POINTS OF VIEW
8058 – Social Theory 2 - Greed or Fulfilment
I was horrified when, together with my tutor group in Ethiopia, we worked out that the underlying philosophy of capitalism was greed. It extends right way through capitalist system. Everyone is greedy. We are supposed to be greedy, since that's what supposedly motivates us to maximum performance. It is not just the money, though that is the acid test and has been raised to levels almost of religious fervour by economists, but also applies status and almost every other aspect of human life. What is more, it is the driving force which supposedly pushes our world forward.
This may have been valid when there were scarcities of most things, and survival of the fittest depended upon what you could grab to satiate your needs. The problem with greed is that we now live in a world of relative affluence. We may not all be able to afford our own private jets. But we all can live a comfortable life, in view of the fact that the marginal products we now desire are increasingly services. As these offer ephemeral benefits, greed is something which is too blunt an instrument for modern society.
Instead what is emerging is fulfilment. Thus, the individual has some sense of what they are capable of, or of what they ought to be capable of, and they need to optimize their performance against that in order to fulfil such potential. Such fulfilment can be, and should be, much more rewarding than any greedy pursuit of excess.
The problem, for the few of the elite who wish to command us, is that fulfilment is very personal. They would love to direct our activities to optimize what they believe would meet their own goals. Yet their wishes are now rarely ideal for the individual. The problem, on the other hand, for the individual is that the leaders have all the guns. They have the rules and regulations, and of course all the advertising and marketing devices, to enforce their wills.
Fulfilment is therefore a revolutionary activity. It is anti-establishment, and that much better for being so.
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