Greed, Obama and AIG's obscene bonuses in the US

Before looking at AIG, I just want to quickly look at two other examples of greed.

As a child I had a Labrador called Bruce who could devour food as if he were a vacuum cleaner. His bowl would clatter across the veranda as his snout pushed into it and a typical meal was gone in ten seconds. My mother was of the opinion that if he finished his food he was still hungry, and the mournful, greedy look on his face didn’t help. Eventually Bruce would come waddling ponderously into the lounge, a look of deep contentment and some discomfort on his face, his belly swaying below him, almost touching the floor, and then collapse sideways in front of the fireplace. Then he would slowly, wickedly and sibilantly deflate, ears twitching an apology as he listened to us curse, and sometimes the atmosphere he created drove us out the room. Man, could that fricken Labrador of mine fart. Under my mother’s generosity he put on an enormous amount of weight and she learned to only give him one large bowl of food every night with a few bones as treats.

The cooks in my Chinese school canteen love me. Because I always go back for more and more dumplings and noodles while they cackle with delight. I am going to have to learn how to cook Chinese dumplings and that piquant sauce before I leave this country.

Greed seems to come naturally to many species, including ours, I find it fascinating that we get so easily disgusted about it as I discussed in my previous blog. Take Edward Liddy, CEO of America’s huge insurance group AIG, which received a massive injection of cash from the government to prevent the business going under. Instead of being responsible with all the money, he and his board helped themselves to fat bonuses for themselves and senior staff members, causing public outrage, including a furious Obama. Edward Liddy says he has even received death threats if he discloses all the employees who received their bonus payouts. That is desperation. It suggests to me some of them were in serious financial trouble and needed the cash in cash-strapped America to bail them out. Well, AIG’s behaviour at board level didn’t surprise me, doubt it surprised you. Did it? It shouldn’t.

Is greed natural? And if we conclude that it is natural, and endemic to nature — and it would be easy to — then can greed be regarded as amoral? To my dog Bruce greed was natural as it is to many animals who go into a feeding frenzy, take pigs, hyenas, sharks, AIG fat cats … Interestingly enough, our biological makeup says otherwise. At the cellular level our bodies are not designed for greed. “Every cell in your body agrees to work for the welfare of the whole; its individual welfare comes second. If necessary it will die to protect the body and often does … Cells function with the smallest possible expenditure of energy. Typically, a cell stores only three seconds of food and oxygen inside its cell wall. It trusts totally on being provided for. Excessive consumption of food, air or water is not an option … The primary activity of cells is giving, which maintains the integrity of all other cells. Total commitment to giving makes receiving automatic — it is the other half of a natural cycle. Hoarding is not an option … Cells reproduce in order to pass on their knowledge, experience … withholding nothing from their offspring. This is a kind of practical immortality, submitting to death on the physical plane but defeating it on the non-physical … when I look at what my cells have agreed to, isn’t it a spiritual pact in every sense of the word? The first quality [of cells], following a higher purpose [the care of the body for which it sacrifices itself], is the same as the spiritual qualities of surrender and selflessness. Giving is the same as returning to God what is God’s. Deepak Chopra eloquently argues here in The Book of Secrets that it is natural not be greedy, to be selfless.

However, that only seems to operate at the cellular level and the opposite is all too often practised. Moving from the merely biological to the evolution of that mysterious gift, sentience and consciousness, what went wrong? Why do so many of us indulge in credit-card buckling greed which is a major reason for the global mess?

There are two current views of existence, one is atomistic: seeing everything as a machine or machine-like. The components are not respected. Just chuck ‘em out and buy new ones. This cheapening, reductionistic view we have the likes of Descartes and Newton to thank. It implies the amoral. Therefore: “gimme, gimme, Edward Liddy” and to hell with America and the world’s predicament. Just keep your hands off my stack.

By viewing everything as machine-like we miss out on seeing the magnificent, mysterious interdependency of the entire universe, which fosters reverence for everyone and everything. This integral approach brought a new word and promoted a much-needed world-view: the word is holon. The term holon was first coined by Arthur Koestler and he states there are no wholes and parts, no cogs and machinery. (And I am fascinated to see “holon” is not acknowledged as a word in my Microsoft Word program or on WordPress or in dictionary.com, except as a place in Israel.) Each holon is simultaneously self-contained and an integral part of a larger holon. Thus an atom is self-contained but is simultaneously integrated into a molecule, molecules form cells and so we keep going. But at the top end of the hierarchy, instead of integration, harmony and reverence for all life we have clashing social groups such as religions and political parties and one helluva global mess. Why?

In order for a holon to emerge from the previous holon, it needs to contain the properties of the previous holon and acknowledge dependence on the previous, subordinate holon (a molecule submits that it is constituted of various particles). The process is therefore “transcend … and include”. The emerging holon needs to live in harmony with its immediate environment. Instead, we have dualism and dichotomies. Christianity versus Muslim, or better still, “my religion” (the unshakable truth) versus “your religion” (deception, falsity), black versus white, liberal versus conservative, fundamentalist versus atheist, ANC versus DP, AIG fat cats versus the poor. How do we overcome this?

One solution is the right leadership. The more I look at Obama, the closer I get to idolising a man, which I will never do, but he gets me pretty close.

Obama is a coloured man with the “wrong” (inverted commas emphasised) background for America as a Muslim, and his immediate ancestry is Kenya, Africa, a continent resonant with a history of oppression, poverty and colonialism. Black and coloured people represent, historically speaking, races that have faced centuries of slavery and oppression. By having such a man with such a background as a world leader we obey the law of holons: transcend and include.

Obama’s politics truly offers a third way that is not serving the needs of one stakeholder, nor is it political compromise or ideologically driven. His strategies are pragmatic and flexible. With his background, his identity and his policies which are in alignment with the law of holons, Obama has the capability to subvert global extremism and all our nasty little dualisms. His is not a profit-driven, imperialist crusade, which is what Bush’s administration was. Time and time again Bush’s policies were partial, non-inclusive and blinkered, from the war on Iraq to his refusal to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 because global warming and pollution and sustainable growth were not, for him, important enough issues.

Obama has also arrived at a time when it seems the world has never been in such dire straits. It is usually at times of greatest need that the next step in evolution or a new holon emerges or is forced. Nor, of course, should people just look to Obama alone. When the student is ready the teacher emerges, goes the Eastern saying. To which I would add, when the teachers emerge, the students had better be ready.