Greed in the modern world

"A person is born with a liking for profit. If he gives way to this, it will lead him to quarrels and conflicts, and any sense of courtesy and humility will be abandoned." - Confucius

Recently, something very strange happened to me. I got into a fight by e-mail with certain individuals from a rival IRC Network and the reason was that one of their lower ranking 'managers' decided that he could impose his networks' rules on all of IRC and demand us into reprimanding one of our 'managers' because of it - without proper proof. This lead me to throw evidence back at them and demand the same from them, which then lead to stone throwing between the higher Network Administrators (The CEO's of the Network) - to the point of one of them threatening legal action against me.

This lead me to see that in this world, unreasonable greed is pretty much always around, even in a free and insubstantial medium like IRC. I also honestly believed this individual just wanted to make a quick buck or scare me away by throwing the law just because he had a disagreement with me. The thing about the modern world is that there are still people that believe that their entitled to things that really they aren't. This belief causes them allot of frustration and also gets them into allot of fights, some which they may win, but most which they lose. This belief is even known to cause road rage, because the other drivers aren't doing what the person wants them to be doing at the time. It can causes rage within relationships to the point that they might abuse or hurt others. It can also lead to reckless actions which leaves the person on the brink of destruction financially or health wise. Like Confucius said in the quote, these poor people give so much into this mistaken belief that they end up destroying themselves and others around them in the process.

There luckily is a cure for it.

The Cure for greed

The best cure for this kind of greed is introspection, which means to look inside yourself rather than the external things. This will then allow you to see that the only thing you have control over is yourself and that your desire to 'own' the world, while useful for motivation, can be destructive if you allow it to overpower your thinking. This comes with the realisation that there will still be people out there that believe they own the world and that there is very little you can do to stop them from destroying themselves. This comes with the realisation that you have the ultimate choice in what happens in your life and that these people, with their reckless actions can't harm you at all, unless you allow them to. Ultimately, you have the power, not them, to choose, but not to expect, to gain, but not take and to be whatever you want, without the need to step on other people to get there.

Hopefully, everybody will realise that greed is only useful as motivation, but if it runs their lives, it will only end up destroying them and worse, by their own hand.