Some weeks ago I bought a book with the title “Der Crash kommt – Die neue Weltwirtschaftskrise und wie Sie sich darauf vorbereiten“ (free translation: “The Crash is coming—the new world economic crisis and how you can prepare yourself”) by Prof. Dr. Max Otte (ISBN 978-3-430-20001-1). His unrolling of the history of the various crashes shows me that our beautiful mother Earth accommodates a lot of “brainless” imitators and repetitive offenders—which can also be said about history in general. The book is very gripping and in a certain way also instructive, but I’m only going to elaborate on a particular point that caught my eye and which I find is absolutely true and worthwhile to examine in more detail.

On page 41 in the first paragraph there is the following sentence: “The old broker wisdom ‘Greed devours the brain’ hits the nail on the head.” This saying also struck me immediately. It’s really true: “Greed devours the brain”! Of course Max Otte supports his statements with some scientific studies, as expected from a professor. Among others he describes an experiment where students were asked questions concerning financial investments while having their heads in a MRI scanner. One of the questions was whether they wanted 100 dollars now or rather 110 dollars in 4 months. The MRI scanner then showed which parts of the brain were especially active during the answering of the questions. Every time the test subject was “greedy”, i.e. wanted the 100 dollars immediately, the cerebellum exhibited a high level of activity. In the history of evolution the cerebellum is a very old part of the brain which is also found in reptiles—one could say it contains our primary rudimentary instinct. However, those test subjects who decided for the 110 dollars in 4 months exhibited a high level of activity in the cerebrum that is used for conscious thinking.
For Max Otte it is quite clear that no profitable stock market transactions can be carried out if only the cerebellum is involved. But how does this function in general? Do we get any positive results if instinctive greed is the motivating force behind our actions instead of intelligent and reasonable thinking?

Greed has several synonyms, i.e. related terms, such as:
desire
lasciviousness
lust
obsession
vice
passion
addictions (craving for money and power, victory, quarrels;
compulsive gambling, gluttony, drugs, sensation, etc.)

Greed is therefore not only to be associated with money, but this unreasonable, foolish and depraved behaviour can also be observed in the degenerated forms of eating, sex, gambling, brutality, belligerence, aggressiveness, victory and lust for power, etc.—greed affects a lot of spheres of life.
Our consciousness consists of uncountable consciousness forms or consciousness levels that embody characteristics, such as love, esthetics, greed, dignity, hatred, eroticism, harmony, freedom, peace, thirst for revenge, justice, retaliation, and a lot more; all of them radiate in a particular colour according to their evolutionary level. If, according to the above study, greed activates the cerebellum—historically one of evolution’s oldest parts of the brain—, then this means for me that the radiated colour also has to be of a low value.