Final answer:
Using John Lara's play 'The Samaritan' as a reference, the concept of greed being dehumanizing is explored, highlighting its capacity to corrupt, exhaust our humanity, and displace moral integrity for the sake of personal gain, power, and wealth.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement "Greed is dehumanizing" can be justified using John Lara's play The Samaritan as a reference. The play, along with historical and philosophical insights, provides a lens through which we can examine the destructive nature of greed on human dignity and society.
Throughout history, as echoed in Sophocles' words in Antigone, we have seen how money and the pursuit of wealth have led to the corruption of innocence and the downfall of societies. Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons further illustrates the scenario where individual greed leads to the degradation of shared resources, showing the conflict between self-interest and the common good.
Modern economic approaches often depict humans as self-interested beings, a view that some critics challenge as lacking moral integrity. Furthermore, Peter Brook's notion that actors use their own emotions and experiences serves as a metaphor for how greed can exploit and exhaust our humanity, leaving us as empty husks once personal gain has been achieved.
The desire for power and possessions, as the material suggests, often overrides our more altruistic and cooperative nature, leading to dehumanization. This is illustrated through the will to power, proposed by Nietzsche, which can encourage individuals to prioritize their own rise to power at the expense of others' well-being. Similarly, the pursuit of productivity and profit, if unchecked, can dominate our lives, turning humans into mere tools or 'machines' as reflected in the quote about the character Deborah, which underscores the loss of humanity under the weight of greed-driven labor.