One of the saddest things that has happened to our world is the rise and rise of greed. Once, in more enlightened times (Ancient Greece), people who spent their lives trying to amass wealth were regarded with complete contempt whereas those who spent their lives involved in the arts, in the sciences, in philosophy, in architecture, in medicine etc, were highly valued.
With the advent of capitalism (a euphemism for greed), this once worthy state of human affairs has been completely reversed. Now the money-grubbers are held up as the epitome of success. Some magazines devote their literary endeavours presenting to the world the hundred richest people and talking about how they made all their wealth. That's obscene given that so many of the world's people are starving or living in abject poverty.
It's not hard to work out how they made their wealth. Because the system we live under allowed it, they screwed a whole lot of people from many nations (including their own), avoided paying a whole lot of tax, got into bed with a whole lot of politicians, kept quiet about a whole lot of the negative, even life-threatening qualities of the products they made, etc !
The result: global warming, endless imperialistic wars being fought for the control of oil and other scarce resources, the poisoning of our air, water and soil, the almost universal use of products which contains carcinogens, the genetic tinkering with plants and animals despite worrying abnormalities, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, an increase in the number of right-wing governments whose funding is reliant on cosy capitalist donations, the use of the privately-owned media for the promotion of capitalism and materialism to say nothing of the subtle stifling of voices of protest, etc.
Greed is destroying our world. We need to change our immoral, contemptible, money-grubbing, elitist value-system, one that benefits only a tiny minority, before it's too late! Or is it already too late?
Do we just have to accept the facts that our world is run by human pigs and make the best of it?
7 comments:
"... (Ancient Greece), people who spent their lives trying to amass wealth were regarded with complete contempt whereas those ... in the sciences, ... medicine etc, were highly valued."
Ancient Greece? Hell! India used be like that 10 years ago.
Strange but I didn't notice this on my many travels to India, D.P.!
You've got the eyes of a white man Daniel. You are cursed. There are certain things that you will never see. I bet you noticed the golden statues in our temples ...
And FYI, we don't have any oil and we have lots of nukes.
I think the curse is being born at all!
Worried, the Republican and Democrat pigs from Animal Farm are in control. There is no happy ending however!
First of all capitalism is not greed. It is a system by which free men are able to use their talents to provide their own future. THe problem is that greed has been allowed to been seen as good. Second of all, wars for resources have been fought thoughout history in countries that do not embrace capitalism. Lastly, global warming is a natural cycle related to the sun. Why did we have cooling and warming before humans, cars?
Anony, greed and capitalism are synonymous. Look at Murdoch. I agree that seeing greed as good is a problem.
Wars have been fought for a variety of reasons: religion is one of them. Empire building is another.
Global warming seems to be related to greenhouse gases this time around. The science seems irrefutable.
Cheers.
Post a Comment