Sirajuddin Aziz
Perhaps man, at his evil best, with deliberate intent, smudges the strong lines that demarcate need from greed. A time arrives when greed is made to look like need. And over time, greed becomes a norm. Since greed becomes need, it acquires respect and acceptability in society.
Need has an expiry date, and since it is finite by nature, some day the demand stops (it must), while greed is infinite and endless. Consequently, the satisfaction of one leads to the emergence of another need…..the urge is for more, and that is considered better than having less. Needs hover around functional necessities. Greed drives itself by real or perceived fear of loss. The major source of greed’s appearance is man’s constant weakness of comparison….possessions are relative to what and how much others have….and that sadly ends up in feelings of not having enough.
Greed, avarice, covetousness or rapacity, or by whatever appellation, is considered to be one of the deadly sins in most regions and societies, yet it is rampant. The dimensions of non-material greed have more damning ramifications. People seek power, control over others, through fair and unfair means; some are afflicted with the greed to be seen, recognised…they seek centre stage, the spotlight, and if denied, they lose the apron strings of decency and demonstrate violent behaviour. Most religions look upon greed as a cardinal sin.
In an organisation, greed finds expression through leadership and senior management behaviour. Leaders/managers are seized with overconfidence, which ultimately leads to poor judgement. Such greedy leadership thrives on the exploitation of those who are lower on the hierarchical ladder.
“A covetous man’s penny is a stone” is a statement attributed to Hazrat Ali (R.A.). The coat of ‘have’ is always too short to cover the growing giant of wants and needs.
Once the basic needs are met, the probable route of human instinct and tendency is to go beyond the basic to more attractive allurements, which may not qualify to reside within basic needs criteria. In most cases, the pursuit is for more luxury. The satisfaction of one luxury leads to the unchecked desire to have more of the same….two cars or twenty of them can serve the owner only one at a time; similarly, a single-bedroom house is as good as a mansion, for one can sleep only in one bed. If the average hours of sleep is eight or six, no one gets up after every hour to sleep in all available bedrooms. A single bed serves the need for sleep….anything beyond is luxury unutilised and hence would classify as greed in action.
In the People’s Republic of China in the 1960s and 1970s, the challenge of clothing alone for almost 800-plus million people was daunting….a challenging need. Political leadership also had the same needs as the masses. They decided that the “need” must be met with sacrifice, that is, no citizen would have more than two suits….these had to be of the same colour, same cloth and texture, and same style…..so, we saw the emergence of the “Mao” collar, which outside China became a symbol of socialist leadership. Even our populist leader, Z. A. Bhutto, had begun to wear Chinese-collar suits but with distinct marks of superiority, conveyed through a well-embroidered collar of different colours. The Chinese leadership and the Chinese people wore the same clothing, with no chinks in the armour or badges of distinction on the chest to distinguish them from the proletariat.
He is not poor that has little, but he that desires much. Most snap greedily even at the reflection of what they already possess. Those who wish to grasp all eventually lose all. History is full of such idiots who suffered from the ailment of discontentment. A quote attributed to M. K. Gandhi says, “Earth satisfies man’s needs but not his greed”. Greed is not a financial issue. “It is a heart issue” (A. Stanley).
Political leadership has to demonstrate more than other sections of society that they have only what they ‘need’, and those needs must remain simple and in alignment with the needs of their followers. Today, after gaining affluence, the Chinese leadership wears designer suits, and a great majority of the over 1.5 billion people can afford a Western suit. That’s an example of selfless leadership.
The corporate sector, here and globally, is no less a serious violator of the basic sensitivity to the “needs” of colleagues in their organisations. Those whose needs, at least on the scale of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, are fully met are paid more handsomely, while those whose basic needs require delicate balancing to finance each month are the lowest paid. The paradoxical dilemma of whether the economic principle for adoption should be “each according to his needs or each according to his abilities” is an issue unresolved by societies. In the context of Islamic tenets, no leader can be better placed in terms of needs and comfort than the poorest of the poor, if any, present in society. A reminder to readers: we are an “Islamic Republic”!
The writer is a Senior Banker & Freelance Columnist.
