Surviving in a Greedy World

“HOW can I survive?” James Scott faced that question when he was hopelessly lost in the Himalaya Mountains. He was in real danger of freezing or starving to death. He recalled having seen people in karate competitions “get slowly ground down, each blow draining them of their spirit, until . . . they became completely defenceless.” He said: “That was how I felt as I zipped up my sleeping bag and feebly ate some snow. My spirit had been crushed and all the will to live had left me. Never had I felt so defeated.”—Lost in the Himalayas.

Many today are, in a sense, like him—trapped in a world dominated by greed. You may feel that you are slowly being ground down and defeated. Few people can completely escape the immediate effects of greed. Depending on where you live in the world, the problems you face will vary immeasurably—greed affects people in developing countries very differently from those in affluent nations. Nevertheless, whatever the difficulties are, maybe you can learn how to survive relatively intact physically, emotionally, and spiritually until rescue comes. How? By following basic advice given by survival experts.

Two points stand out in their advice. The first is to avoid worsening an already difficult situation. “Your strategy,” says The Urban Survival Handbook, “must be to avoid unnecessary risks . . . and minimize the damage caused by those you can’t avoid.” The second—and perhaps the more important—has to do with attitude. “Survival,” says The SAS Survival Handbook, “is as much a mental attitude as physical endurance and knowledge.”

Do What You Can Under the Circumstances

“Someone is murdered in the United States every 22 minutes, robbed every 47 seconds and seriously assaulted every 28 seconds,” reports Staying Alive—Your Crime Prevention Guide. In conditions like that, what can you do? At the very least, you can try to avoid making yourself an obvious target or an easy victim. Be alert and prudent. Do what you can to minimize the danger.a

For example, do not make your situation worse by being gullible. The New York Times reports that 18 percent of Americans admit to being scam victims—duped out of thousands of dollars by unscrupulous people who hunt for vulnerable victims. Often the victims are older folks like a 68-year-old widow who was robbed of $40,000. Her experience prompted the headline: “If the Hair Is Gray, Con Artists See Green [meaning greenbacks, or dollars].”

But you need not be just another innocent, helpless victim waiting to be exploited. Staying Alive warns us: “Beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing.” One 70-year-old grandmother took this advice. She was offered total insurance coverage for medical bills, at a cost of only $10 per month. “The only thing Grandma had to do,” says the report, “was give the salesman $2,500 up front.” She didn’t. By telephoning the insurance company, she found out that the man was a fraud. “While she poured the salesman his second cup of tea, police arrived and took him away.”

Doing what you can to protect yourself is implicit in the advice given in the Bible. “Anyone inexperienced puts faith in every word, but the shrewd one considers his steps.” (Proverbs 14:15; 27:12) Many dismiss the Bible as old-fashioned and impractical. But its sound advice can help you survive. Wise King Solomon wrote: “Wisdom [like that found in the Bible] is for a protection the same as money is for a protection; but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom itself preserves alive its owners.”—Ecclesiastes 7:12.

Many readers of Awake! have found this to be true. For example, some have gained a measure of protection by screaming loudly when threatened with rape or other violence, in harmony with what is mentioned at Deuteronomy 22:23, 24. Others have followed the Bible’s advice to keep clear of anything “that pollutes either body or spirit.” (2 Corinthians 7:1, The Twentieth Century New Testament) They have thus protected themselves from peddlers of tobacco and drugs, who enrich themselves at the expense of people’s health. Many readers have also avoided the traps of money-grubbing TV preachers and power-hungry politicians. (See box, page 7.) Read the Bible. You may be surprised at how much practical help it gives.

Avoid Becoming Infected by Greed

Of course, there is another danger from greed—you can become greedy yourself. This will rob you of the finer moral qualities that distinguish you from beasts. Describing a commercial free-for-all where businessmen were grabbing all they could get, one observer was quoted as saying: “The hogs were really feeding. The greed level . . . just got out of control.” That is likely more of an insult to the pigs than to the business opportunists! They certainly seemed to ignore the good advice offered by Jesus Christ: “Keep your eyes open and guard against every sort of covetousness.”—Luke 12:15.

Jesus Christ gave that counsel because he knew how badly you can damage yourself if greed grips you. A lust for material things—and also, of course, a lust for power or sex—can become the all-consuming passion in your life, robbing you of any time or inclination you might have to care for people or for spiritual values. “Money,” says Anthony Sampson in his book The Midas Touch, has “taken over many attributes of a religion.” How so? Money becomes a god. Everything else is sacrificed on the altar of greed and gain. The bottom line is profit. The bigger, the better. In actual fact, though, no matter how much time you give to it, greed for material things will never be fully satisfied. Says Ecclesiastes 5:10: “A mere lover of silver will not be satisfied with silver, neither any lover of wealth with income.” Equally, “a mere lover” of power, possessions, or sex will never be satisfied, however much he gets.

Never Give Up Hope of Rescue

One important key to survival is maintaining a hopeful and positive outlook. Sometimes there is little you can do to escape the effect of greedy people. Starving people, for example, can often do very little to escape their immediate plight. However, don’t give up; don’t throw up the sponge. “It is easy to let yourself go, to collapse and be consumed in self-pity” when exposed to a hostile or dangerous environment, says The SAS Survival Handbook. Do not give in to negative thoughts and emotions. You may be amazed at how much you can endure. “Men and women have shown that they can survive in the most adverse situations,” says the same handbook. How did they do it? They survived, it says, “because of their determination to do so.” Be determined not to be defeated by this greedy system.

James Scott, mentioned earlier, was eventually rescued from what could have become his Himalayan grave. He said that his struggle to survive had taught him at least one important lesson. What was that? “There is no challenge in life that is too hard to confront,” he said. Tim Macartney-Snape, an experienced mountaineer who was amazed that James Scott was able to survive long enough to be found alive, also drew a lesson. He said: “As long as there is any hint of hope, you must never give up.” So, no matter how dark things may appear to be, you only make matters worse if you lose hope. Never give up hope of rescue.

But is there any “hint of hope,” any realistic chance of rescue from a world glutted with greed? Will we ever be rid of the greedy people who are wrecking this planet and blighting the lives of billions? There is, in fact, a sure prospect of rescue. Consider the Bible’s answer in the following article.

[Footnote]

[Box on page 7]

The Bible’s Timely Warnings

Proverbs 20:23 “Two sorts of weights are something detestable to Jehovah, and a cheating pair of scales is not good.”

Jeremiah 5:26, 28 “Among my people there have been found wicked men. They keep peering, as when birdcatchers crouch down. They have set a ruinous trap. It is men that they catch. They have grown fat; they have become shiny. They have also overflowed with bad things. No legal case have they pleaded, even the legal case of the fatherless boy, that they may gain success; and the judgment of the poor ones they have not taken up.”

Ephesians 4:17-19 “This, therefore, I say and bear witness to in the Lord, that you no longer go on walking just as the nations also walk in the unprofitableness of their minds, while they are in darkness mentally, and alienated from the life that belongs to God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the insensibility of their hearts. Having come to be past all moral sense, they gave themselves over to loose conduct to work uncleanness of every sort with greediness.”

Colossians 3:5 “Deaden, therefore, your body members that are upon the earth as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and from these turn away.”

2 Peter 2:3 “With covetousness they will exploit you with counterfeit words. But as for them, the judgment from of old is not moving slowly, and the destruction of them is not slumbering.”