Greed: a misdiagnosis?

It's easy to look at our society and blame some of its problems (e.g. materialism, gluttony) on greed. Some of it is definitely motivated by the desire to accumulate more, but I suspect that's not the entire problem.

In some cases, I don't believe the root cause is greed. I believe the root cause is emotional discomfort and/or emptiness. I think as a society we don't know how to process our emotions. So when we have a feeling we dislike or when we feel empty, we look towards the experience of shopping or eating to make us feel better. It distracts us from the unpleasantness we are currently experiencing. We don't really want to buy more things or eat more food. What we want is to find relief from that yucky feeling.

This probably could explain some of society's addiction problems: gambling, smoking and binge drinking alcohol to name a few.

I do have more thoughts on this, but I will leave it hanging there for the time being.

Some articles to consider:

• End emotional eating articles (extremely insightful, highly recommended)

• Eight signs of emotional eating (extremely insightful, highly recommened)

• Retail therapy: beware cure hiding a disease (SMH article. Interesting point: compulsive shopping mirrors the spread of obesity)

• Diary of a shopaholic (SMH article)

• CBD a shopper's nightmare (SMH article)