Greed
Greed is a desire to acquire more money, wealth, material possessions or any other entity than one needs (www.encyclopedia.com). Actually, greedy people are treated in our society as harmful since their motives are often appearing to disregard the welfare of others. Actually, people who wanted to avoid distress, poverty and sufferings in their lives are normally controlled by greediness. As I have said, poverty can turn people into greedy, emotionless opportunists whose actions can result into social strife and horror. For example, what happened in Somalia could elaborate this idea more. Somalia is basically one of the poorest countries in the African continent and sad to say, also suffered some of the most ruthless armed conflicts in history. It can be remembered that in the early nineties, power struggle and clan clashes in many parts of Somalia had been prevalent (United Nations, 2004). Thus, love of one’s self and being self-centered can sometimes turned in to greediness. Instead of being satisfied of something that he/she already possess, he/she desired to acquire more and not considering the welfare of others. The truth is people sometimes need to be greedy in order to survive in this world. Nobody can deny that many human beings have been, are, and will always be greedy, power-ridden, and destructive. But at the same time it points to the creativeness of human beings, to what they have added to the world by their presence, not as hunter-gatherers but in virtue of their development of civilization (Passmore, 1993, p. 13).
Greed and self-interest, however, are not necessarily equivalent. Greed denotes not merely self-interest, but an excessive self-interest--in particular, an excessive desire for getting or having, especially as it pertains to wealth. The greedy person is one who wants and takes all that he can get, with no thought of the wants and needs of others. His passions offend not only against the welfare of others, for he wants more than he needs, but against justice as well, for he desires more than he deserves. Adam Smith himself distinguished between reasonable self-interest and greed. For example, he censured the excessive desires of the wealthy, for whom "the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves"
Let’s try to look around, greediness as one of seven deadly sins is always present in our society. Politicians, businessmen, and other individuals or even you might be one of greedy people. Actually, greediness can be eliminated in our selves if we, the people understand the true value of love, the true value of charity and the true value of altruism. True charity and altruism, acts performed purely for the beneficiary's welfare, are unknown to the greedy individual. Giving away something for nothing, which is the only way greed can regard charity, simply does not make sense, except as a ruse to exploit the unenlightened. In the latter case, the greedy sophisticate may at times find grounds to put on a show of charity.
Conclusion
What the greedy person does not understand, however, is that charitable individuals are not engaged in self-denial. If anything, they are likely to possess an even stronger sense of self than individuals looking out strictly for number one. The difference between a greedy person and an admirable person is not simply that they follow different rules of conduct. Nor is that difference a reflection of mere differences in taste, one happening to take pleasure in acts we commonly find despicable and the other in acts we find worthy of praise and emulation. Rather, the key to understanding the noble person is to be found in exploring the topography of goodness, the view of the world that informs and shapes his or her thoughts, feelings, and actions.
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