Greed

When I grew up I was told about the seven deadly sins, pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. A short explanation followed which showed why indeed these are so bad.

Then I forgot about them, whilst I guess holding them somewhere inside my mind as a reference point.

The value of such instruction was negligent. Nothing about how to tackle them, or what they said about the other influences which shaped that early childhood behaviour. We were just told don’t do them, and made to feel very ashamed if we slipped up. Half the time I didn’t really understand the relationship between my feelings and learned behaviours and these sins. The learned behaviours that came from the culture within which I was being socialised, not just family but all of society. And since most of the rest of society really didn’t seem to take much notice of them, I eventually stopped too.

Then I went through various periods of struggle and intense desperation in my life and came out the other side around 35 years ago wanting to do something to change it. I found therapy, psychology, mindfulness especially, tarot and alternative spirituality, all of which gradually shifted how I felt and lived.

At nearly seventy years of life now I find myself in a planet where cruelty is everywhere, between humans and towards other life forms and the planet herself. The climate crisis, the ecosystem collapses. People are in crisis too, suffering in poverty with inadequate health care and in many cases no safe shelter either. It causes me great distress, and it seems to be escalating just now.

Which is when I went back to the deadly sins and saw them suddenly in a much deeper sense, a light of profound understanding as a result of my meditation practice and my deep looking into life itself. One word came out above all others. Greed.

Greed is wanting more than you need for your own survival. It also means that others will suffer lack of enough in order for you to have more than enough. It is a major killer attitude on this planet at this time and I believe it is a form of mental illness.

Greed is a mental illness

When we see anyone with a room full of newspaper, or food in tins dating back to pre-decimalisation, we say they are hoarders and have a mental health condition. I don’t mean a pile of old magazines that still have some good reading in them, like my gardening and writing magazines are often references for me to return to. I mean piles beyond what anyone could ever reasonably want or need or use directly in the living of their life. So replace that with money. It is no different. Do you have what you want to live happily in your life?

I once met someone on holiday who only lit up when he talked about how much money he had made from this deal or that investment. He had been a hairdresser and he suffered from depression. He came on expensive holidays to escape the life that made him depressed. It was all about what was out there. He never once looked inside and asked himself the fundamental questions — what really gives me happiness, not short-term pleasure or quick ego boosts but lasting and sustained happiness and deep joy. He was never going to look inside either. All his values were external, appearances, getting one over someone else in a deal. He was a kind man and wanted to do good but was stuck between these values he held tightly onto and his inner nature. Thus he could never be at peace with himself.

Greed Kills

So that the few can have far more than they will ever need, hoarding money like it is yesterday’s old newspapers, money they will never use or need, the many go without. Yet I would hazard a guess that as long as they can live well enough they are actually more content than this rich man with all his investments. Where this disparity really sickens me is where it leads to people dying, children being deformed through starvation and sickness, and a general imbalance in society across the globe that is less about inequality and more about pure hoarding of resources, a mental illness as I established above.

It might seem utopian, but if we all have enough, and we all look out for each other as once human societies did in order to survive, then we don’t need greed, we don’t need to shore ourselves up against possible loss in the future. WE ALL NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF.

Is your value as a human being measured in material values or in your contribution to the greater good? We may never have exact equality or resources, and that is fair enough. Some people waste what they are given and some people make much of it. There will always be differences between people but a value system which suggests hoarding is ever anything beyond mental illness is the problem here. Instead, we have historically and mistakenly heaped praise and accolades upon those who are rich, and not enough upon those who do good.

Wealth may be a source of attraction for some, look at how so many relationships are based more on material wealth rather than true love and connection, but it is not an attractive quality to sit in luxury and ignore those around you who are suffering. It is cruel, unnecessary and ignorant not to recognise how much your wealth has created the conditions of suffering for others. It is not a separate thing but a direct connection.

The real inequality comes from access to resources. If you take it for granted that you can access resources needed for you to live your life well enough, to realise your potential, then you are in receipt of extreme privilege.

Most people do not even begin to have access to those resources. Instead of making them widely available, they are kept in short supply so that an elite can be created who do have that right of access, and even if scholarship or grants make it a tiny weeny bit more accessible, those individuals are so often left feeling they do not belong in this elite club.

So look again at greed. Think how it influences your thinking and behaviours. Can you really be truly happy knowing that you have contributed to the suffering around you? What have you done to help this suffering become unnecessary?

Live simply, as the Quakers and Buddhists exhort us. Not without wealth in culture, culture should not be measured in monetary terms but simply enjoyed and shared openly. If we each really help one other person who is less well-off than ourselves, without ego or grandeur, without patronising or boasting but simply out of recognition that we all need help at one time or another in our lives. If we all stop chasing this or that to make ourselves happier without finding pure joy in what we do have already.

Stop whatever you are doing and look around you. How often do you give thanks for whatever is there? Celebrate your simple things — your bed a chair a cupboard which has food in it, friends, the air you breathe perhaps if it is clean enough and not making you sick. If you celebrate what you have every day, only that which meets your simple needs, you might find out how little you really do need to live very well indeed.

I have been lucky, I have had the opportunity to live close to money and I did not and do not like what it does to people. I have enough and want no more for myself. If more came I am not sure what either of us would do with it, it would confuse us and we would probably look for more good causes to give it away again, for the greater good, so we too may benefit but so may everyone else. I am also very grateful for all those who gave me a hand up at certain times in my life, even if I no longer know them.