The crises our country and our world are encountering may be fundamentally driven by greed.
Greed is an insidious force that drives our planet toward extinction and obliterates the collective will toward humanness and compassion. Greed that knows no bounds, severs our connection with one another, and distorts the human experience in its ever- narrowing tunnel-vision focused on attaining more and more.
The phenomenon goes far beyond one’s instinctive drive to attain wealth and live well.
I’m referring to an emotional and psychological disorder that leaves us all in peril.
Unbridled greed is all-consuming and relentless, as nothing is ever enough: not enough material wealth, not enough power, not enough influence.
This rapacious force is not limited to mere money. It is a disorder of the ego; an addictive dysfunction ignited by insecure ego attainment.
What else might explain the compulsion to generate more wealth and more power by extracting more fossil fuels and quickening our demise? Is it not greed when those seeking this goal care not for their children’s or grandchildren’s lives? What level of greed is at play when the government removes environmental safeguards that protect us from devastating illness and horrific death for the purpose of increasing profits?
These irrational choices speak to a pathology of mind and morals. We should be adding this dysfunction to the DSM, the operating lexicon of psychological and emotional disorders. This dysfunction is as real and as destructive as any other disorder, yet with far more devastating consequences.
It is suggested that in Native American folklore the elders would envision how their actions might impact their progeny seven generations forward. Clearly, they weren’t consumed by pathological greed.
Greed seeks to overcome insecurity through the acquisition of stuff: money, power, fame, control, and on and on. The greatest threat to our planet and to our humanity, to our very existence, is the rapacious force of greed. We must see it and call it out as such.
Don’t get lost in fake narratives around differing ideologies and policies. It’s far simpler. See the greed and call it out. Greed is the anti-Christ.
Image credit: Cristian Ibarra Santillan via a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
