Monday, July 26, 2010

Philosophy - If I could eliminate an emotion from this world ...

Back again with one of my philosophical blog posts. There are many emotions I would want to eradicate. Anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, just to name a few. The list is endless. There are times when I feel frustrated when I don't know the answer to a question or cannot finish my homework and feel very frustrated. There are also times where I fail to achieve my ideal test mark and lament. However, I feel that the main emotion that deserves to be eliminated would be: GREED.

Greed is the excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of money, wealth, power. It is generally considered a vice and is one of the seven deadly sins in Catholicism.( Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride).

Why greed? Simple. Greed is responsible for many other emotions that appeal to people, like anger, betrayal and jealousy. For example, Harry and John are bosom friends. They decide to open an oil company. As Harry is rich and John is poor, the former finances the business while the latter provides the expertise. However, they fail to hit the mother load for many years. One day, John's intuition pays off and they strike oil. Though they both initially agreed to have a 50-50 cut of any profit, John is greedy for more wealth and argues that since he was responsible for their windfall, he should take a larger share of the profit. Harry maintains that without him, John would not even have the capital to start up the business at all. As a result, their friendship sours over a business squabble and they now hate each other.

In this case, John's greed causes him to lust for wealth and thus he demands a larger dividend of the profit. This makes Harry angry and frustrated. In the end, they are deadly enemies. Greed has caused two close friends to be jealous, angry and at loggerheads. It is an extremely lethal emotion that deserves no more than to be abolished.

Greed can cause someone to betray even his/her closest friend and even steal or kill from him/her. It arises mainly because of a false illusion that material wealth equals happiness. In John's case, he might have thought that since wealth is happiness, having more wealth would mean more joy. This is of course false, as material goods can only give a person a basic level of comfort but never true happiness. Happiness can only come from being satisfied with what you have and not be envious of what others have. As the sage Confucius once preached, “To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of what it means to be happy or content."

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