Grrl Power #394 – Philosonomics
In fact it’s only due to people hoarding wealth that charity is even necessary, so you’re welcome, poor people.
I actually had a lot more written for Deus’s pitch about greed, but a few examples is really all you need to get his point. It’s actually pretty easy to spin almost any attribute as an aspect of greed. Rage, love, hope, they mostly have to do with either wanting something or having something taken away. Sloth is a bit harder as is Vanity and Humility, but Deus can get there. It just takes a little more twisting. You can play along at home!
I really wanted to make this page and the next one a double, but I have to be a little more disciplined about my time if there’s any chance of getting the book ready for A-kon, so the next page is the final part of the interview, then we’re back to Sydney and her usual antics.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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Greed is not the same as want.
You can desire to have things and means without being greedy. I wish to have a home, enough money or other means to provide food and warmth. I don’t think this is greedy, and I believe most people wouldn’t see it as greedy, either.
Greed, I’d say, is desiring the accumulation of means far beyond your requirements, and indeed beyond your reasonable ABILITY, to consume.
Deus isn’t entirely wrong, but I don’t think greed is necessarily the root of all “sins”. As an aside, the notion of “sin” is one that should only be used in literary and referential sense, because it’s a stupid, stupid concept. It’s not outdated, either, because it was ALWAYS stupid. The proper root of “sins”, rather, is selfishness, and if you replaced greed with selfishness, Deus’ argument holds.
And no, I don’t believe in altruism, at least not in the abstract. You can do good for others, but if you are doing so in spite of your own wishes and best interests, then either you are insane, or you’re engaging in some form of self-torture because you want it for some reason. Possibly both. Basically, we humans do everything we ever do to further ourselves. The beauty of it is, that’s mostly a good thing. Being a decent human being, treating others with respect and kindness, and all that stuff is in our own best interest, for the most part.
The problem with Deus’ definition of Greed is that he is not mentioning that selfishness part.
Want becomes Greed by definition when you become willing to harm others to get what you want.
You and another person walk up to a free buffet. There are only two half sandwiches left. Taking both is greedy. Taking only one so that the other person can have one is not greedy. Desiring both sandwiches by itself is not greedy.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to financially uplift Indinge’s country. But it becomes wrong when he becomes willing to murder Indinge to get it, rather than walk away or choose a different, less optimal target and work harder.
Murdering a warmonger for profit, is not a selfless thing but better for the citizens as a whole, and he lines his pockets, gains more influence and power.
his mantra greed being good doesn’t stop him from forcing his way, infact, his solution made far more sense then what the US did in for example Iraq through out the decades.
It SEEMS to, with the limited information we have.
No, Deus isn’t entirely wrong. He’s not wrong at all. And you are right that greed is not the root of all sins. Stupidity is. {\sl Intelligent} greed, though not the root of all virtue, is the root of the most effectively virtuous. Altuism, for example (because you mentioned it), is supremely selfish. Whatever good attention resulting from such aside, it is an insurance that the benefactor later might need be the beneficiary of, and one’s lack of paucity frees his mind towards scientifical, esthetical, or technical advancement—even if his contribution is only the ({\bf quite} selfish) demand for greater convenience further facilitating his internet-dipshitery. Greed, selfishness, whatever you want to call it, it’s responsible for all the nice things we have. Harming someone for the sake of a short-term gain, is a long-term loss. Unnecessarily taking both free sandwiches, thought not harming the other hungry person, is not the most effective act. Letting the other, who would by it benefit more, raises the overall wealth. Of course, there will always be those who do not notice the wealth they are preventing, or notice it and that they won’t see an umpteenth of it, and choose the sooner boon. For this, it oughtta be that he is able to be paid for letting the one who’ll benefit more by it have it. Taking the sandwich to him offered is not violent. So, maybe he sells to the one who’ll benefit more by it the service of not taking it. It may seem assholish (and I’m quite the holist in that regard), but the one who’ll benefit more by it should will pay for it an amount more than an amount that the one who has it would accept for that service. It’s fair, and mutually beneficial. The Preclusion of such profitward benefaction leaves altruists only insane or masochist.
Altruism exist in the Animal Kingdom, and it gives behavioral biologists migraines and cerebral charley horses trying to explain it in “selfish gene” terms.
There’s a joke. Two economists are walking past a car dealership’s lot. One points out a BMW to the other and says, “I really want that car!”
But they keep walking. They get to the end of the lot and the other one says “No you didn’t.”
The one economist wanted the car, but he wasn’t willing to pay for it. The joke was actually about want vs. demand (which in economic terms is “paying x for y”, i.e. a materialized trade of goods or services)
Greed? I guess that’s saying “I want more x” and someone else says “You don’t need any more x. You are greedy.” So it’s a social thing (the judgement of another person) rather than an economic thing as such.
Oh he I REALY like this guy now he has the right idea of life going on
this guy forget the most problematic of sins to that statement sloth and wrath. (both personal favorites of mine.) sloths to lazy to want anything and wrath is just an all consuming raging fire of hate and destruction.
Eh? No, sloth is wanting rest and comfort, Wrath is wanting THAT THING, YEAH YOU to be fucked up.
So you commit sins just by want to do them? Good to know that everyone everywhere though all off time is going to a hell. And here i was thinking you had to actually commit the sin for it to be valid.
I’d rather party with the sinners than die with the saints baby B-)
Seriously though, you missed Gforce1000’s point entirely. Feeling Wrath, the blind rage burning inside of you, usually means you are ‘greedily’ taking lives, no matter what life that is. You don’t care who it belongs to, you just want to take it. Thus, you get a different sort of greed going on. Sloth, as said by Dave in the original artist comment, would be a touch harder to spin. It’s still spinnable simply by being greedy with time. Someone who is sloth-like tend to want all the time in the world to laze about and enjoy comforts. Even if that means stealing time from things they should be doing, such as work or chores.
Folks can be greedy over far more than material things, as pointed out by Deus with Lust.
Yes you can be greedy for pretty much anything. But that is not what i want to argue against, what i want to get across is that not all of everything is a variant of greed, or greed its self. Sloth is me i am sloth, do i want to be? no i want to out there at party’s, i want to have fun and not be lazy, i want to pick up a new sport. But no I’m here arguing about a fictional characters view points with a couple of people i don’t know because i’m too lazy to change.
I Hate the idea you have to want to be what you are to be it, that is such a unfair way of thinking that it make’s me mild annoyed at very idea.
have you never been to a Protestant church? That is exactly how it works…the thought has the same weight as the deed. Everyone is a sinner. Only through this specific brand of Christianity can you go to heaven. Blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, sloth is such advanced greed that not only do you want it, you want it now, and for only minimal effort. That’s actually a virtue, because it drives innovation. The slothful person with enough purse energy increases the demand for (therefore the supply of) convenience innovations. For wrath, it’s important to consider the cause. Why would a person be wrathful? Obviously, it’s because {\sl someone} (or something—I won’t judge) is being {\bf infuriating}. Wants it to stop, so makes it stop. Naturally, it’s better to channel one’s wrath at something where wrath would be productive. For example, systemic reform. The most satisfying revenge is the one that transforms my enemy into something so beneficial to me that he from the start of it wouldn’t recognize him from the end.
Ah, the Greed is Good philosophy. Suffice to say that I don’t agree with Deus unless you redefine greed to the point that it no longer qualifies as greed.
For I am Greed. The most base desire which encapsulates every single cardinal sin.
Greed for the body of other and physical enjoyment – Lust.
Greed for the delicious meals and drinks – Gluttony.
Greed for the rest and comfortable beds – Sloth.
Greed for the revenge on one enemies – Wrath.
Greed for what others have gained – Envy.
Greed for being the best and most peerless – Pride.
I am Greed and I encompass them all.
For I am Lust. The most base desire for which encapsulates every single cardinal sin.
Lust for economic power and material things, for money and wealth — Greed.
Lust for wine and food — Gluttony.
Lust for relaxation, vacation, and hanging out — Sloth.
Bloodlust for ripping that thing apart that angered you — Wrath.
Lust for what your neighbor has — Envy.
Lust for being the best, being on top — Pride.
Funny how all of the sins basically boil down to the definition of Desire. So do the virtues honestly. Altruism for it’s own sake is pure insanity on the basest level. True altruism, doing something for someone else for literally no reason, is insane. Doing something for someone else that earns you nothing in return [i]except[/i] warm fuzzies and feeling good about yourself, STILL ‘earns’ you that good feeling. It is still desiring it. And being that the virtues basically boil down to helping others (and the sins are just helping yourself)… well, it’s a metaphor for all life on Earth. Desire, or wanting things. Well, excepting those things that have no recognizable nervous system and work entirely off of inertial life.
The main issue with this perspective is that it interprets greed so broadly that it basically just means “want”. So the core thesis, worded slightly differently, comes down to “whenever people do something they want, it’s because they want something”.
Revolutionary.
It’s less about the truth behind his statement and more about the charisma he sells it with. Snake oil is snake oil no matter what, but with the right pitch some people can still sell it.
Keep in mind a little snake oil is good for you if you know what you’re taking. But Deus is making sure no one knows what he’s selling.
It’s been said, more than once, that every problem looks like a nail when you are a hammer.
I guess that, since Deus is more than a little greedy, absolutely any attempt by him to play psychologist and/or sociologiist ends up with him attributing anything that happens to greed.
Kinda like how Sigmund Freud tended to blame everything on sex.
Always remember that reading Freud’s works teaches you very little about humanity, and a lot about Freud.
so is he only a villian in name only. (liking the dramatic) cause except for the double talk i haven’t seen him do anything truly evil. i mean killing a despot is evil but rebuilding the despot country seems to be a good equalizer.
Is Deuce twelve?
Because i remember explaining a similar thinking when i was twelve.
Not well enough to get cake, tough.
If you expected to simply get cake by virtue of wanting it righteously enough, I fear 12-year-old you badly misunderstood where the power of greed comes from.
When it comes to getting what he wants, Deus takes the cake.
*applause*
(There is a possibility that) THE BOOK WILL BE FINISHED BY A-KON?! Count me in! Make sure to bring a lot of copies!
Honestly I don’t think that’s realistic anymore after thinking about the time involved of doing a kickstarter, getting proofs and all the prints done, but I don’t know how long all that takes. I’ll try though.
Last page I was on the fence about him being good or evil. Now I am sure what he is.
True Neutral.
He cares not about right or wrong, just about the efficiency of making money. He does not even consider his actions “right” or “wrong”.
What many people fail to realize is that what is best for the majority, is usually best for the individual. He would not give into corruption because that secret could risk destroying everything he has built.
Intersting, I will be looking forward to how this non-hero/non-villian develops.
Pure Ayn Rand here. Right down to the greed is good part.
A few flaws in Deus’s logic, but he does touch upon a legitimate point, which is that it’s not possible to be truly unselfish. That isn’t a judgement or even a bad thing; it’s just biology, and in fact if this weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be capable of empathy.
No matter what we do, there’s *something* motivating us to do it, even if it’s not a motivation that most would categorize as “selfish”. If you do something at gunpoint, you’re still ultimately motivated by the desire not to die, which is a self-serving desire even if it’s not unjustified. Obviously there is such a thing as altruism, but even the most selfless person wouldn’t lift a finger to help anybody if they didn’t derive some emotional or psychological benefit from it. Perhaps helping people makes them feel good (empathy); or perhaps doing good deeds gives them a social reward, like the respect and admiration of their peers.
Empathy and morality couldn’t exist if there wasn’t something somewhere down the line that was in it for us. We happened to evolve in such a way that what’s “in it for us” can just be pleasant emotions — which is good, because primary rewards are vital to conditioning, and thus to developing any kind of moral sense.
This doesn’t make doing good any less *good*, or any less selfless, or any less important; I just find it to be an interesting fact of biology and psychology that it’s impossible to be completely unmotivated by selfish desires. Someone who was incapable of selfishness would derive no sense of reward from doing good, or observing the happiness of others, and thus would be incapable of empathy. Such a person could still perform a “selfless” act, but it only because, being perfectly unselfish, they’d have no more reason to be risk-averse or cruel than they’d have to be risk-loving or empathetic. An unselfish being would have no particularly good reason either *for* or *against* any given action. They’d be a perfectly neutral, amoral agent. (Obviously, such a being could not evolve naturally.)
But in the same way that it’s not really courage if you’re not afraid in the first place, it’s not really selflessness if you don’t expect to incur some kind of cost. An unselfish being cannot perceive rewards or costs, thus they cannot be truly selfless. How fascinating that selfishness is a prerequisite to true altruism and morality.
I love the universe.
Empathy is just a system for mimicing the perceived emotional state of peers in the surroundings.
It exists because under some circumstances it can turn the benefits and troubles of others into our own… which in theory can improve group cohesion.
I say “under some” because it isn’t exactly infrequent that people find different ways of resolving their empathy. Subconsciously speaking, if they’re feeling bad because someone else is having a sad term near them, it doesn’t matter whether the situation is resolved by cheering the other person up or by killing them so they can’t be sad any more. More often than not, the average person’s response to negative feedback over the old empathic link is more along the lines of “get the fuck away from me”… and also advising everyone else to avoid the sad person. Lovely.
All I’m essentially getting at is this:
Empathy is emotional cancer.
Kill it. Kill it with fire.
Personally… I’m motivated by Spite.
Greed holds no interest for me. I tend to take only what I need in the moment and ignore anything more.
But mostly I’ve found this world is not the sort of place that will let me win at anything. And when failure is the only option, the most one can possibly achieve is… to torment the winners. To crush the line between success and failure so much that those that DO succeed don’t feel like they have.
That is what keeps me going: Spiting the world and life in general.
He’s discovered 1 Timothy 6:10?
Now you’re thinking in portals.
I degree vehemently with him, but I have to say that his logic is fairly sturdy.
What I think is the truly fundamental human drive is to use our abilities. Money is a common measuring stick for success, but having money doesn’t make people happier nearly as much as earning it does. While we might enjoy company or sex, the need to work is the reason why we seek out mates who seem unattainable even if they aren’t any better than other options.
It’s also worth noting that if greed was really the only thing that motivated Dues he wouldn’t spend so much effort on an unprofitable hobby like acting like a supervillain, whether or not he really is one. In fact, if he was he especially wouldn’t act like that because it tips his hand.
Okay. New favorite character. You’ll have to work to make me dislike Deus now.
So basically Deus is a Ferengi.
This is assuming that the only form of “charity” is giving money or goods to someone in need. Charity can also be done through action. You remember Mother Theresa? She wasn’t rich, but she had a big heart. You can also give charity in the form of money or goods even if you aren’t living greedily. Maybe you live hand to mouth, but you share what you do have, like when you visit someone in a 3rd world country. Often it is the poorest of people who are the most charitable. My mother was like that. Anything she didn’t need to live she gave away to others. Some people give away more than what they have, and leave themselves with nothing. The other day I was charitable because I helped a woman with her child, in a store, and she was super grateful. It cost me nothing, but who knows how it could positively effect her family down the road, by just giving her some basic tools (I’m a teacher). She was newly homeless and admitted she didn’t have a clue. She lit up when I offered help, and seemed to have a weight lifted when we parted ways. By definition charity just means to “give help to those in need.”
Also, while most divorces occur over money, this is not to say that half of marriages even end in divorce anymore. While people are less likely to marry these days vs decades ago, about 75% of marriages are successful, these days (i.e. people are more likely to wait for the right person/marry for the right reasons rather than marry under societal obligation). That means while money is a stress to more than 75% of couples, that love is overcoming that strife more often than not. Love wins even with minimum wage way behind inflation, and student debt weighing millennials down.
Finally, diligence can be motivated by all sorts of things. We can look at Erickson, Maslow, and the seven levels of human motivation. The highest level is associated with selfless service, and many people never reach that ultimate stage in their lifetime, and stop on a lower rung, even below personal transformation and fulfillment — where esteem needs rule. Deus is obviously stuck on those lower rungs or undesirable outcomes (erickson) for each of those models.
In the end all ll I’m doing is arguing against Ferengi logic though, as Fay pointed out. ^.^
Money feeds the ego, not the soul. It may be common, but it doesn’t make it something that should be exalted. People may have greedy egos as a survival mechanism, but it the higher virtues that allow you to rise above the suffering created by that desire. Buddha, y’all. :)
And look at Ghandi. He was about as charitable as they come, despite his flaws. It wasn’t his greed that stopped the greatest military power of the world at the time – but his ability to generate empathy. It wasn’t MLK’s greed, but his ability to generate empathy, and his call to selfless service. In that way, those famous leaders overcame what seemed like insurmountable greed and power. Greed isn’t greater than charity and empathy. Those things are actually it’s kryptonite.
Some great convo starters in these last few comics! Of course the issue with Deus here is that he is conflating (perhaps intentionally) the cart and the horse.
Charity is a response to the effects of greed, not dependent on it. Charity also does not require a person giving of their plenty to a person in destitution. Definitely a 2 way street.
Divorce’s certainly focus on money, but we live in a capitalist economy so of course they will.
Quirky thought: if the couples divorced, then were they truly loving each other in the first place?
That’s the other issue, love is an act, not a feeling. You choose to love someone, daily, in spite of all their faults and shortcomings. Source – couples who stayed married for decades to over half a century and were truly first parted by death.
Another way to spin stats, comparing the typical divorcee and the lovingly married couple til death, who has more years married and thus has a greater position of importance over the other. If you accept the typical 7th year “affair stage” pop sci points to in marriage, then say about 3 years to finally give up, each divorced couple has cumulatively 20 years of marriage experience, 14 before it started going south. The strongly married couple has a cumulative 120 years of ups and downs. Relevant or not, it certainly seems important and thus is the bread and butter of propaganda, helps that its backing something that is true.
Of course it doesn’t occur to Deus that people want to make things, to do, discover, create and tell stories about things that are not. In fact I’d argue that’s the entire difference between humans and other animals. Alexey Pajitnov didn’t create Tetris for mother Russia because he wanted to take other people’s stuff.
But when that is the only thing you can actually imagine anyone really wants. . .
Playing the ‘enlightened self-interest’ card now, predictably. This sounds like the most charitable ethics a corporation could be governed by, but depends really on how the results are measured. Results such as human rights, quality of life and health, without excluding the knock-on costs to surrounding nations.
I’d binge this archive faster if I stopped writing essays here.
Poor Deus doesn’t realize Greed is just Want in excess…
charity isnt only posible “because rich people bad and they dont give their stuff to others” the reason why poor people exist is the same reason why they have always existed
limited resources
scarcity is the name of the game, unfortunately resources arent unlimited and shit isnt infinite, there is a lack of certain resources and this makes complicated if not imposible for everyone to have everything and the more scarse a resource is the more expensive said resource is, as an example if gold was as cheap as dirt everyone would have gold chairs, gold utensils and they would wrap their food in gold foil and trow it on the trash can without giving it a second through
this actually happened actually, aluminium used to be insanely expensive, in fact it used to be more expensive then gold, it was soo scarse that a story tells that napoleon started to test aluminium weapons for his army but once he discovered how expensive the material was he instead melted it and create aluminium silverware and he reserved it for his more important visitors like kings, queens and the like, the rest of them had to use cheaper gold utensils
that was until we discovered a way of creating cheap aluminium in industrial quantities and now children wrap the sandwiches that they take to school in the stuff
for example we do have an excess of food enough so that every person in the planet could eat double meals but the problem is transport, in some places like africa due to the lack of infrastructure like trains or roads and the instability of the region transporting the required resources is too expensive since usually they need security (armed security) so that they arent stolen and of course they need to be transported through uncharted regions with at best dirt roads
because of this is just too expensive and complex to give the required resources and it has to be said that despite that africa is far from how it was 20 or even 10 years ago, international efforts from the united nations and other countries in the region have managed to lift its living conditions quite a bit and some countries have better living conditions and resources like electricity, water, internet, etc but of course there is still soo much work left
Mentioned this in the past, but I’m playing an epic level game where my character is literally Greed. You actually ended up inspiring a speech I made that accidentally made me the face of the party. Sloth was pretty easy in my mind for Greed though.
What’s more Greedy then to be slothful? What you want is one of the most valuable things of all. Time. Time to yourself. Time to do nothing. Time to sit around and be lazy. Sloth is literally one of the greatest expressions of Greed… or that’s how I spun it anyway. The Mountain Spirit Sloth demon’s player seemed to be amused. But I think he just voted me to be the face because he didn’t want to do any work. Great roleplay either way!
I have a similar philosophy to Deus, except I think everything is just rebranded Pride.
Since Pride was the true original sin(This is what cast Lucifer out of Heaven), and if you boil everything down, it’s just Pride.
I got introduced to capitalist realism.
It puts a new light on this “branding everything as Greed” perspective.