Reflections on Desire and Greed

Back in the 80s, the expression 'greed is good' became popular for awhile. This verbal contradiction was used to call attention to the value associated with needs, wants and desires, the driver behind all effort and all production. Needs, wants, even longings and cravings, are normal and even necessary to life.

Greed cannot, however, literally be good, simply because the word ‘greed’ is intend to name a vice. For example, in the Christian faith, greed, also called avarice and covetous, is one of the seven deadly sins.

But the word play and other uses of the word 'greed' have had me reflecting for a long, long time about what distinguishes morally acceptable desire from contemptible greed. Greed is excessive desire, but the question remains: what is ordinary, fair desire and what is excessive? How do we decide?

I had largely come to think that action distinguishes ordinary desire from greed. Though sin-in-your-heart types might disagree, I have trouble believing desire that has no consequences is a vice. If, however, your desire seduces into you into dishonorable behavior like cheating, lying, stealing, committing fraud, that might distinguish greed.

But last week I posed this question – desire vs. greed – to my Facebook friends. (I didn’t get a rousing response, which probably means this question interests me more than it does most people. Perhaps I should be taking the hint!) Of the people who responded, most spoke of a psychic or emotional internal difference in the individual, not of behavior or action.

I recognize that that might be significant.

Curiously, all too often when I hear a person charge others -- whether individuals or organizations -- with greed, what I hear is frustration and resentment. I wonder if this is projection or a ‘takes one to know one’ phenomenon. Responding to frustration with resentment and bitterness is an error or vice of some kind; resentment eats the soul.

Thus, it comes together for me this way: greed is desire that corrupts. Desire that results in bitterness in the psyche or dishonor in action – or both -- : that’s greed.

Did a word ever send you on a wild goose chase? Me and suzerain. (Voc 2011-1)

When Gregg Easterbrook in his admittedly oversimplified description of modern Arabian psychology (The Progress Paradox , pg. 141) said "Americans asserted suzerainty over much of Islam's oil wealth," he sent me on a journey, as the folks from Raleigh County, GA say, "all the way to Egery and back."

The dictionary definition of 'suzerainty' refers one on to the word 'suzerain.'

A suzerain is a sovereign, either an individual or state, holding political control over another state, thus a dependent state. Historically, a suzerain was a feudal overlord.

Somehow that left me a little confused still about Easterbrook's use of the term. So I turned to Wikipedia to read up on 'suzerainty.' Wikipedia says that 'suzerainty' refers to a relationship between a superior and subordinate for which there are no accurate contemporary examples. The accurate use of the word, I gathered, refers to the relationship between a feudal lord and his vassals.

Before I realized what I'd done, I was reading up on the etiology of the word 'suzerain,' feudalism as a concept, feudal law, the history of OPEC and more generally the history of the petroleum industry in the Arabian peninsula and heaven knows what else!

So, guess what. I now have a fairly good idea where the word came from, why the word was coined in about 1600, how it was intended to distinguish a very specific relationship of reciprocal obligations between two political entities and how that relationship, if it every really existed, wasn't named or defined until it had ceased to exist. And I know the word is being used today in a very loose and unclear fashion to refer to various power relationships; the word tells us nothing about the nature, source or practices associated with the so named power relationship.

That said, nowadays the word 'suzerain' means 'overlord' and the word 'suzerainty' can be taken to mean 'overlordship' or the position of an overlord.

Chase done; there we go.

Judging a book by its ... title!

Have you ever bought a book simply because the title was

irresistible?

That what I did when I came across the title I Never Metaphor

I Didn't Like.

At first, I didn't really read the book. From time to time, I'd

open it and read a few of the quotes -- metaphors, similes,

analogies and similar items. That, it turns out, is a perfectly

reasonable approach to this book.

A couple of weeks ago, I started borrowing quotes from the

book for my Facebook status updates.

I was enjoying that quite a bit, but doing that got me curious

about the author and how he came to write such a book. So

I started reading from the start and discovered that the author,

Mardy Grothe, is a psychologist who started collecting phrases

and expressions he liked when he was a undergraduate student

in the 60s.

In addition to a career in psychology with a focus on business

relationships, Grothe has spent years fascinated by wordplay

and verbal witticisms. So far he has published five books

exploring imaginative use of language.

So, this note is an acknowledgement of Mardy Grothe, I Never

Metaphor I Didn't Like and the source of my recent and coming

metaphor Facebook status messages.

Thanks, Dr. Mardy!

World AIDS Day

In memory of Worlds AIDS Day, I'm sharing this: Grief Suite and a joint AIDS memoir.

Pumpkin Carving Grows on Us

I guess we all know that pumpkin carving and Halloween decorating is turning into a veritable art form. I just think this effort by a neighbor down the shore a bit deserves exposure beyond those of us who drive by!!

Highwood Seeks World Record!

For several days, I've been watching as more and more carved pumpkins have shown up on racks in the nearby town center. I've never seen anything quite like this!

Of course a web search solved the mystery of the pumpkin racks and the daily increases in carved pumpkins showing up in Highwood all through the past week. And the answer is:

an attempt at a Guiness Book of World Record

Got Block Styrofoam?

One of my reoccurring disposal problems involves those bulky, white blocks of foam you get when you buy new computers, printers, TVs and so on; it's a form of styrofoam and most routine recycling efforts don't take it.

This is very local and probably temporary, but for friends and neighbors near Chicago's suburban North Shore, here's an opportunity to dump that stuff!

This Saturday in Highland Park from 10AM to 5PM -- one day only! --
you will be able to drop off clean, white packing styrofoam (the
bulky stuff that electronics get packed in) for RECYCLING!  Usually,
it goes into landfill.

On Saturday, you can recycle it in Highland Park at the Hidden Creek
AquaPark on Fredrickson at Central, near Route 41.

Lake County Board member Anne Bassi arranged with Moraine Township,
the Park District of Highland Park and Abt Electronics to
conveniently drop off styrofoam at Hidden Creek.

Abt Electronics has a machine that processes the bulky styrofoam into
condensed, reusable material that they send to China for re-use.
Customers can drop off such materials to Abt in Glenview all through
the year, but they have generously agreed to bring a 53 foot trailer
to the Hidden Creek parking lot to make it irresistibly easy for us
to recycle this troublesome material.

If this project is successful, we plan to repeat it.   Please help us!

I've been busy elsewhere

Nothing new here -- sorry. But, check out the review I posted yesterday, over there: Readworthy Books, Fast Track.

Death, Aging and other laughing matters

For no particular reason, I ended up reading Ian Frazier essays this morning. Well, actually, it was sort of a carry-over from some stuff I was reading and thinking about during Poetry Month, April. I'd headed out to the Internet in search of an Ezra Pound essay entitled "The Lyric Impulse/X-ta-see and Po-a-tree." While I couldn't find that essay, I did find a reference to it in one of Frazier's essays ... but that's a digression already.

In a hilarious send-up called Researchers Say, Frazier tells us:

According to a study just released by scientists at Duke University, life is too hard. … As the data accumulated, … they provided incontrovertible proof that life is actually worse than most living things can stand. … A major disadvantage to living which the study called attention to is, of course, death. … Death’s effects on life … are two: First, death intrudes constantly and unpleasantly by putting life a risk at every stage … degrading its quality and compromising happiness. … Second, and far worse, death also constitutes an overwhelmingly no-win experience in itself.

From Lamentations of the Father: Essays by Ian Frazier; essay entitled Researchers Say, pp. 88-89; Picador, New York, copyright 2008.

Moving on from death itself, Frazier reflects on the challenges to quality and enjoyment of life posed by the inevitable processing of aging. And, furthermore, the daily challenges faced in just getting through the day.

Then the essayist reports that solutions – exciting possibilities – are under development daily … although his explanations leave the reader suspecting this could just be 'puffery.' And he cautions, in conclusion, that “…we must not underestimate our adversary, life itself. Uncomfortable even at good moments, difficult and unfair usually, and a complete nightmare much too often, life will stubbornly resist betterment, always finding new ways of being more than we can stand.” pp. 92

Or, as another great contemporary commentator, scriptwriter Robert Towne tells us through one of The Missouri Breaks characters, “Life … it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Where I've Been! (Reviews elsewhere)

Someone mentioned looking here for a recent post I'd mentioned.

Obviously that was an oversight on my part! Here's the link to my recommendation of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time:

http://readworthybooks.blogspot.com/search/label/Mark%20Haddon

Here's something you shouldn't miss!

Early this past December, a member of my family suffered a stroke. In discussing how family members could help with his recovery, my brother reminded me of a book several of us read a year or two ago. Although I remembered reading the book and being impressed, I couldn’t recall the relevant recommendations in any detail, so I quickly got my hands on a copy to refresh my memory. (Actually, I downloaded a copy to my Kindle for a modest price.)

On the morning of December 10, 1996, 37-year-old neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had a massive stroke. In the hours, days, months and years following the event, Jill's brain and body became her laboratory, a theater where she learned more about human capacities and potentials than any school or classroom had offered to teach her.

In her book My Stroke of Insight, Taylor details her experience. She includes an appendix of 40 specific notes about the things she needed from the people around her in order to recover.

Without question, if you care about someone who has had a stroke, Taylor’s book is a must read.

But the book works on so many levels that – even reading it a second time – I couldn’t stop thinking of all the loved ones, friends and even acquaintances I wanted to share it with.

Whether you face a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual challenge, whether the challenge is yours directly or concerns the recovery or growth of someone you care about, Jill Bolte Taylor’s book offers something you need to know.

For example, Taylor's experiences and her conclusions tell us not to make limiting assumptions about how much a victim can recover or grow. Eight years after her stroke, Taylor was still regaining skills.

Taylor's left-brain stroke introduced her to her right-brain capacity to experience herself as merged and peacefully at one with the universe. As she recovered, she wanted to regain her sense of herself as a separate and whole individual. But she hoped to recover that sense without also regaining her "egotism, intense desire to be argumentative, need to be right, or fear of separation and death..”. (Taylor, My Stroke of Insight, digital edition location 1778-1780.)

She also explains how externally triggered emotions can take control of a person – or, alternatively, how the person can wait out the initial emotional-biochemical rush and gain purposeful control.

Taylor has followed the success of her book with many appearances, U-Tube posts and interviews, further expanding on the book. In the following excerpt from an interview published on-line, she discusses how she now uses what she learned to keep her life more in balance today.

Can you describe that feeling of bliss that your stroke brought on, and how you're able to hook into it now?

I know that I have a choice in how I look at any situation, and I can create tools that help me recognize when something is stimulating my stressful circuitry. I feel my anxiety and my body pumping up, and it doesn't feel good physically. What do I need to do to step to the right of that? For me, it's coming to the present moment by getting back into my body -- going for a walk, changing my visual scene, and thinking about what I'm looking at. Often I'll sing a song, a very soft melody that's slow and simple, because for me it's an issue of escalation.

My anxiety and stress circuitry runs fast and I can feel that, so I'll consciously choose to shift into something slower. And when I consciously shift into a slower thought pattern, there's just this incredible absence of urgency, of stress, of thinking about all the things in my life that give me stress. A deep inner peace pervades me. There's a celebration of life -- a joyfulness. It's a beautiful experience.

from an interview with Jill Bolte Taylor reported at http://www.caring.com/interviews/jill-bolte-taylor

I've put Jill Bolte Taylor’s book on my shortlist of works I go back to over and over. I hope you will, too.

[Cross-posting with http://readworthybooks.blogspot.com/]

Transition Time

Despite a blue-gray, lazy-feeling Sunday, we went for one last winter walk on the beach --

before returning to family and friends in scenes more like this --