Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Oh hello, sorry. War! We love it, right?

  • Blowing stuff up, watching people suffer and die, it's exciting!

  • Violence, domination, retribution and other attributes of this competitive

  • warring fascination clearly dominates our media

  • with films, television and other expressions constantly

  • glorifying and reinforcing this gesture of conflict.

  • In fact, it has been found that by the time an average kid

  • reaches the age of 14 in the West,

  • he or she has visually witnessed over 8,000 depicted acts of murder.

  • Given all of this, it might make you wonder:

  • Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

  • Likewise, isn't it interesting how most of us in America sleep quite well at night

  • while our military forces routinely invade,

  • slaughter and steal from other nations at will;

  • as, of course, all global empires have done historically,

  • with, this time, a global civilian death toll well over 1 million

  • in the past decade alone, many of them women and children.

  • Yet, the same American culture shudders in horror and confusion

  • when some dude stumbles into an American schoolyard and randomly wipes out

  • a couple dozen or so kids.

  • I ask you, by what measure do we differentiate importance

  • when it comes to the death of different groups of people?

  • What makes us so special?

  • While history is certainly full of xenophobic, racist, religious

  • and nationalist conceits which have served as convenient justifications for

  • external dehumanization, subjugation and imperial power abuse,

  • a rather unnoticed yet profound scientific truth has also emerged:

  • Today, every person on Earth can trace his or her lineage

  • back to a single common female ancestor who lived about 200,000 years ago.

  • 'Mitochondrial Eve', she is now called,

  • proving indeed that we are truly one family.

  • Likewise, the planet Earth, the habitat this family shares, it knows no division.

  • It is a unified, synergistic system at every turn, fully connected.

  • It has no idea what a nation, a politician or a racist is.

  • It has no notion of any such human conceit, for that matter;

  • for division simply doesn't exist

  • in the order of nature by which we're all invariably subject.

  • Mark Twain once wrote

  • "Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his country,

  • under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations,

  • and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense

  • to grab slices of other people's countries,

  • and keep them from grabbing slices of his.

  • And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands

  • and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'- with his mouth."

  • While we all love to give lip service to the idea of peace and collaboration,

  • holding up icons such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • something underneath the surface is clearly holding us back.

  • Yes, we know for a fact

  • that if we took the total war budgets of all the nations on Earth

  • (tens of trillions of dollars over the past quarter century alone)

  • and applied that energy-producing capital towards creating

  • an advanced, intelligent, efficient system of Earth/Human management,

  • not only would poverty and most deprivation be removed from our lives on the global scale

  • our progressive capacity to create, build and improve

  • rather than pillage, seek and destroy

  • could catapult the human family into an age of prosperity

  • never before seen.

  • Just imagine. If we took America's Pentagon or Britain's Northwood

  • along with all the world's advanced military centers,

  • kicked all the army freaks out...

  • OK, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be harsh.

  • I guess we have to do something with them.

  • Maybe we can just take them all and place them in the Grand Canyon

  • and just let them beat the piss out of each other,

  • and hopefully they'll get it out of their systems and move on.

  • I don't know, we'll figure that out later.

  • But we, as the intelligent, mature human family

  • now interested in improving the lives of all,

  • we use that incredible technology to help assist true developmental progress.

  • Imagine if the Manhattan Project, which harnessed about 130,000 people,

  • mostly scientists and technicians, was dedicated not

  • to building a bomb that could destroy on a scale never before seen;

  • but rather, utilizing that collaborative drive to solve true global problems,

  • perhaps those very problems

  • which are causing the interest in war to begin with.

  • Today, the hyper-glorified, romanticized obsession with competition,

  • advantage and conflict has made it into almost every facet of our lives.

  • Not only do we declare war against virtually everything that annoys us:

  • 'the war on drugs', 'the war on poverty', 'the war on crime',

  • 'the war on terrorism', 'the war on cancer', you name it;

  • we also, apart from the near constant nationalist wars,

  • live in a perpetual state of common war or 'class war'

  • where we battle each other on a daily basis

  • for unnecessary economic survival and delusions of status.

  • The fact is, something has been set in motion

  • that keeps us all on a multilevel war path.

  • Something in our psychology and, hence, sociology is constantly pushing us

  • into justifications of these patterns, and as this episode will argue

  • that something appears to reside at the very foundation

  • of the socioeconomic condition itself:

  • a foundation which has given rise to an ever-expanding destructive neurosis

  • a neurosis clearly characteristic of a culture in decline.

  • This just in: The President has finished an emergency session at the White House

  • where he announced that the security focus of his administration

  • will be moving away from the global war on terror,

  • instead, focusing all available resources against something the administration

  • has deemed a larger threat to US and international security

  • than anything recognized before: Nature itself.

  • That's right, Dodge, the newly declared war against Nature

  • will be usurping funds from the Department of Homeland Security

  • effectively replacing it with a new department, the Department of...

  • I think I'm reading this right:

  • "Fuck The Earth And The Science It Rode In On."

  • That's correct, Summer, the administration has already appointed a head

  • to this new department, the CEO of Monsanto Corporation, Satan himself.

  • When questioned regarding concerns about a possible conflict of interest

  • of the new appointee, the Obama administration responded:

  • "Monsanto's reputation of challenging the vast power of this intolerant,

  • bullying force that goes by the terrorist name 'Natural Science'

  • holds great potential for our victory.

  • We feel if anyone can take down these insurgent laws

  • which restrict our God-given freedom, it is the professional experience

  • of our true lord and master: the Prince of Darkness.

  • We've just been informed that a press conference is now underway

  • with the Pentagon's spokesperson answering questions.

  • We now go live to the White House.

  • As the President said earlier, the greatest barrier to US interests

  • has been a constant state of offensive interference by this rogue network.

  • Nature has been forcing its will against our freedom for long enough.

  • Our economy, our values, the American way of life, it's not negotiable.

  • Either Nature concedes to our interests and stops terrorizing us

  • with its hatred of our liberty,

  • or we will be forced to destroy it.

  • Next question.

  • Hi. Joe, from L.A. Times:

  • Don't you feel it could be a bad idea to move against

  • a force which has historically never been overcome

  • or even phased by human action?

  • Also, I understand Nature has given a set of demands which, if met,

  • would cease many of its counterattacks.

  • Has the administration considered just meeting these demands?

  • Listen Joe, we don't negotiate with terrorists, and I've seen Nature's demands,

  • full of queer Communist propaganda such a balance and sustainability.

  • It even demands that we shut down our infinite growth consumption economy

  • to make way for something where we are to be slaves to some oppressive

  • natural regeneration respect.

  • Listen, I didn't spend 35 years defending this country

  • to have some metaphysical terrorist group with science on its side

  • ruin what has made this nation great.

  • No further questions.

  • (P. Joseph) When we think of war, we usually think about gun-wielding soldiers,

  • tanks, flame throwers, fancy metal honors and other theatrics.

  • Yet, when we step outside the theater,

  • digging deeper in our examination of the world around us

  • we find that war is actually a state of mind,

  • a reaction, driven by some type of competitive condition.

  • If we had to classify the different levels of large scale competition,

  • we might end up with two broad categories:

  • imperial war and class war.

  • Imperial war, otherwise known as national war,

  • is when an aggressor nation decides to invade some other nation,

  • justified by some form of perceived threat.

  • Back in the day, this threat often appeared as purely ideological with

  • religious groups battling it out to make sure they were in good with God,

  • while in a mildly more literate scientific world today,

  • the threat is, more often than not, pitched as direct to each of us.

  • Such as, a rogue nation getting a nuclear weapon

  • to blow up your grandmother's bingo tournament

  • or perhaps a crazed state-funded hijacker crashing a plane

  • into your favorite taco stand (bastards!).

  • Regardless, in virtually every historical case, the justification for war

  • put forward for public digestion has always been far from the truth.

  • You see, there is indeed always a true threat,

  • but that threat has little to do with the vast majority of the population.

  • Instead, it is a threat that bothers only the highest echelons

  • of social hierarchy, an elitist upper class self-preservation

  • based around a loss of broad power and control.

  • When was the last time the c