Illustrated Cycles : Ourobori Americana
- Tyler A Deem
- Oct 18
- 2 min read
OUROBOROS of GREED
Progress, Profit and Productivity
In cycles of consumptions, the dollar and the power it brings, are the everlasting sources of pain and desire. We are driven by the desire for more money, more knowledge, more power.
Does progress only exist in a corporate, profit-driven, dollar-valued definition? How does one consider the only progress seen in improvement of production, when lives can be productive without financial incentive?
What happens when the only profits come from others?
To consider the work we do day in, day out... from raising children, to doing laundry, dishes and house work, to our hobbies and talents and our desires to learn more... to consider that not of value unless you can put a 'dollar value' on it excludes the legitimate acts of that work. How do you value the hard and tenacious practice that a musician dedicates, when it does not pay literally? What of the toiling engineer who must go through trial and error, how does that no represent progress... whether it leads to financial benefits or not?
Evaluation should rest on the journey, not the outcome. A dance, a craft of art, and song, an athletic play... none of these have inherent value one can calculate or charge, yet there are people out there who spend their whole lives doing just this, evaluating other peoples work at the expense of others for their own profit.
A financial system that depends on the exploitation of the laborer, built on speculation and over-evaluation, and one that puts productivity over progress becomes an empty self-fulfilling prophecy that eventually fails in a recession on the dime of ordinary people.
