THE DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY

The scourge of humanity throughout its existence has been greed, selfishness, fear, and hate. Until the human fear of lack and selfishness are eliminated, we will continue to do far more damage to ourselves than any natural calamity.

Think about it. Almost a hundred million Native Americans were pushed off their land, experiencing a systematic genocide over a hundred years after Europeans began coming to America. The population of Native Americans has dwindled from an estimated fifty to a hundred million to 9.7 million in the United States. Why? Greed and selfishness. The Gold Rush and cattle barons of the West didn’t care about Native Americans or anyone else. It all boiled down to greed. Around seven hundred thousand were killed in the American Civil War, and hundreds of thousands of blacks were enslaved and brutalized for hundreds of years before that. Why? Greed and selfishness. Africa and India were pillaged for their resources without any concern for the natives who had been there for untold centuries. Greed is a sickness of accumulation, filling the coffers of some to overflowing while draining the coffers of others to the point of subsistence or starvation.

All wars are fought over greed and selfishness. For the duration of humanity, empires have been built, not for the good of the people, but to satisfy the greed of the ruling classes. Rome created an empire solely to acquire wealth, willing to steal that from others. All empires are created the same way. The British Empire was not created out of necessity, but rather driven by Britain's greed. Hitler did not kill seven million Jews and try to take over the world because he wanted to help humanity. It was all due to selfishness and greed. All the empires were built on greed and the lust for more. People don’t cheat or steal because they are contented. They do it because they feel a sense of lack. People don’t hoard far more than they need, while others go hungry for any other reason than the lust for money, luxury, and all that comes with it. This includes corporations that poison the environment and lie that they didn’t know what they were doing thirty years ago, while they continue to pollute today. They didn’t do that for the benefit of humanity. They did it for greed and selfishness. We see it all the time, both big-time and small-time cheats. Everything from a bitcoin scam to a pharmaceutical company continuing to market and promote a drug that they know is excessively addictive. If everyone considered that whatever we do to humanity, we do to ourselves as part of humanity, rather than focusing on exploitation, the world would instantly become a better place.

Wealth can become an addiction. That’s not to say that all who are wealthy are addicted to getting more and more. Many wealthy individuals chip in and try to help humanity, rather than hoarding billions that they or their offspring will never spend. In an essay penned in 1889 titled "The Gospel of Wealth", Andrew Carnegie argued that the wealthy have a moral obligation to use their fortunes to benefit society during their lifetime, rather than simply accumulating wealth for personal gain or leaving it to heirs. Carnegie focused on building museums, libraries, promoting higher education, and cultural institutions. In our current generation, people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, although billionaires, do great works of philanthropy and contribute significantly to helping improve the general state of humanity. Bill Gates helps to feed the hungry and has focused attention on research to end diseases and malnutrition among children in third-world countries.

There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, but there is something wrong with being greedy, selfish, and addicted to wealth. When others are abused for the continued accumulation of wealth, a great wrong is done, not only to certain people but to humanity as a whole. Addiction is essentially a bottomless emotional pit in which, regardless of how much is accumulated, it is never enough. The heroin addict can’t get enough heroin to make themselves feel whole, and those who are addicted to accumulating wealth always want more because, no matter how much they have, it never feels like enough. Those who are addicted are usually in denial and would never admit to their addiction or, at least, become defensive whenever it is identified. What addicts don’t seem to realize is that the emptiness they feel cannot be filled from any external source. It can only be resolved within themselves. Addicts also tend to deny the destruction they are causing in other people’s lives, or even their own, and have a tendency not to recognize their addiction until they are at the point of near complete self-destruction. For some, it never happens. The 12-step program states, “Bottom for some people is six feet under.” When wealth addicts run society, unfortunately, the bottom for all of us may be six feet under.

Wealth addicts are not just a few select billionaires. They run the gamut from small-time crooks to con artists and scammers to the billionaires who selfishly accumulate wealth instead of trying to help humanity. A person can be living on disability income and still be a wealth addict. All that it takes is feeling like you can never have enough, no matter how much you accumulate. It is the result of the ego ruling our choices rather than compassion for others and ourselves. The ego has an insatiable need to feed itself, to prove itself, and to be in control. The desire to control and manipulate or use others is ego-based. The one way we can recognize when we have chased an ego goal is that whatever it was, it never satisfied us. It may have given us a sense of pleasure, prestige, affluence, or the illusion of power for a little while, but that soon wears off, and then the ego is off on another quest. The problem is that ego (which is at the core of addiction) can never be satisfied, no matter what. It doesn’t look around, gratefully taking joy in the moment. It always wants more. The 12-Step programs say that EGO stands for Edging God Out.  It is essentially the opposite of spirituality and experiences a chronic sense of lack. It doesn’t care what happens to anyone as long as it is fighting to obtain more or sending us on another wild goose chase to try to bring us an inner sense of fulfillment that can’t occur. It cannot be fed enough to be fulfilled, whereas spirituality is a state of joy and presence, a state of compassion, empathy, and acceptance. Spirituality does not try to control. It does not shove others aside to get what it wants. Only the ego does that.

When the Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” it is stating exactly what I have talked about all through this commentary. In the pre-interpretation context, the word “love” is more akin to eros or lust. Therefore, what it is saying is that the lust for money is the root of all evil, and what is the lust for money? Greed, selfishness, and a deep, chronic feeling of lack. If Greed and selfishness could ever be conquered, humanity might at last flourish and thrive rather than being self-destructive. However, given that human beings often are in denial, often don’t think any further than the ends of their noses, and often make excuses for the wrong that they do, or the consequences of their choices, the prognosis for humanity is not good. It never has been, and it would take a great awakening worldwide for the human disease of greed to be cured now. History is full of examples of great civilizations falling into ruin because they overtaxed their environment, or because they fought with rather than befriending those who seemed to have more. The problem is that we are not talking about civilizations and city-states now; we are talking about the entire world and all of humanity. If human beings don’t learn to curb their greed, selfishness, and sense of lack, then they will destroy themselves long before any natural calamity could ever accomplish it.