"F*** what you heard"
"It's what you hearin' (Listen)"
If one were to look solely at the amount of unrest in the United States tied to skin color over the last few decades it would be very easy to overlook THE most important connection of all - GREED! I didn’t understand the realities of class discrimination in my youth. I didn’t realize that it was class (and its servant, Greed), above all else, that was behind virtually every human horror story throughout history. Indeed, there are even some who theorize that Hitler’s rise in Germany was much more about suppressing the ostensibly socialist leaning Weimar government than it was about anything else.
The earliest, clear memories I have of my childhood were of the days I lived in a public housing project in Cambridge (Massachusetts). One of those memories, quite strong in fact, was of the smell of human urine in our stairwells. It was strong enough that while I preferred stairs to the frequently non-working elevator I’d opt for the elevator. The very first time I heard “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five I connected to its lyrics almost instantly thanks to the anonymous individual(s) who “marked” our stairwells. “Broken glass everywhere, People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don't care.” (You can watch the video on YouTube here - The Message)
One thing I do NOT remember from my early childhood was which kids were what color because, frankly, I didn’t care. What I did care about was that they lived in the same project, most of them next to the same cemetery I remember right behind our building. There were little old ladies on our floor who my sister invariably sought out when she wanted to be spoiled (I often had to go door to door to find her). More than once I found her sitting at a table eating ice cream or some other of her favorite foods. There were other families like mine in that one of their parents had been in combat (in my dad’s case it was in Korea). There were kids who were lighter than me (a majority) and kids darker than me but I suspect I was the only kid in the project of Mexican ancestry.
Over the years I noticed that while most of my mom’s family lived in a particular part of Pomona I also noticed they counted a number of melanin-deficient folks as friends. One of those friends was Pomona Police Chief Ralph Parker. (He was also best man at my parents’ wedding). Between family friends like these and my dad’s own complete lack of melanin I didn’t really think much about skin color until I moved to Riverside, CA. Even then however, it didn’t frequently cross my mind.
When my parents divorced the summer following my freshman year of high school I learned, very much for the first time, what it was like to go without. In Cambridge my father’s family was nearby so I would have never known if there were money problems. In Pomona my mom’s family was no more than 2 blocks away. It wasn’t until I went from living in a household of two wage earners to one with a single wage earner that I learned about the heavy influence of money and material goods on the average American. I also learned that the connection was anything but healthy.
In my undergraduate years I learned about a number of economic theories which were, surprisingly often, connected to the field of Philosophy. In fact I later concluded that ALL of the “Social Sciences” were not only connected to Philosophy, NONE of them were genuinely scientific. Just before I switched majors from Political Science to Philosophy (and added Religious Studies as well) I told one of my Poli Sci professors that I believed OUIJA boards were better at predicting political or financial outcomes than Political “Science” or Economics would ever be.
Somewhat surprisingly (at least to me) nearly every subject I studied both as an undergraduate and later as a law student coalesced to make one thing about human history very clear to me - GREED is a very, very bad thing. It was (and is) at the root of almost every atrocity ever committed by one group of humans against another. From the slaughter of millions in the name of God to the literal enslavement of millions of innocent people whose only real sin had been a failure to make material wealth their primary goal in life, greed was the engine that made such horrors possible.
In the year 2021 one need only look at the “Captains of Industry” to recognize the most “successful” humans, measured in terms of greed, are billionaires, their ilk and those who grovel before them licking their boots (which reminds me - how about that Secretary of Transportation!). Put simply, NO OTHER force, value or goal has so horribly influenced humans as has greed. To be fair, one can certainly be greedy for things that are not material however the notion remains the same.
Webster’s dictionary defines “greed” as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed.” Short and to the point, it’s a definition that literally describes EVERY billionaire on planet Earth as well as every single person who genuinely bemoans the fact they are not billionaires. What continues to mystify me however isn’t the number who actually wish they were billionaires, it’s the BILLIONS of humans who are victims of what I refer to as the “Tyranny of Greed” who do nothing of substance. Rather than take back the ill gotten gains of the billionaires, they live lives of unfilled needs and desperation while engaging in the social media equivalent of gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands.
The greedy cannot be and never will be satisfied. The word “enough” has no meaning to them when it comes to material possessions. Today, Jeff Bezos is having a ship built at a cost far exceeding the average annual budget of an overwhelming majority of American cities. While I don’t envy Jeff Bezos (in all honesty I pity any human who has placed material wealth before other people) it seems many either do or have somehow fantasized that Bezos’ wealth was “earned.” I know he doesn’t earn any of it since working is the only way I can ensure my fiscal needs are met and work ain’t easy. As a licensed attorney I have to consider what other attorneys charge for their services if I want to ensure I am providing my services for a fair rate. The highest rate I’ve personally ever seen is $1,000.00 per hour. If an attorney were to actually bill for 2500 hours of work (a full year’s worth) he or she would receive $2.5 MILLION dollars. In reality, of course, that’s not how our “Capitalist” system works. A Managing Partner at a large firm makes MUCH more than that amount while doing far less work than 2,500 hours per year. In the case of Bezos his “wealth” is attributable to the actual work of Amazon’s nearly 800,000 employees and, today, has NO connection to any efforts undertaken by Bezos.
Lately I am hearing a lot of talk about relatively new economic theories as well as the impending end of Capitalism. That’s all fine and well but one thing remains unquestionably true of any of them. ANY financial system that rewards rather than punishes greed, is doomed to fail. Today, the only real question is exactly what that failure will look like. Greed has literally driven the destruction or poisoning (or both) of millions of acres of land. Greed has served as the driving force behind nearly every war dating back to the 1930s (and likely well before that). Today, the future of our species hangs in the balance, whether one wants to believe it or not. Fighting against us are the Greedy and their underlings, fighting for us - I’ll leave for you to decide.