To go into this question of bringing about a total revolution,

one must have an extraordinary sense of awareness.

The crisis especially now, is a crisis in consciousness.

A crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms.

It seems to me, though man has cultivated the external world

and has more or less mastered it

Inwardly, he is still as he was.

We want happiness.

We do not want suffering.

Now we are actually creating more unnecessary suffering.

That "one-million dollars" will not bring inner peace.

This money brings more frustration, more suspicion, more anxiety

but people do not understand.

I see all this potential, and I see it squandered.

God damnit an entire generation pumping gas, and waiting tables.

...slaves with white collars.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes

working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need.

We're the middle-children of history, man.

No purpose or place.

We have no great war... no great depression...

Our "great war" is the spiritual war.

Our "great depression", is our lives.

We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars...

...but we won't

and we're slowly learning that fact

and we're very, very pissed off.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

When you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak-show

and when you're born in America you're given a front row seat.

Everybody's got a cellphone that'll make pancakes and rub their balls

so nobody want's to rock the boat. Nobody wants to change.

We're in a nice downward glide.

I call it "circling the drain".

I think we squandered great gifts. I think humans were given great, great gifts.

We polluted it with this STUFF...

...things, material goods, games, gizmos, toys, gadgets...

...having possessions

"He's got a bigger truck! Did you see his truck? It's bigger than mine! I'm gettin' a new truck!"

Part 1 - The Freakshow

"Here's a big truck! Oooh, I'm gettin that one! That's what, you got a video in there? DVD too?"

Hi Eric, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thanks for sliding on

We are here to talk to Eric about black-friday, it has come early this year.

- That's right. With the economy the way it is retailers are doing everything they can

to pry dollars out of reluctant customers hands.

So, you know this is a very important season to retailers it could be 25 to 40 percent of their years total sales.

So if they can expand the shopping season by a little bit, by advancing it...

Anything in this economy helps.

- Well I mean, at this point though last year people were pinching pennies just as much as this year

so why are we seeing this now?

- Well we're seeing it now because it's a way to expand the shopping season

and give retailers that many more chances to...

...you know, sink their hooks into you.

This is the world I grew up in.

Like many others I born with this bright, flashing, shiney promise shoved right in my face

that true happiness was just a credit card swipe away.

When I was a kid the world told me that the coolest kids wore the coolest sneakers.

When I got a little older it convinced me that my success was defined

by a college degree, and a job with benefits.

Today it reminds me endlessly that I should have another drink and buy a new car.

But I gotta tell you, the only real message I've heard through the noise

is that this world knows, better than I do

what's best for me.

>> It seems to me that most Americans have internalized the propaganda

that consumerism pummles and plies them with daily.

So, we internalize this system, we can't envisage anything different.

A number of people were speaking about, "Well why do people break windows and steal consumer goods?"

The poor have been pummeled with this propaganda.

What do you expect them to do, go out and loot a good job and good education?

>> Captain Capitalism! Wow!

What are you doing here?

>> I think the better questions son is, just what do you think YOU'RE doing here?

>> Putting money in my piggybank!

>> Crippling our nation by stagnating the economy and throwing us into another recession is more like it!

>> Hey girl! Can you say "bling-bling"?

>> Why do we consume to such a crazy level?

A level that the research shows over and over

is undermining our health, our societal well-being, and the environment.

We have to step back from before even starting this

to recognize that most of what we do, most of what we see as "normal"

is actually shaped by our cultural norms.

And unfortunately, where we are today is that culture has made Consumerism

feel "normal", or "natural".

So that watching 5 hours of television a day as a child

or drinking huge caffeinated beverages at 5 years old

as this picture here suggests

is ok... We don't even question it anymore.

You know, and a strong illustration of that for me is this series of pictures.

Now if you can't see, up at the top-right there's a little girl

surrounded by all of her pink toys.

This is a little Korean girl.

The artist actually was more interested in the genderfication process of children

Just look from how young we are brought into the consumer culture

where we define our well-being, our happiness, our leisure

through the stuff we have. Through the stuff that surrounds us.

And here's a picture of an American little girl

of course, with the princess outfit

which I've discovered from my own four nieces that... well, it's big business.

Disney makes multiple billions of dollars a year

selling their Disney princess fantasies to little girls.

So around the industrial world and increasingly in developing countries

consumerism, is becoming the default cultural pattern.

>> In the 1950s... late 50s, early 60s...

a bunch of advertising guys got together

in Madison avenue, and decided that what they were trying to do

was sell products to younger people

They thought "we should try and sell products to younger people because then they'll buy things their whole life."

So they'll try and sell them soft drinks, or bread, or cigars

or whatever the hell they were selling them, and they thought...

"We'll try and appeal to young people."

because the youth was the place where you were going to be able to sell things

and what happened was that, in a strange kind of quirk of fate

youth began to be celebrated by society

in a way that it had never been at any time in human history

because what used to be celebrated was experience and cleverness

but what happened was that what became valuable was youth

the quality of youth which made you a consumer

so what happened is that they started concentrating on all of these people

society started to turn on its head

because with the deification of youth...

Youth has a byproduct. The byproduct of youth is inexperience.

By the nature of having youth, you don't have any experience, you're too young to have it.

It became fashionable and desirable to be young and to be stupid!

And it started to be a fashion, and that grew, and that grew

and that grew, and that grew...

and now, that's what all the kids want to be.

and this terrible movement... nobody meant it!

>> Everytime that I open my mouth critically, with regards to this country

everytime I feel like I want to criticize this country

There's this little nagging voice in the back of my head that says...

"How dare you Paul. "

"Do you know how fat and lazy you are? Do you know how priviledged you are?"

"How dare you criticize this country."

"How dare you sit there, in your life of abject luxury and criticize this great country!"

"How dare you."

But you know what, ladies and gentlemen?

I cannot carry the torch anymore for this country.

America is not the "land of the free", nor is it the "home of the brave"...

It is neither of those things.

America is a country of aggressively ignorant fucking cowards.

People that are just willing to hand over their civil liberties

lock, stock and barrel

without even taking the time to inform themselves.

They're so stupid and so diluted

and so caught in the quagmire that is there empty info-tainment filled lives

that they just line up for somebody to tell them how they should feel.

The real problem is us. We're the problem

because we're too distracted by bullshit that's on the fucking T.V.

to stand up for what's in our best interests.

What's the answer to that? How do you stop that?

>> Individually, they earn about $12 a week in allowance.

But collectively, 8 to 12 year old kids in the U.S, 20 million strong

wield 43 billion dollars of their parents money in annual spending power

and they've got the stars to prove it.

>> What makes her a superstar on the launch-pad?

>> When she walked in and said, "Hi I'm Victoria Justice and I'm 12 years old."

I was like, "Alright, this kid has real charisma."

I'm thinking, "This is a kid I want to probably develop a T.V. show for. "

>> Do you want to be a movie star? Or, a singing star?

>> I wanna do both

>> You want it all.

>> I wanna do both. I want it all! Why not?

>> This season premiere got almost 9 million viewers

making it the highest rated season premiere in MTV's history.

Season 4 follows the cast as they head to their homeland, Italy

in what can only be described as the beginnings of a global takeover.

>> Can we get the Lindsey Lohan D.U.I. arrest out of the teleprompter

and put my script in it. Is that possible?

>> As to the charge of first degree murder...

Verdict as to count one, we the jury...

>> Press association is reporting that singer Amy Winehouse

has been found dead in her London apartment.

>> ...and I'm, I'm done with the Paris Hilton story.

>> In this country, being stupid is no longer considered to be a detriment.

Being stupid is considered to be a virtue in this country.

We reward the stupid in this country.

That's exactly the opposite thing that we should do.

There should be social pressure on people that are willfully ignorant

to not be stupid, and instead we reward people...

We reward stupidity in this country!

We reward people with multi-million dollar T.V. contracts

so that all the other stupid people can sit around and watch how stupid these people are.

It breaks my heart to see a place like this that has so much potential

absolutely fucking wasted.

>> But there's a reason. There's a reason.

There's a reason for this. There's a reason education sucks

and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed.

Because the owners of this country don't want that.

I'm talking about the real owners now.

The real owners. The big wealthy business interests

that control things and make all the important decisions.

They own YOU.

They own everything.

They own and control the corporations, they've long since bought and paid for the senate

the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they've got the judges in their back pocket

and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear

They got you by the balls!

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying.

Lobbying, to get what they want.

Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want.

They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking.

They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking.

They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.

That's against their interests.

That's right.

They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out

how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

They don't want that. You know what they want?

They want obedient workers.

Obedient workers.

People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork,

and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs

with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime