TOW#568 — Greed
Greed is very often associated with selfishness, but most importantly greed doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor, ethnic, religious or any other affiliation.
In this competitive age, most people are focused on how to get to the top as quickly as possible, how to get richer, how to get a better place to live, and all regardless of the consequences and how it might affect others. To make the tragedy even greater, we idealize those people and want to be like them, even though deep down we know we’re not all like that.
But is that good? Here are some characteristics of greedy people, so judge for yourselves whether you’re like that and whether it’s good or not to be greedy:
They pretend — while others are working at a frantic pace, selfish people work hard to avoid working at all. They spend their days shuffling around piles of paper on their desks while watching everyone else go crazy. However, when the job’s done, you can be sure they’ll be the first to ask for rewards for the effort (of someone else);
Only for me — they almost always take all the credit for themselves, normally for successfully completed jobs, while if it wasn’t successfully completed then they immediately don’t count themselves as part of the team. In addition, it’s typical for some company managers and directors to get bonuses and salary increases, while when it comes to the rest, well, “it’s been a difficult year”;
Support — as long as it doesn’t affect them, you’ll have their support for any decision. Greedy people have strong opinions about problems, but expect others to solve them. It’s OK for taxes to increase, as long as it doesn’t affect their personal profit, or for everyone’s salaries, except theirs, to decrease because we’re in a difficult year and we should all (not including them, of course) be aware of that. Also, they generally support wars, unless it’s their children that have to be sent!;
More and more — they’re on the front lines when something is being done to get more for them, but when they have to give something they’re either nowhere to be seen (not present at those meetings) or they don’t say anything at all. For them, there’s only the concept of reward, not punishment. For them, there’s (they remember) only what suits them from an agreement, but they immediately forget what was agreed by all parties involved, i.e. what they have to do!;
They take everything that is offered to them — they take everything that’s offered, even though they don’t need it, and even though they know that it may harm their friends and colleagues, or perhaps even the rest of the population. They simply think that everything that is on offer is for them, despite the fact they don’t need it.
Holes in the system — they look for holes in the system, for personal gain. They’ll try to avoid paying taxes, yet will be among the loudest to criticise others for not paying them. They don’t respect the system, yet demand the best parts of it for themselves;
Destroying others’ self-esteem — some people get the best out of others, while selfish people focus on themselves. Greedy people feel better destroying the self-esteem of someone else rather than helping them feel good and giving them credit where it’s due;
Stealing from the future — greedy people only care about their own needs and problems and aren’t at all interested if the solution to their problem has a negative effect on one, two or more people. Instead of solving the root cause of their problem, they solve it to the detriment of everyone but themselves.
Wishing you success with the changes to come,
@kalinbabusku
