{"id":42045,"date":"2014-05-17T09:40:46","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T15:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/17\/for-the-love-of-money-is-the-root-of-all-evil.html"},"modified":"2014-05-17T11:44:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T17:44:41","slug":"for-the-love-of-money-is-the-root-of-all-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/17\/for-the-love-of-money-is-the-root-of-all-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"For the Love of Money is the Root of All Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"
Not the love of having enough to feed your family, or saving to send your kid to college, but the love of money itself, avarice, which seems to far too easily become an addiction just as mind- and mood-altering as heroin. \u00a0Except that while a heroin addict can only rob one person at a time, the true wealth addicts can (and do) rob an entire society to feed their never-ending addiction.<\/p>\n

I think it's important to remember a few things out of this:<\/p>\n

1. Yes, "othering" the Rich is just as wrong as "othering" the Poor or an other group. As soon as you start demonizing and dehumanizing\u00a0any group, you lose the moral high ground.<\/p>\n

2. But not demonizing heroin addicts doesn't mean I\u00a0shouldn't beware of the risks of turning my\u00a0back on one. Having sympathy for a wealth addict and seeing one as someone deserving such sympathy (how many people don't feel some twinge of envy and avarice in their lives) doesn't mean we shouldn't make ourselves safe before trying to help him.<\/p>\n

3. Wealth and power aren't necessarily evil per se<\/i> — you can have a drink of Scotch and not become an alcoholic knifing someone for the price of a bottle of rotgut. What's important is what you do with that wealth and power — do you use it to leverage still more, no matter who gets in the way or gets hurt, or do you use it to help others? "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required." If money and power are the goal themselves, that's a sign of sickness. \u00a0<\/p>\n

(h\/t +<\/span>Yonatan Zunger<\/a><\/span>)<\/p>\n

Reshared post from +Matthew J Price<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0I actually had a paradigm shift while reading this; a small epiphany.<\/p>\n

I have been thinking of people in power as experiencing motivations that were somewhat unique, or at least unfathomable to me. \u00a0Like the 1% were somehow alien, not to be confused with actual people.<\/p>\n

I've been dehumanizing people addicted to wealth<\/b><\/p>\n

If I can have empathy for people in the throes of human weakness in every other area of addiction and malfunction, why would being wealthy make one more or less culpable?<\/p>\n

I can now see how, like everyone else, the broken reward system of their human brain is not equipped to moderate behavior even in the face of grave moral violation and injustice. \u00a0I feel pity for a heroin addict driven to violence for a fix, and I feel pity for the stock broker who would profit from the suffering of millions.<\/p>\n

I didn't, yesterday.\ufeff<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n \n <\/div>\n

For the Love of Money<\/a>
\n We are letting money addiction drive too much of our society.\n <\/p>\n

View this post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not the love of having enough to feed your family, or saving to send your kid to college, but the love of money itself, avarice, which seems to far too easily become an addiction just as mind- and mood-altering as heroin. \u00a0Except that while a heroin addict can only rob one person at a time, … Continue reading “For the Love of Money is the Root of All Evil”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,35,528,374,376,71],"tags":[586],"class_list":["post-42045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-big-business","category-economic-justice","category-money-politics","category-taxing-spending","category-religion-me","tag-pluspost"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":41963,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/11\/good-news-bad-news-in-the-war-on-drugs.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":0},"title":"Good news, bad news, in the war on drugs","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-May-14 11:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Good news: Mexican drug cartels are increasingly getting out of the pot business because legalized recreational and medical marijuana in the US have caused the demand to dry up and the price to plummet.Good news: US efforts to crack down on prescription painkiller abuse are apparently having an effect in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5498,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/03\/responding_to_c.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":1},"title":"Responding to customer demand","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 3-Mar-04 10:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"That's just great. A UN drug agency notes that apparently too many people, particularly middle-class Americans, find the idea of injecting heroin to be too icky. The result? Drug traffickers...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6054,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/news_flash_3.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":2},"title":"News flash!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Jun-04 7:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul McCartney admits that he and the Beatles (gasp) did drugs! Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has revealed he once tried heroin at the height of the legendary band's success....","rel":"","context":"In "Media & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Media & Culture","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132695,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/29\/holocaust-lite.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":3},"title":"Holocaust Lite","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 29-Jan-17 9:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So one weird bit that almost slipped past as relatively trivial during this weekend's events was the President's official proclamation for International Holocaust Remembrance Day which didn't mention the Jewish people.What's weird is that this was intentional (as stated by obvious anagram Reince Priebus), ostensibly as a sort of \"inclusive\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3014,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/22\/thoroughly_thur.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":4},"title":"Thoroughly Thursday","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 22-Aug-02 6:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"And while I wait for someone to come fix my e-mail system, let's hit The Thursday Thumb-Twiddler....","rel":"","context":"In "Personal Q&A"","block_context":{"text":"Personal Q&A","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/personal-qa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18222,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/22\/unblogged-bits-sun-22-aug-10-0800.html","url_meta":{"origin":42045,"position":5},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Sun. 22-Aug-10 0800)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 22-Aug-10 2:00am","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... 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The New Culture War | The American Prospect - \"To the extent that this new culture war resembles the old one, it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42046,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42045\/revisions\/42046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}