THE OBSCENITY OF GREED: SEED OF BOTH OUR EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL DESTRUCTION.
Op/Ed by Jeremy Steele
(This write-up is but a prelude for the next…)
"All earthly joy begins pleasantly, but at the end it gnaws and kills." -Thomas a’Kempis
"We gave ’em wings to fly and they rained death on us." – Karl Brown
“The lust of avarice as so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth.” (unknown)
“Avarice is always poor” – Samuel Johnson
"Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer." – Julian Casablancas
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In case you haven’t noticed, there’s something seriously wrong inside the Pleasuredome.
With porn being, for better and for worse, more mainstream and popular than ever, pornographers and porn stars should generally be living in a land of opulence.
However, as go the trends of uncurtailed free enterprise, there is far less money in it now for most people. The hallowed religion of Capitalism in America has run amok.
Sex sells but not many are paying these days. Piracy and free internet porn, while rightfully being blamed, are but blowback, backlash symptoms of the essential root problem…
There is a very real cancer; a syndrome endangering us all, at the very heart of our collective woes, threatening to augur our very extinction. I’m not talking about the dubious "epidemics" of AIDS, but the very real epidemic of GREED.
Greed is the reason most of us are suffering right now.
Greed is what has brought us to where we are now.
Greed is the reason our economy has been wrecked.
We’ve heard of the Enrons, Worldcoms, and countless scams pulled which have wrecked lives and life-long investments slowly accrued through honest and hard work.
Each business owner has the power to run or ruin their company either in Enron-like, book-cooking fashion, hoarding never enough profits for themselves; or they can acknowledge and fairly compensate those who are the reason their profits are possible.
Greed is absolutely alien to the concept of "giving to receive", as well as the concept of simple "joy in giving", itself, because greed has
already disassociated itself from humanity. Such qualities are shared with sociopaths and other ever-degenerating and dangerous people.
Greed’s minions have no ability to truly appreciate their acquistions because their objective is always more. It doesn’t take long to become completely disinterested
and disassociated with the needs of others, through rationalization that others can suffice with a little less so that greed can have a little more. Eventually, this mentality leads to the collapse of civilizations and the transmutation of a super-power into a third world nation (as is what looks to be the case with the United States). Everyone, in their own way, contributes.
Jeremy with the dog that lives at Max Hardcore’s house
People in positions of power who act out from a stance of insatiable greed are anti-human, spirtually empty and apathetic. Their attempt to make more and more money for themselves riding on the backs of the exploited workers can never bring them any true satisfaction, anyway. Because, having estranged themselves from their fellow humans in lieu of selfish materialistic gain, they create and then invariably try to fill an emptiness that can never be filled.
So in the meantime, as they take more and more, a pathological affliction perptuates…
The problem is with those in charge of the cash flows, is there exists no such thing as "enough". The more we acquire, the more elusive "enough" becomes.
To paraphrase Ghandi, there is enough in the world to provide for every man’s need, but there can never be enough to provide for just one man’s greed.
And as Nietzsche said, possessions are usually diminished by possession.
Greed has no gratefulness for all those who work hard to help make them a success. It’s a very simple equation; when money is more important than people, anything goes.
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction", said Erich Fromm and “For greed, all nature is too little.” said Seneca.
Now, try to feed a greed at the expense of others’ needs and you contribute to the decline of civilization at the cost of your soul. In other words, take a fast glance through humanity’s history and then fast-forward to now…
Greed is the ultimate obscenity. The most extreme, degrading and perverse form of pornography could never come remotely close to Greed’s horrific, damaging effects.
Greed has a sociopathic quality to it. It is a force that propels it’s sad addicts rapaciously towards goals it can never attain. It tears away the fabric of humanity, aggrandizing wealth in a vain attempt to compensate for it’s bottomless emptiness. It is a drug who’s perpetual after effects is scarier than the hardest and most poisonous and illegal recreational drug.
The compound, profound, rippling, crippling and expodential effect of greed is difficult to first adequately comprehend. To then attempt to express what one can comprehend then becomes a painful and depressing thing to attempt when one considers and discovers their own prime examples of it based on experience…
But let me just address instead what could be, what should be, and what would be if only a sense of decency prevailed, instead of the current reality…
One’s rewards would be shared with all who participate, expose themselves in every way for all eternity, those who by their very profession are often hurt, scarred, stigmatized and ostracized from society and loved ones as a result.
Empty souls always put money over people, and money as a tool invariably becomes a weapon. And uncurtailed, that weapon comes to do endless and expodential damage.
Pornography ever presents it’s open vacuous wind tunnel doors to provide temporal relief and release for our collective lust. And lust is too often much like greed. However, while a superfluous abundance of both could warp the senses, greed is potentially far worse than lust, because you can only have so much pussy or dick in one day but never enough money.
Greed is a form of lust which can never be satisfied. And Lust is all GET whereas Love is all GIVE.
Due to how we are all raised, our personal issues and experiences porn oft-times elicit desire and contempt simultaneously, not only from the consumer but in the producer. That contempt can be identified by producers’ and directors’ treatment and/or pay of talent.
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit and so we seek more and more. And so the greedy get only greeder, for that is the way of greed; desire that can never be satisfied, which gradually and perpetually estranges the person in posession of it from his fellow man.
And then, as Kierkegaard once said, most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Believe it or not, I have some fans some who have recognized me in public. I’ve been asked how many hot women I’ve fucked and some have asked me if the
profits are as good as the pussy. They tell me they’ve seen me on cable and pay per view t.v., on this site, that site and in countless video stores.
Then they ask me how much money I made to be in particular movie. And after answering, they say "What is that per month?".
"No.", I answer. "I’m paid just once… No residuals… It doesn’t matter how many times and ways the scene I’ve been in has been sold and re-sold,
I’m just paid once. I pay for my own STD tests. I pay for my own medical tests and treatment. I pay for the social stigmas, absorbing
stares and at times ostracization. No medical, dental, mental or emotional care comes with the job… and no future"
Of course, they go "Wow" and are suprised to hear this.
"What kind of stardom is this?", they ask.
Good question.
In an ideal world, porn performers would reap the benefits for their contribution and various costs for playing the game by receiving a % of sales, residuals, etc… but not in a greedy world.
I say it’s time for the greedy to be held to do the one thing they try "at all costs" not to do, and that is pay. The first thing is to recognize who the worst exploiters are. Finding out companies’ profits and costs, including wages paid out to performers is one way of doing that.
Second, make that information public to the porn "community" at large. If say, some top selling company is paying less wages to their talent
than another company making much less revenues, then such knowledge should be the power to change things for the better for those who deserve it for a change.
Thus far, Bill Margold’s phrase, "family of X" is as much of a joke as he is. There is no family of X. In actuality, it’s at times closer to a family of x-cons… and cons…
So buyer and player beware!