Back in biblical times, when God was off handing out terrifying and grisly punishments to ‘sinners’ like Santa hands out candy canes to kids, one particular man of the cloth decided it might be a good idea to itemize what actions, exactly, would get your intestines packed snugly up your larynx, to dangle comically out from your nostrils, for all eternity. So he compiled a list of seven cardinal sins that basically covered the issue.
Biblically speaking, though, morality was a different kettle of fish, or bucket of severed heads, as might have been more appropriate for the times. In today’s day and age, what goes into making something wrong can be pretty confusing. First up, Greed.
It used to be that there were this many haves, and that if you had too many, well, that was just straight up greedy, and you were liable to be torn apart by an angry mob of have-nots. Today, though, we’ve craftily avoided the tearing scenario by making sure there is at least one ocean, a couple thousand missiles, and our super-friend America in between us and the have-nots. And that changes things.
Biblical Greed clearly never studied macroeconomics, but then again, it didn’t have to. The prescribed fate of those who engage in Greed is to be boiled in scorching oils, for all eternity. Pleasant like a picnic, ‘innit? But by that logic, once we kick the bucket we’re in for one hell of a sort of open Facebook invite afterlife Jacuzzi after-party, but with more screams and the never-ending agony thing. Even worse, we can’t even really escape our greed, because it’s not us, it’s our entire societal structure on a multinational level, or something. And that’s a really tough thing to mess with.
Which brings me to why stockpiling monies, buying fancy shit, and stealing from giant multinational corporations just isn’t sinning anymore, because it’s just too wrapped up in layers of Sin. Fuck you, Walmart, I’m never paying for socks again. In fact, I’ll use the money I save from straight up jacking your fluffy foot mittens and buy one of your workers rice for a month.
Do you see my point? I mean, it stopped being about just not taking something that doesn’t belong to us a long time ago, because if we were to hold that maxim as the truth then we’d by definition be laying claim to millions of the futures of the poor, uneducated and malnourished people that make half our crap.
Then again, the sweatshop workers themselves don’t want to be relieved of their labors because they’re already making more money than those that don’t have their cushy, sweatshop job.
Basically, greed is all outta whack, and more or less it’s just a matter of perspective. Just think of all those hungry/thirsty have-nots eyeing the last workstation at the pants-factory. Shit, they get rice, twice a day. People get all torn up over things like that.
It’d be nice to say there’s a speck of future to our hopes, or vice versa, but let’s face it, the Great Rebalancing can only involve the widespread depopulation of man-kind. But seeing how that’s basically been declared as this inconvenient and inevitable looming doom by the sciencey types, I suggest getting a head start on figuring out what really goes into making yourself happy and working for it. Think of it as getting ahead in this crazy day and age. Either way, when I die and report for punishment at the boiling-oil-pain-cauldron-thing, I’m gonna flip Satan the bird and cannonball that shit. Or, you know, begin not existing for all eternity. Whichever.
//Robert Ardagh
Writer
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