Jottings on Tanghe’s tangle with Huzinga’s zing.

Notes Inspired by Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Tanghe’s re-reading on play and the humanities and out of a longer riff on Huizinga/Tanghe and what play means for culture-crafting today 

Koen B. Tanghe re-reads (2016) Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) as a case study in the long-running “existential crisis” of the humanities. He (etal)  sees the crisis as not primarily about falling student numbers; rather, Tanghe argues it is a confidence and status crisis—humanists doubt their mission and feel the intellectual “action” has moved to science. 

Tanghe’s framing of the “crisis”

He outlines three typical responses humanists have adopted:

1. Reject science’s relevance or moral credibility (a “science wars” posture).
2. Reassert traditional humanities vocations (ethical, political, spiritual, aesthetic, civic).
3. Pursue consilience with science, either strong (full integration) or soft (selective borrowing).
   Tanghe endorses soft consilience as both feasible and historically grounded. 

Why Homo Ludens matters here

Tanghe treats Homo Ludens as:

• A humanist masterpiece: extraordinarily erudite, cross-cultural, stylistically compelling, and morally resonant. 
• But explanatorily weak: once read as a theory about why play matters for culture, it fails to convince modern critical readers. The brilliance-without-explanatory-content combination is what makes it symptomatic of the humanities’ malaise. 

Huizinga’s thesis (as Tanghe summarizes)

Huizinga claims:

• Play is older than culture, and culture arises and unfolds “in and as play.”
• As cultures mature, playfulness declines; modernity shows “false play” and “puerilism.” 

Tanghe’s central methodological critique

Huizinga deliberately excludes biological and psychological approaches, defining play as a “mind phenomenon” and therefore a humanities-only topic. Tanghe says this rests on a strict nature/culture split and becomes circular:

1. Define play as non-biological.
2. Claim only humanities can study it.
3. Use that claim to justify the definition. 

Three explanatory flaws Tanghe finds in Homo Ludens

1. A “ludicrous” contradiction
   If play generates culture early on but disappears as culture matures, Huizinga needs the ad hoc idea of “false play” to explain modernity. Tanghe finds that move conceptually unstable. 
2. A hidden truism about “culture”
   Huizinga treats “culture” as mostly high, aesthetic, ritualized culture (myth, poetry, art, aristocratic contest), so it is unsurprising that play looks foundational. Tanghe argues the thesis works largely because culture has been pre-narrowed to play-like domains. 
3. Agonistic (contest) bias
   Huizinga makes agon (contest) the central form of play and leans heavily on Greek aristocratic competition as cultural paradigm. Tanghe, citing Sutton-Smith and others, calls this a restrictive and masculinist narrowing of play’s variety. 

What biology adds (Tanghe’s “soft consilience” remedy)

Tanghe argues that a credible account of play and culture must start from the biology and evolution of play. Biology shows:

• Play is widespread in animals and humans, so its roots are adaptive and embodied, not just symbolic. 
• Social play often aims to keep play going, not to win; agon is one subset, not the essence. 
• Evolutionary ideas like neoteny and human cognitive “fluidity” help explain why play remains central across life and cultures, countering Huizinga’s declinism. 

Bottom line

Homo Ludens remains a great humanist work, but its explanatory claims are undermined by Huizinga’s anti-scientific “fortress” stance, his declinist mood, his high-culture focus, and his agonal fixation. Tanghe concludes that humanities should preserve interpretive richness while adopting epistemic soft consilience with science whenever they make claims about human nature and culture’s origins. 

Citations:-

Huizinga — original Dutch edition (1938)
Huizinga, J. (1938). Homo ludens: Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur. Groningen, Netherlands: Tjeenk Willink / Wolters-Noordhoff. 

Huizinga — widely used English edition
Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1938) 

Tanghe — article

Tanghe, K. B. (2016). Homo Ludens (1938) and the crisis in the humanities. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1245087

 

My interpretation of terms used or averred 

Agon / agonistic play
Play centered on contest, rivalry, winners and losers (e.g., competitive games). Huizinga treats this as the main form of play; Tanghe says that’s too narrow. 

Anathema
Something strongly disliked or rejected. Tanghe says consilience was “anathema” to Huizinga. 

Anti-positivism
A stance against the idea that only scientific/empirical methods give real knowledge. Huizinga’s humanities lean anti-positivist. 

Arch-humanist
A very thorough or “paradigmatic” humanist—someone who strongly defends humanities’ autonomy from science. Used for Huizinga. 

Biology of play
Scientific study of play as an evolved, adaptive behavior found in animals and humans. Tanghe says this is foundational for any credible theory. 

Consilience (strong vs. soft)
“Jumping together” of knowledge across disciplines.

• Strong consilience = full integration of humanities into scientific frameworks.
• Soft consilience = humanities borrow and align with science where needed, without losing interpretive aims. 

Cultural maturity / declinism
The idea that cultures pass from youthful, playful beginnings to rigid, less playful “adult” phases; in Huizinga, modernity represents decline. 

Diachronic
Across time; historically developing. Tanghe says a scientific account might study play–culture relations diachronically. 

Ethology / ethological aims
Ethology = scientific study of animal behavior. Tinbergen proposed four aims (causation, development, function, evolution); Burghardt adds a fifth (private experience). 

Existential crisis (of the humanities)
A crisis of purpose and self-confidence: humanists feel their relevance and status have weakened in science-dominated universities. Not mainly a numbers / enrolment problem. 

False play
Huizinga’s term for modern “play” that is over-organized, professionalized, or mixed with serious power games; Tanghe thinks it’s an ad hoc patch. 

Geisteswissenschaften / geesteswetenschappen
German/Dutch for “human sciences” or humanities—disciplines studying meaning, mind, and culture (history, philology, philosophy). Geisteswissenschaften (German) and geesteswetenschappen (Dutch) both literally translate to "sciences of the mind" or "spirit sciences" and are generally understood in English as the humanities or liberal arts. Huizinga says play belongs here. 

High culture
Elite cultural forms (art, poetry, ritual, philosophy). Tanghe says Huizinga over-identifies culture with these, biasing his thesis. 

Idiographic vs. nomothetic
Two styles of inquiry:

• Idiographic = focuses on unique, particular cases (typical ideal of humanities/history).
• Nomothetic = seeks general laws (typical ideal of natural sciences). 

Liminality
A threshold / in-between state in cultural life. Mentioned via Thomassen in relation to modernity and play. 

Machismo view of play history
A critique (from Sutton-Smith) that Huizinga frames play mainly as masculine contest and combat. 

Neoteny (juvenilisation)
Evolutionary retention of youthful traits into adulthood. Tanghe uses it to explain humans’ lifelong playfulness. 

Organic metaphor (culture as organism)
Huizinga likens culture to a living being that grows, matures, and loses youthful playfulness. 

Puerilism
Huizinga’s term for a toxic modern blend of adolescence + barbarism: childish mass behaviour, trivial sensationalism, and “play” intruding into serious domains. 

Raison d’être
French: “reason for being.” Used for the humanities’ mission/purpose. 

Romantic pessimism / nostalgia
Huizinga’s mood of mourning a lost golden past; Tanghe sees this as driving the decline narrative. 

Science wars
Late-20th-century conflicts over whether scientific methods should dominate understanding of humans and culture. Tanghe places some humanists here. 

Self-handicapping
In social play (animal or human), stronger players restrain themselves so play can continue; shows play is often about relationship, not victory. 

Studia humanitatis
Renaissance term for humanist studies (grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, moral philosophy). Tanghe uses it to name the humanities tradition. 

Two cultures
C. P. Snow’s idea that humanities and sciences form separate intellectual cultures with mutual misunderstanding. A background frame for Tanghe’s argument. 

Verstehen / Erklären 

Verstehen seeks an interpretive, subjective understanding of social actions from the actor's point of view, while "explanation" Erklären aims for an objective, causal account based on general laws.

Urphänomen
Goethe’s term for a primary, irreducible phenomenon. Gombrich says Huizinga treated play this way to shield it from scientific analysis. 

The Echo in My Head Wasn’t Just Mine

 Dedicated to my co-travellers past, present and future

I sat down to think, quite proud of my mind,
Ideas were swirling, uniquely refined.
A vision! A flash! A spark in the gloom—
Till doubt tiptoed in and re-entered the room.

"Will it work?" I asked, chewing my pen,
"It's brilliant… or rubbish? Maybe again?"
I pondered, I paced, then peeked through the glass—
Were others stuck too in this question-mark class?

A colleague nearby was mumbling a rhyme,
Another was doodling, wasting good time.
Yet all of us sensed, like a brainwave ballet,
That something was forming beyond just "okay."

"Do they see what I see? Or see that I’m mad?"
"Is their silence support? Or do they think I’m a cad?"
"That idea of mine—did it land or just flop?"
"Should I press on with passion or bring it to a stop?"

But then came a chuckle, a nod, a loud "Wait!"
A merging of minds that recalibrates fate.
My half-baked metaphor met their sly twist,
And together we conjured a storm from the mist.

Their doubts danced with mine in a curious jig,
My tiny seed bloomed into something quite big.
Where once were lone thoughts in cerebral repose,
Now ideas linked arms like some well-written prose.

So I laugh at the myth of the lone genius myth,
That solitary lightning bolt struck by a “smith.”
Turns out that innovation’s a bit of a stew,
Made of "me" and of "you" and our shared point of view.

And feelings, oh feelings, those squishy old things,
Insecure trembles with hopeful heartstrings—
They mixed and they muddled till suddenly clear:
We’re braver together when thinking is near.

So here's to the magic of collective confusion,
The chorus of minds in a maelstrom collusion.
If I ever again feel too proud or too clever,
I’ll remember it’s we who make brilliance together.

Why Leaders Derail - Shadows of Success in a Changing World

 

The Paradox of Downfall

The downfall of leaders exerts a strange fascination. In every civilisation, stories are told not only of great leaders who built institutions or nations but also of how those same figures stumbled dramatically. The Athenians gathered to watch Oedipus and Agamemnon undone by fate; Elizabethans thrilled at Lear or Macbeth. In our age the theatre is different — not chorus and stage but press conferences, boardrooms, and social media storms — yet the drama is familiar. A leader rises, triumphs, and then falls, sometimes swiftly, sometimes through a slow erosion of credibility. Leaders rarely derail because they are mediocre. They derail because their very strengths become their undoing. Courage turns into recklessness, confidence into arrogance, vision into delusion. Aristotle described this as the excess of virtue; Shakespeare called it tragic flaw. In the twenty-first century, investor impatience, digital transparency, and relentless scrutiny accelerate the cycle of rise and fall. Derailment is not aberration but systemic risk. To understand leadership fully, we must study not only success but derailment — the shadow that follows achievement.

I. The Spectacle of Derailment: Recent Cases, Ancient Echoes

Contemporary business and politics abound with derailments. Carlos Ghosn, celebrated as Nissan’s saviour, was arrested in 2018 on charges of misconduct, his daring escape from Japan adding operatic flair to his downfall. Adam Neumann built WeWork into a global phenomenon, but erratic behaviour and governance lapses destroyed billions in value. Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank resigned amid conflict-of-interest allegations; Vishal Sikka of Infosys left after cultural clashes with founders; Byju Raveendran’s edtech empire unravelled under debt and mistrust. McKinsey (2022) found over half of CEO departures globally were unplanned, many forced by boards. PwC reported misconduct-related exits had nearly doubled in two decades. 

Political life mirrors this. Nixon, undone by Watergate; Berlusconi, consumed by scandal; Boris Johnson, felled by loss of party trust. The arc is ancient: hubris, blindness, retribution. Sophocles dramatised it, Shakespeare refined it, and modern headlines replay it. Derailment is not anomaly; it is archetype.

II. Literature on Derailment

Scholars have studied derailment through multiple lenses. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) pioneered systematic research. Lombardo & McCauley, and later Lombardo & Eichinger, showed derailers were not incompetence but strengths overplayed: ambition into self-serving behaviour, confidence into arrogance, detail into micromanagement. Their influential 'FYI: For Your Improvement' catalogued derailers and prescribed developmental assignments. Lombardo & Eichinger also advanced 'learning agility' — the capacity to learn from experience — as critical to avoiding derailment. Leaders high in learning agility recover from mistakes; those low repeat them.

Psychodynamic thinkers like Manfred Kets de Vries emphasised the unconscious. Leaders act out inner theatres shaped by childhood. Narcissists crave admiration and collapse without it. Perfectionists strangle teams with control. Paranoids alienate allies with suspicion. Clinical categories sharpen the view: narcissists brittle, sociopaths manipulative, psychopaths cold. Jung’s notion of the shadow applies: traits repressed resurface destructively. Freud’s repetition compulsion explains why leaders recreate old patterns until crisis forces rupture.

Developmental theorists reframed derailment as plateau in growth. Robert Kegan mapped adult meaning-making: socialised minds dependent on approval; self-authoring minds guided by internal compass; self-transforming minds integrating paradox. Nick Petrie distinguished horizontal growth (skills) from vertical growth (operating system). Leaders often collect horizontal tools but fail to grow vertically. Complexity outpaces capacity, and derailment follows. Wittgenstein’s dictum — 'the limits of my language mean the limits of my world' — captures the trap.

Elliott Jaques highlighted 'time-span of discretion': derailment occurs when cognitive horizon mismatches role complexity. Gillian Stamp extended this through her Matrix of Working Relationships and Tripod of Leadership. Leaders fail when they cannot shift relational stance — directive, consultative, systemic — as context demands. Derailment is often relational illiteracy as much as cognitive lag.

Barbara Kellerman identified seven bad leadership types: incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular, evil. Each represents a derailment path where leaders actively harm. Herminia Ibarra showed identity rigidity as risk: leaders clinging to outdated selves — entrepreneur, rescuer, insider — derail when context demands reinvention. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory adds nuance: derailment occurs when challenge overwhelms or bores capacity, driving anxiety or disengagement.

Nitin Nohria & Anthony Mayo emphasised historical context. Leaders succeed or fail depending on alignment with their 'era.' Ram Charan’s Leadership Pipeline describes derailment at career passages: from managing self to managing others, to managing enterprises. Sumantra Ghoshal stressed context and purpose: leaders who create toxic climates derail themselves and others. Together, these literatures show derailment is multi-causal: psychological, developmental, relational, systemic.

III. The Anatomy of Derailment

Five themes explain derailment. First, strengths overused. Virtue untempered becomes vice. Courage into recklessness, vision into delusion. Kalanick’s aggression built Uber and destroyed trust. Welch’s efficiency at GE sowed fragility. Aristotle and Shakespeare anticipated this: excess breeds downfall.

Second, failures of vertical growth. Leaders accumulate tools but resist transforming meaning-making. They plateau at self-authoring minds, unable to embrace paradox. Complexity outruns cognition. Icarus soars on the same waxen wings until they melt. Leaders fall when their interpretive grammar no longer maps reality.

Third, relational breakdowns. Leadership is trust. Boards, teams, stakeholders sustain leaders until confidence erodes. Vishal Sikka’s exit from Infosys reflected cultural dissonance more than competence. Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis deepened when regulators and engineers lost faith in executives. Gillian Stamp shows derailment often follows failure to shift relational mode: from authoritative to consultative, from transactional to systemic.

Fourth, psychological vulnerabilities. Under stress the inner theatre erupts. Narcissists lash out, sociopaths exploit, psychopaths corrode. Elizabeth Holmes embodied narcissistic fragility; Adam Neumann manic charisma; Carlos Ghosn paranoid control. Freud’s repressed returns, Jung’s shadow erupts. Leaders fall from what they deny.

Finally, systemic misfits. Organisations design derailment by poor governance, misaligned culture, collusive boards. Chanda Kochhar’s case exposed governance gaps. Infosys’ founder conflicts revealed cultural fissures. Jaques and Stamp remind us: derailment is often institutional as much as individual.

IV. Implications for Leadership Development

How can derailment be mitigated? First, early identification. Hogan Development Survey predicts derailers. Lombardo & Eichinger’s learning agility highlights who adapts and who repeats errors. 360-degree feedback surfaces blind spots before they metastasise.

Second, developmental ecosystems. Petrie prescribes heat experiences, colliding perspectives, deliberate reflection. Stamp’s tripod insists on balancing task, people, and systemic exposure. Leadership development must move beyond classrooms to crucibles that stretch identity.

Third, governance stewardship. Plato’s ship of state metaphor reminds us leaders need ballast. Boards must balance vision with restraint, guard against hubris, and anchor ethics. Madison’s checks and balances apply in corporations as in states. Boards that collude accelerate downfall.

Fourth, recovery and renewal. Derailment is not always terminal. Steve Jobs, ousted from Apple, returned transformed. Howard Schultz re-entered Starbucks stronger. Nandan Nilekani re-anchored Infosys. Eastern wisdom underscores renewal: Kabir likened life to a millstone grinding ego; the Gita teaches detachment from outcomes. Derailment can be crucible as much as catastrophe.

V. Closing Reflections: The Universal Drama

Derailment is archetype, not anomaly. Nietzsche warned of overreach, Kierkegaard of dread, Wittgenstein of limits. Indian sages counsel humility and detachment. Leaders derail not from mediocrity but humanity: ambition, vulnerability, bounded growth. Success magnifies both light and shadow. The task of leadership development is not flawless leaders — impossible — but systems where shadows are acknowledged, strengths tempered, growth sustained. Derailment teaches. It signals where growth stalls, where humility is absent, where renewal is required. To anticipate and learn from derailment is the deepest challenge of leadership in our turbulent age.

Greedom - -The Fine Line Between Self-Determination and Self-Indulgence

 Greedom – that sneaky love-child of greed and freedom – is the unofficial creed of our age. It promises the enterprising individual an intoxicating mix of liberty and luxury, as if the two were inseparable. In the gospel of Greedom, greed is rebranded as a virtue: an ambitious hunger that’s not sin, but self-determination. We exalt the go-getter who “takes what’s theirs”, clapping them on the back for their initiative – even as they quietly pocket more than their fair share. After all, why settle for mere freedom when you can have Freedom™ with benefits? Greedom winks and assures us: you can have it all and call it principle. It’s a mischievous notion, really, and it’s running rampant in the modern world.

It often starts innocently enough – with ambition. Picture a bright-eyed striver, the kind who devoured rags-to-riches stories as a kid and truly believes in the purity of self-made success. They want freedom in the noble sense: freedom from want, freedom to chart their own course, freedom to be their own boss. They hustle at their startup or side-gig, dreaming of changing the world (or at least their tax bracket). This is self-determination at its best – the scrappy entrepreneur or worker who puts in the hours to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In theory, it’s a beautiful thing. Who could fault someone for wanting to improve their lot and live free of limitations? Greedom stokes this fire, whispering “go on, you deserve more” – and at first it feels empowering, even righteous.

But watch closely: that pure flame of ambition can morph into a wildfire of avarice before you know it. Under the neon glow of consumer capitalism, our aspiring hero is bombarded with a million ways to spend and justify it. The market tees up freedom as a product on every shelf. “Express yourself (by buying our ultra-HD smart TV)!” “Choose any flavour of lifestyle you want (we have 87 brands of cereal)!” “take a break in Chechia, Galapagos, Fujiyama or Vietnam every few months! In the land of consumer plenty, choice masquerades as liberty. We’re told that buying more is the path to freedom – or at least to happiness – and we half believe it. Our ambitious individual, flush with a bit of success, starts equating spending power with personal power. After all, nothing says “I’m free” like the freedom to splurge on the latest gadget upgrade each year, right? It’s self-determination via shopping cart: a few clicks on next-day delivery to soothe the soul. Greedom chuckles here, slyly encouraging a little indulgence. Why not? They earned it! Thus begins the slippery slope: ambition feeding consumption, which in turn feeds a desire for even more.

Soon, the line between needs and wants blurs, and our go-getter finds themselves running faster on the capitalist hamster wheel. Enter the hustle culture – the shrine at which Greedom’s disciples worship. Here, burnout is a badge of honour and “busyness” becomes a lifestyle. Productivity gurus and startup CEOs preach the new Ten Commandments: Thou shalt rise and grind. Thou shalt sleep when you’re dead. Elon Musk himself ( famously and perhaps apocryphally ?) advised that “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”, suggesting that true success demands 80, 90, even 100-hour workweeks. In the cult of the startup, overwork is sanctified. Our once-idealistic individual now wears dark circles under their eyes as proudly as a priest wears vestments. Self-determination warps into self-exploitation – but it’s all for the dream, they insist. I’m doing this to be free. Free in the future, that is, if they ever get there without collapsing. Greedom smirks in the corner, offering a caffeinated toast to their efforts.

This hustle-hard ethos isn’t confined to would-be billionaires in Silicon Valley garages; it’s spread to every corner of the gig economy. The modern labour market often sells “flexibility” and “being your own boss” as freedom’s new frontier. Drive when you want, work in your PJs, be the captain of your Uber – what could be more liberating? But Greedom’s freedom is a funny thing. For many gig workers, that celebrated freedom often means freedom from stability, benefits, or a liveable wage. It’s a deal with the devil: no bosses, but also no safety nets. In truth, this system simply shifts risk and cost from companies onto individuals under the illusion of personal liberty. The result? A delivery driver or freelancer “free” to work 2 a.m. shifts, “free” to hustle every waking hour, and “free” to wonder if they’ll make rent this month. Greedom shrugs – the house always wins, and in this case the house is the platform or corporation that gets rich while individuals chase pennies in the name of autonomy. The commodification of personal liberty has turned freedom into something you buy: pay for your own health insurance, your own retirement plan, your own everything – congratulations, you’re free from the old 9-to-5, and free to fend for yourself.

If a few do manage to climb the gilded ladder of success, Greedom shifts the goalposts again. Wealth accumulates, and with it comes rationalisation. Ambition fulfilled can become a dragon’s hoard – yet our protagonist will insist it’s still about freedom. Now it’s “financial freedom,” a favourite term that cloaks hoarding as prudence. They’ll say: I’ve earned the freedom to never worry again. But one person’s financial freedom can mean 10,000 other people’s financial trap. Consider that the richest 1% of the world’s population now own roughly 43% of all global assets. In Greedom’s calculus, inequality isn’t a bug – it’s a feature, the natural outcome of some people’s superior drive. Our now-wealthy achiever might genuinely believe they deserve their giant slice of the pie because they worked so hard for it. Did they really need that much? In the fog of Greedom, the question rarely gets asked. The line between enough and too much disappears behind self-justification. After all, self-indulgence feels different when you call it “success”.

Look at the tech billionaires, the new royalty of our era, for the most extravagantly satirical illustration of Greedom. These folks have ridden ambition straight into the stratosphere – literally. Armed with obscene wealth and extreme self-belief, they dream up space fantasies while the rest of us deal with down-to-earth problems. Why settle for a mansion by the sea when you can have a private space station? One day it’s garage coding, the next it’s Mars or bust. They tout these extraterrestrial ambitions as humanity’s next chapter, but one can’t help noticing it looks a lot like escapism for the ultra-rich. (The Earth is getting a bit messy with pesky things like climate change and wealth taxes, so why not plan a getaway beyond the atmosphere?) Jeff Bezos – who at one point was the world’s richest man – took a brief joyride to the edge of space and upon landing thanked the people who really made it possible: “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this,” he said. It was a rare moment of blunt honesty in the theatre of capitalism. Here was Greedom in plain words – the freedom of a billionaire literally financed by the labours and loyalty of others. His workers toiled in warehouses timed by the second, his customers clicked “Buy Now” on cheap deals, and the reward for all that collective effort? A ten-minute rocket ride for one man. (He did offer his sincere thanks, if that counts.) Critics quipped that at least someone got a vacation out of all those unmet bathroom breaks and Prime membership fees.

Meanwhile, down here on Earth, wealth inequality widens into a chasm. The space barons and crypto kings promise that their audacious ventures will benefit all of humanity someday – colonizing Mars is apparently going to inspire the masses, and trickle-down technology will solve our problems – but forgive the sceptics for rolling their eyes. In practice, Greedom protects its own freedom first and foremost. The billionaire class gains literal freedom of movement (why be bound by gravity or national borders when you have your own rockets and superyachts?), as well as freedom from consequence. They can pollute and evade taxes under the banner of innovation and enterprise. They champion “free markets” and “freedom from regulation”, which often translates to freedom to do as they please while others clean up the mess. All the while, they remain curiously free from the everyday worries that plague ordinary people – like choosing between medicine or rent – because hey, they’ve got that covered. Greedom is a one-way street: limitless upside for those at the top, and “personal responsibility” for everyone else. As a dark punchline, the world even saw billionaire wealth surge by $2 trillion in a single year during a global crisis, while many struggled to stay afloat. It’s as if Greedom thrives on the credo that “greed will set you free”, at least if you’re rich enough.

Yet the rhetoric around all this remains as slick as ever. Political discourse in many countries has taken up a mantra of “freedom” that conveniently aligns with Greedom’s interests. We hear leaders wax poetic about freedom – freedom to choose, freedom from government interference, freedom this, freedom that. But too often this translates to deregulation and laissez-faire economics that give corporations and the wealthy free rein, while working folks find their own freedoms shrinking. (It’s hard to feel free when you’re juggling three gig jobs with no healthcare, or when you can’t afford to exercise your “freedom of choice” because all the choices are out of budget.) In the grand carnival of modern politics, freedom is the balloon animal twisted into whatever shape sells. Want to block a law that protects workers or the environment? Just call it an attack on “freedom” – the freedom of the market, the freedom of the job creators. It’s a cynical sleight-of-hand: self-indulgence at societal scale cloaked in the language of liberty. Greedom stands on the podium, hand over heart, proclaiming “Let freedom ring!” – but quietly thinking about how much money that ringing cash register is making.

In this sly, poetic farce we call contemporary life, Greedom walks a tightrope between inspiring and insidious. On one side is self-determination – the very real and beautiful freedom to pursue your dreams, to innovate, to prosper from your own efforts. On the other side is self-indulgence – the point at which success loses its compass and becomes an end in itself, demanding ever more at any cost. The line is thin and constantly shifting. An ambitious person might cross it without even noticing, cheered on by a society that equates net worth with moral worth. As we’ve seen, today’s world provides plenty of slippery footing: a backdrop of consumer excess, yawning wealth gaps, idolized billionaires, hustle propaganda, and liberty sold by the gig. It’s all too easy to start chasing a noble vision of freedom and end up mired in greed.

So here we are, living in the age of Greedom. It’s funny, it’s tragic, and it’s absurd all at once. We celebrate freedom with patriotic fervour, while quietly accepting that a CEO can earn in a day what a worker makes in a year (or in some cases, what a worker makes in centuries – at top companies the average CEO now makes about 285 times the salary of their typical employee, meaning the median worker would have had to start working in CE 1740 to catch up to one CEO’s annual pay). We chase the promise that anyone can make it if they try hard enough, even as wealth solidifies at the top and social mobility stalls. We’re told to keep consuming, keep hustling, keep believing – because that’s freedom. And hey, for a lucky few, it really is. They’ll ride the rocket of success straight into the stars, fuelled by a combustible mix of ambition and avarice.

For the rest of us, perhaps the task is simply to laugh (so we don’t cry) and to recognise Greedom for what it is. It’s a satirical mirror held up to our society’s face, reflecting how easily lofty ideals can be twisted by good old-fashioned greed. It urges us to ask: Where’s the line? How much is enough? And what happens to our humanity when freedom becomes just another word for “everyone for themselves”? These are serious questions – but this is a humorous elegy, after all. So we’ll end on a cheeky note: Greedom may let you reach for the stars, but don’t be surprised if, in the end, you’re left holding moon dust – and an invoice for the trip.