Greed in the Season of Giving

Greed has its advocates. In Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street, the character Gordon Gekko claims that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.” The novelist Ayn Rand, best known for her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, famously published a collection of essays entitled, The Virtue of Selfishness. And Thomas Hobbes, one of the founders of modern political philosophy, argued that “No one gives but with the intention of good to himself,” suggesting that apparent generosity is in fact nothing more than disguised selfishness.

Greed vs. self-interest

Yet there is a profound difference between greed and self-interest. Greed implies an excessive desire for money and the things money can buy. Self-interest, on the other hand, means securing for oneself in adequate measure the things that most people need and want, such as food, clothing, housing, education, and so on. A greedy person never has enough and always wants more, while self-interested people can, at least in principle, say when they have enough. Greed seeks self-enrichment at the expense of others, while self-interest makes the quest for mutual enrichment possible.

As we enter the season of giving, it is especially important to grasp this distinction. Even in the midst of a crowd, greedy people are condemned to isolation, because they regard others primarily as opportunities for self-enlargement. They see interactions with others as transactions in which they aim to extract more than they offer, always aiming to turn a profit. As such, greedy people covet not merely money but the time, attention, and talents of others. They will scratch your back, but only if you scratch theirs more. To them, a balanced transaction would seem a waste of time.

Consider Hobbes a bit more closely. He sees the origins of human society in what he refers to as a “state of nature,” a “war of each against all,” in which people look out only for themselves and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” If we manage to avoid pillaging one another, it is merely because we find it more convenient to enter into contracts in search of security and stability. If we manage to get along, it is not because we care about one another, but merely that we fear the punishment that would follow from giving full rein to our selfish passions.

The moral philosopher Adam Smith presents a stark contrast to Hobbes. Smith believes that, no matter how selfish we may sometimes seem, there is something in our nature that “interests us in the fortunes of others,” and renders the other’s happiness “necessary to us.” Where Hobbes sees no passions in the human psyche save selfishness, Smith presumes that social passions are an essential feature of human nature. For Hobbes, we are like billiard balls that sometimes bump into one another, but for Smith, we exist our whole lives in networks of relationship.

Consider a person in distress. For Hobbes, this is a natural state, since even in good times we eye one another with suspicion, while when things are bad we must spend all our time guarding our backs. For Smith, by contrast, distress is an unnatural state, and one best relieved not by building higher and sturdier walls around ourselves, but by reaching out to others. When we share our anxieties with friends, he holds, we see matters in a new light that proves calming, helping us to appreciate that we are not so alone and that others are here for us.

Overcoming greed

The key to overcoming greed is to recognize that we are parts of larger wholes—friendships, families, and communities that define and sustain us. In the words of John Donne, “No man is an island.” Where Hobbes sees human beings as fundamentally selfish and able to live together only by holding our egoism in check, Smith sees us as essentially cooperative and collaborative creatures who could never come to be, survive, or thrive except with and to some degree for each other. Greed is not only morally wrong. It arises from a distorted account of what it means to be human.

Consider Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge. Initially, a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” a haunting enables him to review his whole misdirected life in a single night, and he comes to realize that his greed has gained him nothing but isolation and meaninglessness. Hoping against hope that another path is possible for him, Smith awakens on Christmas morning resolved to reconnect with his family, devote his resources to enriching the lives of others, and build relationships, earning himself a reputation as the embodiment of the spirit of giving.

Hobbes would regard such a transformation as impossible. Once we define human beings as inherently selfish creatures and the astute as those who are most conscious of the egoism at the heart of humanity, Scrooge’s story becomes nothing more than a sentimental fairy tale. But if Smith is right, such awakenings are not only possible but highly desirable. If we can glimpse the extent to which we are our relationships with others and understand that we flourish only to the extent that we invest in such relationships, greed can truly give way to the joy of sharing.