People love labels, blanket-statements and the blame game. We hate seeing, much less changing our own flaws, especially when they’re the same as within the people we loath. One of the most common mental frailties used to express evil and unfairness in the world, is also one nearly everyone shares.

Identifying corporate and government leaders who take obvious unethical and corrupt paths to make money as greedy, is not only accurate, but more destructive than most people realize. Besides that though, the problem is much more universal, because taking what we can and not sharing is baked into our psyche. It’s a matter of that subconscious or automated desire for comfort/fear of discomfort I write so much about. Money and things seem safe in society and for good reason. Our mind knows the streets seem rough, not having running would water would be dangerous, and not having permanent shelter would suck, but our default mentality doesn’t stop working once our needs our met (or even if they aren’t). It is much easier to see those with the most money and power as ‘the greedy ones’, than it is to see the commonality of our species, because then we’d have to take a good look at our selves too. Our need for comfort isn’t based on how much we have; it’s based on how much we’ve challenged it.

So, when I look at the greed in my society (USA) and around the world, I see beyond the super rich never having enough wealth nor even considering giving up any significant sum to help those in need. I see the rich, pretty rich, well-off, kinda poor and super poor doing the same thing. In America, it’s not only human nature, it’s our mission. The American Dream explicitly encourages greed and directs people to it. It starts with a white picket fence, but you endlessly add things like an extra car, an RV, a boat, a second house, etc. The culture isn’t to do good for anyone or anything other than yourself and you family. We’ve mastered greed. Our concept of getting ahead or doing better is just getting more wealth and material things.

Trust me, I want a more fair society and world. I want even one super wealthy person to improve their mentality and utilize that wealth for good. But, it’s not a long-term or serious fix. Our cultural mindset has to change. People, at any level of wealth, have to challenge themselves to sacrifice some comfort. We make excuses of course: “Well, I pay taxes, so I did my part.” That’s giving up. It’s running away from the problems. Governments are run by people. For the tip of that bureaucracy to work well, it would have to be run by something better. The flawed structure of bureaucracy is another post, but the bottom line is, greed isn’t isolated and is something we all can reduce to help change our world.