Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to make a wish, my stock response has been to ask for peace on earth. With world peace, I thought, everything else would have a much better chance of falling into place. If we could direct our energies elsewhere, surely we’d focus on the greater good, right?
Well, it was a nice idea. Unfortunately, wishing has yet to make it so. And the older I get, the more cynical I become. I no longer think most of us prioritize the greater good. Most of us just want good for me and mine.
So I decided to reverse-engineer my thought process. Why don’t we already have peace on earth? What causes war?
That’s easy. Greed. Desire for cheap oil so we can maintain our destructive lifestyles. Desire for land that never belonged to us in the first place. Desire for riches that someone else has accumulated. The view that women are chattel and men make good field hands. Desire to make a profit from the military industrial complex. As long as this greed exists, war will exist.
I’d even go so far as to say that Greed is what causes the six other deadly sins. Think about it.
Pride is feeling good about what you have, or the ways you are superior. Greed is what caused you to strive for those things.
Lust stems from the greedy need to have the best mate all to yourself.
Envy is greed unfulfilled.
Gluttony is greed that is so fulfilled that you can’t seem to stop yourself from feasting upon it.
Wrath is the feeling you get when your greed is unsatisfied.
Sloth sets in when you either become so exhausted by your greed, or you are reveling in the fact that you’ve gotten what you’ve greedily taken from others.
In this age of corruption, especially in the halls of power, greed should be viewed as our greatest enemy. So from now on, when I make a wish, it will be for the death of greed. Surely then we could know peace.
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The View from a Drawbridge 