Divine Greed – Alessandro Sani. Wikioo

“The hypocrisy of some is that we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and evolved, but we’re still also driven by primal urges like greed and power.”

Michael Leunig

Deeply hidden in the misty realms of our unconscious are many thoughts, feelings and impulses that may be too difficult for us to face. One of these is greed. This is, indeed, a ‘primal urge,’ one that, at some point in our lives, if not every day, we all grapple with.

Covering up and denying such ‘urges’ may, as the quotation says, leave us thinking that we are ‘sophisticated and evolved,’ yet many of us are fooling ourselves and still prey to such feelings.

So many of us wear masks as an invisible protection against the fear of being discovered for who we really are, with all our faults, foibles, pain and neediness. These masks of being ‘sophisticated’ also protect us from real awareness of ourselves.

Knowing oneself, becoming acquainted with one’s dark side, is the way to achieve true  consciousness of self; without this we can become irresponsibly dangerous, lacking compassion. We will be running wild, grabbing, greedy and selfish, caring about no-one but ourselves.

“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” 

Criss Jami

• Never having enough

Glenn Marsch.The Bottomless Pit.2013. Flickr

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”

Erich Fromm

As Fromm reminds us, greed is never assuaged; it causes us to desire more and more and yet never to feel that we have enough. This is an uncomfortable state, ultimately leaving us worn out and unhappy.

The greedy person does not know the experience of contentedness, and never has the peaceful satisfaction of feeling that many of their needs are being met.

All the money in the world is still not enough for the greedy; power-hungry individuals cannot have sufficient power and they constantly strive for more.

Nature’s Festival – Bordighera – Alexej Georgewitsch Von Jawlensky. 1914. Wikioo

“For greed all nature is too little.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A person who is very greedy has an insatiable need; as the wise Seneca said, even the whole of nature will not be enough. Nothing will fill that seemingly massive, insecure, fearful, gaping space inside. Such emptiness symbolises feeling unloved, unful-filled; it speaks of a vacancy, a void, an absence.

Albert György, Mélancolie, 2012. Wikimedia Commons

• Greedy… or needy?

Boredom – Aleksandr Deyneka. 1936. Wikioo

Where do the emptiness, the neediness and the hunger originate?

Often, at the root of such feelings lies a childhood of emotional deprivation, maybe one where there was not enough to go round, or where there was no model of sharing with others.

Feeling greedy/needy can stem from loss, hardship and fear. Such ways of being can also emanate from low self-worth, or a lack of confidence.

Experiences in a family that had favourites frequently can lead to greed, meanness and selfishness, and a constant sense of grudge and resentment towards others.

The Miser – Thomas Couture.c 1876. Wikioo.

Such deprived people may feel, either consciously or unconsciously, that they are ‘entitled’ to have everything they want, at the expense of others, because they have been given so little in the past.

By way of example, think of those people who push into the front of queues, who fight greedily to grab the best purchases, who block others from using a seat on public transport by putting their luggage on it.

• Greed and our planet

Rush Hour – George Condo. 2010. Wikioo.

“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.”

Stephen Hawking

Greed is not only found on an individual, personal level; it is also a global and universal problem for us all. There is much ignorance in relation to preserving our world, in that people are slowly exploiting and destroying our planet through greed.

We plunder the earth’s resources, depleting the natural world in which we live with our excessive demands for fossil fuels, fish, wood and palm oil, to name but a few.

Human destruction of the earth can be seen in careless waste management, air pollution, global warming, deforestation and water pollution; all these can have devastating consequences on human and animal life.

“People must consume, but they consume in excess for a variety of social and cultural reasons that are simply an extension of human nature.”

Marc E. Pratarelli

•  How can we manage our greedy thoughts and feelings?

“Greed blinds us from recognising the true value of what we already possess.” 

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (1988)

Sometimes, in order to avoid our inner ‘darkness,’ we channel painful feelings into addictions or into living life at breakneck speed. There may be overspending, buying things we do not really need, in an attempt to eradicate a sense of a gaping hole inside.

In reality, only by going into the darkness can we get out of it.

‘The only way out is through.’

Robert Frost.

Attempts to lighten this dark place from the outside will fail, for it is an inner darkness, perhaps only reachable through sometimes painful therapeutic work.

During this therapy, we will be helped to focus on how we can become more understanding of ourselves, and on being and becoming more authentic people. The hope is that, in expressing and working through our needs, we can learn to focus more on relating to others, rather than greedily grabbing what we can, where we can, to try to gain some satisfaction.

Fromm expresses succinctly the differences between two approaches to life, having and being. He shows us how life can expand and blossom if we can deal with our greed, our desire for acquisition, and can come to understand what such feelings are about.

Then – and only then- will we be able to have satisfying relationships, discovering how to share and engage with others, and teaching our children to do so too.

Aaron Concannon. 2006. Sharing. Flickr

“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING
HAVING: seeks to acquire, possess things even people.
BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people.“

Erich Fromm

© Linda Berman

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