Piety for Things, by Michael Pakaluk

If the opposite of greed is detachment, then greed takes some very strange forms, because detachment does.

Let’s call detachment any ordered use of material goods, while greed is disordered, disproportionate use.  Modern, mechanical images of society conceptualize greed as something like an excessive draw of energy – too much fuel demanded and expended by a part.  Older, organic conceptions imagine it as disproportionate growth, grasping after more than is right for smaller parts such as yourself.  On both of these simple images, the remedy for greed is something simple and a reduction: look for less, ask less, use less, consume less.

We can grant that greed is looking for “more” than you should (the Greek word is pleon-exia, “more grasping”).  But “more” can mean something other than quantity. …

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