1.1.2 – Avaritia, the First of the Seven Deadly Sins

Greed, or avarice, is an inordinate or insatiable longing for material gain, be it food, money, status, or power… an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs… typically used to criticize those who seek excessive material wealth, although it may apply to the need to feel more excessively moral, social, or otherwise better than someone else.

Wikipedia

What is Avaritia? What Constitutes Avarice and Greed?

Avaritia is Latin for avarice, greed. It’s more than that, though, because it’s also the personification of avarice and greed. This means it’s something more than a descriptor; it’s not a synonym for greedy. Rather, avaritia is greed itself. Do you remember ever having a really strict teacher, and people said if you looked up “strict” in the dictionary that you’d see that teacher’s picture? That’s what avaritia literally is to greed: if a person could be greed through and through, that person would be avaritia.

That’s Cool and All, But What Is Greed?

Avarice – extreme greed for wealth or material gain
Greed – intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food

Oxford Dictionary, Avarice and Greed

Avarice and greed are used interchangeably; both words indicate an overzealousness for some sort of personal gain. The desire may be for money, for power, for status, or for something material. Let’s parse this a little, shall we?

The Elements of Greed

For avarice to be a sin, it needs to check all of these boxes:

• Overzealous
• Aspiration
• For Personal Gain

Unless all the boxes are checked, it’s not (necessarily) sinful. Think about it: hoping to make rent and put food on the table is not inherently sinful; working hard to make something of yourself is not inherently sinful; being overly driven to achieve something for your community is not inherently sinful. When all these boxes are checked, though, it’s time to be careful.

Overzealousness

Overzealous – too zealous in attitude or behavior; extreme, fanatical, extremist, violent, uncompromising

Oxford Dictionary

Being zealous isn’t inherently a bad thing; being “too” anything is. There’s an optimal level for all things, with a grey zone around the summit’s plaque. We can want things too much; this may lead to excessive zeal to obtain the goal

We can generally tell when we’re nowhere near the right amount because the extremes are fairly noticeable: I haven’t gotten out of bed in a month because why would I – versus – I haven’t left my office in a month and only take cat naps when my body shuts itself off.

These examples are obvious; life isn’t typically so obvious. Our goal is to work, but not excessively. We’re not aiming for perfect (or maybe we are, dun-dun-dun!). We’re doing the best we can with the tools we have available; one of those tools is time – including the balance of our other obligations making demands on our time. Our goal is to find the summit plaque and do our best to stay on top of it.

Aspiration

Aspiration – hope or ambition of achieving something; desire, longing, yearning

Oxford Dictionary

This aspect of avarice is both simple and complex. It boils down to wanting something, to angling for a goal. There are a variety of things – material or immaterial – that we want, that can drive us to act. Maybe it’s money, or the latest gadget, or a nice house on a lake with access to all the amenities. Maybe it’s less about stuff and more about ego: prestige, respect, or simply having others associate a name with a certain trait, even placing a certain person on a pedestal.

“You will agree, Data, that Starfleet’s orders are difficult?”
“Difficult? Simply solve the mystery of Farpoint Station.”
“As simple as that.”

Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation, S1:E1

Goals are good things! It’s good to know where we’re going. Without having a destination, how are we ever going to reach it? The key here is that we need to select our goals carefully and with the knowledge that getting to that goal will influence others, and that even the noblest of goals may go sideways with overzealousness.

For Personal Gain

A reminder: these elements must be taken together to be bad for us. Doing things for yourself is essential to life, and we are tasked with taking care of ourselves. More than that, we have to take care of ourselves before we can help others. If we never eat, we won’t have the strength to carry a friend.

What are some hints we’re doing it for ourselves? We can go back to the gut check method, but that’s unreliable because we are extremely capable of making excuses for our own behaviors. If we didn’t think we had reasons for them, we wouldn’t do them. Thus, we need to look outside ourselves to objective indicia to determine whether we’re doing something for personal gain.

I volunteer with a local Catholic radio station. It’s awesome. After I started, I know for a certainty that I didn’t keep going for personal gain – I was terrified of going on live radio. Insecurities surfaced and fought back; I wanted to recant my commitment. However, I had promised a friend that I would co-host with her, and I knew that it would put her under tremendous stress to have to find someone else to cover for me. I got through my pre-air panic because I was focusing on everything external: my friend, the event we were covering, and anything I could do to prepare for the discussion.

Let me be clear: it was an amazing opportunity and I would have been foolish to walk away from it. When she asked me to co-host, I was thrilled – until I realized that meant dealing with my insecurities. If we look at the moment of the ask and acceptance, I may have done it for personal gain: how cool would it be to co-host a show? If we look at the moment of setting up the table at the back of the venue, heart racing as I dug out my prep work and travel-sized Winnie the Pooh bear for emotional support, I wasn’t there because I wanted it for myself. My desire to co-host a live radio program was much less than my desire to hide, but a dear friend was counting on me.

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Objective indications that it wasn’t for personal gain: first and foremost, I saw nothing to gain from the experience other than working through the fear of it. Again, it’s not a bad thing to personally benefit from something; for example, education is highly praised, but it is at least in part for personal benefit. (Can you imagine paying tuition to graduate with nothing to show for it? That’s fiscally irresponsible.) I wasn’t planning any sort of launch into the media industry or to put a feather in my cap. It was a marvelous experience, but I wouldn’t say it got me anywhere.

If I did it for personal gain, how would that have changed the scenario? It certainly would depend on what the specific gain I was seeking was, but there are commonalities I would expect to find. Confidence in reaching for the goal, excitement at progression towards the goal, plans for what the event was supposed to achieve, and a tactical assessment of whether the achievements were made and how to progress from there. I likely would have acted differently during and after the interviews, depending on which goal I was aiming for: focusing on myself and how I am awesome, for example, as opposed to honing in on details about the event and its significance.

Summary: Avarice and Greed

Greed is overzealousness in aspiration of personal benefit. These elements are not problems in and of themselves: it’s good to have goals and to take care of yourself. Overzealousness in the pursuit of any goal can lead to a problem, but zeal in moderation is a good thing: we want to be enthusiastic about our pursuits! Where we may go astray isn’t in having passion and conviction, but in allowing it to overtake our good judgment.

Covetousness… is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, inasmuch as man contemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

Now that we have a good grasp of what greed is, we can jump into what we can do to counter it: liberalitas and love. Stay tuned!

What do you think about greed and avarice? Leave a comment to let me know!