Greed
Greed is an uncontrolled longing for increase in the acquisition or use: of material gain ; or social value, such as status, or power. Greed has been identified as undesirable throughout known human history because it creates behavior-conflict between personal and social goals.
Nature of Greed
The initial motivation for greed and actions associated with it may be the promotion personal or family survival. It may at the same time be an intent to deny or obstruct competitors from potential means or future opportunities; therefore being insidious or tyrannical and having a negative connotation. Alternately, the purpose could be defense or counteractive response to such obstructions being threatened by others. But regardless of purpose, greed intends to create an inequity of access or distribution to community wealth.Modern economic thought frequently distinguishes greed from self-interest, even in its earliest works, and spends considerable effort distinguishing the line between the two. By the mid-19th Century - affected by the phenomenological ideas of Hegel - economic and political thinkers began to define greed inherent to the structure of society as a negative and inhibitor to the development of societies. Keynes wrote ‘The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide’. Both views continue to pose fundamental questions in today's economic thinking.
As a secular psychological concept, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. The degree of inordinance is related to the inability to control the reformulation of "wants" once desired "needs" are eliminated. Erich Fromm described greed as "a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." It is typically used to criticize those who seek excessive material wealth, although it may equally be applied to the need to feel more excessively moral, social, or otherwise better than someone else.
One individual consequence of greedy activity may be an inability to sustain any of the costs or burdens associated with that which has been or is being accumulated, leading to a backfire or destruction, whether of self or more generally. Other outcomes may include a degradation of social position, or exclusion from community protections. So, the level of "inordinance" of greed pertains to the amount of vanity, malice or burden associated with it.
Views of Greed
Animal examples of greed in literary observations are frequently the attribution of human motivations to other species. The dog-in-the-manger, or piggish behaviors are typical examples. Characterizations of the wolverine means "glutton") remark both on its outsized appetite, and its penchant for spoiling food remaining after it has gorgedAncient views of greed abound in nearly every culture. In Classical Greek thought; pleonexy is discussed in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Pan-Hellenic disapprobation of greed is seen by the mythic punishment meted to Tantalus, from whom ever-present food and water is eternally withheld. Late-Republican and Imperial politicians and historical writers fixed blame for the demise of the Roman Republic on greed for wealth and power, from Sallust and Plutarch to the Gracchi and Cicero. The Persian Empires had the three-headed Zoroastrian demon Aži Dahāka as a fixed part of their folklore. In the Sanskrit Dharmashastras the "root of all immorality is lobha.", as stated in the Laws of Manu . In early China, both the Shai jan jing and the Zuo zhuan texts count the greedy Taotie among the malevolent Four Perils besetting gods and men. North American Indian tales often cast bears as proponents of greed. Greed is also personified by the fox in early allegoric literature of many lands.
Greed was often imputed as a racial pejorative by the ancient Greeks and Romans; as such it was used against Egyptians, Punics, or other Oriental peoples; and generally to any enemies or people whose customs were considered strange. By the late Middle Ages the insult was widely directed towards Jews.
In the Books of Moses, the commandments of the sole deity are written in the book of Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy ; two of these particularly deal directly with greed, prohibiting theft and covetousness. These commandments are moral foundations of not only Judaism, but also of Christianity, Islam, Unitarian Universalism, and the Baháʼí Faith among others. The Quran advises do not spend wastefully, indeed, the wasteful are brothers of the devils..., but it also says do not make your hand chained to your neck..." The Christian Gospels quote Jesus as saying, "“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions”, and "For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.".
In the Aristophanes political satire Plutus, an Athenian and his slave remark on the moral hazards of greed to Plutus the god of wealth, observing that men may become weary of love, music, figs, and other pleasures, but never wealth:
If a man has thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; if that wish is achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make both ends meet.
The Roman poet Lucretius thought that the fear of dying was a major driver of greed, with dangerous consequences for morality and order:
And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours
Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,
And, oft allies and ministers of crime,
To push through nights and days with hugest toil
To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power—
These wounds of life in no mean part are kept
Festering and open by this fright of death.
The Roman Stoic Epictetus also saw the dangerous moral consequences of greed, and so advised the greedy to instead take pride in letting go of the desire for wealth, rather than be like the man with a fever who cannot drink his fill:
Nay, what a price the rich themselves, and those who hold office, and who live with beautiful wives, would give to despise wealth and office and the very women whom they love and win! Do you not know what the thirst of a man in a fever is like, how different from the thirst of a man in health? The healthy man drinks and his thirst is gone: the other is delighted for a moment and then grows giddy, the water turns to gall, and he vomits and has colic, and is more exceeding thirsty. Such is the condition of the man who is haunted by desire in wealth or in office, and in wedlock with a lovely woman: jealousy clings to him, fear of loss, shameful words, shameful thoughts, unseemly deeds.
In the fifth century, St. Augustine wrote: “Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold..." St. Thomas Aquinas states greed "is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." He also wrote that "greed can be “a sin directly against one’s neighbor, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them, for temporal goods cannot be possessed by many at the same time."
Dante's 14th century epic poem Inferno assigns those committed to the deadly sin of greed to punishment in the fourth of the nine circles of Hell. The inhabitants are misers, hoarders, and spendthrifts; they must constantly battle one another. The guiding spirit, Virgil, tells the poet these souls have lost their personality in their disorder, and are no longer recognizable: "That ignoble life, Which made them vile before, now makes them dark, And to all knowledge indiscernible." In Dante's Purgatory, avaricious penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Dante's near-contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote of greed in his Prologue to The Pardoner's Tale these words: "Radix malorum est Cupiditas"; however the Pardoner himself serves us as a charicature of churchly greed.
Thomas Hobbes argues in his Leviathan that greed is a integral part of the natural condition of man. John Locke claims that unused property is wasteful and an offence against nature, because "as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils; so much he may by his labour fix a property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.”
Meher Baba dictated that "Greed is a state of restlessness of the heart, and it consists mainly of craving for power and possessions. Possessions and power are sought for the fulfillment of desires. Man is only partially satisfied in his attempt to have the fulfillment of his desires, and this partial satisfaction fans and increases the flame of craving instead of extinguishing it. Thus greed always finds an endless field of conquest and leaves the man endlessly dissatisfied. The chief expressions of greed are related to the emotional part of man."
Ivan Boesky famously defended greed in an 18 May 1986 commencement address at the UC Berkeley's School of Business Administration, in which he said, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself". This speech inspired the 1987 film Wall Street, which features the famous line spoken by Gordon Gekko: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."
Inspirations
and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one profits from soliciting goods within the actual confines of a church.A well-known example of greed is the pirate Hendrick Lucifer, who fought for hours to acquire Cuban gold, becoming mortally wounded in the process. He died of his wounds hours after having transferred the booty to his ship.