trade theoretically allows people to get more of what they want.

Taking Advantage
The Sociological Basis of Greed

by

Richard F. Taflinger

This page has been accessed since 28 May 1996.

For further readings, I suggest going to the Media and Communications Studies website.

Greed has a strong biological basis. However, it has an fifty-fifty stronger social footing. This sets it somewhat apart from self-preservation and reproduction. To examine greed and how it fits into human being folklore, we need to beginning from the beginning.

The definition of greed is an farthermost or excessive desire for resources, peculiarly for property such equally money, real manor, or other symbols of wealth. Here nosotros encounter ii problems: defining excessive, and defining wealth, especially in terms of human psychology.

In basic terms, "excessive" is possessing something to such a caste it's harmful. For example, excessive drinking leads to falling down a lot and hating yourself in the morning. Excessive eating leads to bellyaches and obesity. Excessive speed leads to cliff edges and telephone poles. These are aspects that most people would agree are harmful.

However, all these things are harmful only to the individual. How could a desire for wealth be harmful? Every person needs a degree of wealth to survive: you lot need to purchase food, pay the rent, get wear, transportation, haircuts, cable TV. Without money (a symbol of wealth, or rather a transportable symbol of resources necessary to survival) you could starve or freeze to death, something that is definitely harmful. In addition, the more wealth you lot have, the ameliorate the quantity and/or quality of the things it brings y'all can get. Again, how could a want for wealth, and thus the things information technology gets you, exist harmful?

The answer lies in the fact that humans are social and cultural animals, non just individuals. Although for the individual greed (a strong desire for wealth) is good, the social group that individual belongs to may think greed is bad for rher. Notation I say "bad for rher" -- non necessarily bad for the society or the culture or the group, but for rher, which is as practiced an opening as I can think of for going into the history of greed.

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Once upon a time in that location was a lilliputian single-cell organism. Nosotros'll call it Herman. Herman spent its life wandering aimlessly around its waterdrop, dreaming little one-cell dreams and searching for fifty-fifty littler one-cell food. Ane day Herman, who had been getting rather fatty, suddenly felt itself torn asunder and became ii Hermettes (pregnant "little Hermans"). The Hermettes thought this was a good idea, and realized that getting fat would result in even more Hermettes. Thus the Hermettes strove to get more nutrient and become fatty Hermans, and become Hermettes, who also strove to go more food, and become fat Hermans, etc., etc., etc..

Soon the water driblet, and surrounding h2o drops, and big chunks of ocean, were filled with Hermans and Hermettes, all gulping down (metaphorically speaking, since they didn't accept throats) every piece of food they could find. In other words, they were greedy, ensuring their own survival and ability to reproduce by devouring everything they could find that would consequence in more Hermettes.

Herman, and its descendants, and their descendants, kept this up for a couple of billion years, greedily grasping for those resources that ensured personal and genetic survival.

Eventually, some of Herman'south descendants discovered that they could cope with weather meliorate is they found a fashion to evolve faster and weed out mutations that got in the fashion of survival. They adult sex.

Finally, Herman's descendants were greedily gulping fruits, nuts, berries, and anything else that came to a paw that was becoming a hand. Several of them had banded together to form a mutual nonaggression pact. Among them were Oog and Ugh, who were hoping to have a little Ugly of their ain. Reaching for some other apple tree, Oog suddenly had her protohand slapped. Popping the offended member in her oral fissure, she looked askance at her attacker. Aagh pointed to her own little Yugh, who was looking thin and hungry. Oog looked, then dorsum-protohanded Aagh off the co-operative, took the apple, and scarfed it down. The balance of the band, observing this subtle coaction of diplomatic reasoning, decided that such selfishness required word. However, since they hadn't yet evolved language, they simply vanquish up Oog, and for good measure out Ugh, with a few swipes at Aagh for having started the whole mess. And so they sent Oog and Ugh forth to go and sin with another group just leave the states lone.

Such discouragement discouraged Oog and Ugh, but they knew deep downwardly that the more resource they collected and kept for themselves, they meliorate off they, and when Ugly came along, all three of them would exist. They competed for resources better than others, passed on more than of their ain genes, and in general became human being beings.

However, human beings are gregarious creatures, wishing to ring into mutual admiration societies and avoid inbreeding. Nosotros get together for protection, for back up, to share the work necessary for survival, and to have someone to talk to.

In addition, the resources important to humans inverse. No longer was information technology simply food in social club to get and continue the strength to procreate. Now at that place were other things, like land to grow food, and coin to buy food, and pottery to store food, and methods such as ships and caravans and trading and military conquest to go food. Somewhen, the food was non the end result desired -- the means to the terminate became the finish itself.

The real problem arose when the population increased and the possible wealth became limited. There was but so much country and money and other resources to go around. Thus, for one person to aggregate a lot of wealth, rhe had to reduce what somebody else could get. This created conflict in the lodge between the haves and accept-nots, the become-getters and the no-getters.

The purpose of a society is to reduce conflict betwixt the members of that society. The society creates laws, religions, authorities, whatever will let people to get forth without fighting each other in response to their biological urges. Thus, there are laws and religious proscriptions confronting murder to keep people from killing each other and thus weakening the lodge's ability to support itself and the people in information technology. There are laws and religious proscriptions against infidelity to go along men from killing each other and enslaving women so men can be certain of their paternity (a biological imperative -- a male person doesn't want to waste his resources and intendance on genes that aren't his (Daly, 1983), and men are male).

To reduce the conflict greed could create, societies, through their laws and religions, said that an farthermost desire for wealth was harmful to the society since it concentrated too many resource in too few hands. Thus greed was decreed and decried as excessive and harmful, and proscribed.

The ancient proscriptions were to avert societal conflicts. The proscriptions were likewise ofttimes like shooting fish in a barrel to follow when people were nomadic. They had to carry everything they endemic around with them, and thus in that location was little desire to accumulate things that would but increment the burden. For instance, the !Kung people of Africa take lived this nomadic life for centuries and have few material possessions. (Leakey, 1978)

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The want for wealth is especially apparent in those cultures descended from or adhering to the Western European tradition of "progress" and "growth", a legacy of the eras of scientific discovery and world exploration. The sometime led people to believe that they could know everything, the latter increased what they knew and opened the world to trade.

Merchandise became a major cistron in European life afterwards the Black Death, a plague that killed three-fourths of Europe's population in the 14th Century. This massive decrease in the work force had 3 results. First, the finish of the feudal system, since the serfs, their numbers at present low and thus their value as a workforce now high, could now demand wages for their labor. Second, a surplus of appurtenances and food since the number of consumers was so low. And third, a sudden increase in personal wealth as people inherited the belongings of all their relatives that had died. These three factors led to a greater sense of individualism and a decline in spiritual and intellectual interests in favor of material interests. (Burke, 1985)

With the new high-demand products, such equally spices, tea and silk, made available by world exploration, trade and exploitation of markets became the goals of European societies and individuals in those societies. This continues to this 24-hour interval. The standard of living for the members of societies practicing such materialism gives them a major reward over those people and societies that don't. They can assemble more than resource, live longer, raise more children in better weather that tin can pass on their parents' and ancestors' genes, and generally outstrip any contest that doesn't practice greed.

Today, considering of the standard of living materialism provides those who follow the thought that some is good, more is ameliorate, too much is only right, much of the world "goes for the gold". Thus, although legal and religious proscriptions confronting greed have been in effect and given at least lip service for millennia, the fact remains that, every bit it was for Oog and Ugh, deep down inside people believe "greed is adept". Information technology might exist disguised equally capitalism, expanding the range of possibilities, or enlightened self-interest, but deep down inside it's greed.(1)

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Why then, if greed is not only biologically desirable only socially and societally desirable too, does greed have such a bad name? It goes back to the fact that humans are social and cultural animals, not just individuals.

Call back that greed is a valuable trait for the individual. It makes rher fight for a larger slice of the pie, a good idea from a biological point of view. Nevertheless, since humans are social creatures, and greed says that an individual should take more than rher own share, greed creates social conflict, as those who lose out resent those who win more than an even share. Those that are particularly greedy (read, particularly adept at getting larger pieces of pies) are specially resented. Remember Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley: many people cheered their downfalls. After all, who did they think they were? Likewise successful, rich, competent, and capable. They were also manipulative, vain, egotistical and arrogant. However, how many people would, if they were honest, have inverse places with them in a 2nd, at to the lowest degree while the Donald and Leona were at their acme? Why are lotteries and sweepstakes and so successful? Why exercise Reno and Las Vegas concenter millions of people to their casinos? Considering, no matter how much it is decried, people are greedy: they all want more than they have, the more than more the meliorate.

The affair to bear in mind is that "greed is good." That is, information technology's good for the private, only perhaps not for the society in which that individual lives. Unrestrained greed in an private tin lead to callousness, airs, and even megalomania. A person dominated by greed will often ignore the impairment their actions can cause others. Sweat shops, dangerous working weather and devastation of livelihoods are all consequences of people whose personal greed overcame their social consciences.

However, even a society that bans individual greed can endure. Information technology is greed that makes people desire to practise things, since they volition exist rewarded for their efforts. Remove that advantage, and you remove the incentive to work. The former Soviet Union provides an example of this: the collective farms provided no private incentive to strive, and thus produced an bereft supply of nutrient. The individually owned and run truck farms, however, with the possibility of selling the produce and keeping the proceeds, grew a far greater harvest per acre than the collective farms. The "greed" of American farmers has immune them to grow food for the world, since the more they produce the more money they make.

Notwithstanding, however you lot regard it, unrestrained greed is detrimental to society; unrestrained disapproval of greed is detrimental to lodge. People attempt to notice a balance between biological imperative and social necessity.

SUMMARY

Although there is a strong biological basis for human being beliefs, humans are the almost social creatures on earth. The societies and cultures we create have a major outcome on our behavior, mollifying and modifying our biological reactions.

Self-preservation extends beyond the personal to the public, involving family, friends, and fifty-fifty strangers. What may assist our personal survival may assistance others, who may assistance united states of america in turn.

Humans, reproducing sexually, have all the biological urges that other animals have. However, our complex societies and cultures accept altered our reproductive strategies. Social factors, in particular women'due south, take go so important that they are a guiding rather than an ancillary consideration in mate selection. Force and fighting skill in men have taken second place to power, money, and condition. Although the quondam may be necessary to success in the biological world, the latter are necessary to success in human being lodge. And in the last several thousand years, society rather than biology has go the driving strength of human life.

Every bit, man social life has radically altered the need to gather resources to live and reproduce. The need for food, water or shelter is biological -- a lack results in decease. Notwithstanding, human order has changed how and why resources are gathered. The biological necessity is the aforementioned: humans need to swallow, drink, sleep, stay out of the rain. But society has developed a mode to transport electric current resources into the future for employ in that time to come -- money. Thus, humans seek money.

Appeals to the homo psyche must take not but biological science simply society into account. Society is the driving force behind much of man behavior.

Notes

(1) This note is contained in the Comments Page -- Comments on Greed in the Mod Earth
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