The Greedy Poor: why greed is not about wealth.
To be human is to have desires; to have desires is to want their fulfilment; to want without caution is to be greedy.
When do our ambitions turn to greed?
Greed exists with ambition, not in a vacuum—to be ambitious is to have the proclivity to be greedy. And like Eubulides’ paradox, it raises the task of determining at what quantity do these ambitions morph into greed. Moreover, is greed always bad as projected.
Greed, as we know it, has driven evolution for decades. This is because every society battles the existential anxiety of survival and relevance. Therefore, greed had, has, and is been used as a formidable tool to surmount threats.
Therefore, societies did and do everything—wars, expansion, resources—to abate disintegration and advance progress. There’s a suggestion this could be true of humans.
Interestingly, the subject of greed is not a 20th century dilemma, prominent ancient philosophers were bothered by it. During the Athenian epoch, one notable Socrates’ students, Plato, was burdened by the growing chasm between the ruling councils and the commoners. A chasm caused by disparity in wealth distribution. And so he suggested a radical fix that the ruling councils’ members should be deprived of owning any material except for their bodies alone.
Although Plato might have not considered creating more wealth, as it’s largely propagated now, because the few echelons would still own the largest share, his fix sought to remove the desire for acquisitions by shrinking what could be acquired to nothing. Unfortunately this was ineffective.
Different fields promote different rationales for greed-cum-ambition, however, it’s unanimous that the bedrock of this is the preservation of self, esteem, and security.
Moreover, evaluating the discourse in respect to wealth and property, according to John Locke’s fair usage makes the distinction (which we’ll arrive at later) difficult to conceptualise.
John Locke, an English philosopher and the father of liberalism, opined that one can hold any property so long it meets certain criteria:
1. It can be used before it spoils.
2. It leaves “good and enough” for everyone else ( one person cannot own all the money/lands)
3. The property must come from your own work and effort or what he calls “mixing your labor” with that thing.
Thus, anyone can have whatever they want, so long enough is left for others to have whatever they want. But they must work for it. By throwing capitalism into the mix, this ambitions may further create wealth for others, increasing the size of the pie. To Locke, nothing could be too much.
Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and polymath, writing in is his book, Nicomachean Ethics, majorly argues that virtue is moderation—the golden mean between two cases. Excessive courage is rash, its absence is cowardice. Can we say this of both greed and ambition?
He also corrects the simplification of the golden mean saying: for what that is good, we aim at extreme, and for the antithesis, we aim at the base. But which of the two models does wealth belong to? Overtly or cautiously good?
However, in most part, Aristotle advocated for moderation in the acquisition of wealth. But the major objection is the ambiguity around the question: how much is too much?
Greed, in contrast to popular conjectures, is not a matter of wealth. Greed is not a quantity, there’s no definite amount of wealth for which a man could be termed greedy. To be human is to have desires; to have desires is to want their fulfilment; to want without caution is to be greedy. Therefore, a man could be greedy with a cent! What, then, is greed?
‘It’s when we think of little else than increasing our experiences and material possessions. This is the point at which greed has come to dominate your life.’
My resolve, which is reinforced by Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher, is that greed materialises, or a wo/man should be called greedy and avaricious, when the/his/her desire for wealth ranks higher than compassion, kindness, uprightness, and laws.
That a man doesn’t and won’t have, doesn’t mean he is not continually wanting. Greed is a matter of morality and processes, not quantity of wealth. This sort of clarifies why Plato exercise failed.
If you found this enlightening, bet you would find my other works on philosophy, growth, paradoxes, and... interesting. Please leave a clap and share.
Also you can read my previous article on living in an extroverted world as an introvert, and why you sleep at the time you do. Thanks for the support!
