Is Greed Good?

This is what anthropologist call expressive culture art, play etc.

Anthropology uses the term culture in two ways. First, specific culture or the "lifeways", or the rules of behavior of a group of people. Secondly and more broadly as learned behavior, or the capability to give meaning to reality and rules for understanding reality. We, unlike any other species live in a world of meaning. This second is a human universal, all humans possess it. The first, lifeways" is the "twist" that any particular group put on that capability. Culture is our (human species) adaptive strategy. This world of meaning is the niche we occupy. It has been enormously successful strategy but it comes with a price. We really do not completely understand what we have. It gives us immense power, but little understanding. That has tripped us up again and again.

Exactly, Acquiunk. And the enculturation of children (i.e.,their "socialization") is what I meant by our self-domestication.
I agree that we are sometimes tripped up by culture: it can have toxic side-effects. But it is essential in some form or another. The principle problem as I see it is that we inevitably believe that culture, the symbolic artifact we have created is taken to be given. It is the rare individual who can transcend culture and face Reality directly as the immediate pre-reflective phenomenon that it is. We need to be like spiders who spin webs of meaning but who are not caught up in them.
I know, however, that the vast majority of humans will reify their "definitions of the situation" and that that is essential for the survival of the species, but as (philosophically enabled) individuals we are challenged to enjoy the freedom of transcendence while at the same time benefitting from the illusions of culture.
Pardon the preaching.

Oh, but Bogowo means high culture. That thing that people use to distinguish themselves from animals and claim that they are some kind of otherworldly superior being who has moved away from "animal" behaviors. We forget that we are animals sometimes.

Gentlemen and Gentlewomen Scholars:
If you actually can make a good thing of greed , then , by using the same approach
you can make a good thing of War.
Are you people not stretching your
intellectualism a wee bit thin ? I can think of at least a few more obvious examples where debating
a point based on your own definition pushes the
argument to absurdity.

Gentlemen and Gentlewomen Scholars:
If you actually can make a good thing of greed , then , by using the same approach
you can make a good thing of War.
Are you people not stretching your
intellectualism a wee bit thin ? I can think of at least a few more obvious examples where debating
a point based on your own definition pushes the
argument to absurdity.

Gentlemen and Gentlewomen Scholars:
If you actually can make a good thing of greed , then , by using the same approach
you can make a good thing of War.
Are you people not stretching your
intellectualism a wee bit thin ? I can think of at least a few more obvious examples where debating
a point based on your own definition pushes the
argument to absurdity.

Sorry about the repeats above......my machine is
stuttering lately......just as some of you will probably say is my logic.

Alikimr, I agree. While most evils may have positive outcomes and most virtues negative outcomes--nothing is pure, it is suspicious how an individualistic, competitive, capitalistic culture so eagerly looks for the positive in greed. (Ayn Rand is the "highest" expression of this tendency).

Rufio, I remain with the impression that by "high culture" anthropology used to refer to the higher arts (including philosophy and higher religion--e.g., Hinduism vs tribal animism) and "low culture" to everyday lifeways and popular culture. That distinction is no longer used, as far as I know. But that's how I read BoGoWo's usage. In that sense, "high culture" distinquishes human "elites" from human "plebians", not homo sapiens from "lower" species.

Alikimr, I agree. While most evils may have positive outcomes and most virtues negative outcomes--nothing is pure--it is suspicious how an individualistic, competitive, capitalistic culture so eagerly looks for the positive in greed. (Ayn Rand is the "highest" expression of this tendency).

Rufio, I remain with the impression that by "high culture" anthropology used to refer to the higher arts (including philosophy and higher religion--e.g., Hinduism vs tribal animism) and "low culture" to everyday lifeways and popular culture. That distinction is no longer used, as far as I know. But that's how I read BoGoWo's usage. In that sense, "high culture" distinquishes human "elites" from human "plebians", not homo sapiens from "lower" species.

I'm not using it in any conjunction with anthropology - simply with vernacular usage. Not only does it distinguish elites from plebes, but it also distinguishes humans, who have whatever capacity to enjoy high culture from animals, who cannot.

Oh! I've never heard it used that way. Humans HAVE been distinguished from other species, in my experience, by the possession of culture, period, not "high" culture.

Nobody:
I fully agree with your considerations about Ayn Rand.

just a personal clarification; my "culture" refers to all the 'arts' and 'humanities', planet wide, and at all 'levels' (i do not use the word level to indicate any possible qualitative variation).

[The other human endeavours basically serve culture, in one way, or another.]

Re: Is Greed Good?


IN TERMS OF MACROEVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGIES GREED IS EQUIVALENT TO SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST AND THUS PROMOTES NATURAL SELECTION

IN TERMS OF MICROEVOLUTIONARY AND HOMOLOGICAL CONCEPTS GREED IS TERMINAL TO THE BIOLOGICAL ENTITY

SO ONE IS GOOD AND THE OTHER IS BAD

I still think that altruism/cooperation has been much more essential to survival of the human species than has been greed/competition.

Is there not a similarity with Capitalism?

Capitalism is characterized by competition, but the competitive units are not just individuals, but individuals operating in organized teams, like corporations. This requires a high degree of intragroup cooperation.

The title of this thread, Is Greed Good?, is well answered by the hyphenated phrase, Merck-Vioxx.

JLNobody;
There is nothing I can meaningfully add
to this discussion on greed except to say that I agree with everything you have asserted in each of your posts........and that agreement is a very emphatic one.

Alikimr, I am pleased that you were kind enough to tell me.