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http://www.crossroadsfilm.com - John St. Augustine, Amit Goswami and Annie Leonard discuss how society and the media influence values that are "made up." Taken from the film *Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview* by Joseph Ohayon ---- * Watch Crossroads Full Movie » http://youtu.be/5n1p9P5ee3c * Like Crossroads @ Facebook » http://www.facebook.com/XroadsFilm * Follow Crossroads @ Twitter » http://www.twitter.com/XroadsFilm * Share Crossroads » http://www.crossroadsfilm.com/share Use the annotations at the top of the video player to flick through Crossroads' scenes. ---- Transcript of Value Is Made Up: It's astonishing to me that we don't realize we make this all up. We make the whole thing up. You know why gold has the value is has? It's because somebody said so. You know why fuel costs what it is? Because somebody said so. Somebody speculates, somebody decides there's a belief, enough people join in: this is what the thing costs. We've all decided this. So an awakening of, we're repeating these cycles and we're getting kind of tired of it, maybe we should do something different this time around, be something different. John St. Augustine Radio Personality, Author People are interested in processing meaning and values. We have to hear that. It's the society, the media especially, that puts ordinary people into this vain search of material goodies. People didn't live this way, even 50 or 60 years ago. This is just a very recent phenomenon, that if you have, instead of one cellphone, two cellphones in two pockets, then somehow you'll be better off. Amit Goswami Theoretical Quantum Physicist The average U.S. person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago. Ask your grandma. In her day, stewardship and resourcefulness and thrift were valued. So, how did this happen? Well, it didn't just happen. It was designed. Shortly after the World War 2, these guys were figuring out how to ramp up the [U.S.] economy. Retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated the solution that has become the norm for the whole system. He said: 'Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.' Advertisements, and media in general, plays a big role in this. Each of us in the U.S. is targeted with more than 3,000 advertisements a day. We each see more advertisements in one year than a people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. And if you think about it, what is the point of an ad except to make us unhappy with what we have. So, 3,000 times a day, we're told that our hair is wrong, our skin is wrong, clothes are wrong, our furniture is wrong, our cars are wrong, we are wrong but that it can all be made right if we just go shopping. Annie Leonard The Story of Stuff