Human Greed

6 Pages 1594 Words

The Affects of Human Greed
Greed means to me; in order to survive humans have developed the inherent desire to acquire as much as possible as quickly as they possibly can. We are born, and look for food. We develop, and seek out shelter. The more food we store up, the better chance we have to survive when outside sources of food grow scarce. The larger and safer the shelter we secure, the more space to store food and the more room we have to rest. Therefore, has our intelligence guided our species for thousands of years and imbedded those instincts into our nature.
Now that the world is ours and there is little left to acquire from the earth, people compete with each other for what they think they should attain. What has worked in the past can no longer continue to work for the better. The greatest problem in the world today is that for thousands of years, our goal in life has been to take everything we can, and now, if we are to take anything at all, it will be taking it from someone else. While other species of animals strive for their food just to keep the population stable, our intelligence has allowed us to expand and grow, relatively free from the disease, famine, and predators that plague the other members of the animal kingdom.
Through the acquisition of food and shelter, individuals formed families. Through the acquisition of more food and larger shelters, families formed communities. Through the acquisition of food and shelter on a much larger scale, communities formed great nations and civilizations that continued to procreate and increase their vision of how much material possessions each person should attain. Soon, the world was populated with civilizations that had pushed to the edge of their lands in conquest of new food and new places to live. On Thursday October 24, 1929 the headline, “Prices of Stocks Crash,” boldly lined the front page of the New York Times. Within only hours the country had lost over $4,000,...