why is greed bad essay

Never enough: Why greed is still so deadly

Stanley Hauerwas

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Avarice is a timely topic. It is increasingly common today to hear people talking about greed grown out of control as fundamental cause of our world's woes - economic and otherwise. We are suffering because some became too greedy - or so we were told. We continue to be troubled, moreover, that some make millions in bonuses without any reason to assume that there is a connection between the bonus and the work they have done. Greed seems to have no limits or shame.

That we are able to make such judgments presumes we know what we are talking about when we talk about greed. I think, however, that presumption may be just that - that is, presumptive.

The desire for money may be an indication of greed, but I hope to show that greed is a much more subtle vice than simply the desire to be rich. It is interesting, however, that even if avarice is understood primarily as the desire for wealth, Christians are seldom warned about greed. This is exceedingly strange because, at least as far as the New Testament is concerned, greed is considered to be more of a threat for the ability to follow Christ than lust.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says quite clearly "you cannot serve God and wealth" (Matthew 6:24). Paul confesses in Romans 7 he would not have known sin, he would not have known the many forms of covetousness that possessed his life, if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."

In 1 Timothy 6:10 Paul even suggests that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil leading some to wander away from the faith because of the self-inflected pains they have suffered due to their desire for money. At least one of those pains greed produces is identified with idolatry in Colossians 3:5.

In the book of James, Christians are unrelentingly chastised for thinking they can delay doing God's will in order that they can go to this town or that town to do business and make money. Such people simply fail to realize that their wealth will not save them from miseries or death (James 4:13-5:5). James is very blunt:

"You want something and you do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts."

Scripture is clear. If you are a Christian who is wealthy or desire to have wealth you have a problem. Yet in our day greed is seldom identified as a major problem for Christians.

Lust, which is usually associated with sexual misconduct, seems to have become the sin that Christians worry about. It is not clear to me why that is the case, but it may be we think we know what it looks like when we are under the power of lust. For all the changes alleged to be characteristic of our sexual ethics, it is still assumed that we can spot promiscuity or adultery.

We assume, moreover, that such behaviour can be attributed to lust understood as out of control sexual desire. Yet I suspect that greed grips our lives more than lust. But we fail to focus on greed because we are not sure we know how to identify what greed looks like. Indeed, I am of the opinion that what is often identified as lust may actually be a form of greed.

The very fact that the lust that grips so many lives is never satiated suggests that lust has become a form of greed. For if any one characteristic is to be associated with greed it is the presumption that no matter how much we may have we need "more." We need more because we cannot be sure that what we have is secure. So the more we have the more we must have in order to secure what we have.

As Bill May observed, the vices in traditional catalogues of sins were often associated with various body parts - lying with the tongue; lust with the genitals; gluttony with the throat, pride with the chest, conceit with the turned head, and avarice with the arms and legs. The person possessed by avarice reaches and grasps the goods of another. Things come into the possession of the greedy by reaching and holding. Mastery and possession are the marks of a person who is determined by avarice.

That greed names the felt necessity to have more may help explain the seeming paradox that greed seems to become a particularly prominent challenge in economies of plenty.

It is quite interesting, for example, that with the rise of money economies in Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there is a distinct increase in references to the sin of greed by theologians and bishops. Money, it seems, allowed more people to manifest signs of wealth which meant the more wealth they had the more wealth they needed to sustain the wealth they had. For the rich there is never "enough."

I do not mean to suggest that avarice only became a named vice with the development of moneyed economies. The rise of monasticism clearly was the crucial development necessary for the articulation of the seven deadly sins.

Augustine would identify pride as the cardinal or original sin, but the monks who inhabited the Egyptian desert thought greed to be the sin that birthed the other sins. According to Rusty Reno, "They observed a deep human fear of dependence on God that manifested itself in a perennial desire to accumulate some small margin of protective, sustaining property."

That monasticism preceded the identification of avarice as the primal sin is a nice confirmation that our very ability to name our sins is a theological achievement. In other words, the very presumption that we can name our sins and declare that we are sinners prior to God's grace is an indication that we are possessed by sin. For we are only able to confess that we are possessed by sin on our way out of sin.

Accordingly a community must exist that makes possible the identification of the subtly of sin. That is particularly true when you are dealing with a sin as subtle as greed.

I think, for example, it is not accidental that you needed a Saint Francis for the discovery by Christians that we had lost the ability to recognize how greed possessed our lives. The subsequent development of the Franciscan order was crucial for the acknowledgment by the church that the church itself was possessed by possessions.

Yet the very Order that had at its centre the discipline of begging was soon able to make holiness a commodity subject to greed. William Langland in Piers Plowman depicts the friars' ability to turn their alleged sanctity into a means to acquire money.

Langland characterized the friars, in the words of Kelly Johnson, as "hawkers of holiness," who are "all the more prone to simony because of their practices of poverty and begging." Thus in the "Prologue" to Piers Plowman , the dreamer says:

"I found there friars from all four orders, / Preaching to people to profit their gut, / And glossing the gospel to their own good liking; / Coveting fine copes, some of these doctors contradicted authorities. / Many of these masterful mendicant friars / Bend their love of money to their proper business. / And since charity's become a broker and chief agent for lords' / Confessions / Many strange things have happened these last years. / Unless Holy church and charity clear away such confessors / The world's worst misfortune mounts up fast."

Langland's suggestion that the "worst misfortune mounts up fast" might well be a description of our situation. That a poem like Piers Plowman could be written suggests that the poet could still draw on the tradition to show what greed looks like and why it is such a threat to Christians.

But it is unclear if that is the case with us. For greed has become the necessary engine to sustain economic growth. We are obligated to want more because if we do not want more then we will put someone out of a job.

Most of us are familiar with Gordon Gekko's famed celebration of greed in Oliver Stone's film Wallstreet . But the virtues of greed found its most original and persuasive form in Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees :

"Vast Number throng'd the fruitful Hive; / Yet those vast Numbers made 'em thrive; / Million endeavouring to supply / Each other's Lust and Vanity / Thus every Part was full of Vice, / Yet the whole Mass a Paradise."

From Mandeville's perspective "frugality is like honesty, a mean starving virtue, that is only fit for small societies of good peaceable men, who are contented to be poor so that they may be easy; but in a large stirring nation you may soon have enough of it."

Deirdre McCloskey has tried to qualify Mandeville's account of the necessity of avarice for economic growth by arguing that markets live in communities of virtue for which economists often fail to account.

William Schweiker even suggests that because "property" is a cultural construction entangled with arrangements for human identity and worth may mean that what we call "greed" should be better understood as an appropriate desire necessary to sustain market driven economies.

I am not convinced, however, that McCloskey's and Schweiker's language transforming proposals to understand greed even in a limited way as a good is a good idea.

For example, Alasdair MacIntyre observes that for those shaped by the habits of modern societies it is assumed as a fundamental good that acquisitiveness is a character trait indispensable to continuous and limitless economic growth.

From such a standpoint it is inconceivable that a systematically lower standard of living can be conceived as an alternative to the economics and politics of peculiarly modern societies. For such societies prices and wages have to be understood to be unrelated so that desert in terms of labour, notions of just price and just wage, makes no sense.

Yet, as MacIntyre argues, a community shaped by the virtues that would make greed a vice "would have to set strict limits to growth insofar as that is necessary to preserve or enhance a distribution of goods according to desert."

That we find it hard to conceive of an alternative to limitless economic growth is an indication of our spiritual condition. It is a condition well understood by the monks who thought the desire for honour and power to be an expression of the felt need to control the world around us so that we might be more godlike.

Thus Cassian saw anger as one of the forms greed takes in those who no longer cling to the One alone who can provide stability. Deprived of God we become self-absorbed seeking in external goods a satisfaction for our inner emptiness. When those goods fail we turn on others as well as ourselves as a way to hide the emptiness of our lives.

In The City of God , Augustine suggests that the Roman elites indulged in various forms of luxury and illicit pleasures to distract them from the inevitability of death. He observes:

"the essential context for ambition is a people corrupted by greed and sensuality. And greed and sensuality in a people is the result of that prosperity which the great Nasica in his wisdom maintained should be guarded against, when he opposed the removal of a great and strong and wealthy enemy state. His intention was that lust should be restrained by fear, and should not issue in debauchery, and that the check on debauchery should stop greed from running riot."

Augustine, according to Robert Dodaro, argued that the fear of death, the fear that their lives would not be remembered, meant the Roman elites lived in fear of the loss of status and comfort. They were greedy for glory hoping by glory their lives might have significance.

Empire was the means of sustaining status and well-being, but empire also produced an ever increasing social anxiety about annihilation. As a result the Romans became over dependent on military force. Dodaro observes that from Augustine's perspective the Romans were caught in a vicious circle that

"linked the threat of annihilation with an ever-growing political and military response to foreign threats, disseminating anxiety throughout the Empire to such an extent that even the inhabitants of Roman Africa are alarmed by the Visigothic assault on Rome."

Of course we may think that the Romans are Romans and we are not. We assume, therefore, we are not subject to the same death denying greed that characterized the lives of the Roman pagans.

However, in his book The Seven Deadly Sins Today , Henry Fairlie has given an account of how greed grips our lives - an account that echoes the suggestion in the book of James that there is a connection between greed and war - that sounds very much like Augustine's characterization of the Romans.

Fairlie suggests that we are a people harassed by greed just to the extent our greed leads us to engage in unsatisfying modes of work so that we may buy things that we have been harassed into believing will satisfy us. We complain of the increased tempo of our life, but that is a reflection of the economic system we have created.

We know, moreover, no other way to keep the system going other than the threat of war. We tolerate the world shaped by our avarice because that world in return temptingly and cunningly makes us believe that there are no alternatives to a world so constituted.

I do not mean to suggest that it is only with the development of capitalist economic systems that we have lost the ability to recognize greed or, even if we are able to recognize it, think it a moral liability.

For example, in a sermon on Luke 16:19-31 Luther observed that the rich and arrogant people of his day no longer heed the warning contained in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. They do not because the rich think of themselves as pious and without greed. They are able to do so because vice has been turned into virtue. Greed has come to be viewed as being talented, smart and a careful steward.

Therefore "neither prince nor peasant, nobleman nor average citizen is any longer considered greedy, but only upstanding, the common consensus being that the man who prudently provides for himself is a resourceful person who knows how to take care of himself."

Luther's suggestion, I think, points to a way that the subtle creatures that we are can turn greed into a virtue.

In his important book Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar , Paul Griffiths provides a telling account of curiosity. We may not be able to imagine a world without avarice, but we still think avarice is a vice. According to Griffiths, however, though we think curiosity to be a commendable virtue that scholar and student should try to develop that has not always been the case.

According to Griffiths prior to modernity curiosity was universally thought to be a vice. It was so because curiosity was an ordering of the affections, a form of love, by which the knower sought to make that which they knew unique to themselves.

The curious desired to create new knowledge in an effort to give them control over that which they knew. By dominating that which they came to know they could make what they know a private possession. "Curiosity is, then, in brief, appetite for the ownership of new knowledge ."

The curious seek to know what they do not yet know. As a result that which they come to know ravishes them by enacting what Griffiths characterizes as a "sequestered intimacy." Griffiths uses the language of "sequestering" to suggest that the curious think that what they have come to know is for their exclusive use.

The curious assume they are masters of what they have come to know. Because they claim what they know is peculiar to them they seek as well as create envy in those who do not know what they know.

In a way not unlike Augustine's understanding of the place of the spectacle for the Romans, Griffiths suggests that the curious seek spectacles to distract them from the loneliness that is the necessary result of their desire to possess what they have come to know.

The desire for novelty, the desire to have knowledge that I alone can possess, produces a restlessness that "is inflamed rather than assuaged by the spectacles it constructs." Curiosity so understood is the intellectual expression of the greed correlative to an economic system built on the need to have those that make up the system to always want "more."

The alternative to curiosity, according to Griffiths, is studiousness. Studiousness, like curiosity, entails an ordering of the affections and is, therefore, a form of love. But the studious do not seek to "sequester, own, possess, or dominate what they hope to know; they want to participate lovingly in it, to respond to it knowingly as gift rather than as potential possession, to treat it as icon rather than as spectacle."

For the studious, what they know can be loved and contemplated, but not dominated by sequestration. The studious, therefore, accept as a gift what they have come to know which means they assume that which they know is known in a common making possible a shared life.

The contrast between the curious and the studious will be determined, according to Griffiths, by their willingness or unwillingness to share what they know with others. Whether we are or not possessed by our possessions can only be determined to the extent we are ready to give away that which we have.

Griffiths associates such a willingness to share our knowledge of Christ just to the extent that the degree to which any of us know Christ and what the gospel is, and demands, is the "degree to which we must share that knowledge by giving it away."

The studious Christian, therefore, seeks in Griffiths' words a "participatory intimacy driven by wonder and riven by lament" which makes it impossible for them to seek ownership of what they have been given. For Christians believe that all creatures have been brought into being by God out of nothing. Accordingly the studious recognize that only God possesses or owns any creature.

Only God, therefore, has the power to sequester any being into privacy or to grant it public display. Alms, and the sharing of what we know is a form of alms giving, is rightly understood not as our giving away what is ours, but rather is making available to others what was God's before we had a use for it.

Greed is rightly called a deadly sin because it kills the possibility of a proper human relation to the Creator. Greed presumes and perpetuates a world of scarcity and want - a world where there is never "enough." But, as Sam Wells argues, a world shaped by scarcity is a world that cannot trust that God has given all that we need; greed prohibits faith. But the contrary is true.

Wells reminds us that the problem is not that there is too little in God but there is too much. Overwhelmed by "God's inexhaustible creation, limitless grace, relentless mercy, enduring purpose, fathomless love," we turn away finding such a God "too much to contemplate, assimilate, understand."

And so Wells reminds us it is in the Eucharist that we have the prismatic act that makes possible our recognition that God has given us everything we need. The Eucharist not only is the proclamation of abundance, but it is the enactment of abundance. In the Eucharist we discover that we cannot use Christ up.

In the Eucharist we discover that the more the body and blood of Christ is shared, the more there is to be shared. The Eucharist, therefore, is the way the church learns to understand why generosity rather than greed must and can shape our economic relations.

The good news is that we have been given all we need in order not to be possessed by greed. The good news is that we worship a God who, through our worship of Him, makes it possible for us to recognize that although we may be possessed by greed, through confession and repentance we can be forgiven.

Forgiveness, moreover, is the gift of grace that turns our lives of entitlement into lives of humility and gratitude. To learn to be forgiven, to be able to accept the gift of forgiveness without regret, is the condition that makes possible the recognition that all that we have we have through sharing.

There is an alternative to a world based on greed. The alternative to the world of greed is a people capable of participating through worship in the love of the Father for the Son through the Spirit.

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. His most recent books are Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian (Wipf and Stock, 2011), and War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity , which will be published by Baker Academic in October 2011.

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The neuroscience of greed: A glimpse into our brain’s reaction to fear and desire

(Photo credit: OpenAI's DALL·E)

In a recent study published in Behavioral and Brain Functions , scientists have delved into the interplay between fear and greed, revealing intriguing insights into our brain’s workings. By examining how individuals’ brains react to negative emotional faces, the research sheds light on the neurological underpinnings of dispositional greed, offering a novel perspective on the age-old adage of fear and greed driving human behavior.

The scientific investigation was motivated by the desire to bridge a gap in our understanding of the neurobiological roots of greed, especially outside the financial realm. While fear often leads to defensive actions, greed pushes individuals towards risk-taking and aggressive behaviors.

This divergence, particularly evident in financial decision-making, suggests a complex relationship between our emotional responses and behavioral outcomes. The researchers aimed to explore this relationship further by focusing on how the brain’s reaction to negative emotions relates to greed.

“Greed is an extremely critical theme in the history of human development,” said study author Qiang Wang, a professor at Tianjin Normal University in China. “It has attracted the attention from many disciplines, including philosophy, religion, economics, and psychology.”

“With the development of brain imaging techniques such as fMRI, EEG, and MEG, we have an opportunity to comprehensively understand its cognitive and neural mechanisms. However, the studies using these neuroscience techniques are relatively few, and my personal interest on this topic further drives me to conduct experiments focusing on greed.”

For their study, the researchers recruited 452 college students, with the participants’ ages ranging between 18 and 26 years. These individuals were divided into two cohorts: one that underwent a task-based fMRI scan while engaging in a face-matching task (Cohort 1) and another that participated only in resting-state fMRI scanning (Cohort 2).

Prior to the scanning sessions, all participants were assessed for their level of greed using the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS), a validated tool designed to measure greed as a personality trait. This scale helped the researchers quantify the tendency to act greedy, facilitating a correlational analysis with neural activity.

The face-matching task, employed with Cohort 1, was chosen for its efficiency and low-cost in terms of time for investigating basic emotional responses like fear and anger. Participants in this cohort were shown a trio of faces and asked to select one of two faces at the bottom of the screen that matched the target face displayed at the top.

This task included blocks of fearful, angry, and neutral faces, designed to elicit brain reactivity to negative emotional faces without imposing domain-specific biases. The task’s structure — interleaving blocks of face matching with blocks of a shape-matching sensorimotor control task — allowed for a clear comparison between emotional and non-emotional processing in the brain.

Contrary to what might be expected based on previous research, the researchers did not find a direct association between the amygdala’s reactivity to negative emotional faces and dispositional greed. The amygdala is known for its role in processing emotional stimuli, particularly fear and anger.

A pivotal discovery of the study was the significant relationship between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) reactivity to negative emotional faces and dispositional greed. Specifically, individuals with higher levels of dispositional greed exhibited altered reactivity in the vmPFC when faced with negative stimuli, suggesting a unique neural basis of greed that differs from the traditional understanding of fear-driven behaviors.

Further illuminating the study’s findings were the observations regarding functional connectivity between the vmPFC and other brain regions. The research found that individuals with higher greed levels demonstrated weaker functional connectivity between the vmPFC and regions associated with top-down control and visual processing when engaging with negative emotional stimuli. This pattern indicates that greed may involve a diminished regulation of negative emotions, as well as altered processing of emotional and social cues, pointing to a broader network of brain regions involved in the manifestation of greed.

“Greedy people are not as happy as we imagine,” Wang told PsyPost. “The possible mechanism might depend on the neural response to negative emotion faces, especially in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex but not the amygdala.”

These findings lay the groundwork for future research aimed at unraveling the intricate neural networks that govern greed and its effects on human behavior. By pinpointing the vmPFC as a key region associated with greed, the study opens new avenues for understanding the brain mechanisms linked to selfish behaviors.

While the study offers groundbreaking insights, it also has limitations, such as its focus on a specific demographic (college students) and the use of a singular task for emotional elicitation. These factors highlight the need for further research involving diverse populations and varied methodologies to fully understand the neural dynamics of greed.

“I will continue to unveil the neural substrates underlying greed, especially focusing on the emotion, reward, and top-down control networks as well as possible non-invasive neural stimulation to modulate individual greed level on money and materials,” Wang said.

The study, “ Reactivity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but not the amygdala, to negative emotion faces predicts greed personality trait ,” was authored by Kun Deng, Weipeng Jin, Keying Jiang, Zixi Li, Hohjin Im, Shuning Chen, Hanxiao Du, Shunping Guan, Wei Ge, Chuqiao Wei, Bin Zhang, Pinchun Wang, Guang Zhao, Chunhui Chen, Liqing Liu, and Qiang Wang.

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November 1, 2013

Greed: How Economic Selfishness Harms Us All

Taming greed in favor of cooperation would benefit both individuals and society

By Dan Ariely & Aline Grüneisen

“I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that 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.” These are the words of Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film Wall Street . The poster boy for unharnessed greed echoes the sentiment of rational free-market economists, who view greed as not only an inevitable aspect of human nature but ultimately a desirable one.

As the prevailing (yet simplistic) economic theory goes, greed motivates competition, and competition is essential for growth in a functioning market. By focusing on personal gains, people directly contribute to the greater good. The late American economist Milton Friedman espoused this ideology of greed when he said, “The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests.” He asked, “Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?” Homo economicus , the rational self-interested being that represents standard economic theory, benefits society only to the extent that he maximizes his own utility.

Yet greed has historically had a bad reputation. Even today the overwhelming majority of people shun greedy behavior. When we consider the situations in which financial self-interest benefits individuals and society and when it impedes, there are few of the former and many of the latter. The belief that greed allows markets to flourish is more likely a reflection of the ability of Homo sapiens to justify our selfish motivations than it is a prescription for economic success. Understanding this fact, along with a greater appreciation of greed's harm, can go a long way toward curtailing selfish behavior.

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“Thou Shalt Not Covet …” If we rewind to ancient times, the idea of greed as a sin is planted throughout history. Philosophers from Socrates and Plato to David Hume and Immanuel Kant viewed greed as a moral violation, to be avoided and denounced. Roman Christian poet Prudentius depicted greed in the Early Middle Ages as the most frightening of all vices. And in its itemized treatment of this sin, among others, the Bible set forth the 10th commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.”

Today, rather than taking a purely moral approach, much of the opposition to greed appears to stem from its negative effects on others. When people prosper at the expense of others, for example, observers are repulsed. In a study published in 1986 psychologist Daniel Kahneman, now emeritus professor at Princeton University, and his colleagues showed that consumers refuse to support companies that take advantage of their customers for the sake of profit (through price gouging, for example). More recently, in unpublished work, Amit Bhattacharjee, now at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania reported that people judge even the mere act of profit seeking as harmful to society. The researchers found that more profitable firms were regarded as less deserving of their winnings, less subject to competition and more motivated to make money regardless of the consequences. Furthermore, when asked to compare two hypothetical organizations that were identical aside from their “for-profit” or “nonprofit” status, people perceived for-profit firms as less valuable and more socially damaging than the nonprofits. Thus, the perception of greed as harmful extends to the mere act of profiting, which is of course the only way that capitalist markets can function.

This aversion to greed-driven, profit-seeking behavior may be based on a fundamental desire for fairness, including, for example, more equal wealth distribution. In a study published in 2013 sociology graduate student Esra Burak of Stanford University showed that 61 percent of Americans claim that they would support a cap on compensation for extremely high earners, regardless of how hard they have worked or what they have achieved. In addition, in laboratory games in which people are asked to contribute to a public pool of money that will later be split among all participants, players readily penalize those who greedily hold on to their resources. They keep defectors in check and will do so even when restoring fairness comes at a personal financial cost.

Yet not everyone finds value in suppressing greed. In a series of studies published in 2011 organizational behavior professor Long Wang of the City University of Hong Kong and his colleagues had students play the “dictator game,” in which participants are granted a sum of money that they can divvy up among themselves and an anonymous partner in any way they choose. The researchers found that the more a student had studied economics, the more money he or she kept for himself or herself and the less likely the individual was to explain his or her actions in terms of fairness. In a second study, students reflected on their past greedy behavior in writing, rated the morality of greed in general, and tried to define greed in their own words. By all three measures, the more students had been schooled in economics, the more positively they viewed greed. And as a third experiment showed, even just a hint of exposure to economic theory can convince people of the virtues of greed. The researchers found that students with no prior training held more positive opinions of greed just after they read a statement on the economic benefits of self-interest.

Corrosive Competition Although we may be easily swayed by these convenient rationalizations, the economic justification for greed is nonetheless shortsighted. Ferocious competition may occasionally lead to optimal market outcomes, but it can also have harmful side effects. Think about competition in sports. At first glance, the drive to be the best appears to propel human achievements to new heights. World records are surpassed, and yesterday's Olympic medalists pale in comparison with today's champions. Yet extreme dedication has costs. Athletes may not spend enough time with their friends and families, or they may sacrifice their long-term health to perform better in the short term—by overexerting their body or taking performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids.

The consequences of unchecked greed can also spill over into society. In his 2011 book The Darwin Economy , economist Robert H. Frank of Cornell University outlines some of the disastrous effects of allowing competition to run free. Take, for example, neighbors gunning for social status. Each tries to outdo the others, purchasing a slightly flashier car, bigger pool or more expensive grill. When Joe Jones down the block builds a home theater and Jane Smith across the street installs a 3-D amphitheater, you will no longer be satisfied with your meager widescreen television. We don't simply try to keep up with the Joneses, we try to surpass them—triggering what Frank calls “expenditure cascades.” That is, high spending by top earners shifts the reference point for those earning just a bit less, affecting those next in the ladder of prosperity, and so on. This chain of events can culminate in all classes spending more than they can afford, leading to a higher likelihood of bankruptcy (from increased debt), divorce (from the pressures of financial instability) and longer commutes to work (after moving to cheaper neighborhoods to cope with the debt).

The financial crisis of 2008 arose from a similar conflict between eagerness for short-term gains and long-term prosperity. High competition among financial institutions drove them to “financial innovations” that eventually left many of us with bankruptcies, foreclosures, a lack of trust in the market and a substantial national debt that we will be paying for generations to come.

Greed can also encourage ethically dubious behaviors. In an unpublished experiment with Lalin Anik of Duke University, we investigated whether people would be more willing to profit at the expense of others if they could rationalize their actions more easily—specifically by claiming that their motives were intended to benefit another group: shareholders. To explore this hypothesis, we asked participants to imagine themselves as the CEO of a publicly traded bank. We gave them a list of ethically questionable actions that would profit their company and asked which ones they would take. They could, for example, charge overdraft fees, increase interest on securities held or use tax shelters to offset income with losses from previous years. When participants were told that their primary goal as CEO was to maximize shareholder value, they were much more willing to partake in these ethically questionable acts. And when some of these participants were told that their year-end bonuses depended on satisfying this goal, the questionable behaviors became even more popular.

Perhaps shockingly, these results were most pronounced for those who aced the three-item financial literacy test we gave them. That is, those who were more educated in finance were even more inclined toward questionable behavior. Although most of us perceive avarice in a negative light, we can be greedy ourselves when given the right justifications for our behavior.

Cultivating Cooperation Despite this capacity to rationalize selfishness, people do not always avail themselves of it. They can often be quite selfless, sacrificing their own welfare to benefit others. People help those in need, donate money to charities and volunteer their time. (Yes, even economists sometimes help the elderly lady carry her groceries across the street.) In scenarios such as the dictator game, most participants reliably share some of their wealth—despite the fact that the rational economic decision is to keep it all.

All in all, humans are part Scrooge and part Robin Hood. We are more likely to be selfish when we can easily explain our choices or when we fail to consider the people who could suffer from them. Yet when we think about the people whom we can hurt and help, we behave more considerately. The lessons are straightforward: we must not let rational economic theory eclipse the fact that greed can be damaging. Next, we should work to make the consequences of our actions clearer, with the hope that our cooperative spirit will be boosted by concrete examples of those who might bear the brunt of our actions. And finally, we must combat the rationalizations of self-interest, including the simplistic mantra that greedy behavior propels society forward.

Yet if you are still trying to surpass the Joneses, bear in mind that above the poverty line, having more money will not make you appreciably happier. In fact, research shows that individuals who focus on financial success are less stable and less happy overall. So rather than splurging on a high-end grill that will make your neighbor jealous—and perhaps add to your debt—choose instead to help your neighbor assemble her grill for a block party cookout. And if the party small talk turns to the economy, slip in a pitch for cooperation rather than greed.

Dan Ariely is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University and founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He is co-creator of a documentary on corruption and a bestselling author.

Essay on Greed Is Bad

Students are often asked to write an essay on Greed Is Bad in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Greed Is Bad

Greed: a short introduction.

Greed is a strong desire to have more of something, like money or power, than is needed. It is a bad trait because it can lead to many problems. Greed can make people selfish, dishonest, and hurtful to others. It can ruin relationships and cause unhappiness.

Impact on Personal Relationships

Greed can harm our personal relationships. If we are always wanting more, we might forget to appreciate what we already have. This can make us unhappy and make it hard for us to get along with others. It can also lead to feelings of jealousy and anger.

Effects on Society

Greed can also have a negative impact on society. It can lead to corruption, where people in power use their position for their own gain. This can harm the community and make it harder for everyone to succeed.

In conclusion, greed is a harmful trait. It can damage our relationships, make us unhappy, and harm society. It is important to be grateful for what we have and to treat others with kindness and respect.

250 Words Essay on Greed Is Bad

Introduction, effects on relationships.

Greed can harm our relationships. When we want more than we need, we might start to take from others. This can make them feel used or unimportant. It can lead to fights and lost friendships.

Impact on Personal Growth

Greed can also stop us from growing as people. If we are always wanting more, we might not take the time to be happy with what we have. This can make us feel unsatisfied, even when we have a lot.

Consequences for Society

Greed is not just bad for us as individuals, but also for society. When people are greedy, they can ignore the needs of others. This can lead to inequality and injustice.

In conclusion, greed is a harmful trait that can damage our relationships, stop our personal growth, and harm society. It is important to be thankful for what we have, and to think about the needs of others. This will lead to a happier and more fair world.

500 Words Essay on Greed Is Bad

Greed is a strong desire to have more of something than you actually need. It can be for money, power, food, or anything else. Most of us are taught from a young age that being greedy is not good. This essay will explain why greed is bad.

Impact on Society

Greed can also have a negative impact on society. When people are greedy, they can take more than their fair share of resources. This can lead to others not having enough. For example, if a person is greedy for money, they might not pay their fair share of taxes. This can lead to less money for schools, hospitals, and other important services.

Greed and Happiness

Greed can also make it harder for people to be happy. When a person is always wanting more, they may never feel satisfied with what they have. They may always be thinking about what they don’t have, rather than enjoying what they do have. This can make it hard for them to feel happy or content.

Greed and the Environment

In conclusion, greed is bad for many reasons. It can hurt our relationships, society, and the environment. It can also make it hard for us to be happy. Instead of being greedy, we should try to be thankful for what we have and think about the needs of others. This can help us to live happier and more fulfilling lives.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

Happy studying!

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Greed Is Bad (Essay Sample)

Greed is bad.

In the 1987 film, Wall Street, Gordon Gekko gives a speech and asserts that greed is good because it will save the country and companies from bankruptcy. Is greed truly a positive element in society? No, greed will never be good as it is one of the worst human attitudes. It consists of taking more than one deserves or has worked for it and can lead to extremely adverse processes and outcomes. Greed is bad because it can result in illegal activities and extensive, unethical human exploitation apart from directly harming your health and relationships.

Greed is appalling because it can motivate you to conduct illegal activities for your own selfish benefit. A good example would be corporate executives who have been greedy because their salaries are related to stock prices. Enron and similar executives doctored or asked someone else to manipulate the financial statements of their company in order to reach millions of rewards in terms of performance-based salaries and bonuses. Another example would be sales agents who practice fraudulent acts to dupe customers. If you are greedy, you may be predisposed of thinking and implementing illegal things due to significant financial rewards. Avarice of this kind can turn you into a criminal and put you behind bars.

In connection to the effect of greed above, greed can cause wide-scale human exploitation. To illustrate, some corporate executive simply think about how much they can earn from increasing stock prices as well as stealing funds from employees’ retirement savings, thereby resulting in their companies being bankrupt. They exploited their people by abusing their trust and making them think that everything is alright. Another example of the impact of greed is slavery. Slave traders abducted millions of blacks and brought them to America. They took away their liberty and turned them into possessions because they are hungry for wealth and power. One of the worst things of being greedy of money is that it can suck your humanity and turn you into the most malevolent kind of inhumane being.

Greed harms your health and relationships. Due to greed, you may not be getting sufficient sleep as you get obsessed with how you can take advantage of other people. Moreover, you may be somewhat depressed because of how hard it can also be psychologically to mistreat others. You may binge eat to satisfy the inner cravings and dissatisfactions. Either way, you are increasing your blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight as well as raising the risk of hypertension, heart attack, and other diseases. Thinking ill about other people in the process of avarice, you can also be harming your health. Likewise, greediness damages your relationships. Desire for too much can spill over to how you treat your family. If you desire power, you will never listen or share power with your spouse. As a consequence, the marriage will be very unhappy and has a high risk of breaking apart and turning into a divorce. A greedy person will most likely make the people around them unhappy.

Greediness can produce illegal and unethical actions, making it bad for your well being. Greed affects your thinking and perceptions of other people as it puts you on a spot where you think that it is right to take more than you deserve and to use people as if they are only means to an end. Greediness can make you unhappy when you are using everyone around you and have nobody to love you. Money is not everything in this world, and to have a good life, you also need to feel you have lived as a good person and you are loved. Being greedy produces more harms than good as it is nothing but asking for death inside your soul and wreaking havoc in society.

What causes greed and how can we deal with it?

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Goldstein Family Community Chair in Human Rights, University of Nebraska Omaha

Disclosure statement

Laura E. Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Nebraska Omaha provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Recent news stories have highlighted unethical and even lawless actions taken by people and corporations that were motivated primarily by greed.

Federal prosecutors, for example, charged 33 wealthy parents, some of whom were celebrities, with paying bribes to get their children into top colleges. In another case, lawyer Michael Avenatti was accused of trying to extort millions from Nike, the sports company.

Allegations of greed are listed in the lawsuit filed against members of Sackler family , the owners of Purdue Pharma, accused of pushing powerful painkillers as well as the treatment for addiction.

In all of these cases, individuals or companies seemingly had wealth and status to spare, yet they allegedly took actions to gain even further advantage. Why would such successful people or corporations allegedly commit crimes to get more?

As a scholar of comparative religious ethics , I frequently teach basic principles of moral thought in diverse religious traditions.

Religious thought can help us understand human nature and provide ethical guidance, including in cases of greed like the ones mentioned here.

Anxiety and injustice

The work of the 20th-century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on human anxiety offers one possible explanation for what might drive people to seek more than they already have or need.

Niebuhr was arguably the most famous theologian of his time. He was a mentor to several public figures . These included Arthur Schlesinger Jr. , a historian who served in the Kennedy White House, and George F. Kennan , a diplomat and an adviser on Soviet affairs. Niebuhr also came to have a deep influence on former President Barack Obama .

Niebuhr said the human tendency to perpetuate injustice is the result of a deep sense of existential anxiety, which is part of the human condition. In his work “The Nature and Destiny of Man,” Niebuhr described human beings as creatures of both “spirit” and “nature.”

As “spirit,” human beings have consciousness, which allows them to rise above the sensory experiences they have in any given moment.

Yet, at the same time, he said, human beings do have physical bodies, senses and instincts, like any other animal. They are part of the natural world and are subject to the risks and vulnerabilities of mortality, including death.

Together, these traits mean that human beings are not just mortal, but also conscious of that mortality. This juxtaposition leads to a deeply felt anxiety, which, according to Niebuhr, is the “inevitable spiritual state of man.”

To deal with the anxiety of knowing they will die, Niebuhr says, human beings are tempted to – and often do – grasp at whatever means of security seem within their reach, such as knowledge, material goods or prestige.

In other words, people seek certainty in things that are inherently uncertain.

Hurting others

This is a fruitless task by definition, but the bigger problem is that the quest for certainty in one’s own life almost always harms others. As Niebuhr writes :

“Man is, like the animals, involved in the necessities and contingencies of nature; but unlike the animals he sees this situation and anticipates its perils. He seeks to protect himself against nature’s contingencies; but he cannot do so without transgressing the limits which have been set for his life. Therefore all human life is involved in the sin of seeking security at the expense of other life.”

The case of parents who may have committed fraud to gain coveted spots for their children at prestigious colleges offers an example of trying to find some of this certainty. That comes at the expense of others, who cannot gain admission to a college because another child has gotten in via illegitimate means.

As other research has shown, such anxiety may be more acute in those with higher social status. The fear of loss, among other things, could well drive such actions .

What we can learn from the Buddha

While Niebuhr’s analysis can help many of us understand the motivations behind greed, other religious traditions might offer further suggestions on how to deal with it.

Several centuries ago, the Buddha said that human beings have a tendency to attach themselves to “things” – sometimes material objects, sometimes “possessions” like prestige or reputation.

Scholar Damien Keown explains in his book on Buddhist ethics that in Buddhist thought, the whole universe is interconnected and ever-changing. People perceive material things as stable and permanent, and we desire and try to hold onto them.

But since loss is inevitable, our desire for things causes us to suffer. Our response to that suffering is often to grasp at things more and more tightly. But we end up harming others in our quest to make ourselves feel better.

Taken together, these thinkers provide insight into acts of greed committed by those who already have so much. At the same time, the teachings of the Buddha suggest that our most strenuous efforts to keep things for ourselves cannot overcome their impermanence. In the end, we will always lose what we are trying to grasp.

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Is Greed Destroying Your Soul?

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As Gordon Gekko famously said in Wall Street , “Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” Do you believe he had a point?

Defined as the obsessive pursuit and accumulation of wealth, greed is also known as one of the seven deadly sins. However, it may have a purpose, according to evolutionary psychologists. They believe that, by pushing us to amass status-signalling possessions, greed can help us attract a mate and thus perpetuate our genetic code.

I prefer to look at greed as a coping mechanism. In my interactions with greedy people, I have observed that many are trying to fill an inner void or solve another emotional problem. I remember one very wealthy executive, let’s call him Sid, who came to me for help. Sid was on the brink of divorce. His wife was fed-up with his self-centred pursuits. His grown-up children were not happy with him either, as he had never paid much attention to them. Sid admitted that chasing deals was the only thing that made him feel alive. He always felt the urge to earn more money.

When I asked Sid why money was so central to his life, he told me that he grew up watching his entrepreneurial father go through several bankruptcies. He remembered how embarrassed he was when his family would hide to avoid creditors. The neighbour’s children would also make fun of him and his family’s financial situation.

I told Sid that he should be pleased with his accomplishments. He was now independently wealthy and could do whatever he wanted. Sid said that he didn’t feel financially secure and gave many unconvincing reasons why he could not relax.

Wealth as a relief for emotional discomfort

Early negative experiences with parents appear to set the stage for feelings of low self-esteem. Many greedy people obsessively pursue wealth as a substitute for what they feel is lacking inside them. But they ignore the high price that comes with greediness – a stunted life.

Materialistic pursuits are often an attempt at relieving emotional discomfort. In fact, the behaviour of greedy people can be compared to that of substance abusers. But just like drugs, material possessions can never provide the comfort and reassurance we all crave. On the contrary, the greedier we become, the more we advance on the path of self-destruction. Unfortunately, amid our busyness, we rarely stop to ask ourselves: “Why am I frantically pursuing wealth?”

Ironically, greed is not so much of a financial issue. It is the symptom of a troubled mind trying to link self-worth to financial worth, usually on a subconscious level. But, like the proverbial leaking bucket that can’t be filled, the personal costs can be high. Far too often, greed comes with stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and despair. In addition, it can lead to maladaptive behaviour patterns such as gambling, hoarding, trickery and even theft. In the corporate world, as John Grant wrote, “fraud is the daughter of greed.”

Societal and existential considerations

Some believe that without a dose of greed, a given person, community or society may lack the motivation to move forward. In sum, greed spurs accomplishments. Others think that greed is simply Homo sapiens’ way of dealing with the existential anxieties of life. It could even be a means to transcend death, since our possessions persist after we pass on. In this light, isn’t greed nothing more than a fact of life? Shouldn’t we just embrace it?

True enough, many successful societies are driven by greed. It has been argued that political systems designed to eliminate greedy behaviour have invariably led to poverty, chaos and other disastrous results. I believe that, as with most things in life, managing greed is about balance. Like all potentially destructive human drives, greed must be tempered by positive social norms, such as generosity. If not, it is bound to trigger social unrest.

Thus, although greed may be important for economic progress, it is fair to say that lust for possessions may contribute to a society’s decline. Unchecked greed can destroy the soul of humanity like a great cancer, metastasising throughout society. Our tendency towards conspicuous consumption has already inflicted severe damage to the environment. The victory of greed over compassion may ultimately cause our civilisation's downfall.

Is there hope?

Society’s ambivalence about greed makes it difficult to “treat” greedy people. After all, many view greed and its related traits – such as ambition and material success – as desirable rather than a potential mental health problem. It is not always easy to explain the harm caused by excessive greed. How can we explain that helping others is the real path to inner fulfilment? Or make greedy people understand that they can do something about their compulsion? There is still such a thing as free will. We all have a choice.

Returning to Sid’s case, I remember how hard it was to convince him that his obsessive pursuit of money was not rational. As he focused on accumulating more, he didn't even realise that he already had it all . More importantly, if money was his sole measure of success, he couldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be all that he would ever have.

If you can’t be content with what you have, you’re unlikely to be happy with more. At one point, I asked Sid to tell me the income level he believed he needed. After reflecting, he came to realise that there would never be such a thing as “enough”. It started to dawn on him just how illogical and destructive his behaviour was – for him and the people in his life.

Sid and I spent quite some time exploring his underlying issues and the associations between his anxiety and his greed-fuelled actions. Gradually, he came to understand that he was really craving self-acceptance and “rich”, satisfying relationships. He saw that he could break his psychological chains and that he did have choices.

One of the most difficult tasks for greedy people is learning to be selfish in a proper way. They need to pay attention to their inner self. As Sid’s case shows, this is not an easy process. It requires persistence, patience, humility, courage and commitment. But a long-term investment in the self can be a powerful antidote to greed and other forms of addiction. As the philosopher Vernon Howard said, “You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.”

About the author(s)

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

is the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and the Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus. 

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DimunGe Gunasekara

21/10/2022, 09.36 pm

Good , I too like the the article.  I strongly believe that :  

Time to re-engineered the Sustainability mapping across 360 Degrees

If the world thinking the real sustainability and the disastrous consequences that the human raise  is facing,  the current definition of the sustainability  and the strategies to face them with have to be completely re-defined and re-engineered.  

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Anonymous User

17/10/2019, 08.08 pm

I love this article. Subconsciously, I'm this. I super can relate. We are not rich when we were young and there is this feeling that "I promise myself not go back to the same situation again". I had the opportunity of working abroad. I always ask myself "how much is enough for me", so that I can go back to my country and be with my family. After some time of introspection, I finally determined exactly how much I needed and how many years I will stay in my host country. Also, I try to buy things though, not I need, but will give me closure to the issues of my childhood and teenage years. I try to buy plenty of shoes, branded shirts and gadgets. I was deprived of those when I was young. Now, I'm a bit emotional. Going back, too much of something is bad.

On other perspective, how about the corrupt politicians who keeps on amassing wealth. There is a bible quote that" What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" I'm thinking how much is enough for them? After all, you cant bring the money in your grave.

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Greed Is Good: A 300-Year History of a Dangerous Idea

Not long ago, the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled. How did we come to accept it?

Among MBA students, few words provoke greater consternation than “greed.” Wonder aloud in a classroom whether some practice might fairly be described as greedy , and students don’t know whether to stick up for the Invisible Hand or seek absolution. Most, by turns, do a little of both.

Such reactions shouldn’t be surprising. Greed has always been the hobgoblin of capitalism, the mischief it makes a canker on the faith of capitalists. These students' troubled consciences are not the result of doubts about the efficacy of free markets, but of the centuries of moral reform that was required to make those markets as free as they are.

We sometimes forget that the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled until just a few centuries ago. “A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please God,” St. Jerome said, expressing the prevailing belief in Christendom about the relative worthiness of a life devoted to trade. The choice to enter business didn’t necessarily deprive one of salvation, but it certainly hazarded his soul. “If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way then drowning,” Iago tells a lovesick Rodrigo. “Make all the money thou canst.”

The problem of money-making was not only that it favored earthly delights over divine obligations. It also enflamed the tendency to prefer our own needs over those of the people around us and, more worrisome still, to recklessly trade their best interests for our own base satisfaction. St. Thomas Aquinas, who ranked greed among the seven deadly sins, warned that trade which aimed at no other purpose than expanding one’s wealth was “justly reprehensible” for “it serves the desire for profit which knows no limit.”

It was not until the mischievous moralist Bernard Mandeville that someone attempted to gloss greed as anything other than a shameful motive. A name now largely lost to history, Mandeville became a foil for 18th-century philosophy when, in 1705, he first proposed his infamous equation: Private vices yield public benefits. It came as part of The Fable of the Bees , an allegorical poem that described a thriving beehive where dark intentions keep the wheels of commerce turning. The outrage Mandeville stoked had less to do with this causal explanation than with the assertion that only by such means could a nation grow wealthy and strong. As he contended (with characteristic bluntness) in the conclusion to the Fable :

T’ enjoy the World’s Conveniences, Be fam’d in War, yet live in Ease, Without great Vices, is a vain EUTOPIA seated in the Brain.

Philosophers lined up to take their shots at Mandeville, whose moral paradox seemed so appalling precisely because it could not be so easily dismissed. The most notable among them was Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics, who struggled to distinguish the mainspring of his system from the one Mandeville proposed.

Consider how Smith describes the selfish landowner, of whom he says the “proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, never was more fully verified.” Looking out over his fields, in his imagination, he “consumes himself the whole harvest.” The belly, however, is not so obliging. The greedy landlord may engorge himself without making a dent in his crop, and he is “obliged to distribute” the rest in payment to all those who help supply his “economy of greatness.”

This is Smith’s Invisible Hand at work. It is counterintuitive force for good that, on first glance, seems not especially different from Mandeville’s contention that private vices yield public benefits. Smith was sensitive to this fact—Bernard Mandeville did not exactly make for good company—and he struggled to create distance between them.

He did this in two ways. First, Smith emphasized the moral distinction between primary aims and secondary effects. The Fable of the Bees never explicitly claimed that vice was good in itself , merely that it was advantageous—a subtle distinction that created confusion for Mandeville’s readers which the author, a cynic through and through, made little effort to dispel.

Smith, by contrast, made abundantly clear that, as a matter of moral assessment, one should distinguish between the intentions of an actor and the broader effects of his actions. Recall the greedy landlord. Yes, the primary aims of his daily labors—vanity, sway, self-indulgence—are far from admirable. But in spite of this fact, his efforts still have the effect of distributing widely “the necessaries of life” such that, “without intending it, without knowing it,” he, and others like him, “advance the interest of society.” This is another way of saying, for Smith, the moral logic of free markets was a law of unintended consequences. The Invisible Hand gives what a greedy landlord takes.

The second move Smith made was to effectively redefine “Greed.” Mandeville—and for that matter, the Church Fathers before him—spoke in such a way that any self-interested pursuit seemed morally suspect. Smith, for his part, refused to go along. He acknowledged that pursuing our interests often entails getting what we want from other people, but he maintained that not all of these pursuits, morally speaking, were equal. We get what we want in a complex commercial society—indeed, we get to have a complex commercial society—not because we seize things outright, but because we pursue them in a way that acknowledges legal and cultural constraints. That is how we distinguish the merchant from the mugger. Both pursue their own interests, but only one does so in a manner that confers legitimacy on the gains.

Greed, as such, became an acquisitive exercise that fell on the wrong side of this divide. Some of these activities, like the mugger’s, were fairly prohibited, but those of, say, the mean-spirited merchant were checked by censure and disgrace. These forces did not eradicate selfishness, but by the moral distinction they maintained, they helped establish a new ideal of the upstanding businessman.

That ideal was famously embodied by Smith’s friend, Benjamin Franklin. In his Autobiography , Franklin presented himself as the epitome of a new American Dream, a man who emerged from “Poverty & Obscurity” to attain “a State of Affluence & some Degree of Reputation in the World.” Franklin found nothing to be ashamed of in riches and repute, provided they were turned toward some broader purpose. His success allowed him to retire from the printing business at 42 so that he might spend the balance of his life on initiatives—civic, scientific, philanthropic—that all enhanced the common good.

The example of Franklin, and those like him, gave reason for optimism to those who understood the mixed blessing of free -markets. “Whenever we get a glimpse of the economic man, he is not selfish,” the great English economist Alfred Marshall wrote toward the end of the 19th century. “On the contrary, he is generally hard at work saving capital chiefly for the benefit of others.” By “others,” Marshall principally meant the members of one’s family, but he was also making a larger point about how our “self-interest” can expand and evolve when we have achieved financial security. The “love of money,” he declared, encompasses “an infinite variety of motives,” which “include many of the highest, the most refined, and the most unselfish elements of our nature.”

Then again, they also include lesser elements. Andrew Carnegie might have proclaimed that it was the responsibility of a rich man to act as “agent and trustee for his poorer brethren,” but the steel magnate’s beneficence was backstopped by cheap labor, dangerous working conditions, and swift action to break strikes. Besides, the active redistribution of wealth was something of a side-story (and a subversive one at that) to the moral logic of free markets. The Invisible Hand worked not by appealing to the altruism of exceptionally rich men, but by turning an antisocial instinct like greed into an unwitting civil servant.

Still, by the early 20th century, some believed his services might safely be dismissed. Reflecting on the extraordinary rate of development in Europe and the United States, John Maynard Keynes suggested that “the economic problem” (which he classed as the “struggle for subsistence”) might actually be “solved” by 2030. Then, Keynes said, we might “dare” to assess the “love of money” at its “true value,” which, for those who couldn’t wait, he described as “a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”  In other words, at last, we could afford to shift our attention from the advantages of greed and to disadvantages of greedy people.

Keynes’s views were extreme, but only in expression. Substantively, everyone agreed with him that greed was still a vice and a rather vicious one at that. A. Lawrence Lowell, the President of Harvard University, called “a motive above personal profit” among businessmen a prerequisite for establishing Harvard Business School, while its first dean, Edwin Francis Gay, told a prospective faculty hire that the pedagogy of his institution did not include “teaching young men to be ‘moneymakers.’”

As a lingering distaste for the profit-motive combined with continued economic development, the assumption began to wane that self-interested pursuits were the organizing force of a modern economy. Keynes pointed to this when he extolled the “tendency of big enterprise to socialize itself,” a phenomenon by which enlightened middle-managers—guided by science, reason, and administrative esprit du corps—would at last supplant the animism of the Invisible Hand.  If “the corporate system is to survive,” Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means wrote in the conclusion to their seminal study of the modern American corporation, “the ‘control’ of the great corporation should develop into a purely neutral technocracy, balancing a variety of claims by various groups in the community and assigning to each a portion of the income stream on the basis of public policy rather than private cupidity.”

Berle and Means wrote these lines in 1932. In hindsight, they don’t seem exactly prescient. As a matter of economic science, the revolt against managerial capitalism, and the reevaluation of greed, took shape after the Second World War, led by efforts of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter and, later on, the architects of Agency Theory. Against Keynes, Schumpeter presented a new vision of capitalism as “Creative Destruction.” The “relevant problem” for economists, he said, was not how capitalism “administers existing structures” (the purview of the middle-manager) but “how it creates and destroys them,” an anarchic activity undertaken by Schumpeter’s hero, the entrepreneur.

As an icon for capitalism, the pugnacious individualism of the entrepreneur was entirely at odds with the vision of Berle and Means. According to Schumpeter, what drove an economy was headlong innovation, not careful administration. This was the hallmark of entrepreneurial activity, the courageous effort of an inspired mind, not the fruit of corporate collaboration.

An appeal to “private cupidity” was not the only way of eliciting such inspiration, but it was certainly the most obvious. It was also favored by the enthusiasts of Agency Theory, who began filling the ranks of business schools and economics departments in the ‘60s and ‘70s. They eschewed the common cause of managerial capitalism as an endorsement of soft socialism, an inducement to fuzzy thinking, and a recipe for corporate decay. Instead, they portrayed the company as a collection of self-serving individuals whose interests could be aligned with those of shareholders only by appeals to Keynes’s semi-pathological propensity: the love of money. Thus, the rise of stock options, performance pay, and other compensatory strategies that aimed to spark innovation in the executive suite. For the most part, the moral arguments called upon to support these recommendations took a familiar form. Greedy behavior could be tolerated, even encouraged, but only if it eliminated worse offenses: starvation, exposure, idiocy.

But choosing a lesser evil at the expense of a greater one is merely an exercise in good judgment. It does nothing to change the nature of what is chosen, and when a nation no longer fears, first and foremost, the pangs of abject misery, it may be said that greed has largely served its social purpose. An affluent people might fairly turn their attention to the ugly behavior greed encourages and to the social and political perils of extreme inequality. They may have good reason, in short, to restrain the Invisible Hand.

Accordingly, in recent decades, a new line of argument has opened in the moral defense of greed, a change that was augured and embodied above all others by Ayn Rand. Rand understood that, when someone defended greed by an appeal to the common good, he was also conceding that greed could be checked by it. As the moral foundation for free markets, such an argument was entirely unacceptable to Rand, who took aim at it in her 1965 essay What is Capitalism?

“Implicitly, uncritically, and by default, political economy accepted as its axioms the fundamental tenets of collectivism,” she declared in a sweeping indictment of the Invisible Hand tradition. “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve ‘the common good.’” That may be so, but it is “merely a secondary consequence.” Instead, capitalism is the only economic system in which “the exceptional men” are not “held down by the majority” and in which (as she said elsewhere) the “only good” that humans can do to one another and “the only statement of their proper relationship” are both acknowledged: “Hands off!”

A woman who titled a collection of essays The Virtue of Selfishness , Rand was given to brackish candor. Yet at a time when many people think that the common good is more often imperiled than empowered by unbridled greed, she provides an alternative defense of the acquisitive instinct by appealing to an ethics of gross achievement and a formulation of personal liberty that looks with suspicion and disdain on any talk of civic duty, moral obligation, or even prudential restraint. Her aim was simple: To relieve greed, once and for all, of any moral taint.

“I think greed is healthy,” an apparent acolyte told the graduating class at Berkeley’s business school in 1986. “You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” The speaker was Ivan Boesky, who shortly thereafter would be fined $100 million, and later go to prison, for insider trading. His address was adapted by Oliver Stone as the basis for Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech in Wall Street . An exhortation to shareholders of a sagging company, it reads like a corporate raider’s war cry, with Gekko the grinning avatar of Agency Theory.

Such a blunt endorsement of greed today remains far beyond the mainstream. If we tolerate greed, it is because we accept the hard bargain of the Invisible Hand. We believe that greed can do good, not that it is good. That, we are unwilling to say.

But for the most part, I don’t think we don’t say very much about greed, not comfortably at least. Perhaps that is the inevitable price of an economic system that relies on the vigor of self-interested pursuits, that it instills a kind of moral quietism in the face of avarice, for whether out of a desire to appear non-judgmental or for reasons of moral expediency, unless some action verges on the criminal, we hesitate to call it greed, much less evidence of someone greedy. We don’t deny the existence of such individuals, but like Bigfoot, they tend to be more rumored than seen.

Moral revolutions come about in different ways. If we reject some conduct but rarely admit an example, we enjoy the benefit of being high-minded without the burden of moral restraint. We also embolden that behavior, which proceeds with a presumptive blessing. As a matter of public discourse and polite conversation, “Greed” is unlikely to be “Good” anytime soon, but a vice need not become a virtue for the end result to look the same.

Individual Greed and Selfishness IELTS Essay

Individual greed and selfishness have been the basis of modern society ielts essay.

Individual greed and selfishness have been the basis of modern society. Some people think that we must return to the older and more traditional values of respect for the family and the local community in order to create a better world to live in. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. You should write at least 250 words.

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Individual Greed and Selfishness – Model Essay 1

Undeniably, modernization has tremendously affected people’s lifestyles in our contemporary world. Making decisions alone, humans do not value others’ opinions, although this method of living might have had some positive influences. I personally think that its advantages have been less notable than the traditional one.

Now, many individuals prefer to act solely in the past, leading them to succeed in their life more than before. One important benefit is that they have a better independent lifestyle. The more they live without their parent’s assistance, the more they feel more confident. This means, selfishness has led young to have more independence when it comes to the selection of his or her study subject, while they were more under the control of their parents in this matter before. In addition, this has led citizens to become more successful in their businesses. Craving to save more money, businesspersons compete more with their rivals and produce more high-quality products. For instance, the owner of Apple, a well-known cell phone company in the USA, has had a significant prosperous business by 2014. To compete with other rivals, he decided to raise its profit by producing watch cell phones and surpassed other rivals. As a result, his greedy decision has led people to have a different cell phone, and the owner earned more profit.

In contrast, considering traditions can be more helpful in any aspect of life, and I agree with this view. One important factor is that the rate of crime can be decreased far dramatically. Unfortunately, to make more profit, individuals follow rules less than before, and fraud rates have considerably pulled up. However, had they considered the moral aspects being valued in the past, they would not have crossed the line. Another factor is that emotionally people will have a better supportive condition. Clearly, traditions induce citizens to support their relatives or friends. For example, a bankrupted retailer might be helped by his family before due to the traditions people had in the past, while this has remarkably become forgotten.

In conclusion, humans have become less dependent on their families and community. I personally believe that the benefits earned by this method of living have become less obvious than the traditional one our ancestors had. I personally believe that not only the rate of violence will decrease, but people will be backed up by each other emotionally. I E L T S XPRESS

Selfishness and Greed IELTS Essay – Model Essay 2

Modernity has lost its moral compass with a society plagued by avarice and egoism. In modern society, everything is judged by money and owning things. The more you have, the more successful you are. Consequently, people are racing with each other in which there is no place for the common interest. This modern attitude of self-interest has ruined the traditional, shared values and left people feeling a deep sense of despair. That is why I agree with the given view that we must retrace the golden times when we valued traditions and respected the family and community so that we can build a happier world and a happier tomorrow.

We live in a world where selfishness and excessive desire are pervaded everywhere. Everybody is competing with each other in order to please himself with material acquisitions and possessions. There is nothing wrong with acquiring wealth enough but there is always pressure on people to go for more and more and as a result, we have no time for family and friends. Each and everybody is busy in his own thirst for more. So, both the individual and the society are being affected by this greedy psychic pattern. For example, since the parents cannot spend quality time with their children due to their busy life, children are very often deprived of the love and affection of their parents. As a result, they cannot learn ethics properly from their parents which results in anti-social behavior, violence, binge drinking, bullying, and so on. To add to it, when greed and individualism become the cornerstone of society, it contributes to the growing gulf between the rich and poor.

In contrast, life in the past was simpler and happier. Everybody loved and respected each other. The elder is respected by the younger and the younger is loved by the elder. Not only the older members of the family but also members of the community looked after the children and their advice was valued. Marriage was deemed as the core institution of the society that the divorce was somewhat unknown to them. In addition, society seemed like a big family that everybody knows each other. Everyone shared each other weal and woe. They lived for each other that sharpened man’s feelings of sympathy, and so bred notions of obligation and consideration. Thus, the values of respect for family and society glued everybody that led a happy life.

To recapitulate, living in this society of consumer culture, we are all being succumbing to the greed that is fueling conflict, inequality, and poverty. From what has been discussed above it can be said easily that the traditional value-based society can be the best remedy for this suffocating world and make a heaven-like world to live in. since we cannot return from the computer-based automated world to the manual world but we can definitely revert to these traditional values to try to create a new society which has both material wealth and prosperity and respect for the family and community as well. IELTSX PRESS.com

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IELTS Writing Task 2 on Human Greed – Model Essay 3

Today, the luxury lifestyle has affected humans’ living conditions fundamentally. While in the past traditional rules were a major base for many communities, now people consider money as a priority. Some believe that our ancestors had a better living situation, and I firmly agree with them.

Undeniably, now personal factors have become the first choice for many people living across the world. One obvious example is that the young have less respect for elders. Thinking solely about the benefits, juveniles value less their parents’ attitudes compared to the past. For instance, to select their marriage partner, the former youth considered their parents’ opinions more than now, whereas now they have become more selfish and do not value their parents’ experience. On the other side, parents have become greedy too.

Clearly, they financially backed up their children before more than now; however, many over 65 people always prefer to have more savings instead of helping their children. As a prime example, my grandfather supported my mother’s education tuition, but she has not paid any cent for my education even she knew I had many problems paying it. From my perspective, our ancestors had better living conditions. One important reason behind it is that they were more supportive to each other. Admittedly, the traditional family structure assisted all age groups to have a better feeling about life. Adolescents need to be supported by their adults during their studies, and seniors received more aid from their offspring. Another one is that communities could adapt themselves to some unexpected critical conditions. In this case, had not European poor citizens been supported by the rich after World War II, their homes would not have been recovered so fast.

In conclusion, development of technology, humans have a lacking consideration for others. I personally believe that the former societies had safer lifestyles because all age groups were more supportive of each other, during critical conditions or any stage of life.

Greed in Human – Model Essay 4

Dwight D. Eisenhower has rightly said, “A people that values its privileges above its principles Dwight D. Eisenhower has rightly said, “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Therefore, I agree with the given statement that we must revert to the golden times when we valued traditions and respected the elderly and our neighbourhoods so that we have a happier today and a happier tomorrow.

Today we live in an era of technology in which the whole Earth has shrunk and become a global village. Everybody is connected to everybody through telephone lines and the Internet but the warmth of relationships has taken a back seat. Most people have more than enough wealth, comfort and freedom but their hearts desire even more. To satisfy their hearts’ greed people have become workaholics and as a result, have no time for family and friends. People have become selfish, isolated and indifferent. Each person is busy in his own quest for more. To add to it, the youngsters who are at ease with the new technology think that the elderly are good for nothing and that is why they don’t respect them. On the other hand, life in the past was slower and simpler. People loved and respected each other. Family members had a lot of face-to-face contact with each other. Older members of the family were well looked after and their advice was valued. Divorces were very rare as marriage was considered a sacred institution. Moreover, community get-togethers were often organized and people knew the farthest neighbours. Nowadays, the next-door neighbours are also not recognized. There were lesser worries and tensions in earlier times. i e l t s x press

To conclude, living in this modern toxic world, we are all slowly being poisoned to death. Therefore, it is clear that the traditional value-based society is a better world to live in. We cannot return from the age of the jet plane to the age of the bullock cart but we can certainly return to these traditional values to try to create a modern world that has both, material wealth and prosperity and also respect for the family and the local community.

Humans are Selfish IELTS Essay – Model Essay 5

Selfishness and greed have become a social norm nowadays. Some suggest that restoring traditional values will improve lifestyles and have a positive impact on our immediate community.

To commence with, the traditional practice is face-to-face communication. For example, in metro cities, the lack of this form of communication is a contributing factor to bad behavior as millennials learn from social media users who may not be the best either. With direct communication, parents can monitor the activities of a teenager and make the necessary adjustments, while tracking their online activity is more difficult. If only the offspring can learn from the actions of their parents, then most of the problems will be alleviated, and if not, then this will be a worrying trend that looks set to continue.

In addition, the new generation is not equipped with the appropriate knowledge of morality. This is due to a decrease in the discipline in schools, as well as the realization by students of their rights. However, in contrast to this, in the past, teachers were allowed to punish the guilty, including the greedy and selfish, for their consequences. For example, students, in turn, can distinguish between right and wrong morality. Admittedly, traditional methods such as corporal punishment may be overkill for these students; however, it is a concrete step towards educating students as useful managers in society.

To conclude, I strongly reaffirm my position that traditional methods will restore a new generation. It is certainly hoped that these proposed measures will bring order and justice to these criminals, as well as instill various life skills in them.

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Taking ADvantage The Sociological Basis of Greed

Richard f. taflinger.

For further readings, I suggest going to the Media and Communications Studies website.

Greed has a strong biological basis. However, it has an even stronger social basis. This sets it somewhat apart from self-preservation and reproduction. To examine greed and how it fits into human sociology, we need to start from the beginning.

The definition of greed is an extreme or excessive desire for resources, especially for property such as money, real estate, or other symbols of wealth. Here we run into two problems: defining excessive, and defining wealth, especially in terms of human psychology.

In basic terms, "excessive" is possessing something to such a degree it's harmful. For example, excessive drinking leads to falling down a lot and hating yourself in the morning. Excessive eating leads to bellyaches and obesity. Excessive speed leads to cliff edges and telephone poles. These are aspects that most people would agree are harmful.

However, all these things are harmful only to the individual. How could a desire for wealth be harmful? Every person needs a degree of wealth to survive: you need to buy food, pay the rent, get clothing, transportation, haircuts, cable TV. Without money (a symbol of wealth, or rather a transportable symbol of resources necessary to survival) you could starve or freeze to death, something that is definitely harmful. In addition, the more wealth you have, the better the quantity and/or quality of the things it brings you can get. Again, how could a desire for wealth, and thus the things it gets you, be harmful?

The answer lies in the fact that humans are social and cultural animals, not just individuals. Although for the individual greed (a strong desire for wealth) is good, the social group that individual belongs to may think greed is bad for rher. Note I say "bad for rher" -- not necessarily bad for the society or the culture or the group, but for rher, which is as good an opening as I can think of for going into the history of greed.

Once upon a time there was a little single-cell organism. We'll call it Herman. Herman spent its life wandering aimlessly around its waterdrop , dreaming little one-cell dreams and searching for even littler one-cell food. One day Herman, who had been getting rather fat, suddenly felt itself torn asunder and became two Hermettes (meaning "little Hermans"). The Hermettes thought this was a good idea, and realized that getting fat would result in even more Hermettes. Thus the Hermettes strove to get more food and become fat Hermans, and become Hermettes, who also strove to get more food, and become fat Hermans, etc., etc., etc..

Soon the water drop, and surrounding water drops, and large chunks of ocean, were filled with Hermans and Hermettes, all gulping down (metaphorically speaking, since they didn't have throats) every piece of food they could find. In other words, they were greedy, ensuring their own survival and ability to reproduce by devouring everything they could find that would result in more Hermettes.

Herman, and its descendants, and their descendants, kept this up for a couple of billion years, greedily grasping for those resources that ensured personal and genetic survival.

Eventually, some of Herman's descendants discovered that they could cope with conditions better is they found a way to evolve faster and weed out mutations that got in the way of survival. They developed sex.

Finally, Herman's descendants were greedily gulping fruits, nuts, berries, and anything else that came to a paw that was becoming a hand. Several of them had banded together to form a mutual nonaggression pact. Among them were Oog and Ugh, who were hoping to have a little Ugly of their own. Reaching for another apple, Oog suddenly had her protohand slapped. Popping the offended member in her mouth, she looked askance at her attacker. Aagh pointed to her own little Yugh, who was looking thin and hungry. Oog looked, then back-protohanded Aagh off the branch, took the apple, and scarfed it down. The rest of the band, observing this subtle interplay of diplomatic reasoning, decided that such selfishness required discussion. However, since they hadn't yet evolved language, they simply beat up Oog, and for good measure Ugh, with a few swipes at Aagh for having started the whole mess. Then they sent Oog and Ugh forth to go and sin with some other group but leave us alone.

Such discouragement discouraged Oog and Ugh, but they knew deep down that the more resources they collected and kept for themselves, they better off they, and when Ugly came along, all three of them would be. They competed for resources better than others, passed on more of their own genes, and in general became human beings.

However, human beings are gregarious creatures, wishing to band into mutual admiration societies and avoid inbreeding. We get together for protection, for support, to share the work necessary for survival, and to have someone to talk to.

In addition, the resources important to humans changed. No longer was it simply food in order to get and keep the strength to procreate. Now there were other things, like land to grow food, and money to buy food, and pottery to store food, and methods such as ships and caravans and trading and military conquest to get food. Eventually, the food was not the end result desired -- the means to the end became the end itself.

The real problem arose when the population increased and the possible wealth became limited. There was only so much land and money and other resources to go around. Thus, for one person to amass a lot of wealth, rhe had to reduce what somebody else could get. This created conflict in the society between the haves and have-nots, the go-getters and the no-getters.

The purpose of a society is to reduce conflict between the members of that society. The society creates laws, religions, government, whatever will allow people to get along without fighting each other in response to their biological urges. Thus, there are laws and religious proscriptions against murder to keep people from killing each other and thus weakening the society's ability to support itself and the people in it. There are laws and religious proscriptions against infidelity to keep men from killing each other and enslaving women so men can be sure of their paternity (a biological imperative -- a male doesn't want to waste his resources and care on genes that aren't his (Daly, 1983), and men are male).

To reduce the conflict greed could create, societies, through their laws and religions, said that an extreme desire for wealth was harmful to the society since it concentrated too many resources in too few hands. Thus greed was decreed and decried as excessive and harmful, and proscribed.

The ancient proscriptions were to avoid societal conflicts. The proscriptions were also often easy to follow when people were nomadic. They had to carry everything they owned around with them, and thus there was little desire to accumulate things that would simply increase the burden. For example, the !Kung people of Africa have lived this nomadic life for centuries and have few material possessions. (Leakey, 1978)

The desire for wealth is especially apparent in those cultures descended from or adhering to the Western European tradition of "progress" and "growth", a legacy of the eras of scientific discovery and world exploration. The former led people to believe that they could know everything, the latter increased what they knew and opened the world to trade.

Trade became a major factor in European life after the Black Death, a plague that killed three-fourths of Europe 's population in the 14th Century. This massive decrease in the work force had three results. First, the end of the feudal system, since the serfs, their numbers now low and thus their value as a workforce now high, could now demand wages for their labor. Second, a surplus of goods and food since the number of consumers was so low. And third, a sudden increase in personal wealth as people inherited the belongings of all their relatives that had died. These three factors led to a greater sense of individualism and a decline in spiritual and intellectual interests in favor of material interests. (Burke, 1985)

With the new high-demand products, such as spices, tea and silk, made available by world exploration, trade and exploitation of markets became the goals of European societies and individuals in those societies. This continues to this day. The standard of living for the members of societies practicing such materialism gives them a major advantage over those people and societies that don't. They can gather more resources, live longer, raise more children in better conditions that can pass on their parents' and ancestors' genes, and generally outstrip any competition that doesn't practice greed.

Today, because of the standard of living materialism provides those who follow the idea that some is good, more is better, too much is just right, much of the world "goes for the gold". Thus, although legal and religious proscriptions against greed have been in effect and given at least lip service for millennia, the fact remains that, as it was for Oog and Ugh, deep down inside people believe "greed is good". It might be disguised as capitalism, expanding the range of possibilities, or enlightened self-interest, but deep down inside it's greed. (1)

Why then, if greed is not only biologically desirable but socially and societally desirable as well, does greed have such a bad name? It goes back to the fact that humans are social and cultural animals, not just individuals.

Remember that greed is a valuable trait for the individual. It makes rher fight for a larger piece of the pie, a good idea from a biological point of view. However, since humans are social creatures, and greed says that an individual should take more than rher own share, greed creates social conflict, as those who lose out resent those who win more than an even share. Those that are particularly greedy (read, particularly good at getting larger pieces of pies) are particularly resented. Recall Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley : many people cheered their downfalls. After all, who did they think they were? Besides successful, rich, competent, and capable. They were also manipulative, vain, egotistical and arrogant. However, how many people would, if they were honest, have changed places with them in a second, at least while the Donald and Leona were at their peak? Why are lotteries and sweepstakes so successful? Why do Reno and Las Vegas attract millions of people to their casinos? Because, no matter how much it is decried, people are greedy: they all want more than they have, the more more the better.

The thing to bear in mind is that "greed is good." That is, it's good for the individual, but perhaps not for the society in which that individual lives. Unrestrained greed in an individual can lead to callousness, arrogance, and even megalomania. A person dominated by greed will often ignore the harm their actions can cause others. Sweat shops, unsafe working conditions and destruction of livelihoods are all consequences of people whose personal greed overcame their social consciences.

However, even a society that bans individual greed can suffer. It is greed that makes people want to do things, since they will be rewarded for their efforts. Remove that reward, and you remove the incentive to work. The former Soviet Union provides an example of this: the collective farms provided no individual incentive to strive, and thus produced an insufficient supply of food. The individually owned and run truck farms, however, with the possibility of selling the produce and keeping the proceeds, grew a far greater harvest per acre than the collective farms. The "greed" of American farmers has allowed them to grow food for the world, since the more they produce the more money they make.

Nonetheless, however you regard it, unrestrained greed is detrimental to society; unrestrained disapproval of greed is detrimental to society. People attempt to find a balance between biological imperative and social necessity.

Although there is a strong biological basis for human behavior, humans are the most social creatures on earth. The societies and cultures we create have a major effect on our behavior, mollifying and modifying our biological reactions.

Self-preservation extends beyond the personal to the public, involving family, friends, and even strangers. What may help our personal survival may help others, who may help us in turn.

Humans, reproducing sexually, have all the biological urges that other animals have. However, our complex societies and cultures have altered our reproductive strategies. Social factors, in particular women's, have become so important that they are a guiding rather than an ancillary consideration in mate selection. Strength and fighting skill in men have taken second place to power, money, and status. Although the former may be necessary to success in the biological world, the latter are necessary to success in human society. And in the last several thousand years, society rather than biology has become the driving force of human life.

Equally, human social life has radically altered the need to gather resources to live and reproduce. The need for food, water or shelter is biological -- a lack results in death. However, human society has changed how and why resources are gathered. The biological necessity is the same: humans need to eat, drink, sleep, stay out of the rain. But society has developed a way to transport current resources into the future for use in that future -- money. Thus, humans seek money.

Appeals to the human psyche must take not only biology but society into account. Society is the driving force behind much of human behavior.

(1) This note is contained in the Comments Page -- Comments on Greed in the Modern World Return

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You can reach me by e-mail at: [email protected]

This page was created by Richard F. Taflinger. Thus, all errors, bad links, and even worse style are entirely his fault.

Copyright © 1996 Richard F. Taflinger. This and all other pages created by and containing the original work of Richard F. Taflinger are copyrighted, and are thus subject to fair use policies, and may not be copied, in whole or in part, without express written permission of the author [email protected] .

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In addition , I, Richard F. Taflinger, accept no responsibility for WSU or ERMSC material or policies. Statements issued on behalf of Washington State University are in no way to be taken as reflecting my own opinions or those of any other individual. Nor do I take r esponsibility for the contents of any Web Pages listed here other than my own.

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Greed / The Theme Of “Greed Is Evil” In Scarface And Why Greed Is Not Bad

The Theme Of “Greed Is Evil” In Scarface And Why Greed Is Not Bad

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