September 4, 2012
My working definition of greed is: the wanton acquisition of material goods.
First off – I am only exploring male greed in this “attempt,” and, will count on my female readers (and writers) to write companion pieces (or alternate viewpoints) – since my memories of being female in former lives are rather hazy (Tami A. will definitely have-to-step-up-to-the- plate!).
Secondly, I did not come up with the idea I shall be expounding upon…as-a-matter-of-fact; the idea I’ll be proffering has been bandied about for a very long time – but it took Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael to put it into a meaningful context for me.
According to Mr. Quinn (and interconnected with the Malthusian Principle), the more women and children a single man has to provide for, the “more” he has to acquire to feed the many mouths…embedded in this dynamic is the rationale for greed: Such a man has the perfect rationalization for continuing to need MORE…after all, he has many “important” mouths to feed!
And greed, my Readers, is what has leveled civilization after civilization. The irony is: greed has also built civilizations.
Once-upon-a-time, early man lived under that heavy-handed natural law that Darwin punctuated as: survival of the fittest. In-other-words, if a newborn didn’t have what it took to survive, it perished; and, there was very little that the parents could do about it – except try again. Additionally, the entire tribe usually subsisted through hunting and gathering – which also helped to keep their numbers down. If they weren’t hunting and gathering – they were herding and “doing” dairy products. This mode of life also kept a “group’s” numbers down.
It wasn’t until organized and systematic farming developed that we humans began having a surplus of food. And with this surplus of food came a surplus of children (and in certain cases – a surplus of wives!). So, organized agriculture is one-of-the-roots of greed.
To keep the agricultural wheel flowing and growing – farmers required more-and-more land to be put under the plow; and that, is when greed infected our species: because as Daniel Quinn so eloquently suggested – a moral pejorative to kill anything that prevented land from being cultivated came into effect.
Yes, yes – I am fully aware that royal houses have cropped up everywhere around the planet, and, that many of these greedy sovereigns were warriors and not, farmers – and; that they often acquired multiple wives and had multiple children – so their rationale for greed was slightly different, and, is probably the dynamic more operative today. Simply put: these men (and the odd woman) believe themselves to be superior to-the-rest-of-us. And, if they are able to back up this contention by force (power) – then there was no one to stop their steady acquisition of material goods.
This latter group of Greedies – has somehow landed on the farmer’s rationale (that they provide a greater good by feeding many mouths and therefore, their greed is good for all) – because through their greed – many are fed (I believe they forget how many they cause to starve).
I have a difficult time differentiating between Mitt Romney and Gordon Gekko – it seems that I hear Mitt saying: “Greed is good!” After all, Mormons are a classic polygamist group that farmed a lot!