Where does the ever-growing gap between haves and have nots, the making of over 800 billionaires in the past 42 years, the soon-to-be first trillionaire in the world, come from?
It comes surely from the institutionalization of greed by way of a society so rigged in favor of the haves that they, through their bought politicians, make all the laws. Laws that favor tax breaks for the rich such as the new “big, beautiful budget” does, laws made by the super rich for the super rich.
Such a budget is being paid for by gutting health care for millions Americans (Medicaid and Medicare) and food for the most needy (SNAP) to the tune of trillions of dollars. And promised threats to Social Security.
Bought politicians and bought SCOTUS members seem so blinded by power that they appear not even to know they are bought. Their moral compasses are cracked and broken. Ever since SOCTUS gifted us with the poison pill for democracy called Citizens United (2010), unlimited and unregulated amounts of dark money have flooded into our elections. The result is that we’ve gotten the best politicians and the best judges that money can buy.
Is there any more direct and immediate way to counteract the institutionalized greed of today’s America than by demanding the overturn of the Citizens United decision?
Thomas Aquinas alerts us to how “one person cannot overabound in external riches without another person lacking them, for temporal goods cannot be possessed by many people at the same time.” Thus, today’s version of capitalism is actually creating poverty and hunger and the inability of an entire generation of young adults to purchase homes.
Aquinas also warns that cupidity or unrestricted desire can readily “extinguish charity” in a person. Yes, greed kills love in the soul, murders it. Check it out. It kills love of Mother Earth and Creation itself, and kills the very agency set up to protect our waters and air and environment.
It is deadly as well as unjust, for “it pertains to avarice to take or keep the goods of others unjustly and this is always a mortal [i.e. deadly] sin.” Unrestrained capitalism is deadly and spreads injustice. To kill justice is to kill the common good, which is the very glue that keeps a society together.
Furthermore, observes Aquinas, restlessness, violence, perjury, fraud and betrayal very often accompany avarice.
David Korten recognizes institutionalized greed as a betrayal of Adam Smith’s philosophy of capitalism. In The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Smith actually condemns business monopolies that are sustained and protected by the state, and urges a market composed solely of small buyers and sellers. “Smith never advocated a moral philosophy in defense of unrestrained greed. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest—not greed.” *
Indeed, “Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money.”
Korten compares our current economic system of unlimited growth to a cancer. “Our economic philosophy based on constant growth is a kind of cancer that seems to parallel the rise of bodily cancer in our time. Cancer too is a response of our bodies expressing itself in unlimited growth. Both are killers.”
The problem with avarice is that it is looking for the infinite in the wrong places—in objects (money and power) that cannot satisfy. The infinite is available to us, however, as Aquinas assures us. Where? We will discuss that in the accompanying video.
* Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2015. Cited in Matthew Fox’s Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. 301-304.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: “Avarice,” engraving by Pieter van der Heyden (1530-72) after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1558. From the National Gallery of Art. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you recognize that institutionalized greed can kill love in the soul? And kill Mother Earth? And kill the common good and hope for an entire generation that cannot, among other things, buy a home or afford health care?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. 301-304.
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, Jen Listug, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
“Warriors for Ecological and Economic Justice,” in Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.
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4 thoughts on “Aquinas and Korten on Limiting Institutionalized Greed”
YES! YES! YES! You’re right Matthew! Our deeper search for the infinite is a spiritual search of Our Eternal Souls to manifest LOVE~WISDOM~CREATIVITY… on our personal/communal spiritual journeys with one another/all life, with Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth, with the subtle spiritual beings/realms, and with Our multidimensional/multiverse evolving Co-Creating Cosmos with-in the DIVINE SPIRIT/Flow of Our LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS….
Greed and hoarding disorder are close relatives. Love and greed are incompatible in individuals or institutions alike. Love is an outward flow of energy, greed an inward one and even vacuum cleaners cannot be at the same time in blowing mode and in sucking mode. The insatiable plutocrats would be well advised to read the closing line of Aesop’s fable The Frogs and the Ox: “the old Frog kept puffing herself out more and more until, all at once, she burst.”
Recently, I enjoyed a spiritual retreat where we talked about how to take the love and community we feel with God and together “back home.” How do we approach those we see as “others” because they are on the opposite side politically, those and oligarchs who seem to be “taking all the pie.” Our teachings invited us to look for the spark of God within these people and invite it come back to life. Perhaps through visualization, prayer, and when we summon the courage through conversations, essays, and art we might see some changes of heart. I’m not finding it easy. It’s still my goal. (Right now, that seems awfully arrogant of me: choosing who’s right and whose terribly wrong.) I’ve told others I can hold this visualization some of the time, but not with three people–Peter Thiel, Stephen Miller, and tRump himself. I think their thoughts and actions have killed that spark within them so completely that I don’t think it will ever flicker again. If folks reading this can help me clarify my thoughts, I would love that.
As Matthew has pointed out in the past, the current systems are causing soul carnage. But these have been present before, as I think he has also taught. To go along with the previous discussions of the Antichrist and Thiel, here is a powerful sermon by the Rev. Dr. William Barber emphasizing the damage to souls by following the greed trail and attempted justifications for it. https://ourmoralmoment.substack.com/p/the-antidote-to-antichrist-is-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4608222&post_id=179045570&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1bl5ts&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email