By Abdallah Khabib Jallow
I had a strange dream.
I was walking through a golden temple, beneath a dome of glass. And through chambers of splendor, filled with so many objects that the heart so desires. I saw miracles of human skill and artistry. And flawless beings who seemingly lacked nothing. But it appeared they were all searching for something. Such strange creatures.
There is somebody who tries to say you need this. There are enough people who think they need that. That is what the marketing strategy is — it always tells you that you shouldn’t be content.
Today, I go as far as to say it is a symptom of an illness.
I kept asking myself: Why are we like this?
We are caring and compassionate. But we are also egocentric and reckless. We give and we earn. We create and we destroy. What drives us?
I went in search of answers.
The Human Condition
Humans are, on the one hand, very similar to all other forms of life. We share a basic biological predisposition towards survival. But on the other hand, we are so smart that we actually recognize that we exist.
Being alive and knowing it is grounds for great joy. But it also carries a very terrible existential burden. If you know that you are here, you know that someday, like all living things, you won’t be here.
If that is all we thought about — I’m going to die. I may walk outside and get hit by a vehicle — we would literally be paralyzed by object terror.
What human beings did was to construct and maintain what anthropologists today call culture. All cultures offer some recipe for immortality. Either literally, through the heavens and afterlife and reincarnation of all the world’s great religions, or symbolically, through the belief that some vested identity will persist over time nevertheless.
That is why you want to have children. That is why we want to build pyramids. That is why we want to write great books and symphonies. That is why we want to have a whole lot of money.
Human beings are motivated to have a lot of stuff because psychologically, it gives them a sense that they may be living forever.
Desire, Greed, and the Struggle
Desire, greed, and the struggle that brings about anger and aggression — from the philosophical perspective, these are all resultant states of a person consistently trying to look at what is not true.
We talk about three fundamental truths. That things are impermanent. That the fundamental principle of everything is said to be emptiness. And the third truth: suffering.
We try to build something that makes us forget about this. We try to make things permanent. And that struggle creates suffering. We begin to then hang on to things.
I will give you an example. If I have a shirt, and every time I go out to do some shopping, I buy another shirt. I may have twelve in my closet, but I will buy the thirteenth — just so that I have a sense that I will live long enough to wear all thirteen shirts, or perhaps even more than that.
So there is a sense of everyday consistently doing something through which we may be able to more solidify our sense of immortality. Our sense of living continuously, not changing. And that struggle consistently builds up all this neurosis — and the prominent one of them becomes greed.
The Human Animal
An animal takes only what it needs. But the human animal is different.
More than seven billion of us populate the planet. And each of us desires something. Desires more. Is this perhaps the secret of success?
The Ego and Its Illusions
One day, a narcissist came upon a spring that was so clear that he could see himself in it as if in a mirror. When he saw his own reflection, he fell in love with its beauty.
We too like to see ourselves as the center of the world. The individual is the measure of all things. And so we yearn for recognition and self-esteem. We collect relationships, photos, and likes. SUVs, shoes, watches, records.
Are we like narcissists? Addicted to our own egos?
If you say you want to be true to the world, you have to get rid of all your “I’m’s.” When I say your “I’m’s,” I am talking about: I am this, I am that. I can do this, I can do that. Oh yeah, I did that last year. I’m better than him.
All those I’m’s are egos.
There are a lot of people in The Gambia — predominantly youths — who carry the ego badge on them. And they carry it high like a flag. Those are the people who we would see as the future bureaucrats of the country.
If you are driving into a poor neighborhood where people are starving to death, and you drive down with your BMW or Rolls Royce with your exhaust removed — that is the worst thing you could ever do. Driving with this ego to say, “I am better than you. You will never be where I am.”
Those people are lost.
The Greed Cycle
If I believe I have to assert my ego, the only way I can do that is through greed. I am forced to constantly incorporate something into myself that lends stability to my ego. Those can be material things, but they can also be spiritual things — for example, ideas like I am important or I am somebody due to money, fame, or my title.
Our entire modern world is based on this.
Greed destroys people. Why? Because it isolates us. And because greed is like a drug. The more I have, the more I want to have — because whatever I have no longer satisfies me. So it is not what I actually possess that satisfies me. It is the constant strive for more.
Religion has known for centuries that this drive lies within us humans. But the strive is also our ruin.
The Myth of Midas
Since time immemorial, there have been stories of people who could never get enough. People like King Midas. He asked Dionysus to grant him a wish — that everything he touched would turn to gold. Even his food and drink turned to gold. He starved and died of thirst.
Gold has always cast a spell of omnipotence and a whisper of eternity.
What, I ask myself, gives money such a powerful allure?
More Growth, More Affluence, More Contentment
More growth, more affluence, more contentment. This is the promise of those who mean well with us. And we are only too happy to believe them.
We do our part. But are we hoping to buy ourselves happiness?
We are attracted to anything that fosters life and pleasure. And we are afraid of anything that threatens that state of affairs.
There is nothing wrong with being a consumer. To stay alive, we have to consume things. But we have literally surrounded ourselves with stuff to the point where we become imprisoned in a gilded cage. We have become consumed with consumption.
We will keep buying stuff until the last drop of petroleum has been burned. It is fairly ominous, I will argue.
Can We Stop?
Are there other ways to feel happy and content? Can we simply stop being greedy by changing the way we think?
The answers may not be easy. But the question itself — and the courage to ask it — is already a beginning.
Greed exists everywhere. But it does not have to win here.
TheHeraldWhistleBlower 