Greed, Hatred, and Delusion
Our True Planetary Pandemic
Survival in hell — I live: you die you live: I die Zero-sum life
I have written elsewhere, as another Wolfku, that Survival as Individual Task is just another word for War, and I believe that our growing planetary greed is dead set on proving me right.
I have also often wondered what sort of sicko deity created this world where someone or something has to die for someone or something else to live. No answers as yet, and I’m not holding my breath. What truly concerns me, though, is that this zero-sum principle is so widely accepted and is often recast as “survival of the fittest” (aka “dying of the unfit”).
In my book, a good working definition of a Saint is someone who is more concerned about another’s survival than about his/her own. Someone, in other words, who truly loves.
The Buddha truly loved.
Jesus truly loved.
Mother Theresa truly loved.
Mother Generic very often truly love.
And thousands of unsung saints truly loved — a few are still around to love in the present.
And then to run across mottos like “Greed is Good” (Wall Street, 1987) only to realize that a majority of humanity has taken this to heart and live by it — bringing us ever closer to a saint-less world.
Someone once said, “If you were looking for Hell and found Earth, you’re in luck.”
In other words, a Hell where one solitary little man’s survival is more important to him (by a factor of billions) than the survival of the planet as a whole — and if faced with failure (which he is) I can just hear his little ego-brain gears squeak out: “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”
And the little man has the nukes to do it.
And scariest of all: Since Maya is very, very efficient — expertly wielding both pain and pleasure to steadily convince us — one and all are now decided that this illusion is real — we have the pain to prove it.
Today, I find solace in those men and women who clearly see these things as they truly are, and a sweet percentage of these seers are Buddhists. For a reason, I believe: The Buddha saw through this veil of tears and as the spiritual doctor that he was, he correctly diagnosed the illness (craving, in the form of greed, hatred, and delusion) and prescribed a cure (the Noble Eightfold Path).
Without his guest appearance some twenty-five hundred years ago, I’m not sure there’d be any world left at this point.
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