 So I've got a few questions to ask and actually before I, before we begin I should just say or ask for the tape what your name is and could you tell me what your job is? All right my name is Sam Vaknin I'm currently professor of psychology in several universities several countries and author of books in a variety of fields the one relevant to you would probably be Malignan self-love narcissism revisited which is a book which deals with pathological narcissism and its manifestations from the individual level to the collective level. Great thank you. So as you've pointed out you've written extensively on narcissism and you've got a YouTube channel that I've been watching and you've also appeared on VICE as well so from what you've seen and what you've, how is a narcissist created? How is a narcissist created? Yeah. Well narcissism is thought to be a reaction to an abusive environment traumatizing environment and definition of abuse in this sense is wider than than typically deceived it's not limited to sexual verbal or physical abuse or psychological abuse putting the child on a pedestal pampering and spoiling the child and dowing the child with a sense of unlimited entitlement to incommensurate with ease of her achievements and so on so forth. I also are also considered forms of abuse because the child is instrumentalized, objectified and used as a tool to gratify the parent in a variety of ways. The child's boundaries are not recognized they are breached the child is not allowed to separate it and individuate every every penetration so to speak of the child's emerging periphery, emerging sense of separateness and and individuation is considered abusive and so abuse is many forms and children exposed to abuse a tiny minority admittedly opt for a solution of becoming abusers themselves in the obviously mistaken believe that should they become abusers they will no longer be amenable to abuse and the pain it inflicts on them and so what they do they they create they concoct a kind of confabulation known as the false self. A false self is everything the child is not the child is helpless the false self is omnipotent the child is unable to predict the next moves of the capricious adults around him the false self is omniscient knows everything godlike that the child is is castigated as a bed unworthy object in case he fails or fails to to realize the expectations of the parent and the false self is of course perfect and brilliant etc etc and the false self also serves a function of as a decoy the false self is is a firewall it stands between the child and the and the painful or hurtful environment so it absorbs all the external shocks of abuse and in this sense and only in this sense narcissism can be construed as a form of dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder but the narcissist actually has two personalities one is a hidden childlike suffering true self and one is a protective externalized and all powerful godlike creation which is the false self that's in a naturalist narcissism my work in my work currently i'm trying to recast narcissism not as a personality disorder but as a post traumatic condition right and post traumatic condition with elements of addiction elements of attachment disorder and elements of depression as a depressive disorder and that would be quite quite the revolution should this view be accepted because either too over well over well over a century narcissism has been considered a character defect something to do with the personality in totality um and i think actually the personality of the narcissist is quite okay however it it has it suffers from a post traumatic syndrome it's a form of cptsd complex post traumatic stress disorder again that's in a natural and so it has quite a strong element is that it's about how the child or the person views themselves am i right understanding sorry go ahead so it's how how they view themselves what narcissism is um is a form of reinvention it's an early childhood reinvention the child reinvents himself as god and in effect narcissism is a form of private religion where there is a godlike entity which is the false self and the child worships the false self and also the child makes human sacrifice to the false self in other people no in sacred well later on true but initially in sacrificing himself the child child tells the false self listen let's make a deal i will and i'll myself i'll negate myself i'll vitiate myself essentially i will i will sacrifice myself i'll kill myself um on condition that you protect me insulate me from from fear and pain and and be with me forever as my as my private guardian guardian angel or guardian divinity and later on of course and our sister brings other people as human sacrifices to this mole mole to this you know bal like um divinity to use the word choice that i think you may if i remember correctly use the word choice indeed there's a choice involved because the child the child is faced with a variety of solutions the child can for example become codependent the child can become uh narcissists the child can become a psychopath and so on so or a borderline which is also a very common solution actually more common than narcissism so children make this choice unawares it's mostly an unconscious choice but yes they do make a choice they choose either to be perpetual victims in a variety of ways or to become the abuser themselves so they kind of internalize the abuser they we call this process introduction they internalize the abuser and merge with the abuser and become the abuser it's subsuming the abuser and becoming one becoming abuser oneself and that's narcissism it can be um is it always the parents that are the cause or can it be others in the overwhelming majority of cases it would be the parents because the formation of narcissism is very very early on it starts more or less at the age of four and possibly earlier um so it would be in a majority of cases the parents but of course if the parents are absent to a very large degree it could be other caregivers like grandparents it could even be role models like a very decisive figure like a teacher it could even be in in some cases a peer group an abusive peer group and we do have late onset narcissism also called situational narcissism where people are exposed to a very stressful uh lifestyle or for example they become rock stars or famous politicians or suddenly they become very rich and this this external shock this stressful external shock renders them so narcissistic that they technically qualify for for a diagnosis diagnosis so narcissism can be late onset however the the bulk of of pathological narcissists narcissism cases we see in practice clinical practice are people who were formed or malformed by their by their parents and especially the mother i'm interested in the trend that seems to be happening more and more these days in that kids they they just sit in front of the tv and watch tv all day or they watch stuff on their on their ipad and they're getting a lot of their the messages about life and how they need to view themselves they're getting that from the advertisements and the tv channels and i'm wondering if that has some sort of role as well to play i was wondering what you thought about that before i answer your question i i i should think that you might find my interview with richard granham richard granham of interest um i've just i've just granted him an interview of a pretty lengthy one usually the case with me i just granted him a lengthy interview on the toxicity of social media and if you go and it went viral by the way so if you go to his channel which is spartan life coach channel or richard granham i mean and you you can find this um the true it's called the true bombastically it's called the true toxicity of social media or something like that and i deal with i i relate to this question there but again in a nutshell um first of all it's it it's recommended it would be who of you to make a distinction between pathological narcissism which is a clinical entity and narcissistic behaviors and traits which are universal we all have healthy narcissism and we all display traits and behaviors which could be characterized as narcissistic from time to time and um yes narcissistic behaviors and traits could be condoned by society and rewarded by by the culture and in cultures and societies and civilizations which are highly narcissistic in the sense that they elevate people with narcissistic traits and behaviors reward narcissistic traits and behaviors etc etc we would find we would we would tend to find the preponderance or an increase in narcissistic in narcissistic elements um among youth and not only among the youth so but this is very little to do with pathological narcissism that's a narcissism is a well-defined clinical entity um okay i didn't know about that that difference so is that is that uh a part of um why narcissists narcissism or narcissistic traits seem to be more prevalent in wealthy societies is what i would dispute i would dispute this assertion they may be more visible more visible in wealthy societies because wealthy societies um have means of communication which are far more effective and far more or pervasive far more you know ubiquitous so it's very hard it's very hard to observe narcissism in a remote obscure village in in Kenya or in Sierra Leone than it is in for example Manhattan um and of course the eyes the eyes and ears of the global of the global media are on Manhattan and London much more they are on remote Torah Bora mountains in Afghanistan but i i would think that narcissism is a is a global phenomenon and does not discriminate between um cultures and societies however the way narcissism manifests um would be different would be culturally conditioned or culture bound in Japan for example which is a collectivist society narcissism would be expressed collectively be expressed expressed via belonging to a collective so it is the collective that would be narcissistic on behalf of its members um in the united states where individualism runs rampant and possibly could be described as malignant individualism narcissism would be an individualist individual thing and would be expressed via the agency of individuals but i think narcissism is is um absolutely as you be as the incidence and prevalence of narcissism in my view would be the same in Africa where i used to work for where i've worked for four years will be the same in Africa as it would be in new york where i've lived for two years or in london where i've lived for for another two years etc i've had exposure to well over 15 countries and i was born in the middle east i've worked in Africa i lived in the west i've lived in europe i've lived in north north america etc and and i've had no reason i had no reason to conclude that narcissism is is less prevalent for example in Sierra Leone where you know i've worked for one year then in new york where i've lived for two years only it manifests differently also society um controls narcissistic behaviors and traits differently in different parts of the world for example it is condoned in let us say california condoned encouraged eggdome in california uh and in new york but it is frowned upon in societies such as macedonia where i am right now yeah so it really crucially depends on where you are but narcissism is a force of nature i think narcissism is on the rise simply because our numbers are on the rise there are 7.6 billion people well i was born there were only three it's far more difficult to stand out it's far more difficult to feel unique and special it's far more difficult to individuate to feel like an individual in uh in um when you are immersed in an environment with seven point six other billion people billion other people and that you're connected to by social media and all of that right when you're exposed to to thousands of other people daily if you want to be noticed if you want to be just seen if you want to be acknowledged as a separate individual with your own uniqueness you have to stand out you have to protest you have to demonstrate you have to become much more demonstrative you have to and so your behavior escalates and you become more and more vociferous more and more um unusual more more so and i think that's what we're seeing i think we're seeing an arms race where people try to stand out and and everyone tries to out do everyone else and one upmanship and and aggression are rewarded and extreme behavior uh becomes the norm simply in order as i said to be noticed and seen the very basic function that was that used to be fulfilled in communities i mean only 100 years ago um typically you would have been born in a village and you would have been seen acknowledged noticed gossip gossiped on censored praised etc etc by an average of 2000 people the vast majority of people 100 or 150 years ago came across 2000 other people the overwhelming majority of people never traveled further than 20 miles yeah and spent their entire lives in the same place that we're born carrying on the trades of their fathers and forefathers and would have interacted with six or seven clans would have interbred etc etc the environment was very limited and so if you lived in a village or in a community or in a neighborhood you were safe in the sense that you felt special you felt unique is everyone you everything about you and everyone to everyone took care of you and really cared about you even if it even if it were ironically in a malevolent way still you would be noticed you would be cared for and today you believe and you you conduct an alienated existence among millions of other people your neighbors don't know who you are you know they don't care who you are you can die in your own apartment you would not be noticed until the stench you know drives everyone away and your only or you know predominantly only mode of interaction would be with so-called friends impersonal disembodied digital traces and avatars it's an abnormal existence and so just to feel alive you need to exaggerate this existence you need to characterize your life you need to become a symbol or an avatar as everyone else is and you need to you need to radicalize and you need to escalate your messages your signaling just to be noticed about the about the din of everyone else doing the same it's a terrifying thing not to be noticed and not to be seen because we feel alive only when we're exposed to the gaze of others imagine if you walk the street and everyone looks through you as though you were transparent by the end of the day you will feel transparent you will feel that you don't exist you begin to doubt your own existence and so we create halls of mirrors and these halls of mirrors hold social media these halls of mirrors are are there just to convince us that we are alive because we are no longer convinced that we are alive and this leads to your question about the issue you've raised of consumerism so I think the main role of consumerism is to convince us that we are alive via possessions but we'll come to it I assume yes so I I suppose does advertising have a role to play with that because they're they're trying to sell you almost like an identity that you can sort of latch on to and yeah I don't know is that something you've given some thought about well advertising is a very very compounded is advertising has very little to do with the content of the advertisement most people don't remember the content of the advertisement they do remember however the advertiser so they would not they would not necessarily remember what it was that apple had said about the iphone x but they will remember that it was apple that put out the ad so the ad carries a message which essentially says I'm apple I'm financially robust and the proof is that I have money to spend on advertising and I care about my products and I care about you my customer enough to expose you to my products so it's a message of care indeed it's a message of being seen when you're exposed to an ad the advertiser is is telling you in effect I I see you I notice you you matter to me you're important to me and I've gone to the length of investing millions of dollars in creating this special movie for you it's a 30 second spot admittedly but it's still tailored to you it's so yes it enhances enhances the experience of uniqueness of being seen and being noticed being acknowledged and also it's usually contains a series of subliminal or subliminal subliminal is wrong message wrong word but series of hidden messages about about your status relative positioning ability to purchase the product because the the ads actually ad actually tells you we trust that you have the money to buy our product so we kind of believe in you and in your ability to earn and so the ad has this conspiratorial tone it's like it's you and me baby I know that you are rich enough to buy me I know I care enough about you I see you I believe that you deserve to own the iPhone I mean like I believe in your status or ability to attain this status and all you have to do is consume so consumption is a message is I would agree with you that consumption is or consumerism is a narcissistic message in the sense that it singles out every individual and there was a guy there was a philosopher called Althusser I don't know if you ever heard of him what was the name sorry Althusser how is Louis Louis Louis Althusser and Althusser called this process interpolation Althusser said that advertisers exert a digital finger out of the screen and this finger like the finger of God in assistant chapel touches you and consecrates you and interpolates you in other words in other words impels you to act and he has a whole theory of advertising which you put out in the 60s and 70s brilliant work by the way you find my analysis of his work on my website cool it is it is directly with advertising and consumption and so does our consumer society have a part to play then do you believe in encouraging narcissism well as I've just said I think consumption and the attended met attendant signaling just known as advertising and marketing I think consumption is about narcissism first of all we most of the products we consume are utterly unnecessary obviously so they must fulfill some other kind of role if they are if they are not necessities what are they they must be signals or messages in other words most of the products we purchase are forms of communication coaxed messages and so some of them are what we blend called weapon called post and weapon called conspicuous consumption positional positional goods goods that signify our position our relative position in society and others are about making you feel unique or making you feel special and yet others are about making you feel that you belong that you're part of some club and yet others make you feel that you're young again and yet others make you feel omnipotent because they contain so many functions and there's absolutely you can do everything with them there's nothing you can't do with them and yet others make you feel omniscient that's an important function of a smartphone for example you are all knowing with the click of a button you have the entire the entire human knowledge at your at your fingertips and disposal and and so on so forth so yes I would say that most modern products have little to do with our necessity they are a little to do with our needs and a lot to do with our self-image and self-perception they are about molding our self-image and self-perception to feel unique omniscient omnipotent members of collectives which are omniscient and omnipotent narcissistic not only individually but also collectively and so consumption from about a hundred years ago has has been transformed from a system of catering to needs into a system of catering sorry from a system of catering to physical needs into a system of catering to psychological needs so well let's say up until the 1890s up until the end of the industrial revolution most products and services were needs physical needs oriented you bought a plow or you bought a dishwasher you bought a laundry machine or you bought a refrigerator you bought something you needed and your needs your needs were physical needs up until let's say the 1950s even everything you had bought catered to your physical needs physical needs as a as an animal who needs to eat and drink physical needs as someone who needs to travel physically you know but they were all physical needs starting in the 1950s most products and services cater to cater to your psychological needs very few of them indeed vanishingly few of them cater to your physical needs and your psychological needs can be grouped can be amply described as narcissistic the overwhelming majority of our psychological needs are are in support of our narcissism now as I said before there's healthy narcissism and there's pathological narcissism and again we can make a distinction between 1950s between the 1950s and the 1980s most of the products and services had to do or catered to our healthy narcissism so for example they were geared to to help us to learn and educate ourselves or they helped us to expand our horizons or they helped us to acquire skills which we could use in the workplace or they helped us to as tourists to discover new territories and your cultures and your societies etc etc so I would say that in the history of modern consumption there are three stages from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the 1950s where most products and services catered to physical needs from the 1950s to the 1980s where most products and services catered to our healthy psychological needs including our healthy narcissism and from the 1980s to this very day where most products and services catered to our pathological narcissism our need to be noticed and our need to be seen and to be observed and to be acknowledged as unique and special and in a pathological way in a way that implies entitlement in a way that implies delusion in a way that implies self deception in a way that implies grandiosity in a way that implies fantasy all these are pathological adaptations and pathological defense mechanisms and the overwhelming vast majority of products and services nowadays cater exactly to these things fantasy delusion, self deception, grandiosity, lack of empathy, separation, atomization, social seclusion etc etc are there any sorry go ahead no no while you can't say this about products in the 1960s and 1970s for example they also catered to your narcissism they also made you special unique and enhanced your skills and capabilities but they did it in a very healthy way what they were they were reality based if you want me to give you a kind of litmus test all products and services until the end of the 1980s were reality based yeah they they acknowledge a reality test today's product and services take you away from reality away from social reality away from physical reality away from interactions away from reality because you were talking about how uh advertising and the products they make you feel something they make you feel like you have this but it's it's devoid from reality i suppose yes i would say that until then the late 1980s everything was reality based yeah the quality the quality of the product and the service and these commercial success of the product and service or service were based on reality how effective they are in helping us to manage reality to manipulate reality and to extract benefits from reality products and services that came after the dot com boom and bust these products and services are not reality based they are actually ways and means to avoid reality to shun reality to escape from reality and to construct alternative realities virtual realities augmented realities avoid social reality avoid true interaction avoid coping with real life challenges avoid acquiring real life skills etc etc we are escaping from reality and society and all other social institutions are disintegrating we have a process called atomization where everyone sits at home isolated with a series of screens of varying sizes and interacts essentially with other people who are doing exactly the same yeah and and the sizes of the size of screens can tell you the whole story if you go back to the 1950s the dominant screen was huge yeah and about 2000 people could could congregate in front of that screen and share a common experience and that screen was the cinema in the 1950s and then fast forward 20 years and you had a much smaller or 30 years actually or 20s you had a much smaller screen and only 20 30 people could congregate in front of that screen and have a common experience and that screen was a television and then fast forward another 20 years and you have an even much smaller screen and only two three people could share the experience of that screen and that was the personal computer and then the screens kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking until today's screen allows only one person to interact with it it's a one person interaction and that would be the smartphone or your watch yeah your smartwatch so screens tell the whole story screens are a metaphor to what's happening to us at the very beginning of screens in the 1950s or or even 1930s we wanted to have communal experiences shared with thousands of other people today we don't want other people I mean think of the way that you hold your smartphone you hold the smartphone in front of your face the smartphone isolates you from your environment kind of a firewall the smartphone was designed to separate you from reality to separate you from other people there could have been any number of design choices in designing the typical smartphone but from the very beginning smartphones were built designed and constructed to separate you from life to provide you with an alternative to life and so modern consumption and modern consumer goods are about isolating you and rendering you a hostage in effect a prisoner they are total ecosystems all previous consumer goods up to the 1980s were not total ecosystems in the sense that you could not interact only with a single product and need nothing else you could not for example interact with your refrigerator only or with your laundry machine only or even with your personal computer only or with your television only you had you had to go out to reality you had to talk to other people you had to use other devices you had to have a network both social and electronic in order to survive but today's devices today's consumer goods are self-contained self-sustaining self-sufficient and they isolate you because they provide you with a total solution and they could safely be called total consumer goods or total devices and they provide a total ecosystem but the way you see it in the way that these devices are designed because for example apple yeah you can't use an apple you cannot use an apple device if you go outside the apple ecosystem you must remain hostage and prisoner to apples offerings apples app store everything is apple yeah everything is branded apple look at facebook for example facebook does not allow google to to uh crawl does not allow google to crawl its databases there are no facebook results on google google because google keeps its content behind a paywall a firewall and a paywall so that google has no access to it what happens is modern consumer modern modern consumerism modern consumer devices fractured our world broke it apart so that if you if you interact on facebook you are the hostage of facebook you are facebook's prisoner if you interact with apple you're apple's prisoner they don't want you to go outside the the walls of the ecosystem which is exact opposite philosophy to the philosophy of the network which prevailed in the 80s and beginning of the 90s exact opposite philosophy and you can see the same happening with with countries countries like china russia so the arabia they isolate their consumers behind firewalls they don't allow their consumers free access to for example information or even to consumer goods so we are seeing a fracture in an atomization of of life of social life of society as a whole of institutions and this has direct linkage to modern technologies and the consumer goods that they produce so consumerism is not only about narcissism and the individual level it's about the emerging very disturbing trend of collective narcissism exactly the trend that brings to power people like donald trump or bolsonaro in brazil or duterte in the philippines we are beginning to see a confluence of consumerism with politics technology with politics donald trump is a technological president exactly like adolf hitler adolf hitler used consumer goods and technologies which were the cutting edge technologies in his spirit he was movie theaters he was the microphone he was the airplane he was the radio and he was the first to use television so adolf hitler was a highly technological leader in a narcissistic psychopathic age using consumer goods in a way that fractured and broke society apart and people like donald trump are doing the same so consumer goods dictate not only how we as individuals interact with the world but how collectives interact with the world via institutions such as politics it's an extremely extremely dangerous and worrying trend where do you see that trend sort of heading to in the next sort of 20 years well first of all i think that and again i encourage you to have a look at the interview i made with richard granon because it's very detailed and so just allow me a sip of water apologies i think for the first time the first time ever is when we talk about adolf hitler we are talking about a phenomenon which was largely european started in germany and infected the rest of europe but that's where it ended up more or less but the first time i think we are talking about a global a global and um we are talking about and that's why i'm comparing social media and modern consumer goods to viruses essentially because exactly like in epidemiology we have vectors of transmission and we have spreading um memes and so on which imitate very effectively the behavior of viruses so as i see i think what exactly like viruses are self-limiting i think the technology and the consumer goods current consumers are self-limiting there will come a point where people will simply draw back in horror and recoil but it will be too late for for many of us because social media are modern consumer goods they are constructed to be addictive they're constructed to condition us as i said they render render us hostages and prisoners not only physically but also psychologically so there's a lot of addiction and conditioning going on a lot of the planned obsolescence which is a typical feature of most consumer goods a lot of the planned obsolescence has to do with the attempt to condition us to buy new versions new updates new generations of the same devices and the same goods and the same services so there will there will remain a group of people addicted to all these paraphernalia to to social media to consumer goods etc and there will be a rebellion against a counter-revolution a counter-trend where people will try to free themselves of the shackles of modern consumerism and we're beginning to see of course the buds of this revolution the thing what what it will do is it will fracture humanity to two camps the camp of people who find consumption gratifying because it caters to their narcissistic needs and these people will continue to be addicted and conditioned by innovation by technology by modern by new consumer goods etc etc and one billion two billion people will be like that they will continue their existence as it is now forever consuming forever working hard in order to consume forever forever using consumer goods as stuff symbols as positional goods forever bragging forever showing off forever you know delineating or demarcating the uniqueness via consumer goods via social media and so on and there will be a the rest of humanity which will break break free i believe in that because all viruses are self-limiting in the sense that at some point they stop propagating had viruses not stopped propagating we would all be dead by now yeah so i believe that consumer goods are kinds kinds of viruses which and i believe the trend is about to stop and then humanity will fracture and we will have these two camps that's how i see things the other camp the rebellious camp i think will consume a lot less will consume differently more should we say in a balanced way will consume not narcissistically in a healthy way and i think this will have tremendous destabilizing repercussions is the entire mass production system our entire modern economy all modern economies west and east are built and founded on the assumption of ever increasing consumption if we take if we pulled the rug multinationals manufacturers service providers we are going to collapse the modern economy and i think the rug is about to be pulled really i think this revolutionary movement that i'm talking about people who are gonna people are gonna renounce social media people are going who are going to consume less people who are going to move to the countryside people who are going to consume wisely people who are going to issue to give up goods and services which are not necessities people who are going to revert to retro lifestyles i think this movement is on the rise and i think it's going to be actually become actually dominant counter a counter culture a subculture or counter culture of non-consume consumerism i believe it's i believe the revolution is happening but here's the irony we can't afford not to not consume should we stop consuming even marginally the entire edifice of modern economies will crumble and then of course we will have provoked enormous social unrest everywhere and possibly global wars so this is the dilemma on the one hand our consumption to patterns today are sick narcissistic atomizing destructive the way we consume is destroying us destroying us as individuals destroying us as societies destroying us as collectives destroying and ruining and devastating our institutions starting with the family and ending with the state raising to power demagogues narcissistic and psychopathic leaders at great risk to peace in our future our consumption leads us into a blind alley of self-annihilation afford to stop consuming because if we stop consuming we will have we will have removed the foundations of modern economics modern economies i'm sorry and then the global economy will collapse and then we will have such social unrest which will most probably lead to global warfare and again to our self-destruction it's a no win situation if we continue to consume we will annihilate self annihilation if we stop consuming we will self annihilate and this is the double bind that will find ourselves in this is the blind alley that will lead ourselves into the cul-de-sac and i'm not i'm not wise enough to offer a solution i don't think anyone is sobering thoughts um you so um where i sort of heard of you first was through your book after the rain and you you drew a fascinating parallel i thought between uh our consumer culture and religion and so you made the point that shopping malls and banks have almost replaced the temples and bankers finances and bureaucrats the clergy um and so i wonder if that's going to be increasingly the case then with this no sorry go ahead of course we as i said consumerism is um i i i started by saying that narcissism is a form of private religion yeah and so consumerism is a is a private case of narcissism writ large let's say so of course by by definition ipso facto i mean uh by syllogism consumerism is a form of religion and we worship at the temples of consumption first of all consumerism as a form of secular religion as its own its own um holy bible its own holy scriptures and it has its rituals and it has its ethos and morality and it has its do's and don'ts prescriptive and proscriptive measures and it has its clergy and it has its servants and it has its bureaucracy etc etc it's absolutely a form of secular religion of course it has its headquarters the equivalent of the vatican and that would be the united states and um and so on so yes i think we have replaced um classic god-centered religion and and by the way i'm an agnostic so don't misunderstand me i'm not advocating god-centered religion and other forms of master causes but we have replaced god-centered religion one form of master causes with another and that is the belief that the fount of happiness because religion is about finding happiness finding balance being a harmony and equilibrium with your environment social and natural that's what religion is about essentially god is supposed to be the the the guide to provide the guidance on how to achieve this balance and so here comes consumerism and tells you listen there's another way to happiness another path to happiness and that is by buying things goods and services even if they are not necessary they will cause you happiness and a huge amount of people bought into it and they are rendered happy they believe simply by purchasing the next generation of iphone or simply by by the massage massage parlor or whatever so consumerism provides a complete turnkey solution and substitute to religion and that's why it's far more widespread than any religion or any group of religions combined and i stand behind it yes shopping modes on the modern temples and what what price do you think we as consumers or as as people what price do we psychologically pay for that how does it affect us psychologically well if your only source of happiness is consumption then first of all the prerequisite the precondition for consumption is money for consumption is money so money becomes not only desirable the absolute condition foundation and so on for your happiness so we all become money crazed and the problem with money of course is that it's morally neutral it's not immoral it's not it's amoral it has no truck with morality or ethics in any way shape or form we're trying to impose moral values on money making but these are foreign implants money in itself is morally neutral and and so when we adhere to this new religion where money is gone and the guiding principle and our organizing principle of reality and the fount of our happiness we also ascribe automatically um subscribe to a world which is amoral and or morally relative or morally neutral and if we subscribe to that then essentially the only remaining principle guiding our behavior is selfishness or more precisely egotism and then if if we accept selfishness and egotism as the only remaining was surviving moral principle then by definition empathy and altruism for example are irrational not only irrational but counterproductive because they become obstacle and obstacles and hindrances to the making of money in other words we tend to maximize utility and we want as much money as we can because the more money we have more happiness we have via the agency of consumer goods and consumer services so in order to maximize the production of money or the ownership or possession of money we need to be disempathic we need to eschew we need to give up empathy and of course we need not be altruistic because that's a waste of resources and so we see a rising tide the tidal wave of unapathic behavior self-centered behavior um and utilitarian behavior and when you try to approach the subject of whether this is good or bad people tell you openly that good or bad are obsolete categories of relating to the world they are no longer relevant this good or bad cannot be applied to money making there's no good money making the whole bad money making there's only money making and so good and bad good and evil are on their way out and so we we live in a world that's becoming increasingly life-threatening uh increasingly unpredictable increasingly capricious and arbitrary and hostile and dangerous to live in and also frankly unpleasant to live the world today i don't know how old you are strike me as too young it's too young to remember but 22 you see the world today is a lot less pleasant than it used to be now of course every old gizzard will tell you the same but the world today is a lot less pleasant etc etc and people who are born into this world take it for granted they have no basis for comparison so say okay you know old people talk like that but it's truly less pleasant you have to trust me of this it's simply it's more bad it's worse than it used to be not in the sense that you know it's more restricted actually it's much more free it's much more tolerant it's much more empowering the technology is empowering so i'm not blind to the advantages of the world today that the world is offering as compared to the world of my childhood or my twenties but it was a hell of a lot more pleasant simply more agreeable let's say today's world is more jungle like more natural selection type and everything is fleeting nothing is really deep everything is fleeting it's not that people don't seek depth they do they do seek depth and love and commitment but it's nowhere to be found because if the guiding principle is money because money buys you things and things make me make you happy then it's a race isn't it it's become it becomes an addiction the world became a dried drug dispensing center everyone is a pusher or a drug addict the world is divided to pushers and junkies we all became junkies and with a junkie mentality you know instant gratification junkies want instant gratification uh no whole part to get to get his money the junkie will steal from his own mother because he needs to fix we're all fix oriented and it's getting the fix is getting shorter and shorter because we become desensitized so now it's not enough to buy an iphone you need also an ipod and it's not enough to buy an ipod you need also to fuck around that means the the fixes become much the pace the pace of change and the pace of your need for the next fix it's becoming it's accelerated there's an acceleration going on and so in a world like that it's a rat race it's it's insane it's a nightmarish of it it's realistic essentially i was really an interesting analogy to consumerism where this author was saying that consumerism is almost like seawater where you're thirsty and you need something and you see the seawater and so you drink it and you think it's going to satisfy you but it never does and unfortunately with our society we think oh well to to be satisfied i need to just have more of it and it's having the opposite effect yeah great i think also the analogy of of a drug drug culture applies it's a drug it's addictive it's and you know and it and as you know when you consume drugs you need more and more all the time it's the thresholds goes up all the time so at first you needed one fix a date and you need two then six then nine then there's an overdose and you die but i think that's where we're heading basically you ask me where are we heading we're heading to an overdose well i've reached the end of my questions um that's good because i reached the end of my answers tell me can i ask you for a favor oh yeah sure is is there any any way you can upload the audiophile somewhere so that i can download it yeah i can do that yeah sure yeah send me a link if you if you please that'll be my only reward uh except talking to you of course but send me send me a link so that i can download the audiophile and then would you mind if i upload the audiophile somewhere make it not big yeah okay it's okay with you are you yeah if you yeah just yeah that's fine it's fine yeah i'd rather if it didn't say like my name but absolutely not if you're anonymous if you prefer thank you well actually no i don't mind uh feel free well you know send me the link and uh in the same email write to me how you wish to be identified and if you wish to be identified so and then i'll i'll buy it by anything you say brilliant okay but please don't forget it's important to me if you if you phenomena i'll get it sent pretty soon okay thank you very much was that are there any other things that you wanted to say that i didn't ask no i think we've been we've been pretty thorough i mean i thought i mean i think we covered a little bit yeah this has been really helpful i hope so thank you so much pleasure in any case thank you so much for giving up your time my pleasure thank you very much ah we've gone bang on one hour there you go okay great that's a good good time for our audio recording so don't forget the link please yeah and if you need anything further you can write to me and then you know we can even schedule a follow-up if you came up with new questions and so on don't hesitate just write to me and we'll do something again thank you sam you're most welcome and success with your with your physics thank you so much i hope you have a great sunday youtube take care bye