The Greed Cycle

Can the rise and fall of civilizations be explained in one word and one word only?

Greed.

Is it everybody’s greed that makes humanity build one prosperous civilization after another until they all eventually fail and start declining as a result of the exact same thing that made it prosper?

Any project that starts from scratch needs an incentive in order to get started at all. Greed is usually not defined as merely wanting something but rather as wanting something in excess, so at the starting point the incentive of greed is never really recognised as greed. As long as a project is still on its way to success it is rather admired as ambitious and clever than as the result of greed.

Not until the success of a project has peaked will the greed become apparent, as it will be revealed by the same actions taken as before the peak, but now resulting in the decline and eventually the fall.

The time it takes for the rise and the decline can be very similar, espcially if the project is very complex and large scale like a whole civilization. But the decline and fall can also take a much shorter time for a small business or organisation.

When we keep doing more of the same but no longer get more of the same results, we have passed the peak of whatever it is we are doing and are instead declining. The same greed that helped us reach that peak is now what brings us to the decline and eventually to the fall.

It seems obvious that the simple solution is to stop at the peak and just maintain what we’re doing at that level. But what if we are incapable of doing so? What if we cannot stop the innate greed that is our driving force as individuals as well as a species?

That would certainly explain the rise and fall of empires and other projects throughout human history.

The question is if greed is part of human nature or an acquired property that can be terminated?