LETTERS 

Of all the modern attributes the writer was wary most of all with greed and power.

Oh, yes, greed and power. The writer must come to grips with greed and power. To simply admit that these things existed but were beneath contempt was not enough. To surrender to them was not enough. Why, he asked, have human beings accepted the nature of greed as an axiom, as a good thing, as a value, when so much of history is a struggle against greed? And yet, as greed became a normal function of daily life it became something else. The world progressed. And it only progressed when stimulated to do so.

In history, anything past the lower working classes was greed. But the moderns had produced another sort of history and ways to measure value had to change as well. A man was greedy if his capital was not being used intelligently.

In a wistful moment, with no money in the bank, the writer asked, isn't the question one of vitality of spirit? The presence of greed as a pervasive fact of daily life reduced the desire of the self to do magnificent things human nature was capable of. But if everything was bought and sold and the buyers existed at the highest level in a stratosphere of power only a few could enter what incentive was there to do the simple, provocative things human beings had always done? And to do those things at the highest level possible?

David Eide
September 20, 1999
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