|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1928 - Alderson High School - 1968 |
|
|
|
|
Greed; Selfish and grasping desire for possession, |
|
Greed? Is that what causes us to cry so soon after the
initial slap on the rear to get us to draw our first breath? Is that what
causes us to pull and hold on to things, to reach and cry for the things
we see long before we utter our first words that usually start with "I
want...."? No one is immune, everyone is effected in one way or another.
It simply becomes a habit to a lot of people. The more you give them the
more they cry for more. Remember the first days of school when you saw that dress or those shoes and said to yourself "I want those shoes or I want that dress"? It doesn’t take long before you are wanting, not only what the other guy or gal has, but more than what they have. Where does it stop? In some cases it never ends. I knew an old man once who could barely make it to his office in the morning. He moved very slow and he sometimes needed an arm to get from his office to the meeting room. His goal was to make just one more deal before he retired. But, it became just one more after that and one more after that. The old man died going to his office one October morning. He was very rich, but never stopped to enjoy what he had made. He was too busy making that "one more deal". Our nation along with much of the world is now caught up into this thing called greed until it has put us on the brink of a global disaster. Big business tycoons and politicians have been working on that one last deal that would put them into financial heaven and they didn’t stop to look back and see what making that one last deal has cost the rest of the country. They have lulled us into spending our money, borrowed money and put the money that is hanging by a thread in retirement accounts. Its bad enough when we as individuals do such foolishness, but business and government has jumped on the band wagon of credit spending and they, just like us, now see no way out of a situation that once only very stupid people would get themselves into. Politicians so involved in getting to the political welfare trough have failed to see what devils they have loosed on society. They have leveraged our money, our children’s money and our children’s, children’s money on wars and bailouts from whence there is no recovery and no bottom to the pit. Who is to blame and what can be done to turn this thing around? It is hard to blame any one group. We have been indoctrinated by TV ads since we were old enough to understand basic language that "we need" or "we want" everything. We are entitled to it and no one has a right to keep us from having it. Banks and credit card companies have put us on a course to fail financially. If you have credit cards and you pay on time, you get a letter out of the blue to tell you your credit limit has been raised. Soon you are paying interest on interest and going deeper into debt. For years they have programmed us to fail and fight it as we will, we are finally fulfilling the program. We live in houses that are too expensive on budgets that are too small. If 85% of the work force was out of work for just two weeks without a paycheck they would loose everything they own. Their house, their car and most of the furniture. The only solution as citizens, as companies and government is to live within your means. The old ways of a man tithing 10 percent and saving 10 percent and living on what is left would work today just as well as it did 50 years ago. We won’t do it though. That would mean that we would be thinking of our families, our church and our future. What an odd thought process for today's " I want..." society. Government while trying nobly to try to hold back the dam is much like the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike. The act is noble but will never keep the dam from bursting. Don’t be surprised one day and wake up to find that while we were doing business as usual or unusual as we do, there comes on TV a man who has to speak through an interpreter (because he only speaks Chinese) to say that he and his partners (actually the Chinese government) have taken over some of the largest corporations in America. You see, China does live within their means and they hold a cool one Trillion Dollars worth of good old USA currency. Just waiting for the right time, the right moment to seize the day. Then don’t be surprised when English actually does become a second language. Greed is a powerful thing. It makes us sell our birth rites, our integrity and our very soul. |
|
|
