Gratitude 128

I don't understand greed.  I know what it is: it is the compulsive desire to have more than you need.  But what causes greed?  Since we are still touching on gratitude in this series, perhaps we'll think about where greed and gratitude intersect, or fail to.  Greed, or the compulsion to have and to horde seem to come from a fear of want.  Even if you have everything you need, there is still the thrill of having more, to make yourself rich beyond measure, rich beyond telling, rich beyond logic.  Greed particularly goes nuts when we already have everything we need, have no reasonable fear of future lack, and still want to have, to possess and to cherish as our very own....Precious! as Gollum would say.  Greed is the dumbass reflexive motion that gapes from the empty soul, swallowing everything that it can suck into its maw, giving nothing in exchange.

The Spanish were not motivated by virtue, nor the desire of converting heathen souls to the True Catholic Faith when they sent their thugs to the New World.  They wanted gold.  They wanted silver, spices, exotic things.  They wanted plunder.  Spain was not poor.  Spain wanted to be rich.  Catholic Spain, representing one of the most venal popes during one of the most corrupt eras of the church.

The Aztecs seemed almost plated in gold.  Robbing them would make Spain rich.  Impoverishing them would give Spain the advantage.  Mama Spain defrauding and stealing everything she could from her wayward heathen children, then hanging, shooting, burning or hacking them to death.  Mommie Dearest on steroids making Grendel's mother look like Mother Theresa.

I think that greed becomes inevitable when we are clearly not grateful for what we have already.  We come to believe that we are entitled to more, to better.  We are not satisfied because we do not appreciate.  We do not appreciate because we do not think that we are the recipients of already such great blessing.  We  don`t appreciate and we don`t share because we are selfish and egotistical.

I cannot believe that any of those Spanish Catholics really knew God.  They didn't appear to be grateful.  They simply wanted more and more.  Gold and spices.  It absolutely baffles me that they knew absolutely nothing about their relationship with God as that of the recipient to the giver.  They didn't appear to know how dependent they were on his goodness, as well as knowing absolute nothing about the care that he already had for them as well as for all people.

They didn't understand that less is more, nor the poverty of being too rich.  They didn't appear to even know that the soul starves and perishes from having too much.  There likely were still authentic saints in the church doing what they could to remind them, but any prophetic voice was likely to end up screaming its final agony at the stake while the flames did their work.

Essentially, greed is the vile and bitter fruit of the lack of love.  These people did not know God as love and they themselves did not love.  So they had no gratitude and their soul was consumed by greed and off they went to kill all the heathen who wouldn't consent to being baptised into Holy Mother Church, whose vaults and new altars in the New World became coated in the very gold they stole from the Aztecs.