is there a difference between discontentment that leads to the accumulation of stuff (think shopping sprees) versus the better-than-the-joneses never-ending pursuit of wealth?
i mean to say feeling unfulfilled and discontent is quite a different malady than being greedy, but do they have necessarily different cures?
the solution to discontentment is to be content. content with who you are, what you have, where you fit in to the world, the grand scheme of things.
the drug of greed however seems quite different. is it necessarily due to a lack of fulfillment? for i think many greedy people are fulfilled, do have all they want, but simply enjoy the endless pursuit of more. i don't know whether this is a condition that needs a cure. i don't know whether the greedy person has a soul that cries out for meaning, for water to drink that will truly satisfy. i don't know whether this person needs anything? whether they need jesus?
the person who seeks contentment, however, will, and can truly be content when they find and accept jesus, the water that he brings.
but what, if anything, can we bring to the greedy person?
3 comments:
Is the better-than-the-joneses never-ending pursuit of wealth really more about status than wealth? i.e. more about identity than power or hedonism? Just a thought.
yeah, i was trying to put my finger on what it was, what it was that made greed different from discontentment.
status is definitely a contender.
i guess it's about inward versus outward fulfillment. about the way we make ourselves feel, which we are able to do possibly in a vaccuum, in contrast with the way we want to make others feel (envious, insufficient, incomplete). that change of emphasis.
good point.
Alain De Botton on the futility of "status anxiety":
"Contrary to what an optimistic mindset teaches us, everything will turn out for the worse. We will die. Everything we achieved will be forgotten. Everything we strived for will be ignored and perhaps mocked. Our names will be stamped into the ground. Whatever was our status, we are all fated to end up as the most democratic of substances, dust."
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