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

An interesting  documentary about greed, happiness, Buddhism, and eternal life. Is our capitalist way of life making us happy, it seems for many, maybe not? Even with lots of possessions many people are still not fulfilled and keep on buying more things to get that short lasting thrill.

But are we trying to bury the thought of our deaths when we buy more and more stuff we don't need, or when we are always desperately trying to have more fun? The documentary says how we feel spiritual but it irks us when realize that we aren't so different from the animals.  This documentary talks a lot about death, but there's hope, at 1:14 Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, describes his near death experience and why he doesn't fear death anymore.

In the documentary is a psychologist who is studying greed. He has developed software simulating financial investing and most people stop when the risks get too big, but stockbrokers tend to keep on going until it all goes bang. He says it's only a matter of time until the financial system crashes again.

Rudolph Elmer, a Swiss banker who worked on the Caiman Islands, alerted his management about the criminals using the bank and the money laundering going on. They fired him. He then sent a CD off with all the evidence on to the Swiss tax authorities but he ended up being followed everywhere by black cars which really scared him, because, he says, some Swiss bankers working in the Caiman Islands had ended up dead. He eventually did two and a half years in prison, some of it in solitary confinement. He says he learnt the hard way how governments always protect their biggest companies. This section starts at about 28:00 and there's a bit more at 51:00.
 
Money, happiness and eternal life - Greed (director's cut) | DW Documentary

Can money and power ever make us happy? How much is enough? Our constant desire for more is part of our human nature. Some call it a useful dowry of evolution, others a fault in the human genetic make-up: The old mortal sin Greed seems to be more ubiquitous than ever. Why can't people ever get enough, where is this self-indulgence leading - and are there any ways out of this vicious circle of gratification? "People like to have a lot of stuff because it makes them the feeling of living forever," says American social psychologist Sheldon Solomon, who believes today's materialism and consumerism will have disastrous consequences. Anyone who fails to satisfy his or her desires in this age of the Ego is deemed a loser. But with more than 7 billion people on the Earth, the ramifications of this excessive consumption of resources are already clear. Isn’t the deplorable state of our planet proof enough that "The Greed Program," which has made us crave possessions, status and power, is coming to an end? Or is the frenzied search for more and more still an indispensable part of our nature? We set off to look for the essence of greed. And we tell the stories of people who - whether as perpetrators or victims or even just as willing consumers - have become accomplices in a sea change in values.