Stanley Hauerwas recently wrote Never enough: Why greed is still so deadly, in which he describes how greed is inscribed into our economic system. This sounds all too familiar:
[I]n his book The Seven Deadly Sins Today, Henry Fairlie has given an account of how greed grips our lives – an account that echoes the suggestion in the book of James that there is a connection between greed and war…
Fairlie suggests that we are a people harassed by greed just to the extent our greed leads us to engage in unsatisfying modes of work so that we may buy things that we have been harassed into believing will satisfy us. We complain of the increased tempo of our life, but that is a reflection of the economic system we have created.
This is the same insanity that George Carlin so perfectly skewers:
2 responses to “Hauerwas on Systemic Greed”
“…our greed leads us to engage in unsatisfying modes of work so that we may buy things that we have been harassed into believing will satisfy us.”
So very true.
(Also love the George Carlin bit.)
That about clinches it.