GREED is GOOD
Remember the immortal monologue by Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street”,“Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good. Greed in all its form, greed for love, greed for money, greed for development has always marked the upward surge of mankind and greed only, ladies and gentleman, will save not only Telder paper but a larger malfunctioning corporation named the USA.”
Few people could disagree with him at that time, and Michael Douglas won Oscar for the performance. But the question remains, does greed work? Even if it works to an extent, is it correct to portray that it is the reason behind the social and economical upliftment of mankind. What about the ancient Indian philosophy of “????? ???? ????.”
This is the battle of ideas. Should we Indian discard the ancient teachings of our Vedas and whatever our ancestors always taught us about “simple living and high thinking” and follow the “Dog Eats Dog” philosophy of so called modern “laissez-faire” capitalist, being represented by likes of Gordon Gekko?
Let us look into few examples of greed & austerity in the history of mankind:
“We don’t need the fire; we should be strong enough to withstand the cold.”
Just imagine, the boss of tribes in ancient jungles, saying this to his fellow men about the recent discovery of fire. “After all, our teachings tell us to live simple. Why do we need to cook our food? Why do we need to heat our caves, we need to be more strong.”
“Why do we need to grow our food, aren’t animals tasty enough.”
Imagine ancient people thinking this way. After all, animal meat is good enough to fill the stomach, why do they need to take the pain of cutting down the trees, preparing the fields, sowing the seeds and keep waiting for 4 months for the crop to be ready. It takes few minutes to slaughter an animal and arranging the food. Why to take so much pain.
“Why do we need iron, bronze does the job efficiently.”
Imagine these as the words of a king in Vedic era. He had always been taught to be happy with whatever he had. Hence, he believes that there is no need of something like iron, which can do the same job as bronze. “After all, if you employ iron, what would happen to the poor bronze? It will be a treachery from our side, to disown someone who has always worked for us for the last so many years?” Sounds familiar?
We don’t need more land, we are happy with whatever we have.
This is what Ashoka started believing after seeing the massacre of Kalinga War. He didn’t want to fight and took the responsibility of spreading Buddhism across the planet. Is anyone surprised that the empire of this great king was disintegrated within next 50 odd years.“Desire is the root of all evils”, is what Buddha preached and Indians and Chinese followed. It is anybody’s guess, which country has been enslaved for the largest period of time in the history?
“I am happy with my life, why do I need to explore the world?”
Imaging Columbus thinking on those lines before deciding on going on a voyage to discover new route to India. Ever imagine, what drove these men to risk their life in high seas, full of pirates and unknown dangers? What was the drive behind Marco Polo’s audacious voyage across Cape of Good Hope, and why did Magellan risked his life to cross all Oceans?
“If God wanted men to fly, we would have had wings.”
If these were the words of Right brothers, we would have been taking 10 days sailing to cross the Atlantic. Men could have never enjoyed flying, leave aside stepping on the Moon. “Why do you want to fly, if you can take a train?” Most of us think and believe that way. After all, Greed is not Good for us.
“You want a telephone! You are a blood sucking, enemy of the proletariat, profiteer kind of a person. ”
Can you imagine, thinking on those lines. Well, most of the Indians believed this way till late 1980’s. Those were the times, when our deeply flawed national belief and policy of austerity used to make us wait for decades for a second rate car at an exorbitantly high price. And if you have a car, people would believe that you are a black marketer. We believed in “Simple living, high thinking.”
Every single discovery and invention of the world can be attributed to greed of someone. It was the greed for more and better, which paved way for fire, iron, wheel, gun powder, telegraph, telephone, engine, aeroplanes, computers...... The list is endless. Has not it been greed of men, we all would have been sitting in some cave in the jungles, devouring upon the raw flesh of some reptiles.
Your reading this article, over a machine conceptualised in the greediest nation of the world, does also prove that“GREED IS GOOD”.
