When “more” becomes the goal instead of the gift.
Abundance was never the problem. The harvest is meant to be full, the table wide, the cup poured. The trouble starts the moment one person’s more requires another person’s less — and we stop noticing.
Every wisdom tradition saw this and named it.
Hesus — “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24) The rich fool built bigger barns and died that night. The camel through the needle’s eye. “Woe to you who are rich.” (Luke 6:24)
The Buddha — craving (taṇhā) is the root of suffering. Let it go and the wheel stops turning on you.
Lao Tzu — “There is no greater calamity than not knowing what is enough.” (Tao Te Ching 46)
The Qur’an — “Woe to every slanderer and backbiter, who collects wealth and counts it.” (104:1–2)
Hillel — “The more possessions, the more anxiety.” (Pirkei Avot 2:7)
Indigenous wisdom — what you take from the web, you take from yourself.
Five faiths, one finding: greed is the engine that turns abundance into scarcity for someone else.
In the twenty-first century the engine has scaled. A handful of people now hold more than half the planet. Algorithms are tuned to deepen the craving the Buddha warned of. Markets reward the barns the rich fool built. The test has not changed — only the magnitude has.
The test is still one question.
Does my more require their less?
If yes, it is not abundance. It is extraction wearing abundance’s clothes.