Greed has many faces, it can be found in all places and in all levels of society, among the poor as well as the rich. The object of greed may be as simple as a piece of cake and/or as complex as high finance. When there were only two young boys still living at home in our family, it was necessary to have one cut the cake and the other would have the option of selecting the first piece. That approach seemed to satisfy our boys sense of fairness and equity. Greed is often taken out of the equation when equitable practices are in place.
Greed, like garlic or onions, tends to leave a lingering taste in the mouth of the greedy. They may be successful in obtaining the object(s) of their greed but that seldom if ever leaves their palate satisfied. Greed, once introduced into a persons psyche, soon penetrates bone and marrow, and the greed becomes insatiable. Once an object of one’s greed is satisfied, greed moves on to seek after another object, like a honey bee moving from one flower to another to collect as much nectar as possible. Greed is described as an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods with the intention to keep it for oneself, it is the sin of excess. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed was “a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.” In Dante’s Purgatory, the avaricious penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. That statement reminds me of the following story: “A greedy lawyer who was diag- nosed with a terminal illness was so greedy that he was determined to take his wealth with him when he died. He instructed his wife to take a pillowcase to his bank and withdraw all his money and to put it in the pillowcase. When she got it home, he instructed her to put it in the attic directly above his bed. His plan was that at the moment he died and his spirit left his body that he would grab the pillowcase on his way up. Several months later his wife had gone to the attic to do some cleaning and she came upon this pillowcase full of money. She commented, “I knew I should have put that pillowcase in the basement.” She understood that his greed was taking him in the other direction. As a lay historian, I often read of historical events that are either initiated by greed or fed by and seemed to grow based on greed. These events are almost always stories of devastation and human suffering. Such is the history of the California gold rush of 1848. Prior to the gold rush, over 150,000 Native Americans lived and sustained themselves in California. They had existed there for centuries, supporting themselves mostly by hunting, gathering and fishing. Their lives changed drastically in 1848 when James Marshall discovered the yellow metal in the American River at Coloma, in Northern California. By 1870, twenty two years later, the native population had dwindled to approximately 31,000. Over 60 percent of these indigenous people died from disease introduced by hundreds of thousands of miners, so-called “the 49ers.” Maybe the very worst aspect of it all was the treatment that the local tribes were subjected to when these hoards of greedy miners came into the state. The Native Americans were systematically chased off their lands, marched to reservations, enslaved and brutally massacred. Even more unbelievable to us in our day was the fact that in 1851, the California State government allocated $1 million for scalping missions. A person could get $5 for a severed Indian head in Shasta in 1855 and twenty five cents for a scalp in Honey Lake in 1863. Thousands of Native American children were sold as slaves—the prices ranged from $60 for a boy to $200 for a girl. How they were worked or abused by their owners has never been documented. Jack Forbes, a contemporary ‘Native Historian’ stated that ‘Gold’s a devilish sort of thing. You lose your sense of values and your character changes entirely. Your soul stops being the same as it was before.’ The Treasure of Sierra Madre does an excellent job describing the corrosive nature of greed. Greed has no conscience nor sense of right and wrong, creed motto is ‘what ever gets the job done’ or ‘what ever works’ to the satisfaction of the greedy. Let us take Paul’s advise and learn to “Be content with such things as ye have.”(Hebrews 13:5) That advice was not meant to include self improvement and spiritual growth. May the Lord bless us to recognize greed in our minds and hearts and to never allow it to dominate our souls.