Tyranny,

You talked about how the Greed factor plays out in the markets. I wrote an article about that a little while ago. Do you agree with this?

http://www.theasiamag.com/perspectives/thats-my-american-dream

The "American Dream" isn't inherently American, rather, it's an amalgamation of migrant perspectives. This is the American dream from a Nepalis perspective.

 

“If you're still seeing the American dream, you must be sleeping.” I have heard people question where such rampant greed in modern society comes from. They say it’s unconscious greed, although I don't know just how unconscious the source of greed is.

I think it's just good old insecurity. In history, different people in different cultures have responded to insecurity in different ways. Insecurity has been expressed as paranoia, arrogance and defiance, in terms of social traits. In modern society, we have just chosen to express it as greed – finding security in the world of material possessions. The modern propaganda goes: earning money by hook or crook is the way to find security, love and happiness. The panacea to all of life’s problems is “material symbolism”, as promoted by the Church of Multi-National Corporate Culture (COMNCC).

Of course, you can’t have a church without also having a devil to be against. In modern COMNCC, the devil is portrayed as “the bear”. The bear is the global economy that is very hungry and chomping at our heels. This bear is what everyone is supposed to run away from by not falling behind in the rat race. This global economy is all devouring and never satisfied. We all fear being eaten alive by the bottomless pit of the stomach of the economic bear. This bedtime story is told in many different shapes and forms on many channels of the media.

Every good bedtime story needs to have a good moral. The moral of the bedtime story of the economic bear is that we should feel shame and guilt. We don’t need to personally feel shame and guilt, but since we know that the story is told in every household across the nation and the world, when we talk to someone at a party, we feel that they are judging us based on where we stand in relation to the chomping bear. We fear being detested and rejected by those around us because we aren’t good enough. We fear being laughed at because the wealth we own does not match up to those around us. So we find ourselves constantly comparing our own economic standing in relationship to others. In such an environment, each person fears having less than the people around them.

It’s like that story of the two friends who are being chased by a bear. One friend runs faster than the other feeling that he doesn’t need to outrun the bear, he only needs to outrun his friend. The lesson is that in order to be saved by the bear, we need to make sure we are surrounded by people who are weaker and run slower than we do.

In developed nations, where there are lots of opportunities, you learn to run faster. In under-developed nations, where there aren’t a lot of opportunities, you learn to smile in front of people but to drag them down when no one is looking. In essence, you learn to be Manipulative Mike. This is why there is rampant corruption and back biting amongst people in under-developed nations.

The statistics say that about 5% of the world's population owns 60% of the wealth in the world. In a global economy, if the top 5% of the world, whom the rest of the world either directly or indirectly works for, wants to motivate the middle 60% to work harder, what do they do? Well, it's easy. You give the bear steroids. The faster the bear on steroids runs, the faster everyone else runs in fear. The faster everyone else runs in the “rat race”, the more electricity (money) is generated for the top 5%.

We spend the prime 50-60 years of our lives preparing and worrying about the last 10-20 years of our lives, instead of following our passions and our dreams.

All that running leaves us tired and hating ourselves for being “inadequate”. It also leaves a lot of us afraid that we won’t be able to outrun the bear in our old age. That is a great motivating force for a lot of us pouring money into our nest eggs for our old age. We spend the prime 50-60 years of our lives preparing and worrying about the last 10-20 years of our lives, instead of following our passions and our dreams. This also prevents us from being there for people who need us the most.

And what about greed? I believe that the source of greed is the objectification of people. Its cure then would be to identify with the unlimitedness that comes from being “greedy” for relationships and for loving and playing with others. I believe real satisfaction comes from finding intimacy by identifying with unlimited “goods” instead limited “goods”. Unlimited goods are beauty, truth, goodness, joy, care, love, knowledge. These are things that the more we share, the more we have. I feel that if yours, mine and the rest of the world’s focus was more on the unlimited, then the limited would be seen in perspective. That’s my American dream.

 

This article was previously published in V.E.N.T! Magazine in April 2009.