KAHIHI

“Greed, for 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 and greed, you mark my words…” Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) said in the 1987 movie, ‘Wall Street’

Considering only the movie part, I was utterly impressed with that dialog. I grew up enacting that dialog, it had very powerful words. I have seen the movie enough number of times to defeat the claimants of Sholay (insanely boring movie).

However, as stages of maturity and sanity passed in my life, I began to realise that the dialog was good enough only for the delivery part and could not actually be practiced. The upshot of Gekko’s words lessened over a period of time.

It was short-lived though. The words started resonating in my mind when India emerged a country of scams, frauds in 2010 – the CWG, the 2G, and the Adarsh.

There was Bofors in 1986, the fodder scam in 1996, the arms bribery scandal in 2001, and there were people like Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parikh, Telgi, all of which have shamed India repeatedly. Today we have the sucker-games in telecom, lands, food grains, onions, sports and possibly many more to come. The more is dug, the deeper it gets.

Laissez-faire capitalism proponents claim that it is inappropriate to out rightly reject greed as a negative quality. On the contrary greed should be considered as an overwhelming munificent force in human affairs and also an important underpinning for the capitalist system. However, there have been numerous arguments as this portrayal of greed misappropriates it with self-interest, which can be benevolent.

Time and again our country has been plagued with nuisances of various kinds. It was the real rats that spread the epidemic long time ago. The rats have now transformed into politicians, real estate honchos, bureaucrats, defence personnel et al. These blood sucking rats are running in pursuit of power and wealth with negligent thought about the disaster they are causing (and hence probably the word “rat race”).

It takes me by surprise thinking about the psyche of these people who ignorantly want to amass wealth about which they perhaps have no clue when and how they will utilise it. 1.7 lac crore, an amount beyond my imagination; I would perchance spend my entire life counting it (no pun intended).

What is it that so persistently drives the greed of accumulating money power or fame? Is it only the greed and is it pleasure giving in first place? Is peace of mind not important, forget about values or culture or family matter?

I wonder from where does this disproportionate goad to acquire material wealth beyond one’s need arises from. What is worse is this act of greed denies access to legitimate others who are in need of those resources and which can be utilised to build up a society that will give our country a look of a “developed country”. It is the greed of people like these that has left our country at the status of a “developing country”.

It is good to aspire about being rich & famous. It is ubiquitous and conventional in all the civilisations across the world. It would be rather harsh to synonymise this plain aspiration to greed. Greed is usually the far extreme of this aspiration, largely driven by the psyche of collecting huge amounts of money not to spend it but just to have its possession, when considered in terms of wealth. The extreme of consuming drinks for sheer delight is gluttony as is the fanatical greed for sex called lust; underlying psyche in both these examples remains greed.

Greed classically involves acquisition of material possession at the cost of other’s welfare.

Not only politicians or people who have power but I have seen many around me who despite having all the basic needs and freedom of luxury behave insanely yearning for more material wealth. People in their early sixties (who own a house, a car, have wife, pension, other savings, children supporting them, enjoyed vacations, enjoy alcohol, have had enough sex all their life, have enough well wishers around, good friends, etc) still crave for accumulating as much as they can. At that age, possibly, I would have fulfilled all my aspirations.

What is it then that there is something still missing in one’s life? What is this nature of ravenous hunger? Is it because of the society that we live in, which praises and recognises and worships only fame and richness?

Inner selfishness gives birth to greed; a paradox. Greed breeds on unawareness of the self. The greedy always craves for more than what is at hand, even when it is enough to satisfy his/her needs. It is an ineffectual attempt to satiate the barrenness within you. These self defeating and destructive mannerisms arise from unfulfilled puerile needs and the trauma of the adulthood that fails to catch pace with the mates around.

The focus then shifts from yourself and the dissension begins to avoid the self.

I am neither religious nor spiritual. However, I do end up subscribing to Gautam Buddha’s ideology of desire (which the greed is a part of) – the root cause of all human suffering.