Green-eyed Monster

Money is not the root of evil. Love of money is. It seems that we, humans, never learn. We not only don’t improve, become more enlightened, but constantly search for more physical, sensual if not sexual satisfaction. We are descending from the heights of Edenic state of near-perfection to the animalistic expression of most primitive fauna. Why, you ask? Because of the Green-eyed Monster.

Because of greed.

CEO’s salaries come to mind. Thank god we are not all CEOs, or the average morality of the human race would descent to the abysmal depth of materialistic gutter.

Pease note the following.

In countries spanning from Japan, through Germany, France, Italy, Canada, South Africa, Britain, Mexico and Venezuela, the CEO’s salaries range from 11 times all the way to 50 times the wage of an average worker. 50 x average sounds like an incredibly greedy disparity until we look at a comparative ratio in the United States of America. There, believe it or not, the ratio is 325:1. In the good-old USA, the CEOs, on average, glut themselves with 325 times the salaries of the people they employ.

I thought I’ve heard the worst until on Tuesday Oct.2nd, 2012, the ABC News reported: “2,400 millionaires received unemployment insurance benefits during the economic downturn…”

I thought this was a misprint until I read on. The report continued to say that:

“In 2009, 2,362 millionaires received unemployment benefits, down from 2,840 the year prior, according to a study from the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan arm of U.S. Congress that provides policy and legal analysis. Of the 2,362 more than 1,000 receiving unemployment benefits had a household adjusted gross income of $1.5 million in 2009.”

There is greed and there is greed. But some people are no longer human. They are green-eyed monsters.

What we must never forget, however, is that the vast majority of us are good, honest, working folk, contributing to not only our own wellbeing but that of the whole society.

If you want to read more on the subject, I recommend my essay “The Green Eyed Monster” from my collection Beyond Religion III. It reaches further into the insidious aspect of envy. You can also get the book for virtually any other electronic reader listed on my webpage http://stanlaw.ca

Enjoy!