Do you remember the movie Wall Street? The 1987 Oliver Stone film starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, and Daryl Hannah (remember her???)? There is one sentence from that movie that was rather shocking—not because of it’s vulgarity (it kinda wasn’t at the time, but I consider it so now, in these times), but because it said out loud a quiet part about our culture, and a human character frailty, that usually never gets said—because we used to be polite. I think it has become THE most famous quote from the film. Maybe you know what I’m talking about.
I’ll get to the quote in a sec. But I start with that because I was hit with it again, in my face, at a time I least expected it. And it made me profoundly sad and angry, even as it was fully in line with who we seem to be right now as a human species. I wanted to believe there were certain areas of our lives where we’d be free from cynicism, shallowness, and materialism. I think those areas are becoming harder to find, much more rare. Here’s my case:
Although I’m a former, recovering Catholic, current “None”, and student of Zen and Taoism, I am still vastly interested in certain characters of the Church and can still admire some among the clergy who seem like decent people who do good works and stand, in word and deed, with the core values of love, compassion, nonviolence, grace, and forgiveness. I still am a fan of the early Saint Pope John Paul’s papacy and cult of personality (considered the first “rock star” pope!); I am inspired by the compassionate principles of Pope Francis (his affinity for serving the poor and his amazing encyclical on climate and environmental disruption Laudato Si’); I am grateful (and fortunate) for having served as an alter boy to two very humble, pious, and decent priests when I was growing up; I admire the dedication and steadfastness of the selfless service of Saint Mother Theresa; I am charmed by a 90+ year old Monsignor in my home town who honored us by officiating at my dad’s funeral; I’m still intimidated by a 90 lbs octogenarian nun, long ago deceased, who taught me the Catechism; and am incredibly excited about the potential of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV.
I followed closely the developments leading into this recent Conclave; I read into the bios of some of the Cardinals who were “frontrunners” for the new papacy imaging who might be elected, imagining who would be best to serve the Church in these times given their past experiences and affinities. Like just about everyone else, I never thought an American would be elected—could EVER be elected.
Okay, cutting to the chase of this post now.
I was at an appointment and away from home when the white smoke billowed and the words “Habamus Papam” was microphoned to the masses from the balcony in St. Peter’s Square. I received a text from my mother-in-law that we had an American pope. Eager to begin to listen in to the developments, I tuned my car’s radio to Sirius XM’s Catholic station (yes, there is such a thing. In fact, there are two channels devoted to the Catholic ministry!). There, I listened in to the two commentators, both priests I believe, who were excited about the election. They shared their utter astonishment and almost speechless wonder that an American had been chosen. And then THIS exchange happened between them:
Fr. 1: No one saw this one coming! All the prognosticators were wrong. What were the odds?
Fr. 2: Can you imagine how much money a lot of people lost by this election?
Fr. 1: Can you imagine how rich someone could have gotten if they placed money on him?
They were serious too. They were not joking.
That exchange prompted this Post. Writers are best served to leave themselves open to whatever enters their sphere of passion, and then try to capture as best they can any words that follow—that exchanged between the two priest ignited something in me.
Immediately, following that exchange, I said to myself (cuz I was alone in the car), “WTF? THAT’s where they went? And now? JESU CHRISTO!”
And that’s when I realized the entire world is sick (okay, not really. I’ve known for a while now that the entire world is chronically ill). Even in a moment when we should be focused on the deep spiritual aspects of this world-impacting event, we have those whom we are listening to wondering aloud to each other about how much money someone could have won had they put a thousand down on Robert Francis Prevost.
JESU FUCKING CHRISTO!!!
We have an addiction. The fact that two Catholic priests have this passing exchange as something completely natural in the given context was yet the latest example. There have been more since. One can no longer watch any sport and not see a betting line displayed on the screen, or entire commercials tantalizing us with the “best winning odds if you only subscribe to our online gambling site.” The entire sport of horse racing is all about this (the Kentucky Derby having just run). There are so many ways, now, of how you can lose your money through the placing of bets.
BILLIONS, that mystical magical number that has become both ubiquitous and meaningless, are spent every year via gambling. Can you imagine how much money we’d collectively have if we stopped gambling it away? Gambling, however, is not the addiction I’m talking about. The addiction is a layer deeper—gambling is just a method or servant of the addiction. Companies know this. Las Vegas knows this. We are the prey; but if we play, we play along as if we have agency. We don’t. Companies and Vegas understand the addiction—and they are getting rich off of it. We’re just handing them our money.
The addiction carries over into other areas of our lives too—but it is most insidious, now, by the promises made by our current president whose entire administrative plank is about “making every one of us rich beyond all dreams.” He says this all the time. He understands the addiction too.
“Tariffs are going to make us rich!” “We’re going to be rich, I’m telling you.” “When we get all the criminal migrants out of our country, we’ll have even more opportunity to get rich.” “When all the beautiful corporations come back to America to make their beautiful products here, we’re going to be richer! And everybody knows it.” “We’re going to have so much money coming in, no one’s gonna believe it. But believe it. It’s gonna happen. It’s like we’re going to be tired of being so rich.”
For the LIFE of me, I want just one reporter, just one, to ask him the questions “just who are you including in that collective pronoun ‘we’? Because everything points to YOU being the only one who will get rich, sir. Is ‘becoming more rich’ your sole determinant of success, sir?
“Nevermind, don’t answer. We know your answer. Some of us do anyway.”
The others want what he has, but he’s never going to give them access.
The Addiction Has a Name—back to that quote:
Half of what I write about in my Substack is my humble attempt to understand how we got here, why, and how we’ll get out of this dark place. When I reflect upon our current ills, and try to rationalize the hows and whys, I’m settling upon a final answer now. One has to identify the addiction before one can get on the road toward healing. This is a collective addiction though; so the road, if indeed there is one, is going to be rough and looooong. Because…the addiction has become normalized. It’s become our culture’s measuring stick of “A Great America.” The addiction is now our national and personal dream. Upon realizing this, you begin to see it in more and more ways—even, apparently, when listening to a broadcast from St. Peter’s Square!
In the first half of Wall Street, Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko (one of the all time great character names in all of cinema!), while making a speech, says “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” That’s THE quote. That’s THE addiction. In fact, that phrase came within this portion of the speech:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
The film was made in 1987 y’all—an astonishing 38 years ago! But it took us to these days in 2025 to fully understand, for most of us anyway, the degree into which our culture is fully immersed in the intoxicating enticements and consequences of greed. Can you see how this has manifested deeply within so many aspects of our culture?
Oliver Stone meant to portray Gekko as the ultimate villain (though Gekko himself portrayed himself as a savior about to “save” a company from abject failure)—a manifestation of the dark angels of our nature; Gekko was to be the embodiment of corporate evil. Our current felon-president and Gordon Gekko are the same person. Except Gekko went to prison in the end. Now, our current felon president, who sees Gordon Gekko as a personal hero, is the celebrated champion and standard-bearer for all those who’ve bought into the truth of the addiction. Like most addicts, they’ve attached themselves to their pimp, dealer, or pusher, trusting that in exchange for their loyalty (the price demanded from their pusher), they’ll be included in the “we” that he keeps talking about. Not realizing, like all pushers and dealers, he doesn’t give a shit about them. Talk about Jesu Fucking Christo! (Ugh, my Latin seeps out again at the most awkward of times sometimes, sorry.)
Addictions are diseases; this one’s endemic.
I mean, just pause and look around. If you are on social media, pay attention to the pop up adds. If you watch TV, pay attention to the commercials but also how we’ve idolized celebrity. If you go into a store or mall (if these even exist near you still), pay attention to the displays. Pay attention to what we celebrate in our culture. MORE, MORE, MORE! Pay attention to who we hold as “heroes” and who we want to emulate. Pay attention to whom we give money. Pay attention to the college athletes who can now portal to other universities who will offer them more $$$. Pay attention to who the influencers are AND how and why they’ve become influencers. Hell, pay attention to the politicians, most of whom, but not all, have the “R” behind their name—don’t listen to what they are saying, watch what they are doing. And believe your eyes even as they boldly tell you not to.
We’re addicted. And the addiction has a name:
Greed.
A: Absolutely Nothing.
Greed is a distorted and perverse form of desire, of acquisition. Greed implies a winner, with a multitude of losers. Greed demands an economy built upon scarcity, not abundance. In fact, greed, and those who play in the sandbox of greed, work to build systems, policies, regulations, and laws in which they are assured they will come out on top while riding the backs, hard, of a majority of people who can never rise out of the impoverished swamp—and this even though those at the top continue to dangle the carrot of “rich beyond all dreams” in front of them. (There’s a reason why state lotto’s are called “the poor person’s tax.”) We don’t realize, as they are dangling that carrot, that with the other hand they are clamping down an invisible and impenetrable lid of intentional class stratification. To realize the full “benefit” of their greed, they need us to be below them, forever ignorant of how they got to where they are. In a world where greed predominates, and we’re in that world now, only those who are in positions of power will win, and “we” elected them to be there. The rules are stacked in their favor because they are creating new rules. Greed demands most lose. Greed is a zero-sum game that demands we choose fear over love, see others as competition and threats, and believe our cravings and desires for more are healthy for us and never will become problematic. “If I could just have more money, all my problems would go away! Hey, I have an idea: I’m going to vote for the guy who says he’ll make sure I’ll get more money! Yay! I just bought his bitcoin, gold sneakers, and his latest NFT Digital Trading Card (for the great low price, btw, of $99). Now where’s my red hat and Tesla??? Hey, where’d my social security go?”
Gekko said something else in that little speech that is a common strategy for those with similar beliefs: that strategy goes by the name of justification.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind
It’s a justification because it’s wrong. Greed, in all its forms, is built upon the foundation of scarcity, of win/lose, of causing some kind of harm, of coming at the expense of some thing, or some one, else. ALWAYS! That’s why it’s called greed and also why most major religions designate greed as a deadly sin (not just sin, mind you, but DEADLY sin!), a poison, and a defilement. And yet, we celebrate it! Greed has become a core value. Let THAT sink in.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Life, love, knowledge, even money when used with benevolent intent, if they are to be sustained in the most healthy of ways, must be pursued from a foundation of abundance. LOVE and greed are oxymorons (only morons combine them…I couldn’t resist!) It’s what Gandhi said:
“The world has enough for everyone’s need; but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
Ever stop to think just how rich we’d be if we stopped pursuing trying to be rich?
Those whose default bearing is built on scarcity are incapable of understanding abundance. They don’t trust in it; and abundance demands we trust. In fact, scarcity people don’t trust at all. They believe all interactions must be transactional (what’s in it for me?) and cannot fathom how reciprocity (“I have received gifts from you therefore it is only right that you receive gifts from me”) can make the world a truly beautiful place.
BTW, that other sentence of Gekko’s up there didn’t escape my attention either—being as I am a Darwinian evolutionist. But even science is disproving this other tantalizing justification when Gekko said “Greed…captures the evolutionary spirit.” Current understandings are pointing to the fact that species that did, and do, the best, evolutionarily, are those NOT the fittest, but rather those who instinctually understood cooperation. (Maybe more on that in some future post.)
I don’t want to end on a bummer. But I’m also a realist. Here’s what I know: to overcome an addiction, you first have to name it. I’m naming it, for me at least. If we can collectively come to an understanding that this way of being together cannot be sustainable, if peace is still an embered goal, hidden for now deeply within the better angels of our nature that are currently being intentionally suppressed, we have to come to an understanding that the primary evil is greed; a deadly evil that inevitably carry’s with it all the ills, harms, and traumas we are witnessing. Again, it doesn’t have to be this way. THAT’s the entire point:
It doesn’t have to be this way.
That’s a big ask, though, of human nature right now. We may have been close to that (and not all that long ago; some tribes of Indigenous Peoples still practice abundance and reciprocity…because they get it. They’ve always gotten it.), but in our popular culture, we’ve taken huge strides in the opposite direction because we’re being led there. We’re being sold on the addiction that “a successful Nation is a rich nation; a successful person is a rich person.” We can no longer fathom what a world built upon a foundation of abundance looks like. Yet, it remains a worthy aspiration—and maybe THE only way we’ll find ourselves back to a place of common decency and compassion for our fellow humans—we need only look to nature to rediscover it. SHE gets it too.
I have to trust you can see the possibility for yourself.
“I make myself rich by making my wants few.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”
~ Patrick Meagher (often attributed to Bob Marley)
The best I can do, is work on cutting out greed, in all its forms, from my own life and heart. When I’m successful at doing that, I realize just how wealthy I am.
You’re right but unfortunately there’s not much that can be done about it. The oligarchs own the country. When Gates started a foundation to give his money away the conspiracy theorists from the greedy right vilified him as if he violated a code. I suppose younger generations can help by teaching their children not to reach for the pot of gold and instead seek fulfillment in what they love to do. But cynical me says it’s the same rich families that will continue their cultural tradition of greed.
We’re taking a stand,
it's a virtuous, valiant stance.
Against greed. For love.
You’re right but unfortunately there’s not much that can be done about it. The oligarchs own the country. When Gates started a foundation to give his money away the conspiracy theorists from the greedy right vilified him as if he violated a code. I suppose younger generations can help by teaching their children not to reach for the pot of gold and instead seek fulfillment in what they love to do. But cynical me says it’s the same rich families that will continue their cultural tradition of greed.