G is for Greed

“Chalkie fired a warning glance at Matt.

“You imagined being with her and how good it would be. You said to yourself, Julia and I could have fun. She wouldn’t nag me and she would want to listen and hang out with me. She would want to make love to me. Then you started visualizing that sex.”

“Steady on,” said Matt with a note of alarm in his voice.””

-          Loathe Your Neighbor ch. 11

 

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Greed is good, according to Gordon Gekko. Greed says, I don’t have enough. I want more. Greed drives a person to greatness regardless of the cost. Greed sees the acquisition of things as more important than the establishment and maintenance of relationships. Greed is the antithesis of content. Greed appears as gluttony and as lust. What restrains the urge to gather more, to have more? To possess things and own people? Is self control enough when the animal appetites of sinful man drive him to self destruction? What’s the difference between greed and ambition? When am I going to stop asking questions, and cease this heavy self righteous moralizing? Oh, I’m sorry I’ve made you uncomfortable. I didn’t realize what I was doing when I started. I lost control. My propensity to grandstand and pontificate overwhelmed me. Damn, all I wanted to do was write a cute little blog entry about something starting with G. I spy with my little eye…

Courageous or Crazy

Nuts are a kind of food. There are many different kinds of nuts...Hey, wake up! This is interesting. Snickers, the nut filled chocolate bar which really satisfies has just been released in a new version. The latest in an insanely long line of Snickers varieties is a yellow packet version. Mars confectionery, bless their hearts, after trying once to boost sales of the popular snack with a king sized version, and then again with an extra nuts edition, now want us to try Snickers with three nuts. I don't know if this marketing has been successful or not, nor do I know whether the marketing gurus at Mars and the boffins who make the budgetary decisions are courageous or crazy. Successful or not, I think they are all nuts.

With apologies to North American readers who are used to multiple varieties of everything, I must say I just can't see the need for trying to improve Snickers. It's always been a favourite of mine because it really satisfies, and it helps me feel more like myself as opposed to grouchy like Joe Pesci, or wussy like Betty White. Australia did not even receive the Snickers blessing until 1977 which was 47 years after the sensational product hit the stores in the U.S., and 50 years after it was invented. Who says Australia isn't behind the rest of the world? The point is though, the Snickers bar was three years in the making. That's 1095 days of tinkering and fine tuning the original product to get it spot on. I reckon it's perfect. Just the right size, exactly the right amount of nuts, and precisely the right kind of nut: the peanut. It doesn't need to be improved.


However, changing the ingredients and/or the packaging is necessary according to Mars, and it does provide at least an initial boost to sales simply because people are curious. One of the human characteristics which is mercilessly targetted by advertisers is our curiousity, the other is our greed. We've already got the perfect chocolate bar, Snickers, but they say, let's try to improve it because we need to sell more units. Well, I'm not falling for it this time. Call me courageous or call me crazy but I am going to boycott Snickers as a personal protest. Are you with me?


To encourage participation in my futile little protest, I am offering a free copy of my short story Yummy. Just e-mail me and ask for it.

Generosity versus Greed

How much effort and cash is expended by people to help themselves compared with helping others? This is a frightening question which many will shy away from asking. Many more will not want to hear the answer. The truth can be troubling, to say the least. Truth often is. Despite its outrageous propaganda Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was well named. Facts can be sledgehammers. Facts can make us squirm and sweat, even make us sick. Contestable? Debatable? Controversial? Yes to all three, but people react and respond to the truth differently, and regardless of whether you agree or not, truth is truth. Not liking something or not believing in it does not alter the reality of it. Some things are true and that's all there is to it.

Former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli is believed to have once said there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. At the risk of being accused of using statistical acrobatics to support my case, I offer the following shocking facts.

The 2005 Boxing Day tsunami was arguably the worst natural disaster the modern world has ever seen. Australians responded to the cry for help from the people affected and by the organisations that moved to alleviate their suffering and begin the rebuilding process. Roughly $100 million dollars was raised by Australians alone.It was a fantastic effort and a wonderful display of generosity. In that same year however, gambling losses by Australians totalled $17.5 billion dollars. Read that sentence again. It's not a misprint. Here's more; total giving by Australians to non profit organisations in 2004, personal and corporate, was $11 billion dollars. Gambling losses in the following year were $17.5 billion.

Statistics from Giving Australia in 2005 showed that Australians donated 0.7% of GDP on a per capita basis. That puts us behind the Americans, the British and our friends across the Ditch. A more recent survey by Commsec showed that Australians spend more on gambling than they do on some bills. $2292 on gambling versus $1830 on gas and electricity bills, for example. Illuminating isn't it?

Why? That's the question. Why are Australians addicted to gambling? Hope. Most of us struggle a little financially, and whether our wallets are fat or emaciated, we would like a little more. The desperate need we feel for more, the belief we have that more money will solve our worries, that having more will make us complete, make us more content, that winning a fortune will rescue us from the prison of our boring jobs with their insufficient incomes, all translates into an addiction. Our hope is in gambling: the small chance that we will get lucky. The statistics say we spend more on this addiction (and I haven't even mentioned alcohol and cigarettes) than we do on helping others.

That's pretty sad, isn't it?