them up to finding answers not on the external but finding much more answers within one's own self you're always on the driver's seat and therefore you can choose to drive straight or you can choose to drive wrong and so your own awareness your own potential of being mindful is much more powerful I think happiness is found where there is inner contentment simplicity and contentment [Music] your money will not impress anybody how many bags you carry from a shopping center will not impress what kind of car you drive is not going to impress or will make the difference is what you bring from new in your heart into the world and I wanted to give you an experience which directly relates to the celebration of life [Music] [Music] I don't know if you can feel the energy this is a Midnight Sun and this is a full moon completely opposite of one another Oh No Oh Oh [Music] Oh [Music] Oh Marnie neo [Music] life is a ceremony in itself so you had to recreate your ceremony to celebrate your life uh-huh that's the key for the chains there's no other key are there solutions I hope so greed is a complicated ally of motivational forces that has driven creativity innovation and discovery on the other hand with each uniquely human innovation there's been an unanticipated downside it is a blessing and a curse we're probably the first species to run into the problem and evolution doesn't create solutions to problems that don't exist evolution is blind evolution doesn't plan for the future evolution doesn't worry about moral consequences we have moral principles and we all know them but we don't live by them anymore that is our problem we need to listen that's not always easy to understand that every action of my body my speech and my thought patterns interconnect and impact the lives of the others if that genuine sense of awareness could be developed human life could be and is the most powerful and the most beautiful gift for everyone I like how Albert Camus put it in one of his notebooks come to terms with death thereafter anything is possible [Music] this is what my mother would do she says oh oh Oh [Music] some imaginative but thou is it formal Oh Elizabeth sure would be charged with adoption novel [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 6,022,256

Rating: 4.63098 out of 5

Keywords: greed, money, happiness, well-being, beauty, psychology, consumerism, capitalism, climate change, materialism, USA, Sheldon Solomon, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Philip Chiyangwa, Pops Mohamed, Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, society

Id: CVuVlk2E_e4

Length: 91min 11sec (5471 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017