Greed : The Deadly Sin

The vices are as much part of a man as are his virtues, yet some among them seem to stand out with alarming resolution. A man with no vice is very hard to come by. As the world we live in is slowly succumbs to temptations of them, the good at heart are crumbling to a trace minority. A vice is like a disease, it catches you without you knowing it, it feeds on to your thoughts and grows stronger every second and finally when it grows powerful enough, it just takes over your life. Finally it takes you on a very lonely journey to your grave.

jamin brenn and his share of the spoils - 1893

An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed.

- Paul Samuelson

Greed among them is the most evil and most widespread. In fact it is so widespread that we have started to think of greed more as a way of life than as the capital sin it is. Our everyday life is so stuffed with signs of greed, from the sky scrapers aching to touch the heaven to the deep oil wells that borrow down to hell. Greed is all around us, greed is there in everyone around us. In fact most of the problems that humanity now faces can be drawn straight back to man’s greed. Let it be the rising problems of global warming or the severe shortage of usable water, it all ties back to the greed of one man or the other. As men so thoughtlessly engaged in the pursuit of wealth and power he has endangered everything that sustained his arrogance and greed and in turn endangered his very existence and the existence of the planet earth.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.

- Mahatma Gandhi

One man’s greed not only does destroy himself but also the whole lot of people near and dear to him, His thoughtless actions will forge the chains that he will eventually be chained in. In his frivolous pursuit as he annexes one kingdom after the other to his empire, what he is doing is scripting his on eventual decline. But still men tend to be greedy and from this greed stems his other sins, as he forgets who he is and what his virtues are in his pursuit for the fools gold he end up doing things that he might otherwise have looked down at  in contempt and disgust.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, 

one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

- Garrison Keillor

Greed has claimed his many victims from time immemorial and hence greed is the capital sin, All it takes is a few minutes in ones very busy pursuit to think, think about what is it that they are really chasing. All it takes is to ask oneself if this mirage you chase really your dream. All it takes is these few seconds of contemplation and greed will vanish for ever. When you realize that what you have been chasing all your life is but fallacies then you realize what that is really important to you and what is that you really wish for yourself.

Third Fisherman: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. 

First Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

- William Shakespeare ( Pericles 2.1.69-70 )