We’ve so often heard and been made to believe that ‘Greed’ in humans is natural that we’ve come to believe it as an unquestionable aspect of our being.
We believe it so firmly that if an idea of a living community is proposed, that does not incorporate any monetary incentives or other such rewards for an individual to accomplish certain tasks for the betterment of the overall community, then that idea is shot down before it even surges up for a discussion. We all weep for the needy or the “unfortunate ones” but none of us has the will to do anything about it other than posting about it on social media, partly because it makes us feel less guilty about our inactions and partly to gain approval from strangers on the internet.
I know that there are exceptions to every rule, but these are not mere exceptions. These are daily traits that people portray. Charity, philanthropy, adopting a child, loving a pet, and so much more, give us nothing more than emotional and mental satisfaction. If we think that feeling good like this is also part of “Greed” then it may indeed be natural to us, but the fact is that this kind of greed doesn’t harm anyone but, in fact, does tremendous good to the world. This means we need to segregate the two, the kind of greed that brings harm to the world and the kind that brings benefit to the world. For the mere simplicity of it, the harmful one may be regarded as Greed and the beneficial one as something else entirely.
Coming back to the original point, if it indeed is possible for us to live without being concerned about tangible rewards then why is the idea of a community with common welfare so taboo? Is it because we’ve been so brainwashed to associate happiness with material things that it is incomprehensible for us to imagine a world without material possessions?
Ah yes! How could I forget the argument against all of this that there wouldn’t be any, or rather there would be extremely slow progress of humans if no competition existed? Just think about it. REALLY think about it, How many studies that lead to human progress have been squashed till now because they didn’t serve the agendas of certain governments? How many advanced technologies have hostile propaganda(s) against them because they challenge an existing industry that serves to profit from obsolete technology? Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison comes to mind…
The aforementioned argument is nothing but a farce that tricks human beings (who, if I may remind you, are social animals), into believing that it is more beneficial for us to act as individuals rather than a community. Divide and Conquer.
I would like to believe that we’re not intrinsically evil, that we’re just molded and brainwashed by a system around us to be nothing more than “consumers”. I would like to believe that in time, we’ll evolve past these obsolete ideas of believing that war is essential for progress. It is preposterous to think that we would never have gone to the moon without the Cold War. This is what these chains of moral bankruptcy make us believe.
We’ve probably just lost our way somewhere along the lines where we diverted our path from being a healthy community towards giving more preference to being more socially isolated, defying our biology. This all probably seems very grey, there may, in fact, be a lot wrong with this entire post that I so dearly typed. But with dismissive attitudes and without intelligent discussion, we’ll never progress towards a better world.
We will talk about greed and possessions etc. in the animal kingdom as well, and how it’s an intrinsic or extrinsic part of nature and how Humans are like and/or dislike other animals in this context. We’ll talk about evolutionary traits and characteristics and so much more. There’s quite a world of thought around this, we’ll explore this in a much more factual and scientific way later on during our literary endeavor.
