Punjab notes: More or less: can you solve the riddle?

Debate on the philosophic question of whether we should have more or less has been going on since ages. It in fact seems to be unending.

History of social evolution clearly tells us that human have always been struggling to have more of everything that provides security and comfort. We broke loose from the animal kingdom way back in time but we carry with us the psychological make-up formed during that unimaginably long period underpinned by primal fear and visceral sense of insecurity.

Our primordial impulses work on us in a surreptitious manner which we are not aware of all the times. So our legacy of fear and sense of insecurity weighs on our mind in multiple ways. To get better of it we try to find ways that we think can make us less vulnerable in a universe which still remains largely unknown and unexplored. Since basic needs are to have food and shelter that create conditions wherein the continuity of our existence is ensured through a process of procreation. Such a fundamental instinctual drive has led to our social organisation which upholds the notion of more. More is generally believed to be a panacea; more of everything; concrete and abstract, tangible and intangible. Such an attitude is largely driven by what we call in social and moral terms greed or profit.

Greed has worked wonders as it has made us what we are at this point in time. Can you imagine that lack of greed or pure altruism would have created what we see all around us on our earth? Can one imagine for example tall buildings, towers, palaces, gardens, hospitals, ships, railways, airplanes, spaceships, telephone and telegraph, and computer in the absence of greed or profit?

Greed has a positive dimension too which is not usually highlighted in the face of ever-present moral outrage against it.

Baba Guru Nanak has forcefully expressed both sides of the situation; what greed created and moral attitude towards it: 'Kings, subjects, royal officers, none will remain at all / shops, towns, bazars, by Order will fall / Stylish, strong doors, fools consider their own / Storehouses filled with treasures, in a moment will be empty / Arabian, chariots, chargers, elephant in armoury / Diamonds, households, orchards, where will they be known /Pavilions, tape-laced beds, little inns desirable /Nanak truth is the giver, recognition natural (Trans: Muzaffar A. Ghaffaar).'

Look at the beauty of the things he has describes but it doesn't display the ugliness of the process that creates...