“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA” (The movie, Wall Street).
There is not a more accurate definition of greed to date than this one provided by the fictional multi-millionaire and corporate raider, Gordon Gekko, in Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic, Wall Street. Greed is often associated with money or wealth by the hoi polloi in terms of money laundering by chief executives or the widening income gap between the rich and the poor; but, nobody ever wants to talk about the positives. Why should you be greedy? According to Gekko, you should be greedy because it is innate and your very survival and social advancement depends on it. We’ve all heard, at some point, the ideology, ‘survival of the fittest’; this ideology becomes more relevant today as globalization becomes more of a reality.
Globalization is the reason why the richest man in the world is no longer an American, a title Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, held for over a decade. Globalization is the reason why we all have friends online from all over the country and worldwide and yet we continue to seek more on popular websites such as Myspace.com and Facebook.com. Globalization is the reason why greed is here to stay and Gordon Gekko’s quote is still relevant after twenty years.
You should be greedy because you already are. Our greed for more friends to increase our friends’ list online, greed for achieving the American Dream, greed for love, greed for achieving good grades, and greed for power, are all healthy and required for humanity’s continued growth and increasing global competition. The critics out there may wonder about the effect of greed on social injustice, but I ask, isn’t greed for social justice a type of greed? For the sake of my argument, let’s forget that greed belongs to the nomenclature of vices referred to as the ‘Seven deadly sins,’ or that it carries a negative connation, or that it even exists in any lexicon. What we are left with is a classless, stateless, pseudo-utopia. This new pseudo-utopia can now be referred to as a communist or socialist entity.
The absence for the need to be greedy only creates an opportunity for the human spirit to become greedy as in the case of pre-WWII Europe and the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I perceive greed as being on both ends of a spectrum and in the middle is motive. One has the choice to travel right or left (or in this case, good or bad) with one’s motive but no matter the choice there will always be equilibrium, but that’s not to imply that there is equality in power distribution. Greed is like the internet, it is nowhere but everywhere or vice versa; in other words, no one claims to be greedy but we all are; as opposed to if we all acknowledged our innate greed then no one would be “greedy”. If success is supposedly 100% attitude, who’s to say greed should not be incorporated into one’s attitude?
April 11th, 2009 23:07
“Greed was good.” Greed is “good” as long as it is in the best interest and benefit to the advancement of mankind. The advancement of mankind to what end, you ask? The advancement of mankind in regards to happiness. Happiness is the end goal. Religious figures figured this out ages ago. Which is why they offered “eternal bliss” (how ironic) as bait for their slaves. Greed has become detrimental to the advancement of happiness at this point. One could even argue that it has been so for a very long time. But we cannot return (well we can, but that would involve a memory swiping device) to agrarian bliss. So, I suppose we MUST push ahead with our greed intact until we can break through to an advanced state that offers a little more good on this globe. Because, the global-north citizen is constantly battling routine, dreariness, pointless overwork and plain suburbia (itself). The global-south are beset by the consequences of international exploitation and domestic corruption. Their exists a very small minority benefiting from life and feeling happy in this world at this time.
“Greed was good.” And maybe “greed will be good”, but it certainly “is not good” now.