What is greed?
“Lord, I did not wish to lose you, but in my greed I wanted to have creatures as well as you, and thus I lost you for you do not allow us to possess the falsity and deception of creatures together with you, who are truth.” -Saint Augustine
This is an interesting view of what greed really is—which is different from how it’s generally understood. People usually think of greed simply as wanting too much. But the real nature of greed is a bit more complex than that, as St. Augustine gets at.
Greed is not simply wanting too much, necessarily—but wanting both; wanting things that are incompatible; wanting truth (God—and all goodness which comes from that), and falsity/deception (creatureliness, to stay with Augustine’s term). Thinking that you can have both truth and falsity—that is greed. You must choose—either a life of truth, or a life of falsity; either a life of goodness or a life of evil.
It is often remarked that there is so much greed in our world today—which is true. And this is precisely why, and how—because people think they can have both, deception and truth, good and evil. A hybrid life.
The concept hybrid has become very popular in society lately—hybrid work, hybrid learning, hybrid cars, hybrid weed, etc. etc. etc. It’s no coincidence that hybridity has grown along with greed—it is an effect of the growth of greed.
We often think of greed as immoderation, wanting too much, not being content with what you have. But it’s really about wanting things that don’t go together. This, more than anything, in so many ways, is what the world is all about now. If greed is ugly—which it is—this is the way in which it is ugly.