What Is Causing Greed?

By Patrick Driessen

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power!” - P. J. O'Rourke

A couple of months ago I attended a presentation about the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) by Professor Andries Terblanché here in Sydney. He gave an excellent and detailed overview of the impact of the GEC and the most likely future crises. As two main causes behind the GEC he highlighted: 1) complexity and 2) greed. He explained how the level of complexity had increased beyond the capacity of the available risk models, resulting in huge hidden risks, which could lead into a painful crisis such as the GEC. Unfortunately an explanation for the deadly sin of greed was not given.

The greed aspect kept me busy. It intrigued me and I wanted to understand what had caused so much greed that it could result in a global crisis.
In first instance I started interviewing other people about their views on what's causing greed. I gathered many different insights, but still could not explain to myself what the real greed causes were. It took me several weeks of research and thinking to create some possible route cause scenario's. I saw the light when I started analysing changes in human behaviour and in particular changes in our social skills!

I concluded that in the last two decades young children have lacked free play time and changed the way they spend their precious spare time. In other words; children lack time and opportunities to develop their social skills, which results in more selfish (greedy) and often arrogant behaviour!

Go figure: The average teenager these days will spend most of their spare time on: watching TV, surfing the Internet, utilising social media, messaging on their mobile phone, playing games on various game consoles, etc. So....What happened to their free play time to play and have fun with other children?

When I grew up in the seventies and eighties we had loads of spare time to free play: building (tree)huts, playing military games in the forest, playing soccer in the garden, forming play gangs, cycling through the neighbourhood, etc., etc. In those days we had enough time to have fun and play with friends and to socialise with them. Nowadays that socialising is often done via electronic media instead of face-to-face contact. And time to free play? It seems it does not exist any more!

Do children still play with each other? Yes, but most often in their own virtual or online world! A good example: last weekend I was having lunch at a nice hidden restaurant at a small marina here in Sydney. It was sunny and the outdoor terrace was packed. When I looked around I saw many families with young children. Were their children playing with each other and having fun at the waterside or in the harbour? No way! Except for one family, the children of at least eight families were all playing games on their game console or on a mobile phone.... It prevented them from meeting other children to play together with, enjoy the great weather and have fun!

When I searched for scientific proof of my findings, I came across Boston College developmental psychologist Professor Peter Gray who suggests that use of play helped early humans to overcome the innate tendencies toward aggression and dominance which would have made a cooperative society impossible. "Play and humor were not just means of adding fun to their lives," according to Professor Gray. "They were means of maintaining the band's existence - means of promoting actively the egalitarian attitude, intense sharing, and relative peacefulness for which hunter-gatherers are justly famous and upon which they depended for survival."

This theory has implications for human development in today's world, said Professor Gray, who explains that social play counteracts tendencies toward greed and arrogance, and promotes concern for the feelings and well-being of others. "It may not be too much of a stretch," says Gray, "to suggest that the selfish actions that led to the recent economic collapse are, in part, symptoms of a society that has forgotten how to play!"

Interest in play is very much on the upswing among psychologists, educators, and the general public, according to Gray. "People are beginning to realize that we have gone too far in the direction of teaching children to compete," he said. "We have been depriving children of the normal, non-competitive forms of social play that are essential for developing a sense of equality, connectedness, and concern for others."

Gray stressed that the kind of "play" that helped hunter-gatherer children develop into cooperative adults is similar to the sort of play that at one time characterized children's summers and after-school hours in contemporary culture. This play is freely chosen, age-mixed, and, because it is not adult-organized, non-competitive, he said. This "free play" is distinct from leisure pursuits such as video games, watching TV, or structured extracurricular activities and sports.
"Even when children are playing nominally competitive games, such as pickup baseball or card games, there is usually relatively little concern for winning," said Gray. "Striving to do well, as individuals or teams, and helping others do well, is all part of the fun. It is the presence of adult supervisors and observers that pushes play in a competitive direction, and if it gets pushed too far in that direction it is no longer truly play!"

The most important skill for social life, Gray said, is how to please other people while still fulfilling one's own needs and desires! In self-organized play, he contends, children learn to get along with diverse others, to compromise, and to anticipate and meet others' needs. "To play well," he said, "and to keep others interested in continuing to play with you, you must be able to see the world from the other players' points of view.

"Children and teenagers in hunter-gatherer cultures played in this way more or less constantly," he said, "and they developed into extraordinarily cooperative, egalitarian adults. My observations indicate that age-mixed free play in our culture, in those places where it can still be found, has all of these qualities."

Gray's article addresses not just children's play, but also play as a fundamental component of adult human nature, which allowed humans to develop as intensely social and cooperative beings. Through the course of his research, he said, it became increasingly apparent that play and humor lay at the core of hunter-gatherer social structures and mores.

Hunter-gatherers used humor, deliberately, to maintain equality and stop quarrels, according to Gray, and their means of sharing had game-like qualities. Their religious beliefs and ceremonies were playful, founded on assumptions of equality, humor, and capriciousness among the deities. They maintained playful attitudes in their hunting, gathering, and other sustenance activities, partly by allowing each person to choose when, how, and how much they would engage in such activities.

“Professor Gray's novel insight sheds new light on the question of how such societies can maintain social harmony and cooperation while emphasizing the autonomy of individuals,” said Kirk M. Endicott, a leading anthropologist and hunter-gatherer expert at Dartmouth College. "Conversely, his demonstration of the wide-ranging role of play in hunter-gatherer societies focuses attention on the importance of play in the evolutionary success of the human species."

Is there a solution? Can we turn this negative path of becoming less social and more greedy around? Can we change our social skills and minimise the risks of a society which is too greedy? Yes of course! It's up to all adults to change the behaviour of our children and indirectly change and improve our future! As we've learned from the past; children have the future and create our future. That's where we have to start our change process: allowing our children to free play and socialise!

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction!” - Enrich Fromm

Make this a Positive & Fruitful Day…..unless you have other plans!

Warm regards & success,



Patrick Driessen

© Patrick W. Driessen. All rights reserved.