Greed is a sin

Greed is a sin. My initial reaction to the prompt was: this is alien territory. I have no appetite for possession of worldly goods, with few exceptions, such as a nice pen, or a very good coffee machine. I do not belong to the rentier class, that plague of mankind since the most remote antiquity. What does “having it all” mean?

It sounds to me like a metaphor for unlimited greed. If one has it all, then what comes next? What about the rest of us? While I am no paragon for “equality”, the historical reality of profiteering and theft repulsed me as a child, and still does. How does it appear in reality, that is in the world as our elites want it to be?

Well, for a start the visual evidence is in those cities, the high buildings, the luxury in the windows, in the streets, the cars, the outrageous and moronic behaviour of the rich. This is plain to see, in London, in any European or North American big cities, and perhaps elsewhere, cohabitating with the most sordid proof of poverty and despair. For having it all means insatiable greed, at the cost of humanity.

absence of spirituality

Greed is the most visible evidence of the absence of spirituality. As those so-called elites abandon their faith (was it at any time for real?), they proclaimed their attachment for “values”, which boil down to their iron will to “have it all”: the resources, however rare, the land, other human beings as play toys or worse. This is not new. 

Socrates said: “You seem, Antiphon, to imagine the happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine, to have as few as possible comes next to divine.” We know about the process: the principle of ever increasing wealth for the few, outrageous interests charged to the poor – that is the rest of mankind – the sending of little children to the mines to extract for the filthy rich, whatever it is, gold, cobalt, lithium – aren’t they caring for sustaining their monopoly of everything?

perennial nature of greed

This constant in history, the perennial nature of greed, and the concentration of “all” in very few hands, indicate the submission of the rentier class to evil. Resisting it is the role of the spiritual life, and this may have to be in the end by force. So Ilyin instructed us:

“But if each of the people, carrying in themselves the known origin of evil, is responsible both for themselves and for others, then the correct attitude to one’s “own” evil is expressed not in the fact that one “can” fight it, if he wishes to, but the fact that he is obliged to fight with it under all conditions, and has no right to forego this struggle. For foregoing it, he harms not only himself, but everyone: the wells of human souls have, as it were, a connected, subterranean (unconscious) network of messages, and one who clogs and poisons his own well, clogs and poisons the wells of all…”

Sadly history, and today’s predicament, the rise of “having it all” in one percent of the world population, shows we have a long hard path to this struggle. So, no, it means nothing to me, but I am aware it means all to some.

“Here, we have brought these pahos for you. May you and your people flourish. As for us, Walpi is besieged by Utes, Paiutes, Chemehuevis, and Comanches. They steal our food, our women and our children. They come and they come again. You people of Tewageh, we have often heard of your courage. Our people invite you to come and build a new village on our mesa. If you are there the enemy will be discouraged and turn back.We will give you land for your corn. We will live side by side. You will be our brothers.” (“The Arrival of the Tewas”, The Fourth World of the Hopis)

Inspired also by Three Things Challenge #M705

Photo: statue of Socrates