Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.

This week – Greed.

We are, in effect, one big tribe of people. The human race. We want to survive, prosper, develop ourselves, and remain secure. Both as a group and individually. That has been at the heart of our genetic make up since our ancient caveman ancestor days. But as we have advanced and improved our standards of living many no longer serve the many. They only serve themselves and get as much as they can. We are now plagued by greed everywhere and that means SMS has to get involved.

1 The Social Symptom.

Greed isn’t anything new. Mankind has always had a propensity to act in selfish ways. But this was decidedly the minority. Socially it was frowned on. Roll on to the 21st Century society. Fuelled by social media and every image, story, post, and video showing the trappings of success (although it’s usually faked), the mindset of ‘go get everything and be a winner’ has spread. It’s a mental symptom. Now becoming a someone and having anything you want it cool. It’s not greedy, it’s making the best of who you are.

Is greed now merely a social media driven desire to be as successful as possible?

2. Full Time Food.

Historically food typically was eaten at home. Cafes and restaurants were reserved for birthday treats, business meetings, and food on the go when travelling. In this way we stuck to three meals a day and rarely drifted from that. Then along came the 1980’s and fast food arrived, literally in its bucket loads. After that quick, hot, delicious food we craved was everywhere at all times of the day. We just couldn’t say no. Let’s be honest, today it’s merely a couple of easy buttons away on an app and is delivered right to our door. For this reason food need has become food greed.

Are we greedy because food is on tap full time for us?

3. Destructive not Constructive.

The legendary astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking warned, ‘We are in a danger of destroying ourselves by our greed’. This view was also shared by another legend, this time of music, Eartha Kitt, who also observed that, ‘Greed is so destructive’. Undoubtedly both are right because today we are seeing this effect through what banks, financiers, big companies and world leaders have done and are doing to construct their own bigger nests. I am saying that selfishness now leads to extreme greed.

Has greed already put us on the road to destruction?

4. We Want, We Have.

I have already written in other posts about Internet Attitude. A formulated expectation in the mind forged during the internet era of an expectation of what we want will come quickly. All in all this is because we have gotten used to ordering online and it being delivered in hours or the next day. But it has a counterpart. The Will Have mentality. I will write about this in a longer weekly post. Internet Attitude has given birth to it. As things turn up easily that we buy/order, we just believe we can have anything we want. The end result? We are greedy for more.

Has the easy availability of the internet made us greedy to just have anything we want?

5. We Don’t Know Enough.

The truth is, this is the most technologically filled age. Which also makes us the age with the most knowledge at our fingertips. No other age has as much open to them every day as us. Wisdom says that we can never have enough knowledge. The more we have the better our lives. I believe we have enough of the wrong things. We have too high standards of living, of modern transport, of gadgets and devices, of food and entertainment. And we can’t get enough of these. Ominously we keep demanding ever more. In summary, our greed is out of control.

With this in mind, will we ever learn when enough is enough and what will it take?

Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. 

Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Perhaps YOURS!!

See you next time for more super thinking.

Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by aaronjbutler and Frank_Rietsch.