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5 Dec, 2013

6 Signs Our Culture Is Sick With Greed | Alternet

By R.J. Eskow

November 28, 2013 | The love of money for money’s sake is the social disease of our time. We see it all around us: in the celebration of ill-gotten stock gains, public admiration for the heads of criminal banks, the words of Kanye West, in the commercialization of charity and even spirituality.

This adoration of wealth isn’t a new thing, of course. When I was in elementary school I was sent to a school counselor for being moody, introspective – in other words, for being either a proto-goth or a writer in the making. I was asked to draw a picture of myself as a happy adult, and the resulting portrait showed a rich man standing beside a Rolls-Royce with an ascot around his neck.

In defense of my childhood self, the Beatles were famous for their Rolls-Royces at the time and the Beatles seemed happy. The ascot was borrowed from my TV hero, a millionaire playboy turned a police detective, on a show called Burke’s Law. Like any good consumer in the making, I had internalized these images of wealth and had come to equate them with happiness. And what did we know about the angst of the rich in Utica, NY, in a family of five living on a community college professor’s income?

via 6 Signs Our Culture Is Sick With Greed | Alternet.