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Following my thinking from my previous post, +PATTERNS OF CONVERSATION – SOOTHING OR NOT? I find myself wondering how, even if we do detect subtle or blatant competitive aggression in conversations, how do we know whether or not a person is ACTUALLY experiencing their unsafe and in-unsecure attachment system as ON — which means they have needs that are present in the conversation but are not being recognized or addressed — versus someone who is being greedy rather than needy?

Greed implies to me that a person has their basic needs met through access and utilization of adequate resources but WANTS and intends to guarantee to themselves that they will have MORE THAN THEY NEED.

I suspect the only way anyone knows (about someone else or about their self) whether greed or need is operating ‘below the surface’ and intertwined in conversations that feel unsettling and stressful rather than sustaining and soothing is that an honest degree of awareness of INFANT-CHILDHOOD has been gained so that this history (as if absolutely affected development of body-brain) is KNOWN.

It is probably not ‘good enough’ to note the ‘symptoms’ of need-greed being present in self and/or others.  If the context, the earliest history is NOT known, a wide open space exists within which determination between actual need related to an insecure attachment system versus outright greed cannot be made.

We can watch someone operate who appears competent and confident — perhaps self-righteous and arrogant and selfish — but still appearing as if they have everything ‘all together’ — and not be able to detect whether their aggression-competition in conversation (and action) is due to their UNDERLYING, unknown, unconscious (even implicit-memory based) woundedness or to outright greed.

Either way, what I most often experience is that it is not considered appropriate to ASK someone for clarity regarding these issues.  Humans operate with supposed conscious choice in our culture at the same time most of the platform for conversation is built on ignorance of important factual information.  Even if we know someone a LONG time, and know a LOT about their background — enough to expect that their NEED is at the bottom of their inability to truly express empathy and compassion — it is STILL not appropriate to bring up the truth.

This awareness leads me to feel dissatisfied, empty, and often drained after engaging in conversation with nearly everyone.  If I had NOT been built in a world of trauma, abuse and isolation I strongly believe that I would be able to abide by the ‘rules of social engagement’ along with nearly everyone else on their terms without question.  Most importantly, I would participate in the ignorance and NOT know what I do detect.  How easy that would that be?

Meanwhile, I believe that greed is one of America’s most powerful mainstream cultural ACCEPTED values.  That not even THIS fact can be ‘politely’ addressed and usefully conversed about just further contributes not only to the drain that our society creates for the planet, but also for the individuals within it that choose to remain blinded to and by this fact.

As long as we continue NOT defining personally and culturally the difference between what we NEED from our expressions in word and action of GREED we will never grow into our mature wisdom.  We will continue to toddle along with hoped for impunity until somewhere down the line the consequences of our ignorance catches up to us — because it will.

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I further think that severe infant-child abuse survivors, once we let the reality of how awful our early years REALLY were, can have a distinct advantage over ordinary people in that we KNOW we didn’t get our basic human rights or needs met.  This means that perhaps we can become more honest, more clear, more conscious — and more responsible for how we interact with others than ordinary people might EVER decide they need to.

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