Greed

Greed (or avarice, Latin: avaritia) is an insatiable desire for material gain (be it food, money, land, or animate/inanimate possessions) or social value, such as status, or power.

It may at the same time be an intent to deny or obstruct competitors from potential means (for basic survival and comfort) or future opportunities; therefore being insidious or tyrannical and having a negative connotation.

[8] Erich Fromm described greed as "a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction".

Late-Republican and Imperial politicians and historical writers fixed blame for the demise of the Roman Republic on greed for wealth and power, from Sallust and Plutarch[13] to the Gracchi and Cicero.

[15] In early China, both the Shai jan jing and the Zuo zhuan texts count the greedy Taotie among the malevolent Four Perils besetting gods and men.

North American Indian tales often cast bears as proponents of greed (considered a major threat in a communal society).

In the Aristophanes satire Plutus, an Athenian and his slave say to Plutus, the god of wealth, that while men may become weary of greed for love, music, figs, and other pleasures, they will never tire of greed for wealth:If a man has thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; if that wish is achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make both ends meet.

[24] The Roman poet Lucretius thought that the fear of dying and poverty were major drivers of greed, with dangerous consequences for morality and order:And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law, And, oft allies and ministers of crime, To push through nights and days with hugest toil To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power— These wounds of life in no mean part are kept Festering and open by this fright of death.

The Roman Stoic Epictetus also saw the dangerous moral consequences of greed, and so advised the greedy to instead take pride in letting go of the desire for wealth, rather than be like the man with a fever who cannot drink his fill:Nay, what a price the rich themselves, and those who hold office, and who live with beautiful wives, would give to despise wealth and office and the very women whom they love and win!

The healthy man drinks and his thirst is gone: the other is delighted for a moment and then grows giddy, the water turns to gall, and he vomits and has colic, and is more exceeding thirsty.

In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi observes that "the more implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan.

"[30] Xunzi believed that selfishness and greed were fundamental aspects of human nature and that society must endeavor to suppress these negative tendencies through strict laws.

In the fifth century, St. Augustine wrote:Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold [...][34]St. Thomas Aquinas states greed "is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.

Dante's 14th century epic poem Inferno assigns those committed to the deadly sin of greed to punishment in the fourth of the nine circles of Hell.

The guiding spirit, Virgil, tells the poet these souls have lost their personality in their disorder, and are no longer recognizable: "That ignoble life, Which made them vile before, now makes them dark, And to all knowledge indiscernible.

But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and everyone may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf forever.

To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy, pious man .... Usury is a great huge monster, like a werewolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus.

[40]Baruch Spinoza thought that the masses were concerned with money-making more than any other activity, since, he believed, it seemed to them like spending money was prerequisite for enjoying any goods and services.

[41] Yet he did not consider this preoccupation to be necessarily a form of greed, and felt that the ethics of the situation were nuanced:This result is the fault only of those, who seek money, not from poverty or to supply their necessary wants, but because they have learned the arts of gain, wherewith they bring themselves to great splendour.

He enjoys not a moment's relaxation; and what is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his power to gratify them; so that after a long course of prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world.

"[47] In his account of the Sack of Rome, historian Edward Gibbon remarks that:avarice is an insatiate and universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind may be procured by the possession of wealth.

The same may be said of the majority of the great objects of human life—power, for example, or fame; except that to each of these there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at least the semblance of being naturally inherent in them; a thing which cannot be said of money.

But since in years most recent and depraving Woman is wont no longer to be saving And, like each tardy payer, collars Far more desires than she has dollars, The husband now has much to bore him; Wherever he looks, debts loom before him.

[52] He also stated that 'With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange-value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises also the greed for gold' and that 'Hard work, saving, and avarice are, therefore, [the hoarder's] three cardinal virtues, and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political economy.

"[55] In 1967, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Populorum progressio which called for "a joint effort for the development of the human race as a whole.

"[56] He warned that "the exclusive pursuit of material possessions prevents man's growth as a human being and stands in opposition to his true grandeur.

[59] This speech inspired the 1987 film Wall Street, which features the famous line spoken by Gordon Gekko: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

"[60] The theologian David Klemm summarized Augustine to stress his view that a need-love for earthly things was dangerous: "Most people... become attached to their objects of desire, and in this way are in fact possessed by them", needing and dependent.

[61] Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed.

A well-known example of greed is the pirate Hendrick Lucifer, who fought for hours to acquire Cuban gold, becoming mortally wounded in the process.