Greed as a vital sign of a successful life

Our competitive lives in a society makes us connect greed to self- interest and thus thrive on it more and more in the fear of loss or falling behind in a community. Of central importance are the distinctions between greed and desire and between acquisition and satisfaction. Emphasis is placed on the connection between greed and loss, with greed understood as a response to the threat. Greed, desire and self interest leading to acquisitiveness rendering monetary success.

The idea  that  greed , desire and self interest run in a self sustaining cycle is the basis of success in social institutions. You see, the desire for self interest leads to the fear of loss and the continuing greed to be successful and ultimately the process runs in cycle. Though prominent in shaping our thinking about self-interest, the part played by greed is as often denied as acknowledged. The foreswearing of avarice communicates the inner conflict it incites, which comes from the risk it postures or appears to posture. 

There is an inevitable link between greed and destructiveness.  The destructive aspect of greed is treated as a threat that must be made acceptable to continue growing. Joan Riviere notes that greed "represents an aspect of the desire to live. …  By its very nature it is endless and never assuaged; and being a form of the impulse to live, it ceases only with death" (1964, pp. 26-7; see also Hyatt-Williams 1998, p. 46) .  However destructive greed may be, its connection to our sense of aliveness and vitality lets it grow deeper and deeper in the society.

There is a difference between need and desire. The need limits to sustained economic of life whereas the desire for an object means something more than the need to have it to sustain life and in this sense desire has no limits. 

Greed has two aspects of particular importance, exclusiveness and withholding from others (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983, pp. 128-9), This second aspect of greed is well expressed by Harold Boris when he distinguishes between greed and appetite according to whether satisfaction is a possibility or not.  Unlike appetite, "further gratification only stimulates … greed" (Boris 1994, p. 38).  

However well known the thought of covetousness might be, it should likewise be a riddle accurately due to its refusal to be fulfilled. It is a yearning, but then it is definitely not. This is on account of covetousness' end is not to pick up fulfillment but rather to dodge dissatisfaction. We keep away from dissatisfaction not by picking up fulfillment, but rather by surrendering craving and supplanting it with something else. What shows up as the quest for self-interest may be the looking for after fulfillment of craving, or it may be the push to maintain a strategic distance from yearning and supplant it with something regarded of less threat to the self.

So self-interest connected to greed becomes both self-denial and an attack on others associating a greedy person as an example of the survival of the fittest in the society. Greed may appear in the form of acquisitiveness rendering the impulse to acquire ultimately leading to limitlessness. Not to forget here that one mans gains is another mans loss.

Thus, the "longing or greed for good things can relate to any and every imaginable kind of good--material possessions, bodily or mental gifts, advantages and privileges…" (Riviere 1964, p. 27).