Greed enables a person to buy things money can buy while losing the things money cannot buy.
Laurence J. Peter
A person can stake their claim to any material possession so long as they have the financial firepower to acquire it. However, money and, by extension, all the material possessions it can buy are but a means to an end. This simple fact is something we humans tend to forget easily when greed takes over.
Avarice has long been decried as a vice, and yet man has the remarkable ability to disregard this golden nugget of wisdom at the first chance he gets to stuff his pockets. There isn’t anything wrong with money as such. Or with the desire to acquire it, for that matter. If anything, it is a necessary evil if one is to lead a honorable life in this materialistic world. In fact, there are millions of people who live by the singular goal of getting rich, and this is fine so long as this ambition doesn’t become an obsession.
The issue is with the insatiable human thirst for acquiring more and more money. This senseless pursuit often leaves us blind and unsympathetic to others’ plight. In fact, it even leaves us oblivious to our own interests. In our meaningless quest for money, we forget what really matters in life – family and friends. Unfortunately, in most cases, this realization comes a little too late. By this point, one has irreversibly lost the people that made their life worth living. And while they can get as much material comfort as they wish for from all the money they made, nothing can make up for what they lost in the process.
Laurence Johnston Peter was a twentieth-century Canadian hierarchiologist. Best known for formulating the Peter Principle, Laurence once said: “Greed enables a person to buy things money can buy while losing the things money cannot buy.”