So, what is greed anyway? When does a person who is driven to succeed, or who is just interested in taking care of #1 (and who isn’t to some extent), become a greedy-sneed?
A friend and I were discussing this, and his opinion was that the concept of greed had to involve ill-gotten gains. Maybe, but by whose measure?
Say, if two guys are each trying to sell their cars, one takes the first offer. . . the other refuses several offers, waits, plays tough and ends up getting more for his car. . . is he greedy? Or is he just more money-driven? Or more patient? Or does he just have more self-worth, or better knowledge concerning what his car is actually worth?
This, to me, is a spiritual question. From my own tradition, I can read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (not a child’s catechism, the big book):
2536: The tenth commandment forbids greed and the desire to amass earthly goods without limit. It forbids avarice arising from a passion for riches and their attendant power. It also forbids the desire to commit injustice by harming our neighbor in his temporal goods.
2537: It is not a violation of this commandment to desire to obtain things that belong to one’s neighbor, provided this is done by just means.
If you want to go Buddhist, desires are the cause of all suffering, and the point of spiritual practice is to free yourself from them. Plus, the rule of Right Livelihood is the enjoining of a practioner of Buddhism to make a living without causing harm to others.
There is quite a bit of Catholic doctrine and discussion on that subject as well.
Essentially, if you harm others in your quest to attain material goods, you are causing yourself spiritual damage. And, focusing on the accumulation of stuff is in itself a spiritual distraction and danger.
Bigger people than you or I have weighed in on this.
Seems like a good start. Maybe we find a way to measure the “average” want and characterize greed not as an absolute quality but in terms of standard deviations away from the mean towards the “wanting more” side? Think that’s a reasonable start to characterize greed? Not sure how to quantify “wanting,” though. Hmm.
Other than that, pretty much what John said…it’s a subjective term that’s going to mean different things to different people. Like say when one person attempts to apply it to someone else.
It is almost impossible to define greed personally because of our tendency to justify ourselves. We tell ourselves that “we need”, “we deserve”, “it is owed us”, “it is only fair considering”, “it’s o.k. because I give back in other ways” and dozens of other justifications for having what others do not.
Research has shown that primates, in general, have an innate sense of fairness. Humans, being primates, also have an innate sense of fairness. Greed occurs when our sense of fairness appears to be violated. Where we set that tipping point, though, is going to depend on cultural, experiential, and who know what other factors.
I don’t remember who said this (maybe it’s in Dante?), but Greed–like all of the “seven deadly sins” of Christian ethics–can be understood as a perverted form of love, in that it devotes love to something unworthy of it. In the case of Greed it’s material possessions.
I think in the above scenario, it wasn’t a greed motive at all. It was risk vs reward, he took a risk by not selling to the first offer and ended up with the reward of selling at a higher price.
Anyhow, greed to me would be very much like **John Mace
** stated and it is very subjective. One man’s greed is another man’s ambition etc etc
Greed has nothing to do with how much you own or can aquire. “Greed” is when your desire for “more” becomes detrimental to those around you are yourself. And in many cases it can become counter-productive to actually acquiring wealth.
Other Guy is acting in rational self interest. If you are selling something, you have every right to sell it for as much as you can. By the same token, everyone else has the same choice to either refuse to buy it or seek a cheaper alternative. That is what we call the “free market” and it works pretty well. Other Guy can’t just sell his shitbox for a million dollars for the same reason my employer can’t just cut my salary to minimum wage. Because no one would accept that deal.
When it becomes “greed” is when Other Guy continues to hold out and refuse reasonible offers thinking he can get a million dollars for his crappy shitbox. Or if someone stays unemployed for years because they won’t accept a paycut in a crappy job market. It’s a refusal to recognize economic reality.
But I get a sense that the OP and other people on this board were ingrained with the notion that “money is the root of all evil”. I feel bad for those people since they are likely to spend most of their lives not receiving the true value of their time, goods or services.
Subjectivity isn’t a spell you can cast to make hard questions go away. Taste in food is subjective but that hasn’t stopped restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers from making a living. Subjectivity is a problem in need of clever measurements.
