Nov 21, 2022
The Four Fundamental, Insatiable, Human Desires: Greed, Revenge, Vanity, Megalomania
The dramatic increase in recent years of the toxic emotions that drive susceptible, noxious human beings
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
I get a daily email called Pocket that contains links to articles that the editors think people might find interesting.
Pocket recently send me the link to an article by Maria Popova published in The Marginalian on September 20, 2015, titled “The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior.”
This article contained excerpts from Bertrand Russell’s December 11, 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, observations that I found especially relevant given the events of the last few years.
I copied Mr. Russell’s remarks and edited them, principally by deleting some text that I felt was unnecessary for the purposes of this column and also to replace “he” with “s/he” or “they.” Please feel free to follow the link above to read those portions of Mr. Russell’s the speech in their original form.
Preliminarily, I would comment that Mr. Russell omitted from his list of basic, universal human desires any sexual motivations which I would argue is a fundamental omission. To Greed, Vanity, Revenge and Megalomania I would certainly add Lust.
— — — — The Edited Remarks By Bertrand Russell — — — —
All human activity is prompted by desire.
Duty has no hold on a person unless s/he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what people will do, you must know the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.
Unlike All Other Animals, Humans Have Desires Which Can Never Be Satisfied
Humans differ from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that they have some desires which are infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep them restless even in Paradise.
(1) Acquisitiveness [Greed]
Acquisitiveness — the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods — is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.
However much you may acquire, you will always wish to acquire more. Satiety is a dream which will always elude you.
Consider the many people who have tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars and are constantly striving, above all else, to acquire even more money while complaining that they are being subjected to unfair taxes and costs.
Recall the example of John Paul Getty who put a payphone in his home in order to prevent his guests from making phone calls at his expense.
We are all familiar with the story of King Midas.
(2) Revenge, The desire to vanquish your enemies — Rivalry
Rivalry is a stronger motivation than Acquisitiveness.
A great many humans will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.
Every murder-suicide is a confirmation of the truth that people infected with the virus of revenge will happily destroy themselves if it gains them the ruin of those they hate.
(3) Vanity
It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of vanity throughout the range of human life, from the child of three to the potentate at whose frown the world trembles.
Is there a better example of the truth of this observation than Social Media?
(4) The Desire For Power — Megalomania
The desire for power is by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.
The love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing.
What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power.
Many people prefer glory to power, but on the whole these people have less effect upon the course of events than those who prefer power to glory.
Social Media is all about acquiring Glory without Power.
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.
In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford.
Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure.
Desensitization often causes serial killers to accelerate both the frequency and the severity of their crimes because they require more frequent and more extreme experiences in order to produce the same level of emotional stimulation.
The exercise of power is an addictive activity to which one builds up a tolerance, requiring greater and greater amounts of power in order to achieve the same level of emotional reward.
Ruling a city is not nearly so enjoyable as ruling an entire province. And if ruling a province is good, then it follows that ruling a country is even better. But why limit yourself to only one country when a section of the world, or better yet, the whole world may be within your grasp?
Surging Greed, Revenge, Vanity & Megalomania In Our World
Greed
In 1989 the top 10% of U.S. households owned approximately ten times more wealth than all the wealth owned by the bottom 50% of U.S. households.
In 1989 half the people in the country altogether had about 10% as much of the country’s wealth as the top 10% of the people in the country.
Thirty-one years later in 2020 the top 10% of U.S. households owned approximately twenty-one times more wealth than all the wealth owned by the bottom 50% of U.S. households.
Half the people in the country altogether had less than about 5% as much wealth as the top 10% of the people in the country.
In only about thirty years the top 10% have more than doubled their share of the country’s wealth relative to the wealth of the bottom 50%.
And the right wing is complaining that too much money is being spent on food stamps, that social security needs to be cut, and that the rich are being taxed too much.
Greed.
Revenge
Huge numbers of murder-suicides. School massacres. Random shootings.
Vanity
Do I even need to talk about the rise in social media, influencers, followers, Instagram, Tic Toc, etc. to make my point that vanity and glory hunting are off the scale?
Megalomania
Jim Jones. Cults. Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping. Russia’s attack on Ukraine. China’s stated desire to take over Taiwan.
Trump, Trump, Trump.
Need I say more about rampant megalomania?
Greed and the thirst for power are insatiable.
People like Donald Trump who are infected with the toxic viruses of greed and megalomania should be feared, avoided, shunned and isolated.
— Never applauded.
— Never trusted.
— Never admired.
— Never followed, and
— Never enabled.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
