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THE PSYCHOLOGY AND AESTHETICS OF GREED

"Greed is Good" in the movie Wall Street. This was the mantra of the only religion on Wall Street. Michael Douglas was so right, we agreed. Greed is good.

Greed has, of course, gotten a bad name over the centuries. Most cultures condemn greedy guys as pushy upstarts with no patience for the afterlife, souls not content to doff their caps to their betters or bow down to King Rat in the rat race. But greed is the ultimate human insurance policy against apathy, fatalism, ignorance and mediocrity. Greed for money is matched by greed for power, knowledge, women (or men), travel, even food.

Greed in the modern UAE manifests itself in varied ways — the urge to speculate in the stock market, punt on ponies or futures, respond to faxes from Nigeria or magician money multipliers on Naif Road (George Soros, where are you?), startup companies in a Media City cubbyhole, splash millions of dirhams of borrowed money on Dubai Marina flats' off-plan in moments of leveraged madness, charter a Jumbo jet to get a kid married 36,000 feet in the sky while all the invited guests — friends seethe with envy. Everyone wants to be Number One Hottest with the Mostest Dude or Dudette, has to show the universe he is top banana, even if it means shelling out a million dirhams to buy a number plate at Sotheby Muroor's number plate auction.

"Money is the root of all evil". So preached the priests of Europe even as they ate off of gold plates in Rome. "Stinking rich" is both compliment and poisoned arrow. Moneylenders were hated everywhere, yet who could live without money? Money may not buy happiness but as any visitor to the playgrounds of the French Riviera will attest, money sure rents it.

Greed is programmed into the software of the human DNA. We eat, so we exist. Columbus would not have found the New World or Einstein sniffed the cosmic glue without a greed to know. Rockefeller, Hunt, Getty, Gulbenkian, Dr Hammer would have never owned lakes of black gold without the need to amass riches and power, to hunt for the ultimate geological prize. As the billionaire J Paul Getty observed, the meek may inherit the earth but not its mineral rights. Even the Hereafter is defined by delightfully greedy visions — lakes of milk and honey, beautiful houris, luxurious mansions. The pious smirk? Knowingly, there is a pecking order in the afterlife, heaven for the Beautiful People, hell for the hoi polloi.

There is no fun amassing without the urge to display, to exhibit, in-your-face moolah. Hence Louis XIV's chateau in Versailles, Lakshmi Mittal's 100 million quid pad-palace in South Kensington and Imelda Marcos's 5000 shoe closet. Hence the fleet of Learjets, Falcons and G-5 jets on the tarmac at Nice, Aspen, Palm Beach and St Moritz airports. Hence the Hummers and the Ferraris cruising in Bur Dubai, number plate auctions and Ferrenti yachts moored on Dubai Marina. Yet greed also gave the world the Getty Museum in Malibu, the treasures of the Vatican, the blessings of the Rockefeller Foundations, the Taj Mahal. So yes, greed is good. Greed works. Darwin was only half right. Life is about the survival of the fittest — and the greediest.