Greed is, without doubt, The Root of All Evil . This link goes to great lengths to associate Greed with MONEY but Greed has two further driving factors, POWER and THE COMPULSION TO WIN. The Original Sin is attributed to disobedience but I believe that the real problem was GREED. It is my RIGHT to eat the apple as well. I am FREE to do as I want to. So the two words GREED and selfish are pretty well aligned as a personal objective.
GREED has been compared with ambition in previous statements that I have made. Where I was considering that the wish to be better is, in fact, GREED. It has been pointed out to me that this is NOT so. We therefore have to be careful to separate GREED from ambition because these two emotions are very far apart. When one takes into account the objective associated with the emotion two examples spring to mind, triggered by the frightening USA elections as they are reaching finality. (Oct, 27, 2020).
An example of GREED is my favourite “bad example”, the trump, who has “ordered” a significant tax benefit for big-business in the USA. This was done was to curry favour with his Republican associates and, most importantly, benefit his bank account. The reason that trump wants to stay in power is to maintain the phenomenal presidential power which he managed to obtain by being elected. Greed for power is driving him to do insane things at this time. Winning? The trump is so fixated on WINNING that he is has become completely amoral in the process!
An example of ambition AND dignity AND ability AND conviction is Elon Musk. He has put the US car industry to shame with his Tesla and is proving to be more efficient and has achieved a huge competitive advantage over both NASA and Russia in the “space race”. He has achieved this by having an unbelievable work ethic, working 24/7 regularly, true engineering knowledge and committing vast sums of hard-earned cash to his future dreams. That is true ambition and commitment. NOT GREED.
Solutions? This is going to be a tough one to find solutions for because GREED is a very powerful emotion and often brings out the worst in human nature.
Jude