From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 04:30:46 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Greed (was Charging for obesity)
>
> In Swedish there are two words that get translated into greed in
> English. "Girighet" means greed. Then there is "Missunsamhet", which
> refers to dislike of seeing others have something.
Closely related to coveting, the desire to possess that which belongs to someone else. There is a word in German that translates as
"joy in the distress of others", e.g. the fascination found in watching a car wreck, a war, or a boxing match.. Each of these
phenomena might be considered diffrent aspects of *perception of relative gain*.
> As I see it, the
> missunsamhet-component of greed is the big problem. It is what makes
> people dislike successful people and wish them less success. It is
> what drives people to "equalize" others income, even when they
> themselves do not get much from it. It does not produce anything, it
> only seeks to steal or destroy.
This accounts for the tremendous popularity of Socialism.
> It might make an interesting transhumanist exercise to think of ways
> of promoting healthy greed at the expense of unhealthy greed, both
> culturally, instutionally and psychologically. Maybe there is a
> connection in the hypothalamus between aggression and the frontal lobe
> value-estimation system that we really ought to cut...
Yes indeed.
Forrest
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:56 MST