Greed is Not Good

As capitalism spins out of control, and the oil-based economies head into hyper-inflation, it is worthwhile to revisit the Market-Will-Fix-Everything devotees old adage: "Greed is good."

Is it really?

How you think about greed influences perception to a greater degree than you might think, and whether you let the "economy" or "the market" depersonalize your fellow humans, whether you let it personalize objects and knowledge as "yours?" 

This is where it becomes increasingly clear that greed is clearly NOT good.  Perhaps historians will look back on this as the "Age of Plentiful Resources," for why else would our economy externalize so many costs of desecration, pollution and commodification at the extreme end of unsustainability.

Why then should our country, our world, still worship the market and the greed motive as the best organizing force for our collective relationship with resources, environments and long-term social and cultural communities.  What has greed gotten us?

So I wanted to demonstrate in a drawing how greed is in fact NOT good for distribution of resources and knowledge. In the above two panels, the people are organized around "love," or in economic terms, a contribution-based co-op economy, e.g. Norway, while below greed and a pure free-market capitalism control the exploitation of resources and knowledge. In both drawings, the three primary components are represented as blue bubbles (mind), green (body) and yellow signatures (energy).

The first thing about Greed that we notice is that the person's mind stands completely between their body and energy.  Their mind is everything, and they live in a world where they are often "right" and you are simply "wrong" because they allow their opinions to dominate how they think of people and resources.  They see objects (the cubes) as without their own energy and up for grabs for the first to capture or possess.

In contrast above, resources are seen by those motivated by Love as having their own independence, their own energy, and through the organization of their minds, they seek to use resources for the greatest good.  Thy share and enjoy objects with others because they do not horde, and they do not fear for supply because they share and enjoy with others who do not horde.

When it comes to knowledge, those organized by generosity or Love recognize that any "knowledge" is by definition a kind of abstract container that one or more will fill with different observations, different filtrations, and through that shared understandings of the limits of communication, they respect better what they don't know and work together to solve it.

In contrast, knowledge is horded and wasted in the Greed world because the very nature of the knowledge is often confused with the identity of the "owner" (creator or exploiter).  The boxes are blue in the bottom right panel because in Greed, we treat knowledge as exclusive and hide and fight about it in elaborate wastes of social resources.  All in the name of Greed, and excused as a "necessary evil" because of the vagaries of the free market.

Yet most revealing in the bottom lower panel is how those motivated by Greed come to see other people in their world.  They do not recognize their bodies, they refuse to sense or acknowledge their energies or signatures, and they think of them akin to the empty "objects" that the Love people reserve for concepts or symbols.  And instead of respecting this abstraction that Greed people place onto other people in their world, the abstraction is expressly used to disrespect or dehumanize.

Left without a choice, we find ourselves pitted against each other in the Greed economy.  Our very survival, our ability to get food and healthcare and warmth and shelter depend on the compromise you can make with the Greed economy.  Yet beware the numbing of your senses into a place where you only see what you want to see.  Remember that your mind is under your control. 

Even though we must still participate in this greed-based world, remember that Greed is NOT good.

Comments

[Steve Newcomb]

The thrust of your comments is, I think, profoundly true.

However, I wonder how helpful it is to categorize humans as "greed people" or "love people". Perhaps I am too sensitive to such remarks, after years of puerile declarations from our political classes that certain people are evildoers, and that there are "evil" people in the world whom we should regard with fear. In fact, "evil," at its root, means "foreign" or "outside the communities in which I'm comfortable". It's a matter of perspective. To what extent is the difference between "greed people" and "love people" a matter of perspective? And, can "love people" really be "love people" if they think they have no greed, or that others are "greed people" who have no love? Seems to me that the way forward is not to classify people, but rather to love them, help them, and share light with them. Which is just what your prose is trying to do! Which makes me wonder whether "sharing light" is possible without sharing perspective, and whether perspective can be shared except in terms of classifications, like "greed people" and "love people".

Maybe the real problem is that we have to use words when we talk with each other. Every word invokes classifications. In fact, it's hard to think of a word that isn't in fact an invocation of at least one classification of some kind.

But I still think there's a problem with classifying people. I sense that it's a bad idea. It's OK and necessary to classify ideas and things, but it's somehow always misleading and generally unfair to classify people. People should be held in higher esteem than that. Also, there's an amazing human tendency to classify others in ways that are often far more applicable to oneself. We should hold ourselves in higher esteem than that. We should hold ourselves to higher standards than ones that can be justified in terms of being better than the standards to which others hold themselves. For a wonderfully pathetic example of what I'm talking about, consider George Bush's remarks about how evil Saddam was, and the terrible things he did, such as killing his own people, dispensing authoritarian justice, torturing people, and so on -- with every single accusation by Bush about Saddam being fully applicable to Bush himself.
But I'm not talking about Bush, here. I'm talking about everybody. Us. We all classify people, and I sense strongly that it's a bad idea. If we classify them as "good" in some way, we set ourselves up for disappointment. If we classify them as "bad", we separate ourselves from them.

[bgk]

@Steve Newcomb:

Without explaining to someone the prospective you come from: they cannot see you truth. Much like without explaining how a lightswitch works, the the florescent bulb of illumination cannot be turned on.

I don't think the author here was classifying people here, so much as a socio-economic system. Instead of giving the people the label, the label derived from the actions influenced by the system. In a love based system, the objects, energy, and ideas are shared; where in a greed based system they fall into contempt.

I do agree that labeling people is the problem. I think that any Greed Person in a Love Environ would change accordingly. I think that any Love Person in a Greed Environ would change as well.

I think its up to us to figure out how to change from a Greed Environ to a Love Environ.

[air jordan 13]

This is a good article. I agree, if there is a method of saving costs then I am all for it. The last place I would have thought to notice a disease was in the eyes.