Tag Archives: greed

Ditch the Greed, Find the Good

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In a world drowning in overindulgence, degeneracy, and nefariously naked malevolence,  there is one virus more deadly and culpable than any other.

Greed.

The cracks at the base of every broken heart. The desperation of drug addiction as a means of escape. The tear-stained cheeks of a starving child.  The innocent hands reaching out for compassion and finding a wall of abject antipathy. The baffling realization that a chasm constructed by an imaginary system of wealth and power to oppress, ridicule, demean, and belittle is as fragile as the egos that designed it.

This is the way we choose to occupy the literal blink of an eye opportunity we have to breathe oxygen on this planet.

Seems like the collective cost of effort, time, and resources could be better spent improving the quality of our human experience as opposed to a wild-eyed maniacal race to obtain and maintain the most toys.

Some are drowning in money, most are drowning in debt.

None of this is real. It is a giant constructed illusion to award power and influence to those at the summit. We worship the shiny silver success of excess and spend our days plotting our own path to the promised land. But most of those intrepid mountaineers stepped on the broken backs of the masses to make the ascension. 

Unable to handle the level of pain and suffering constantly endured by the innocent, the overwhelming impetus to take action is paralyzing. So I am left stopped and stalled and defeated. Frozen by the panic, size, and scope of the challenges sitting on the docket, passivity takes the place of initiative, and further down the spiral I slide. 

But a reckoning is waiting in the wings and the majority will no longer silently stand idly by, merely satisfied with the fallen scraps dropped from fortunate tables.

Adolescence Interrupted

Unclog the Drain

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“It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.”    —Dalai Lama

A country cowering in the corner of a storm drain and hiding from the impending hurricane by practicing almost unfathomable acts of social irresponsibility and shortsighted selfishness is a nation ripe for ridicule and condemnation by its global neighbors.

Sadly, the current pandemic is merely the pinpoint tip of an iceberg with titanic frozen roots, sitting at a depth scraping the seabed. Placing every pressing issue in the back seat of a brakeless car fueled by a narrow focus on some imaginary, concocted finish line—solely to benefit personal desires or ambitions—is beyond dangerous. It’s deadly.

We are reluctantly reaping what we’ve sown, regretting our batch and wishing we buried a different seed. But this toxic crop is precisely what we deserve, and the consequences of our actions have taken the shape of daily force-fed attrition.

Diseased, tortured Frankensteinian animals mass-produced as sustenance and left alone to rot in cages. Stock market manipulation to pack the pockets of people least deserving of the spoils. Blatant refusal to don masks at the expense of vulnerable elderly lungs desperately trying to survive a cloud of venomous vapor.

Every individual act of toe-shooting defiance is just a bullet in the head of the greater good.

Maybe you’ll be rescued by a vaccine. Maybe you won’t.

But patterns played out over time eventually lead to concrete, unchangeable results. If we continue to walk a path of least resistance—protecting our self-interests above those of the collective—and stunt the organic flow of nature’s blueprint, we will be met with far fiercer foes than coronaviruses.

We are not left without choice or free will, so selecting selfishness above selflessness is an insensitive slap in the face of humanity.

There will be debts to pay tomorrow for what is spent today.

Adolescence Interrupted

Scales Without Balance

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“If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life’s crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder.”                                                                                                    —Harold S. Kushner

I am deeply troubled these days. I’m blinded by unjust suffering on a global scale and I watch the escalating pain of family and friends from a very personal perspective.

How did our calibration fall so far out of balance? Why must genuinely sweet souls be forced to endure sustained agony while those with evil, black hearts are permitted to swim free in a sea of avarice and insensitivity?

I will never understand the fundamental human hardwiring that values greed and excess over common decency and the general welfare of others. It is a pandemic virus without a cure, and it’s systematically infecting our brains with frightening speed and alarming accuracy.

So…why do bad things happen to good people? Is there really no karmic system in place to level the playing field? Is everything simply randomized chaos without even the hint of some justified cause or effect?

This nightmarish scenario certainly frames society in a context that would cause the vast majority to squirm in their seats, and that’s not even taking into account the titanic religious implications in the lives of those who truly believe there is a grand master plan at play.

As hard as it might be to wrap your head around the fact that we’ll probably not get to the roots of the “meaning of life” debate during this short post, it’s worth considering that our own backyards are the only ones we can clean, and acts of kindness and generosity can easily be distributed one day (and to one person) at a time.

Your pain is never as severe as someone else’s. Your financial situation is never as dire. But your success is never as impressive, and your status is merely an illusion devised by your artificially-inflated ego.

Take a step back and take a step down. We are forgoing a sense of community and compassion at a disturbingly breakneck pace. It might be wise to take stock of what’s truly important…before it’s all lost.

Adolescence Interrupted

Helping Hands

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It’s been said in various ways by brilliant minds with giant hearts. There is generally a slight bending of the words, depending on the originator of the quote, but the message remains unambiguous.

A society’s worth is measured by the treatment of its weakest members.

If this is the yardstick by which our modern nation is measured, then I think it’s pretty safe to say this country is worthless.

It’s easy to jump on the gun debate bandwagon because our policies are horrific and asinine, but there’s a much bigger picture to paint.

We don’t care about people. We care about money. Greed has raped decency, and the elite’s blatant refusal to turn around to look at the bloody and bruised feet that are being trampled on the road to ascension is abhorrent.

I’m too young to be the oldest and grumpiest man on the street, but watching half the nation swing a sickle at crops that took generations to grow while the other half cowers in a collective fetal position, is sickening.

We are on a roller coaster careening toward a graphene wall, and it feels like we’re only going faster.

A society should be caring for and protecting those who are most vulnerable. But when people reach out for a helping hand, we consistently find a way to sever it at the wrist.

I’ve discussed my disgust with the chasm between rich and poor a number of times in past postings so I won’t continue to abuse a lifeless equine. But there are dangerous roads being paved with precedents that will be too dangerous to excavate, once we’ve located our missing minds.

This goes way back…before Trump and before Obama. There is a systematic unraveling of our foundational ideals that has been spinning for decades. Human compassion, environmental sympathy, economic responsibility, and global empathy have taken a distant backseat to excess, waste, disrespect, and avarice.

It is a seemingly impossible course to correct, but I have to maintain faith that we will somehow find the courage to grab that handbrake, and in a screeching sea of sparks and flashes, bring that cart to a lifesaving stop.

Adolescence Interrupted