When Is Greed Good: An Examination of Enlightened Selfishness

I plan on doing a lot more research on this topic this evening for my Erev (Friday Evening) Bible Study, but the following are some thoughts I am trying to organize beforehand. Former American President Ronald Reagan said that "Greed is good," and has been widely lampooned since then. Selfishness is widely considered to be a highly negative quality, and the supposed narcissism of my generation has come under rather undue criticism from Baby Boomers (perhaps the most harmfully selfish generation in the entire existence of planet earth, if environmental scientists and moralists can be believed). Adam Smith stated that we do not trust the generosity of the butcher (or any other merchant) but his self-interest. The research of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow sought to demonstrate that in certain circumstances selfishness was an act of altruism because benefitting the self also served to benefit others as well. Jesus Christ seemed to indicate the same thing when he stated that those who were not faithful with unrighteous mammon would not be faithful with much either (a paraphrase). The question is therefore: in what circumstances is selfishness good?

At first blush, this question may seem quite proposterous for some people. Many people do not consider selfishness to be positive at all, especially the selfishness of others (all of us are at least a little bit selfish ourselves). When we feel jealous about the success of others, and are insecure about how we are loved and respected, we are behaving selfishly. When we try to hoard money and resources and knowledge for ourselves rather than give them generously, we are also behaving selfishly. Most would agree with me, I suppose, that these types of selfishness would be bad. This is the sort of selfishness that seeks to increase one's own at the expense of other people (through shortchanging them as is common in the actions of businesses towards their salary/pension obligations, tax obligations, and social obligations). No one, save an overly greedy and wicked sort of person, would consider this sort of greed to be good.

What kind of greed is good then? When Adam Smith referred to the self-interest of the butcher (a stand-in for merchants in general, businesspeople who make their living by providing goods and services to paying customers), he seems to be referring to the fact that when a company seeks to meet the highest customer standards at the lowest price, both the customer and business benefit. The customer benefits by having his or her needs and wants fulfilled, and the business benefits by receiving profit on the transaction (as well as the possibility of future profit as satisfied customers tend to be creatures of habit and return to the same businesses over and over again so long as their standards are met). In this case, the selfishness of the merchant (the desire for profit) was benevolent because it served to help the customer as well.

This, then, provides the way out of the false dilemma of selfishness versus generosity and an environment where acting to benefit ourselves benefits others, and acting to benefit others benefits ourselves. This world is what Maslow (and others) would call an enlightened world. In an enlightened world, success, wealth, honor, and love are not zero-sum concepts, where one person must suffer if another benefits. Once an environment becomes synergistic (where gains in one area trigger gains in other places as well, to the benefit of all in the system), then we can gain enjoyment from the good we do to others, and acting for ourselves will serve to benefit others. In these cases selfishness is not a bad thing at all--and it cannot be separated from the benefit we are bringing to others as well. Both generosity and selfishness (taken as personal enjoyment and personal benefit) are intertwined into one.

In order for selfishness to be good, however, we must build an environment where what benefits us benefits others as well, and vice versa. This sort of environment would increase the connections that people have with each other, and would mean the sharing of gains we have with others around us, and vice versa. In such a realm of mutual generosity and love and respect, what benefits one benefits all, and there need not be a hostility or jealousy about the good that happens to others, so long as everyone shares in its benefits. This can be true of families, churches, businesses , and societies, indeed even the whole world. It is only the case, though, when we start from the premise that all human beings are worthwhile and valuable and important simply by being human beings, and that the human beings who are yet to be born are deserving of the same pleasures of this earth that we who now inhabit hte earth are. Such enlightened selfishness is not wicked at all. The question, though, remains: can we behave so righteously ourselves as to make enlightened selfishness possible for ourselves and those around us?