Greed

I've been thinking about greed recently and how it seems to be a defining theme of our 'western' society. I stumbled across a TV show on hoarding 'Buried alive!' the other night. There are some people who are driven by the urge to acquire more and more 'stuff' at garage sales, second hand shops, or whatever it might be, but they just can't bear to throw anything away. They gradually acquire so much stuff they can barely get in and out of their houses. Morbid obesity has also got to the point where it is pandemic in many 'developed' countries, including Australia. Now, obviously these are psychological disorders and these people need help to be cured of them, but what about people who hoard money? What about the world's billionaires? What's with that? Rather than see these people as mentally ill for wanting to amass more than one person could possibly hope to spend in a lifetime, we are told by our 'media' to admire them. These people are considered heroes, idols, superstars. On reality shows, movies, magazine covers, lifestyle spreads, etc. these people are held up as an example to admire and emulate. Are we being brainwashed? Think about it. This behaviour is nothing to admire. This behaviour is completely dysfunctional. If I was going to be politically incorrect, I'd call it "nuts".

In other cultures, hoarding the vast bulk of resources produced by your society would be seen for what it is; a kind of madness. In many cultures such as the Innuit culture and Australian Aborigines, and various African cultures, not to share what you have with others is seen as nonsensical. It's OK to have personal possessions. It's OK to maybe have some personal possessions a bit 'nicer' than the next person - especially if you made it yourself. But to hoard 1000 or a million times more 'stuff' than you will actually ever need is really, really "bonkers". If you live 'hand to mouth' as a group there's nothing much to hoard anyway and if anyone did start hoarding, they would put the survival of the whole group at risk. Since those people are mostly your own relatives, and you have to live with them, there's not a lot of incentive. With the advent of the colonialism,t he industrial revolution and now 'globalization' a small number of world-class hoarders are now able to gather up OIympic sized quantiies of resources in industrial quanities and never need to see who's going without food or shelter because of what they're doing. They can strip forests, suck rivers dry, ruin whole continents, destroy entire coastlines whatever they want. No problem. Nobody to stop them or even disapprove. It's crazy. It's not sustainable. It's nonsensical and I said it, it's wrong!

Regular readers will know I like a good zombie apocalypse movie. For those who are not afficionados of the genre, there's a key theme running through many of them which is what happens to a small group of people forced to depend on each other for survival. What's the point of money anyway? You can't eat it. Zombies don't use it. What do you do if there are people in your little band who won't share their food and refuse to get along with others? Well, it's a pretty simple decision when you're surrounded by thousands of hungry zombies... Let's all hope there's a middle way between the current unbalanced situation we find ourselves in and some form of 'apocalypse-type' situation which is where we're going if we don't get our act together. Let's hope one day (soon) being ridiculously wealthy will be seen for what it is: ridiculous. Let's hope one day even sooner we work out what's really valuable (hint: it's not gold or diamonds). It's going to take a massive mental shift for a lot of people in the 'developed' world, but things are changing quicker than you might think. There's a lot we can learn from older cultures. Maybe it's about time we started paying attention?