Debunking the myth of greed and the rat race

Why leaders are attracted to greed and the ‘rat race’

In the popular movie The Wolff of Wall Street a talented sales professional Jordan Belfort – played by Leonardo di Caprio – displays an lush lifestyle of excessive wealth earnt by selling penny stocks to ignorant customers. In one of his exuberant speeches to his followers, Jordan Belfort cries out: ““Let me tell you something. There's no nobility in poverty. I've been a rich man and I've been a poor man. And I choose rich every […] time.” You can’t help but feel a strange sense of allure with a statement like this. Who does not want to be rich like Jordan Belfort? Within no-time, Jordan Belfort had a large crowd of followers around him wanting to emulate his style and quick road to wealth. In an earlier movie Wall Street the main character [Michael Douglas] quickly rose to a mythic status where real-life leaders on Wall Street emulated his famous one-liners (e.g. “Greed is good”) and fashion statements (e.g., slicked-back hairdo). There is, of course, also a moral twist in this story. Jordan Belfort’s business model, behavior, and celebration of greed, eventually came at a cost to his customers, to his followers, to his business, to his friends, to his wife, and to himself. If anything, this movie does a great job in showing the double-sided coin of money. A great depiction of what the Psalmist (37: 35-36) wrote 3000 years ago: “I saw a wicked man, awe-inspiring, spreading its nakedness like an ever-green native tree. Suddenly he vanished and was gone; I sought him, but he could no longer be found.”

Jordan Belfort cries out: “Let me tell you something. There's no nobility in poverty. I've been a rich man and I've been a poor man. And I choose rich every […] time.”

While The Wolf of Wall Street pictures the downsides of pursuing a lifestyle of greed in the ultimate downfall of Jordan Belfort, this is not what tends to linger in the mind. In an experimental study recently conducted at the Vrije Universiteit with Inge Brokerhof as lead researcher, our research team found that Jorden Belfort embodies an ideal self to young people and aspiring leaders. In particular, we found that Jordan Belfort is seen as somebody who exemplifies an ideal ‘future work self’ in the field of work to both business school students (our future leaders) and sales professionals. Follow-up interviews revealed that leaders like Jordan Belfort are attractive because they seem “winners” in life, like a King of the Mountain. Here, life is depicted as a rat race where contenders strife to become their own ‘King of the Mountain’. The rat race urges us to they climb the ranks of hierarchical status, to achieve the status of self-made success in the game of life. When watching a movie like The Wolf of Wall Street, something in our basal human nature is activated that feels stronger than the mind (Psalm 73: 21). In his book “King of the Mountain”, Arnold Ludwig (2002) shows how much of the human struggle for success in the rat race is highly comparable in how monkeys strife to be the ‘alpha male’ in the dominance hierarchy. Indeed, psychologists Van Vugt, Hogan and Kaiser (2008) argued that many students and young professionals aspire to be leaders because it tends to come with a great pay check, power, and greater choice in the selection of a romantic partner.

Nicely illustrated in the The Wolf of Wall Street, is that there is correlation between the strife to come out as a ‘winner’ in the rat race of life, and the phenomenon of greed. The concept of greed is defined by Wang and others (2011) as “excessive acts of self-interest that impose costs on – or otherwise deprive the well-being of – others”. This definition of greed paints the picture of an exploiter, a person hoarding money or material possessions. This is indeed a bit of an animalistic tendency which is also witnessed in monkeys hoarding more fruits than they factually need (Hoyer et al., 2022; and Psalm 73: 22). Despite this, there are still voices that suggest the idea that greed would be the behavior of a rational ‘homo-economicus’, who creates a safe security-blanket against shocks, and that greed would be good for the economy at large. Some economists, for instance, would argue that greed can be positive in making one work harder and in being more inventive in the accumulation of wealth. Further, Adrian Furnham (1998) write in this book The Psychology Money writes that money is associated with (the illusion of) security, more freedom (escape from corporate orders), the lure of power (who pays, gets to decide), and even the idea of love, where lovers pragmatically exchange their need for security in exchange for love and affection. Yet, all of this is misleading.

Debunking the purported ‘positives’ of greed

There is quite a bit of empirical research which debunks these purported positives of greed. Here are some conclusions:

• There is, in fact, only a negligible correlation of about .10 between wealth and happiness, and psychologists Hoyer, Zeelenberg, and Breugelmans (2022) showed in a representative sample of the Dutch population how greed even makes you significantly more unhappy.

• There is almost no correlation between job satisfaction and bottom-line payment. As soon as a certain minimal threshold of sufficiency is crossed, money loses its magic as a motivator. It is well-established in the leadership literature that leading and motivating through financial transactions only (i.e., ‘transactional leadership’) has proven to be ineffective. The social comparison mechanisms in highly transactional pay-for-performance cultures (epitomized by Jeff Skilling’s rank-and-yank policy at Enron) is known to create highly toxic organizational cultures.

• Economists still run their calculations based on the idea that a human is a ‘homo economicus’ by nature, which assumes that people simply do that which yields the highest utility (i.e., highest gain, at lowest cost). This idea, however, has been debunked since the 1970s in Kahneman & Tversky’s Noble Prize winning work. Gain maximization is not necessarily what makes people feel secure or happy. For instance, behavioral economics research shows that people who have money become ‘risk averse’: they hate the idea of losing the money they have, even if it means making a rational investment (with the highest ultimate gain). This is in line with the idea of ‘hoarding’ as basically an irrational tendency.

• Greed, in fact, brings about collapse of individuals, relationships, teams, organizations, and even societies. The downfall of the Roman Empire, for instance, we instigated by widespread corruption. In his book “Swimming with sharks”, Joris Luyendijk (2015) wrote a disenchanting piece on how the institutionalization of greed and perverse financial incentives in the financial sector brought about the 2008 worldwide financial crisis. The case and downfall of (greedy leadership of) the Enron organization is also still fresh in mind. When a company looks too good to be true, it usually is.

• Even the argument of evolutionary psychologists that greed would lead to more offspring is debunked in Hoyer et al.’s (2022) study discussed above: it is associated with fewer offspring, short-term mating strategies, …and broken families.

In its defense, though, Hoyer et al.’s (2022) research does show that greed does seem to bring higher security on the short-term (in the form of higher household income), but the question is: How sustainable is this really? This question has been a perennial conundrum throughout the ages.

About 3000 years ago, the psalmist Asaf (Psalm 73) wrote eloquently about this question in a way that mimics the luring narrative of The Wolf of Wall Street quite well,

Here’s my story: I narrowly missed losing it all.

I was stumbling over what I saw the wicked doing.

For when I saw the boasters with such wealth and prosperity,

I became jealous over their smug security…..

So pride adorns their necks,

lawlessness enwraps them as a mantle

Fat exudes from their eyes;

their imaginations cross the line

They set their mouths against heaven,

Such are the wicked;

So tranquil as they amass their wealth.

…

Till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny.

Surely you place them on slippery ground, You cast them down to ruin.

When You are aroused You despise their image,

as one does a dream after waking, O Lord.

[in my jealousy of the rich] I allowed my heart to be soured,

I allowed it to be taught by my baser passions

I allowed a fire of desire to burn inside, not knowledge;

I was like an animal with you

…

Whom else do I have in heaven?

In comparison with You, there is nothing to desire on this earth

You are my portion and my heart’s Rock forever.

A rectified understanding of money

What then, does God want us to be poor? Far from it. From God’s perspective, found in the way the Bible talks about it, wealth is primarily a sign of God’s blessing. Blessing involves the law of multiplication (Genesis 1: 28) if person walks with God and lives in a accordance with His ways. Great examples of Biblical figures who were both rich and God-fearing were Abraham, Jacob, Josef, Job, and so forth. God is a good God and loves to be generous to those who live for Him. Yet, in all these characters in Biblical narratives we see that God’s blessing is conditional upon their obedience to the voice of God. In fact, the Hebrew word for blessing (barach) also means to “bow the knee” in the original Hebrew text. This double entendre is highly significant. Financial blessing, for instance, happens in a relationship (i.e., a covenant), which implies mutual commitment, and obedience to God’s voice. This is the kind of relationship that God had with Abraham. This man, for instance, heard the voice of God that he should leave his own land, family and belongings and go to a new land that God would show him as he got there. He obeyed, and then become rich in silver, gold and livestock. This is the relationship God wants with us as well.

When the pursuit of money becomes ‘sin’

Yet, something is off when the externalities of these Godly blessings (wealth, material possessions, relationships, social status, influence) become life goals to desire in and of themselves. Young people who strife to come on top as winners in the rat race in hopes of gaining access to money, wealth, comfort, sensual pleasure, and the pride of life become addicted to these things and then forego on their true, God-given destinies. In fact, the lure of amassing the attractive externalities of life is perhaps one of the greatest pitfalls of humanity at large. This mysterious ‘lure’ (ta’ava in Hebrew) is mentioned already in Genesis 3:6 of the Bible. Saying “yes” to this urge is called “sin.” This word ‘sin’ originally means to lose your destiny, but it can also mean a perversion of a good thing into something nasty and corrupt, and it can mean a blatant rebellion against the will and purposes of God. Sin is inherently misleading (Hebrews 3: 13). Sin misleads us into thinking that the ‘fat’ of life is all there is, and it makes us forego on the true (Godly) origin what makes life worth living. Sin is what separates us from God, and it has a destructive effect on ourselves.

Being caught up in the ‘rat race’ is a form of spiritual intoxication

This pitfall of ‘money’ and lure of the rat race has strong repercussions on leadership. The last time I talked about the three main functions of leadership: the watchman looking out for external threat, the shepherd taking care of internal needs, and the prophet who hears from God and sees in the God dimension. The text in Isaiah 56 on which this idea is based, actually shows how these leadership functions can become perverted though sin. The passage starts and ends with a scene of a wild party of drinkers of the type we have seen The Wolf of Wall Street, but then it says that what the partygoers do not realize, is that ‘wild animals’ (figurative for demons) have now gained legal access and are invited to the party to steal, kill, and destroy. Yet, the watchmen are oblivious of this danger have lost their ability to signal warnings (literally: like dogs who cannot bark), because they are intoxicated (alternatively translated in the Septuagint as “under a spiritual hypnosis”) as if in a deep sleep. What we learn from this passage is how the strife for money and the rat race acts like a drug. We become blinded, intoxicated, and fall asleep spiritually by playing this misleading rat race game. The rules of the rat race game are different in every organization, but general sense is that playing this game dulls the heart for the things of God and for what really matters. It blurs the watchman’s eyes from seeing what (s)he needs to see, for what is factually going on in the spiritual realm: that the enemy comes in and is roaming around to steal, kill, and destroy. Then it says in verse 11: These dogs [leaders] are greedy; they never know satiety; they are shepherds who have no discernment. They turn each to their own paths, after their own gain, every single one of them. Bam! Sadly, this is true for many leaders trapped in the rat race game. Blinded by greed and intoxicated by the game, they ‘shepherd’ themselves only.

Being caught up in the ‘rat race’ is a form of spiritual intoxication

The fact that being caught up in the rat race is a form of intoxication is confirmed by a statement Jesus made when He was discussing the end times (talked about the previous podcast). He states: “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with lush spending, drunkenness and the concerns for this life, and that day [of judgement] will close on you suddenly like a trap (Luke 22: 34). It a stern warning that we should not let ourselves be rocked into sleep by pursuing the things of this world in a mindless quest for comfort and winning the rat race. Sometimes a major shock (like what this world is experiencing nowadays) can wake people up from this state of intoxication. Recently, popular media stated that many Americans decided to quit their jobs right after the Corona-19 pandemic: they called it the ‘Great Resignation’. And generally, research on careers and the life span shows that over the course of the life span, many people ‘wise up’ to the truth at least a bit, decide to quit the ‘rat race’ and live a different life. At some point, leaders start to see the vanity of the game they are playing and come to appreciate more the covenantal, relational origin of life as a walk with God, as He originally created it. We can then say, like the Psalmist Asaf that after having tasted the wonderful presence of the Holy Spirit, nothing this earth has to offer comes even close. This sense of inner fulfillment and peace is found in Jesus alone. In Him, there is prosperity in all the facets of the word.