Can Greed Be Good?
Another theory of greed is that it is programmed into our genes because, in the course of evolution, it has tended to promote survival. Without greed, a person, community, or society may lack the motivation to build or achieve, move or change—and may also be rendered more vulnerable to the greed of others.
Greed, though an imperfect force, is the only consistent human motivation, and produces preferable economic and social outcomes most of the time and under most conditions. Whereas altruism is a mature and refined capability, greed is a visceral and democratic impulse, and ideally suited to our dumbed down consumer culture. Altruism may attract our admiration, but it is greed that our society encourages and rewards, and that delivers the goods and riches on which we have come to depend. Like it or not, our society mostly operates on greed, and without greed would descend into poverty and chaos. Indeed, greed seems to be the driving force behind all successful societies, and modern political systems designed to check or eliminate it have invariably ended in the most abject failure.
In the film Wall Street (1987), Gordon Gekko says,
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. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
Drawbacks
While greed may be good for economies, it may not be so good for individuals. A person who is consumed by greed becomes utterly fixated on the object of his greed. Life in all its richness and complexity is reduced to little more than a quest to accumulate and hoard as much as possible of whatever it is that he craves. Even though he has met his every reasonable need and more, he is unable to adapt and reformulate his drives and desires.
If the person is embarrassed by his greed, he may take to hiding it behind a carefully crafted persona. For example, a man who craves power and runs for political office may deceive others (and, in the end, perhaps also himself) that what he really wants is to help others, while also speaking out against those who, like himself, crave power for the sake of power.
Deception is a common outcome of greed, as is envy and spite. Greed is also associated with negative emotional states such as stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and despair, and with maladaptive behaviours such as gambling, scavenging, hoarding, trickery, and theft. By overcoming reason, compassion, and love, greed undoes family and community ties and undermines the very values on which society and civilization are founded. Greed may fuel the economy, but, as recent history has made all too clear, uncontrolled greed can also lead us unto a deep and long-lasting economic recession. Moreover, our consumer culture continues to inflict severe damage on the environment, resulting in rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather events, deforestation, desertification, ocean acidification, and species extinctions, among others.
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