GREED

(Published in the January 2009 edition of the East Bay Psychiatric Association Newsletter)


Wall Street insiders using unethical practices and awarding themselves multimillion dollar bonuses despite running their institutions into the ground; Detroit automaker CEO’s producing impractical cars because they are profitable only in the short run and then demanding government bailouts to keep their businesses afloat; banking executives soliciting and selling unsustainable loans and then taking government bailout money that they use to pay dividends to their stockholders and bonuses to themselves; average Americans using their houses like ATM machines to take out equity loans and exhausting their entire credit lines on their credit cards to live lavishly; an individual perpetrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme for over 30 years, devastating individual investors and charitable institutions alike. What do these people all have in common? Their road to happiness is paved with greed!

Individuals who excessively attach themselves to money alone as a means to achieve happiness have a very weak foundation upon which to move forward when hard times come. But people who have built their lives around occupational achievement, cultural, spiritual and intellectual pursuits, and friendships, are no less rich when stock markets collapse and wealth diminishes.

There’s an old saying about Americans: “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations.” The immigrant populations and their children work hard to establish themselves and provide security for those that follow them. But by the time the third generation comes along and has been over-indulged by those that came before them, many people no longer feel the need to be productive themselves. In addition, without the family lore that conveys the message of overcoming adversity through hard work, there is no longer even an understanding of what it means to work hard. If you have not had a parent or grandparent who has told stories about what it was like to overcome hardship, you have missed an important source of motivation in your life. For people who have missed that inspiration, it may seem as if money should simply grow on trees, and their avarice often increases.

There has been a shift in this country over the past generation from the brightest minds going into medicine, law, engineering or other professions to many of those people going to Wall Street to figure out how to make money out of money. Seventy-five per cent of the engineers trained in this country now are foreign born. Americans no longer specialize is manufacturing products; they specialize in slicing up the money pie differently with nothing created but profitability for different people. If our country is to succeed, it appears that we had better embrace our immigrant populations who are entrepreneurial and hard working, because without them, our economy is likely to stagnate. Greed alone cannot sustain a society.

With continued tough times ahead financially, it might be well for all of us to remember that the basis of our happiness cannot be found in money alone. A long walk in our natural surroundings, laughter with close friends, reading a good book, or listening to enjoyable music each have a price tag of almost nothing. Perhaps this difficult transition our nation is going through will help us all get a firmer grip on what is truly important; then we can discern more easily what money can and cannot buy, and the amount of greed that now prevails will diminish.