Courtesy of native-languages.org :
"Wašicun - wašin icu" (the white man, takes all the fat.) Wordplay is common in the Sioux languages.
While growing up, my family had 6: 3 boys and a tough-as-nails sister; both parents were “depression era babies,” so my friend Lyles’ expression “no blood, no foul” could well describe the otherwise genteel mealtime table my mother aspired to. The expression “slow down, nobody’s gonna take it away from you” seems quaint in the days we are living with talking heads formulating remarkable insights about when we can expect the “water wars” to commence and where. Even as I struggle to express how astonished I am that my nation is ranked second to last for childhood poverty in developed nations, my mind falters at how something so utterly unnecessary as poverty could exist in a world capable of repeatedly landing our species on other worlds, but cannot restrain a confused hunger for too much? The scale of grasping sadly now far exceeds any parallel to appetite or really any human image save that of the truly deranged. The blind pursuit of “more” has taken on other worldly aspects which with the resources available to such extreme power, real or perceived is transforming what had once been a largely humane planet into a pustulated reflection of its former self.
Not that the cultural compass of our lauded poets and artists hasn’t at times complicated matters with potent images of riches, power and splendor rewarded for heroic efforts against impossible odds. Nor is the unreasoned grasping characterized by greed restricted to wealth and power; I’m 3 times married and when she once again shows me the error of my ways, it’ll be 4. Does this make me greedy as Leonard Cohen sings of needing “ . . so much to have nothing to touch, I’ve always been greedy that way . . “ ? As an aging fine artist content to dictate the pace and access of my work, I’m guilty of greed and would have been whither way I turned - japing for the art industrialists or as I do, savoring the deeper recesses of our feeble consciousness while trying to fathom what cave artists knew - who defines what is greedy? In the opening line of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell he wrote “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” and we’ll never know what he might have said about Bill Gates’s achieving the remarkable feat of owning $1,000,000,000,000 one trillion dollars; back in the day, think 1980’s, the example for any Rockefeller was if you started saving $1,000 a week from the time of Christ you still wouldn’t be as rich - approximately $104 million. To mimic Mr. Gates you’d have to have started saving $1,000 a week better than 19 million years ago or roughly the beginning of the Miocene Epoch.
The drive to amass more than you can use is unfortunately the flip side to the poet’s coin; and were a 3 headed coin possible, that added face might reflect the ceaseless shoveling of food, or liquor for the alcoholic, or needles for the addict. The arrogance of appetite that drives a human soul to own a brand new Ferrari while mothers protected by plastic trash bags mop up the Ebola Virus is the same contempt for the human spirit which motivates a violently connected multinational corporation (comprised of breathing humans) to reduce regenerative seeds to a single crop for gain, or find a profitable purpose for owning the Ebola Virus. This behavior is a perversion from the original utility for provisioning that drove our species to harness waterways and cultivate food in communities. That cooperation for the greater good has been twisted into the fallacy that we are incomplete, whether that be from an existential vacuum or financial vulnerability. Lao Tzu says the objective of existence is to defeat want, to know satisfaction with what you have and this confuses me, for he also says the 3 greatest treasures are simplicity, patience and compassion. I read of those three treasures and wonder about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admonition, “moderation in all things, especially moderation.” From which treasures are we to be free of want, “simplicity, patience and compassion” or the filthy lucre the haters dangle out of reach like a carrot on a stick for our modern day horse and carriages. If for some odd reason Lao Tzu was laughing at posterity and advocating we free ourselves from civil restraint, would we be free to unleash our rancor on the heads of our oppressors raining down but again another human revolution and it’s illusion for change except in this revolution it won’t be workers of the world unite, but “Lord of Flies” meets George Orwell.
Is it greedy to demand justice or attack the ruling class with any leverage possible, even logic? I shun any belief that equates punishment with justice, up to and including the traditional drawing and quartering as punishment for endangering a ship and its crew - we are a ship and they the billionaires have put our vessel in great peril. Some number of the 1,467 billionaires on this planet of 7 billion human beings pose the greatest single threat to our survival. They must be brought up on a short leash, as in given a one room walkup with no more to live on than what is paid the local kindergarten teacher. It is what my uncle Dwayne recommended to me as a young thrasher - “if you are jumped by any number of others, you begin with the biggest of the cowards and work your way down,” but Socrates has said “The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but in building the new.” To me this says find a way to supplant the illusion of material wealth with an insatiable desire to “make the world a little better than you found it” - Aunt Jane. I have tried with this essay to better understand greed and so help the world. I am no closer to understanding, so if I can’t help myself, how will I help you? What I am doing is what HH the Dalai Lama advocated which is “if you cannot help, at least do no harm.”
When someone or some entity has demonstrated antagonism to your wellbeing, but then experiences a reversal of fortune; it is still misfortunate, for to take pleasure in suffering of any kind is simply self-righteous greed. Until we are able to disconnect from the desire for payback we will be divided and conquered. The mistaken concept of a balance sheet for violence, but not one for the dignity of life and the welfare of all people is a curiosity. Not so much for the stupidity of eye for an eye, but how easily people are diverted from the problem at hand - justice and adequate resources distributed fairly to the greatest number of people. There is no other overarching demand in the world we live in, not spiritual, economic, or political, not even what happens next on Dr. Who. We as a species are about to perish for the sin of having docilely satisfied the perverse demands of a handful, large handful, of amoral sociopaths who by luck and and circumstance have convinced themselves that having more than they know what to do with at the expense of 7 billion other humans beings is scientific confirmation of survival of the fittest, or some such shit. I’m old, older than you Bill Gates, so whenever you are are up for it I’m challenging you to fisticuffs; name the time and place, Queensberry Rules, or no; as many rounds as it takes . Know this Bill, I am not calling you out because I wish you to suffer at my hand, or because I’m mocking your self-serving incompetence, but because one) I say I got more heart than you; two) I’m willing to prove it, 3) Uncle Dwayne said to start with the biggest and work your way down - Uncle Dwayne was a standup guy and I want to help you learn what it is to be standup; be not afraid - I’ll stop when you fall down or say “uncle.”
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