Have you heard about the silent killer? It is killing the American dream. Actually, it is so insidious that it invades every culture. It is silent because it is subtle. A silent killer gives us no warning. It is the equivalent of some diseases that give no warning signs until it is too late. It is like the avid runner who drops over dead from a heart attack in the middle of his morning run. Something crept into his body while he wasn’t looking – a silent killer.
I believe what makes this killer so effective is two flaws in human reasoning: our ability to rationalize just about anything and our propensity to compare ourselves to others. First, our capacity to rationalize feeds our insatiable desire to be right or at least if we can’t be right we can be “less” wrong than others. This feeds our whole view of relativism: the idea that being correct is a matter of degrees rather than a matter of absolutes. It is better to be right in my own eyes than wrong. That way I can sleep at night and I can look at myself in the mirror without judgment. This then spills over into the way we feed our relativism. We compare ourselves to the people around us. This works out well for us at times and not so well other times.
Comparing ourselves to others can feed the idea of self-righteousness. We don’t do the bad things other people do. It is always easy to find someone who does things that make us look good. It is just the way we measure degrees of goodness or badness. We can feel good about ourselves when we think we are in the “right”. At least that is how we see it in comparison to those around me. This thinking, or better yet lack of thinking, feeds the silent killer.
What is this silent killer? Greed! The insatiable idol of greed! I know, you are already thinking – what?!? I read this far and you drop something on me that is not my problem. Don’t stop reading now.
If you think you don’t have a greed problem, then greed has you right where he wants you. He has crept in while you were out on a run. The very reason that greed is the silent killer is that we often live in denial of its influence on our lives. You see, greed sells us on wants – by making them into needs. Oh, they are couched in the best of terms: I need a 42 inch flat screen TV – my neighbor just got a 50 inch – I didn’t spend as much as him. The words ‘I need’ replace the words ‘I want’ in our thinking. We are rationalizing and comparing our lives to the people around us. If we are around people who have an abundance of material wealth we compare ourselves to them.
Watch out! Greed is crafty. We live in a culture that defines us by our success. Of course, that is all relative if you know what I mean.