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In times of rampant greed and openly executed corruption it is easy to point fingers . . at the so called rich and powerful. The sometimes even publicly celebrated cynical egotistic bullying makes it hard indeed to feel anything but anger or rage. Is arrogance matched by ignorance here as it most often is?

Is greed just a pastime of people who lost their way so much that they can’t even remember that there has been a way in the first place?

Or are these people just smarter because they use a system which at least allows for if not outright invites those kind of selfserving habits? And who supports that system? Wouldn’t that be us?

In a conversation on TV a smart thirtyish business woman answered a related question posed by a famous anchorman: “Well, as long as you can get away with it, I suppose we do just what everybody does, right? Or are the media different in this concern?” The man looked as if somebody reminded him od something embarrassing and quickly shot his next arrow:”But don’t you consider this kind of greed deeply immoral and obscene?”

The woman knew her field well and sneered at him: “I guess by ‘this kind of greed’ you mean there is a consensus of what is an acceptable amount of greed and what is not. I tell you something, if greed wouldn’t exist this system would be finished at once.” “How can you be so sure about that?”, the anchor already went for defense. “Because the ones who are crying out so loud right now would love to be in our place, at least moneywise. They’d love to imagine all those millions buying them out of slavery because that is what we are doing: escape the prison of conventional everyday mediocrity!”

The experienced anchor had lost safe ground and therefore raised his tone: “In other words you don’t care at all what happens to people who entrusted you their money? You just go for making your personal killing?” “Well, that’s a bit easy, right? The way I see it this system is so competitive that you either go with it or not. Make your choice. There is not much room for morals.” “And what about the average family who lost their whole savings and are scared for life?” “Well, I’m sorry for them but they knew they would take a risk, didn’t they?”

The helpless anchor, while contemplating the competitiveness in his own field, turned to a different  subject: the public. “Ok then, here are some questions from our viewers. Al from Chicago asks two questions. First: don’t you take advantage of people by permanently creating formerly unknown needs and then profit from presenting yourself as the saviours who have the solution? Second: What do you feel when you bring your kids to bed at night? Don’t you ever have doubts about your actions?”

The woman responds unswervingly. Well trained, very professional, thinks the achor with jealous admiration. “These are good questions. I’ll start with the first. Again I have to say that advertising services which are supposed to help people in their needs are not immoral, right? If they would, I guess we’d live in a different system, probably a socialist system. Second: I love my children like everybody else. And yes, I have doubts from time to time. But then again: you cannot let them win. So I work hard in making responsible decisions . . .”  . . . .

Blablabla. On and on they go. And spare the time to swap channels. You know why. How often did we listen to and watch this kind of collusive game? What is touched inside us that addicts us to such obvious propaganda?

Greed is just the other side of the coin. Need is the first one. As long as we seek our fulfillment in distraction, consumerism, so called ‘Secrets’ and ‘Sciences of getting . . .X (fill in the gap)’  we are easy prey for the ruthless. And indeed, they mostly get away with it. We don’t.

Unless we quit all addictions that cloud our soul, our reason and our heart, we have little chance of living the kind of fulfilled and happy life we strive for. Our joy of giving has been transformed to the status of a delivery boy(girl): we earn money just to burn it for useless or overpriced nonsense.  Should we remind ourselves that love and compassion, friendship and cooperation is for free? Well, at least on the surface . . .

Because there is hardly a system which can sustain itself without our consent we might as well think about one that could contain our hearts. And then we take action, cooperative action and maybe even the cynics join into the manifestation, grateful for being able to drop their stressful burdon. Cheers to heartful change!
 
 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.