Forum Post: Greed Is A Natural Instinct In Us ALL & It Must Be Controlled
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 6, 2011, 7 p.m. EST by Puzzlin
(2898)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Greed is a natural characteristic of being human which is deeply seated in our mind at birth. Our prime motive, at our core, is to stay alive and that means having everything we believe we need. In the deep recesses of our mind we don't differentiate between enough and everything. Basically this survival instinct over-rides our cultural desires to be respected and not seen as a swindler. The gambler runs on this greed. It's power over us can easily overcome the social norms which seek to control or limit the tendency towards greed.
Also, interestingly enough, when we satisfy this desire for greed by making large sums of money by taking foolish risks we also stimulate those same areas of the brain that are stimulated by sex, or drug use. This was verified through MRI studies involved with greed as the subject.
The scientific finding that greed in our current culture can stimulate feelings of pleasure similar to sex or drugs explains why capitalists seem so drawn to lust after profit and power. This lust leads them to seek short-term gratification even if the long-term results of their action may be disastrous.
So, with this knowledge, we have to realize that the only possible way to get greed out of politics and out of wall street is to control it. Our history is replete with these scam artists, charlatans, swindlers, and con artists since it's been recorded. It is the natural tendency of all of us when we're born. We had to be taught not to steal, share our toys, and that sharing is polite. If we were raised well, and have good discipline, we can overcome those tendencies. Our culture can help reinforce these values in us.
We can ultimately regain our control by restoring the regulations on wall street that were there just for this reason. We can stop the outsourcing mania by taking away the incentive for corporations doing it. And finally we get the rich out of the pockets of the politicians, make the rich pay their fair share in taxes, and close all those crafty greedy loopholes.
If greed dominates, the engine of economic growth will deplete our resources, push the poor aside, and drive us into a deep social, political, and economic crisis. The alternative is a path of political and social cooperation, both within countries and internationally. There will be enough resources and prosperity to go around if we convert our economies to renewable energy sources, sustainable agricultural practices, and reasonable taxation of the rich. This is the path to shared prosperity through improved technologies, political fairness, and ethical awareness.
greedy-needy....................................................................greedy-needy
and more Greed.................
control the greed - a positive idea -
There are a huge number of great COMPLICATED ideas that will garner GREAT OPPOSITION. In an ideal country full of great idealistic philosophers, these would be easy to implement. We need to be realistic & pick an issue that is simple - that is popular -
that 83% of Americans agree on -
that 56% of TP agree on -
that will bring together the people in OWS with the people outside of OWS.
Everybody wins!
Our only goal should be to pass a constitutional amendment to counter Supreme Court decisions Citizens United (2010) & Buckley v. Valeo (1976), that enable unlimited amounts of anonymous money to flood into our political system.
“Corporations and organizations are not a persons & have no personhood rights”
and
“money is not free speech”.
We don’t have to explain or persuade people to accept our position – we have to persuade them to ACT based on their own position. Pursuing this goal will prove to the world that we, at OWS, are a serious realistic Movement, with serious realistic goals. Achieving this goal will make virtually every other goal – jobs, taxes, infrastructure, Medicare – much easier to achieve –
by disarming our greatest enemy – GREED.
THE SUCCESS STORY OF THE AMENDING PROCESS The Prohibition movement started as a disjointed effort by conservative teetotalers who thought the consumption of alcohol was immoral. They ransacked saloons and garnered press coverage here and there for a few years. Then they began to gain support from the liberals because many considered alcohol partially responsible for spousal and child abuse, among other social ills. This odd alliance, after many years of failing to influence change consistently across jurisdictions, decided to concentrate on one issue nationally—a constitutional amendment. They pressured all politicians on every level to sign a pledge to support the amendment. Any who did not, they defeated easily at the ballot box since they controlled a huge number of liberal, and conservative and independent swing votes in every election. By being a single-issue constituency attacking from all sides of the political spectrum, they very quickly amassed enough votes (2/3) to pass the amendment in Congress. And, within just 17 months, they were successful in getting ¾ of the state legislatures to ratify the constitutional amendment into law. (Others were ratified even faster: Eight —took less than a year. The 26th, granting 18-year-olds the right to vote, took just three months and eight days.)
If they could tie the left and right into a success -
WHY CAN'T WE??????????
I feel that we should stay with this simple text to overturn CU:
”corporations are not people” and “money is not free speech”
for four simple reasons and one – not so simple:
1
83% of Americans have already opposed CU in the ABC/Washington post poll and the above
IS THEIR POSITION ALREADY.
2
We don’t have to work to convince people on the validity of our position.
3
Simple is almost always better.
4
This simple Amendment is REQUIRED to overturn CU.
And all other electoral reform can be passed through the normal legislative process.
5
OWS and these pages are chock full of ( mostly ) excellent ideas to improve our country.
All of them have strong advocates – and some have strong opposition.
None of them has been “pre-approved” by 83% of Americans !
Pursuing this goal – without additional specifics is exactly what Americans want.
What do we want? Look at that almost endless list of demands – goals - aims.
Tax the rich. End the Fed. Jobs for all, Medicare for all. So easy to state! Can you imagine how hard it would be to formulate a “sales pitch” for any of these to convince your Republican friends to vote for any of them?
83% of Americans have ALREADY “voted” against CU. And 76% of the Rs did too.
All we have to do ask Americans is to pressure their representatives – by letters - emails – petitions.
Wanna take your family on vacation?
Convince the 7 year old and the 10 year old to go to Mt Rushmore.
Then try to convince them to go to Disneyland.
Prioritizing this goal will introduce us to the world – not as a bunch of hippie radical anarchist socialist commie rabblerousers – but as a responsible, mature movement that is fighting for what America wants.
I feel that using the tactics of the NRA, the AARP an the TP – who all represent a minority – who have successfully used their voting power to achieve their minority goals - plus the Prohibition Amendment tactics – bringing all sides together - is a straight path for us to success that cannot fail to enable us to create and complete one MAJORITY task.
This subject is always current as long as we under assault from greedy rich a$$hats who everything for them and nobody else matters.
Selfish Greed is what destroys our communities!!!
No control over inborn atavistic traits.
We can learn to take control but your right, difficult. This is what this thread is here about.
Greed is deep in us, and when presented the candy store, we eat candy until it makes us sick, then we stop. Point being, have to keep a vigil with this stuff. De-regulating was a huge mistake, we took away all the restraints. And we got unrestrained GREED...........
Agreed, "we must control it", so perhaps you would consider our group's proposal of an alternative online direct democracy of government and business at http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/strategically_weighted_policies_organizational_operating_structures_tactical_investment_procedures_as_of_11_6_2011 , for this is a small-business-bottom-up approach, not today's big-business-top-down approach, so if agreed, join our group's 20 members committed to that plan at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
I don't think there are any changes that can be made even though I think the solutions you provided in the last sentence are a means to a new way of being but in the even larger picture they are just temporary solutions and will just prolong the inevitable. We need to instill a new idea, a meme, that creates a new cultural value, which will be perhaps the the first global cultural value, a value shared by all of humanity. I say this because survival is also dependant on the collective. We can not survive alone but we can feel alone in our struggle to survive. We need to internalize the reality that we need each other to survive. This idea raises the bar on human to human respect and respect for the earth as our survival depends on taking care of our earth as well. I think greed becomes a motive when loneliness and survival instinct combine. If you feel your alone are responsible for your own survival you will defy others and make decisions motivated by fear, supremacy and hatred for your neighbor. With the population as large as it is we need to learn how to not compete but work together to progress forward and flourish otherwise we as a species will commit suicide. The 1% is nothing without the 99%. So the reality today is that in order for humanity to move forward we must be the 100%. Thus the only hope for a global future is coup de tat. (sp.?)
I believe in the case of Greed, there has to be enforcement against it. In other words, when these big money transactions go down, someone else needs to be looking at it that's impartial. When we De-regulated wall street we were set up for what happened because no one was left watching the store after that.
Greedy people can be stopped if they believe they may get caught doing their dirty deeds. Otherwise, they are wide open. Since greed is so inherent to us when the regulations were taken away it was open season. It was an open inviting invitation.
And, after the melt down, and the dust settled, who was held accountable?
problem is, who decides what greed is? Who are the people doing this deciding? Will we jail people with force of violence for even saying they are greedy? Where will it end?
Our courts decide whether a person is guilty or not dependent on the evidence. It will end when we severely curb swindlers, thieves, and charlatans from running corporations. It will end when the big wall street bankers can no longer peddle worthless derivatives with AAA ratings (how'd that happen, ey?). It will end when we have justice and we are protected from these rip-offs.
Well spoken ubuntu, and i like your train of thought. I have read other similar posts on other forums that tackle your ideas also. If your interested then have a look at this link http://www.911oz.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=11393 The authors other post are also very interesting and well worth a read if you have the time.
Americans ignore the insanity and incompetence of the government
read more -- http://overthecoals.blogspot.com/
Let's begin with the budget and the squandering of trillions of dollars on more and more weapons. Only raving maniacs would create the American foreign policy and defense policy. Americans do it with a straight face as if they were sophisticated and educated people.
The economists and bankers in America have created policies that allow and promote wild gambling with derivatives that they claim are complex as if they worked. They worked to destroy the banking system and put 50,000,000 Americans out of work with the globalization policy that is nothing more than simple slavery of Chinese workers. That slavery is hidden behind the bogus claim that China's currency is too strong. If China allowed its currency to rise in value to the dollar, the US debt they own $1.137 trillion (the same as it was in August 2010) would be paid back with half of what they loaned.
The Chinese government isn't stupid. They aren't going to take half of what they loaned. The American people are completely uninformed nitwits who have no clue that the government they believe can't be voted out of office with a 3rd party, would be gone if they heard what SCREWED AGAIN is trying to publish for them.
The ignorance and incompetence of the American government is displayed by the liars that divert attention to 9/11 every day. The American people refuse to hear about and understand the evidence that proves clearly the 9/11 was a direct attack by Bush who was warned officially more than 40 times and chose to use the Al-Qaeda attack as a false flag for the incidents revealed by SCREWED AGAIN.
We had a pretty good shot at sane governance in the U.S.... but those who love a dead constitution, one that can not adapt for technological and social evolution... well, they legislated the system to legalize bribery and they absolutely quit, at every level of the gov't, working for the people. We need a restoration of honest governance and the permanent removal of our gov't being allowed to make the rules for political campaigns and the money that corrupts it.
I am wondering if this could be a vehicle by which we stop the legalized bribery and forever remove it from our gov'ts grasp. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2Fthe99percentdeclaration%2F&h=7AQF3gMz7AQEMWf7jzSpaUWO2tlAaNJ1wC-bdNNJqDQBOQg
I don't consider our constitution dead by any means.
I don't think it's realistic to believe that we could just scrap our constitution and start over. It's like saying History is dead so we don't want read about it anymore. We'll cancel all the history classes because it's dead.
Dead is Dead, right? Or did you mean dead in another sense?
perhaps I should have said "a static" document
Well, it's a step in much better direction.
But I still don't agree since essentially it written intentionally to be a dynamic document. In other words, I don't think we will be giving up our hard fought for rights anytime soon. We still enjoy freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy for instance, naming just a few, and I don't see them as static.
those are gone or slowly fading away my friend.
Well, I do agree there. We need to get these rights back. They are still there in our constitution just like we were all created equal with certain unalienable rights.
Unalienable Forever. This one holds.
Greed is learned, it isn't a natural instinct. watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JmkI0MXF7w