Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The solution to Greed?

Based on information from http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

We are all greedy, we all want more, we fail to be satisfied once we've achieved our goals? Why? Greed is natural it is part of being a living entity on this ball we call the earth?

Why do I say this? Have you ever considered the difference between a "living" thing and a "non-living" thing?

Rocks are non-living, they are made up of atoms, they follow the "great laws" of nature. They have but one "desire" to achieve equilibrium. A non-living thing when taken out of a state of
equilibrium will supply effort/energy to get back to an equilibrium state.

Living things (such as you and I) are similar. If you are taken out of your comfort zone, you will work to try and get back to it. However, there is one important difference. A living thing [for whatever reason] once in a state of equilibrium will get 'bored', and will supply effort/energy to move itself out of equilibrium, and thus an ongoing cycle of in/out of equilibrium occurs.

In our brain, this desire can manifest itself as greed. At this point, I must point out that even if greed is natural, and a part of all living things, does not mean it is 'good'. But the first step to the solution is to recognize that we all have it and/or are susepticle to it.

Consider, that most laws in the world are solutions to the symptoms of problems involving greed.
Theft, Murder, Assault, Drugs. We want more, more money, more stuff, more drugs, etc. But these are just symtoms of a bigger problem. We, as individuals, are inherently greedy.

Not all of our problems are caused by greed. Some acts such as sexual assault, or serial killing, do not seem to be related to greed, but to other twisted psychological issues. So solving Greed will not fix everything.

But there is a problem..imposing limits on greed, by many people is considered 'unethical' even 'evil' itself. Limits on greed limits individual liberty, and is considered socialist thinking. For some people the idea of socialists just puts a bad taste in the mouth.

And yet, we continue to prosocute those tho commit crime in the name of greed, and the crime continues. Would it be such a terrible idea to create a socieity that imposes limits on greed, just as we impose limits on things like murder, and theft?

Of course, this is riddled with problems, how does one define what it is to be 'too greedy?'

Another major problem, is that greed seems to be part of our nature, we are never satisfied with the status quo - we always want more. If this is true, we would need to evolve out of this mentatility as a people before we could keep the society functioning. People, would in essence have to be un-corruptable. Is such an idea even possible?

Warning: This is a rather long video (3 parts about 60 minutes each. If you can't sit still you can always bookmark it and check back later, or get this file here and burn it to a DVD.

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