[Music] I had a strange dream I was walking through a golden temple beneath a 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 [Music] something such strange [Music] creatures 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 Brin would still make me money it's the thing
in me I grew up in a way that I would still make money even if I was left in the desert there is somebody 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 diens 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 [Music] perfectly today I go so far as to say it's a symptom of an illness
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 [Music] [Music] Museum I kept asking myself why are we like this we're caring and compassionate but we're also entric and Reckless we give and we hoard we create and Destroy what is our problem what drives us I went in search of answers [Applause] Humanity's at the crossroads I think a historical moment the physical environment is undermined to the point where we need to attend to it war
is something that we ought to think about well why does that happen people are evasively unhappy on top of all of that we keep building Walmarts 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 you know you might ask to talk about Darwin well if you're asked to talk about Darwin it has to be about Evolution evolution is an idea that Darwin is trying to understand and what's his strikingly original proposal natural selection [Music]
so humans are on the one hand very similar to all other forms of life and 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 [Music] exist and the point here is that being alive and knowing it is grounds for Great [Music] Joy 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 uh that you won't be here if that's all we thought about uh I'm
going to 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 afterlives and reincarnations of all the world's great religions or symbolically through the belief that some vestage 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 [Music] emptiness 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 13th just so that you have a sense of you live long enough to wear all 13 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 these neurosis and The prominent one of them becomes the [Music] greed death is a very real physical phenomenon and it doesn't matter how good your symbols are your religion your politics your money they're 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 Li of beans or armadillos [Music] an animal takes only what it needs but the human animal is different more than 7 billion of us populate the planet and each of us desires something desires more is this perhaps The Secret of success [Music] we've now developed instruments to measure greed as a personality trait and also to elicit a state of greed in [Music] people this is the balloon
task we use it to measure our test subjects willingness to take risk the subject has to try to keep inflating a balloon the larger the balloon the more it's worth in each round the subjects play for real money every time they inflate the balloon they're risking that it might burst and then their money would be gone 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 [Music] and we see that people who tend
towards greed also demonstrate an altered brain response 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 punishment signals [Music] what is interesting is that these people also tend to want to maintain that state the classic experiments of s and Miller on the brain's dopamine system are very interesting in this respect 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 and this is presumably one of the biological mechanisms that helps explain excessive [Music] greed come here come on Ren there you go where' Lily go oh you can have two okay where' Lily go you already have two come [Music] here most primates are highly social but these guys are atypical and 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 um 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 how are you so the experiment itself is very simple it take two monkeys or two Apes um sit
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 a food reward for having completed it good job 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 Nala there you [Music] go see [Music] 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 want it Dr great 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 though my perspective is that greed 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 [Music] 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 [Music] [Music] egos being successful in business is an art and when you have it you can be able to take things to a level that people will be surprised how much is the square meter price let's not talk about the the international price let's talk about our price is 700 Square met per floor multiply by eight floors multiply it by our local price 1,000 what it's 1,000 it's 1,000 yeah it will cost you 56 5.6 million oh 5.6 million yeah I I rather deal with those types of V
because that's exactly what it's going to be makes sense I will tell you my philosophy is very simple there's a thin line separating a businessman and a criminal why because anything I do somebody's bound to say I've cheated him so all of us as businessmen throughout the world whether it's Bill Gates it's Richard Branson we are all viewed is the criminals but it's because we think Beyond other people think president m is my brother from a European perspective I would be a nephew from our African I'll be a brother we cannot have a world full
of critics we want there shrink there's fewer critics more doers that way the world economy will be nice to live in I welcome to my house I I want to show you around as well as the achievements I've had for for so many years and uh yeah you know at a school which is near my uh 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 uh uh they gave me this award we this award from Bea
its main focus is uh to uh recognize those who have done a lot of work in human rights affirmative action and empowerment issues uh you know uh internationally that's me in here is my main Lounge wherein if you come in uh and friends and family we are we we do meet and uh toss around and you know have conversations of sorts political economy and family okay we 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 the gab dining room if I refurbishing this house this is the only room I don't refurbish because it gives me that uh sentimental relationship with the president and uh yeah the men that money can buy and this is it I know where I came from I came from being a vegetable vendor my bed was the floor the granolithic 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 to live well [Music] it should always be that easy go I like that one things like the RAC track 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's status relative to one's uh 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 hot dogs I can eat in 10 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 they're realistically attainable by the average [Music] 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 Warren Buffett or Bill Gates 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 [Music] 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 arms and when I say your IMS 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 IMS it's [Music] egos there's a lot of people in South Africa both black and
white who carry the ego badge on them and they carry it high as a flag you see and and those are the people who we would see as the the future bureaucrats of the country I was Bor if you are driving into a a poor neighborhood where you know people are starving to death and you driving down with your mercedesbenz or your rollsroyce 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] [Music] if
I believe I have to assert my ego the only way I can do that is through greed I'm forced to constantly incorporate 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 somebody due to money or fame or my title or something like that our entire modern world is based on this gear for greed destroys people why because it us and because greed is something like a drug the more I have the 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 [Music] since time immemorial there have been stories of people who could never get enough people like King Midas he asked dionysis to Grant him a wish that 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 ET it what I asked myself gives money such a powerful [Laughter] [Music] Allure I chose banking as my career I'm a trained accountant and I worked with the Julius bear and Co AR Bank first in Zur and then in the Cayman Islands which is a tax Haven I was promoted to compliance officer meaning I was the legal conscience of the [Music] company a certain amount of greed is instilled into you that was true for me too I have to admit you start
to think only in monetary units the dollar signs appear before your eyes and in your heart then they're there and they're the only thing that matters a lot of profit and making sure you don't get caught that's the way I operated to of in my function as compliance officer I determined that we had criminal compliance were names like Bin Laden there was a Mexican drug boss 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 I ended up feeling morally conflicted
then took the matter up with management we were threatened the entire family ended up leaving the Cayman Islands very suddenly there've been Swiss bankers in the C Islands who have been killed 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 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 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 work hours the sight of a black car would upset me I was completely spooked I even considered suicide they wanted to drive me crazy the state prosecutors had all the information but they did nothing with it it's a political problem 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 no they go after
the man who made the truth public I spent 217 days in prison the first 30 days were in 20 5 the rest in 2011 both times I was in solitary confinement spending 23 hours a day alone in my cell there were prisoners who flipped out started banging against the doors screaming Switzerland and basically every country they protect their golden calves the golden Cal in Switzerland is banking secrecy that's why no one will ever investigate the Julius bear Bank even though the state prosecutors know that Julius bear had helped deceive the US tax authorities and so
forth for political reasons the state prosecutors will never investigate any of that our question was how could we create test conditions that would approximate the behavior of a stock broker for example [Music] we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activity in our test subjects we can look deep into the brain including into the structures responsible for the reward [Music] 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 display a more muted response in regions responsible for punishment and loss of money this mechanism enables a kind of this inhibition based on the assumption that ordinary and average people will be risk averse it makes sense for the finance industry which is optimized for outcome to hire people who are more inclined toward risk they achieve that with bonuses and with targeted hiring practices I believe it's just a matter of time before the next Finance crisis will hit [Music]
yeah what's your name j okay J what how you what's your name Craig okay thank you very much job let's go [Applause] [Music] when I started hearing about waren Buffett and Bill Gates wealth it was around about the 30 40 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 will spend $10,000 a day how many of us live for $200 33 years so if you've got a billion that means you can even spend 30,000 a day because
you're not going to 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's no taxes that enables government to function so therefore people who make money enable things to happen and I'm one of those [Music] people 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 going to take this death anxiety and we got to do something with it and one thing that we can do is BU a l of [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 [Music] subliminally 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 [Music] Race we basically in a sense no different than am meas we are attracted to anything that Fosters life and pleasure and we're repulsed and afraid of anything that threatens that State of Affairs she shoes and there's shoes everywhere shoes sometimes you don't want to let go of something you keep it for
instance this shoe I've never woron it but I think it's been sitting here for like 3 years still brand new and it's the same thing with this one still brand new this one still brand new this is a designer shoe I don't want to be limited because uh in in the Bible Genesis says You must have dominion over everything that gives me that strength nobody in 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 every verse each verse talks about money that is something that people need to realize and um I'm happy that there's something like this you do you uh been doing work oh that's good work with Carpenter very nice nice to see you I think the key for the materials Society is that it'll 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 [Music] from 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 they're habitual patterns and you keep thinking they're calling me samsara is calling me I need to go there have a car have a house have a partner be busy be neurotic you know that's what I would say because you don't call it that way you call it no being someone being
capable finding your [Music] identity where there is 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 get a cup of 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 going to make you feel good there is this drive as we say in the US keep up with the Joneses in our wealthy set on Park Avenue everybody's 16th birthday party last year everybody handed out iPods well this year we're going to hand out iPads well this year we're going to do this and so there's also this um sort of Ratchet [Music] effect there's nothing wrong with being a consumer I mean to stay alive we have to consume things but then we literally
surrounded ourself with stuff to the point where we become imprisoned in a gilded cage we became consumed with consumption we're going to keep buying stuff until the last drop of petroleum has been burned it's very ominous I would argue you [Music]
