Does the Occupy Wall Street movement believe it has the antidote to greed? Is simply protesting the disparity in income and assets between the 1% and the 99% enough to overcome that age old deadly sin?
I suspect that most of us belonging to the 99% think the 1% are greedy but would trade places with them in a heartbeat. So why are we so upset that some people have a lot of money when so many of us wish we had it?
We tend to think of greed as one of those seven deadly sins which afflict only rich people. However, if this was merely a disease suffered by the rich, it probably would not really qualify as a deadly sin since so few people are rich.
Greed is an equal opportunity affliction. Greed is behind just about every major crime committed in the world.
It has been the primary cause of every revolution since recorded history.
It has been the downfall of every attempt to create a utopian society. It is ignited by the fear that we will not get something we want or we will lose something we have. It is at the root of hoarding. Even if we got what we wanted or we kept what we have, we would want more. Why, because in order for greed to sustain itself, it can never be satisfied.
Earlier this week, I was invited to attend a workshop on how to organize immigrants. Since immigration is not one of those issues putting me over the edge, I spent the first part of the workshop wondering why I was there. Once I thought about the fact that I had adopted a new approach to life called “do what comes next,” I decided to sit back and listen with the expectation that I would learn something.
I had been invited to attend this workshop by a woman who is very committed to empowering Latinos. Her commitment interested me more than the empowering. She was a young white woman from an upper middle class family who was certainly not reaping any great economic reward for her effort. Although she was employed by an organization helping immigrants, she was probably just making enough to satisfy basic needs. Yet when I looked at her I saw more than a woman committed to immigrants, I saw a woman waging a war on greed simply by her generosity.
I was glad I attended the workshop because I did learn for the first time just how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had created wide spread poverty in
Latin America. This was the driving force for so many Latinos and Haitians coming to the
United States after 1994. Days later, two questions came to my mind: who benefited from NAFTA and why is the
United States so attractive to immigrants from these third world countries?
I think the answer to both questions is money. Money in the abstract is like oxygen. It serves no purpose unless we use it, unless we spread it around. Money is the means by which we
fairly exchange goods and services, and unless that fair exchange is going on, we are as poor as those immigrants who fled to the States.
Greed is like a Catch 22. If immigrants who have come to the
United States are fortunate enough to get a job, they start buying those items manufactured in countries that have benefited from NAFTA. These are the same products that cost them their security in the first place. But fair exchange is not going on here. Money is simply creating more money because the quality of those goods and services is declining and bears little relationship to how much is spent on them. The poorer the quality, the more money is spent. Today, money has become another name for greed and everybody wants some or what it can buy.
A few years ago I was in a store shopping for Christmas. The prices were low because everything had been made in
China or
India. I remember thinking about the number of American jobs that had been lost but I kept on buying. I was championing free trade. Now that our factories have closed up and there are around 20 million people out of work, we are still buying goods made in
India and
China. We are told that our economy is dependant on our spending. We are obliging and going deeper and deeper into debt. But what if we stopped and put our greed on hold for just a little while and shared what we have with those who have less just as this young woman is doing. I think we would learn that generosity is really the antidote for greed. In this way, greed might just lose its place as number two on the list of the seven deadly sins.
Roz, I think you are capturing here the fear at the heart of greed-- always wanting more even when you have enough-- and the seemingly intractable problem of an economic system that makes us, as consumers, the producers of our own oppression.
ReplyDeleteThough I've been involved in the Occupy movement, I've actually never supported its emphasis on greed because greed seems to me a moral, individual problem rather than a systemic and material one. And it seems to me the strategy of neoconservaties to emphasize the moral, individual source of sin (the greatest sin in the U.S. being, of course, poverty) rather than the systemic source. I am convinced that economic injustice is a systemic, material problem because I, like you, have spent years around wealthy people and see their privilege as:
1) inherited & maintained rather than achieved & re-achieved across generations: the majority of rich people I know were born white, provided with private education where public education was lacking, and raised in a culture that expected that they would become doctors, lawyers, and bankers. Banking was not only sanctioned by the American ideas that any dollar made is fairly made and that there is no greater shame than dependence on public services (because it proves you are ill-adapted to the exigencies of our society at worst, and restricted to mediocre bureaucratic provisions at best). So the reproduction of wealth is normalized both by the wealthy (who, circulating mostly among people of their own class, feel accustomed and entitled to a certain lifestyle) and by American values at large which see wealth as an external index of internal capacities for creativity, intelligence, adaptability, and autonomy.
2) contained by the absence of a robust civil society or promising ways of redistributing wealth: the majority of rich people I know want to "help" but don't know how. They pay their taxes, yes, but then the majority go to military spending. Could they attend marches? Wait- until Occupy, we hardly marched anymore, and when we did, we have no impact (see WTO protests in 1999, anti-war marches in 2003). Should they give to charity? Well- charity by and large focuses on goods/services rather than organizing or other means of systemic change that would make the agencies providing those goods unnecessary. Charity in many cases means "throwing money at a problem" without an eye to impact. So could rich people work in solidarity with low-income people to create change? Well- yes, by voting progressive, but for the past 20 years that hasn't meant they will necessarily pay more in taxes or that those taxes will distributed with low-income people in mind. So is it any surprise that people with extra money tend to buy a vacation home in North Conway (I didn't tell you my grandparents used to have a vacation home there, too) before they bankroll an organization like N2N? (Anecdotally, and not surprisingly, it's been documented that lower income people give a higher percentage of their salary to charity than higher income people-- which leads to your point about greed and my next point...)
3) The more neoliberal policies in the U.S. take public money out of education, health care, housing, and other basic necessities, the more anyone with money will be terrified to lose what they have since 'falling' in the U.S. means there will be no one to catch you. So neoliberal policies stoke the fear at the heart of greed that makes people hoard their capital and thank their lucky stars (because it's a matter of luck, everyone knows deep down, and not a matter of creativity, intelligence, adaptability, or autonomy) they are not living in the projects or on disability money because, Lord knows, neither of those services offer enough or good enough of anything. The more we divest public funds from public services, the more "greed" is just a reasonable reaction and seemingly the only guarantee of a safe home in a clean community, a good school with the prospect of meaningful employment, and an income that buys us what we need with a tiny bit leftover for ice cream (which we deserve). The 1% certainly wants more than that, but the greed is stoked, like you said, by the very elemental fear you point to.
ReplyDeleteI am an organizer because I grew up with a lot-- my parents paid for (and are still admittedly in debt from) my private education. I am childless, eat organic food, and have $1500 in credit card debt, half of which is from a vacation to Cuba. So while I still live with an everyday greed, shoo-ing my boyfriend's hand off my plate when he wants to share my dinner, I can work full-time for the economic justice my Jewish parents and grandparents felt they couldn't afford. It's not a matter of generosity at all, actually, but privilege that I now feel entitled to a life without fear.
If we want to provide an anti-dote to greed, we have to promise peopel that they will have what they need-- not just schools, but good schools, and not just enough food but good food, and plenty. The 1% legislated their own fear through neoliberal policies, guaranteeing our and ironically their own insecurity; it's our job now to legislate abundance-- because Lynn residents know how to stretch a meal, make old clothes feel new, and piece together 2 low-wage jobs to be able to afford night classes, but it's only reasonable that they shouldn't have to.