Well , far be it from me to rain on anyone ' s parade ! Actually , I truly feel that people should be free to pursue their dreams and aspirations . Of course they should ! As long as they are actually pursuing them .
But as with most things , balance is needed . Greed is very easily encouraged in human beings . And I would argue that it isn ' t the same as aspiration .
We can tell greed from aspiration , because greed doesn ' t like to wait or work . Greed doesn ' t encourage us to contribute or to support the best interests of others .
" Greed is good !" said the Wall Street baddie Gordon Gekko . Well , I would argue not always .
Greed is cunning and , if given the slightest encouragement , can sink its hooks into us and manifest in different ways . We can become greedy for money - that one ' s well recognized - or attention . We can be greedy with desire to be seen as moral ( or amoral ), or even to be seen as not caring about money . And so it goes on . Greed hides in tiny dark corners of us , often while posturing as its opposite .
If greed were a clever demon , it might even have produced the current taboo against talking judgmentally about greed . After all , taboos against criticism are a great way of ducking and dodging responsibility . " We ' shouldn ' t ' really call people greedy ." Clever , eh ?
Anyway , I wasn ' t about to suggest Mike was suffering from greed ! Partly because of the taboo just mentioned , but also