TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - Avarice (Greed)

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearers through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with an amazing man who's wrote an amazing book, The Seven Deadly Sins, and we are moving through this book. We are on the chapter of avarice or what some people may call greed. We're going to get into all of that.

Without any further ado, let me just go ahead and introduce Dr. David Solomon and give him a moment to introduce himself to people who might be new. Sure, George, thanks for having me back. This has been an interesting journey through my book, and I'm really enjoying it. So, yes, I am a professor of English and the director of undergraduate research and creative activity. at Christopher Newport University in Newport, Newport, Newport, Newark, New York, and have been teaching in higher ed for almost 30 years. And this book on The Seven Deadly Sins really grows out of a lot of the research of my entire career and my life. I study medieval religion, literature, and culture. And the book really is almost a summation of a lot of that.

So, yeah. Yeah, very nice. And it's, it's so well documented and written. This particular chapter, like the other chapters, it really allows the reader to follow some breadcrumbs into the way you think with so many different options from Chaucer to Gordon Gecko. And there's so many examples that are just weaved through time in different disciplines and stuff. I think you started with a pretty interesting quote by Einstein.

Do you remember what that quote was? I don't. You have it in front of you. You know what? I should have it too, but for some reason, I don't. I've got it here. He says, great forces rule the world, stupidity, fear, and greed. You know, this issue is one that's interesting.

I mean, a lot of people see the word avarice and it looks foreign to them. We really are talking about greed. Averis is the more traditional. word to use to describe this in the guise of the seven deadly sins, but it is again looking at another form of excess and it's excessive desire, but also excessive accumulation of stuff. It may be money, it may be material goods, it may be just the detritus of your life, whatever it is. it is an over-accumulation of those things. Do you think it matters which thing it is you accumulate? Like the sin of avarice or the idea of greed.

It is, you know, it destroys your soul a little bit. But do you think it matters which thing it is you hoard or you keep or you strive after? It might. You know, it's interesting that we're having this discussion today because I just I just had a discussion with my class last night about something very similar. We were talking about, I'm teaching a course this semester in museum studies and the courses I'm curating. And so the students have curated their own exhibition and have done a lot of reading by curators. And the piece that we read last night, the curator was talking about the fact that curators really deal with our world of overabundance, deciding what should we keep?

What do we not keep? What has value? What doesn't have value? And I think that that's really the question is how do we assess and how do we place value on things? You know, we talk about monetary value. We talk about sentimental value. What's the difference? And is one more important than the other? I mean, I've got plenty of things that I have kept. And I think most of us are like this. in my life, which I have because I've kept them because they have sentimental value. What does that mean? Do they have any monetary value? And does that matter? I mean, I've got thousands of books. You know, some of them are worth some money, but most are not. Most have value to me. And that's what becomes important. So how we decide what we're going to hold on to, what we're going to keep, what we're going to collect and why and I think that there is a way you know to to collect

things and I'm using that word in a very nebulous way that can be somewhat beneficial I mean I I like to think that I collect good friends such as such as yourself my friend George but there is a point at which I suppose anything like that can become problematic and in my class last night, that mention of the role of overabundance really got us into a discussion of how do we get our information? There's so much coming at us. It's an overabundance of data, which we've talked about before in a previous episode. And so I tested them yesterday afternoon. My class met last night, and I said to them, okay, I've got 16 of them sitting there. They've all got their laptops open.

I said, you can't Google this. I said, what's the news about Britney Spears? And six or seven of them immediately barked out. She's pregnant. And I said, that got through to you today. And you saved that in your memory, that you made room for that in your day and your mind. And think about all the other things that you didn't, that didn't get in there, it didn't get through. Now, sure, part of this is the general problem algorithms and social media and the way that that all operates.

But it really did kind of prove. It was startling to see their reaction because when they thought about it then, they said, oh, my God, I know that Britney Spears is pregnant, but I don't know, you know, what happened in the Ukraine today or, you know, something like that. And so I do think that there's a point at which that overabundance, the accumulation of, of stuff, information, things, whatever you want it to be, can become problematic, even if the initial intent maybe is positive. Yeah, I agree. It speaks volumes, too, to what information is worth to some people. It seems to me that, oh, well, this information is good.

I should have this information, but this other information is not. which brings us to our good friend Gordon Gecko that this guy believed greed is good. Yeah, I mean, you tell a beautiful story. The main character in the 80s film, Wall Street, Oliver Stone's classic film about greed, really, about Wall Street and the Wall Street of the 1980s.

And this attitude that Gecko played by Michael Douglas has, which is greet greed is a good thing. Now, the film itself, though, is really a kind of a monument to the antithesis of that, because in the end, we see it's not. Gecko does not come out of the film without going to jail. And even the main character, played by Charlie Sheen, has a problem where he really sort of, of experience as an interesting arc through the film. I just I just rewatched the film the other day.

It was on one of the movie channels and it's very interesting. He starts out the Charlie Sheen character really sort of at the bottom. He works his way all the way to the top, having been taken on by Gecko as a protege. And then in some ways he really surpasses Gecko. And he ends up in, and in a typical sort of Aristotelian fall at the end of the movie, just completely losing everything. But the difference is that he then essentially betrays Gecko and turns him in. And he, in some ways, escapes from his punishment, although morally he certainly has experienced an interesting sequence of events

that I think changes the character. And I think that's what a lot of people experience as well. I think that the people in general, if you accumulate a lot, I mean, we think about people who win the lottery, right? They suddenly win the lottery. And, I mean, studies, there's lots of studies. I mean, people who win those huge sums of money, everybody always thinks, well, that's going to solve all their problems

and make them happy. And oftentimes, they're miserable. Their marriages fall apart. they waste the money on things they they don't know how really they'd handle it how to deal with it and it oftentimes ends up being a big negative instead of a positive yeah it's it's it reminds me of what you said in the book about gordon gecko how it was actually the inversion of god like the unrestrained greed that is it's almost as powerful as it's such a powerful thing. Which man could possibly handle that?

I mean, he is a very satanic character in the film. Just his, he really seems to have no moral structure whatsoever other than making money. And that is really sort of the antithesis of God. And in some ways that it's set up, there is no God figure in the film that I can see. You know, Charlie Sheen's character is certainly not that. But it is a study in greed. It is a study in unrestrained greed. It reminds me of John Ronson wrote a book called The Psychopath Test.

And in that book, it's so fascinating to read this, you know, 21 question quiz that he put out. And it's, I don't know if it's magic or if it's tragic that the majority of people in positions of authority seem to score perfect on that test, you know, perfect meaning they're a psychopath. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's these people, it seems to be, I don't know if it's the people that gravitate towards those positions or if it's the actual position and that which comes with it, it allows for the degradation of empathy and morality. Yeah, it's a, which came first chicken or the egg, right?

You know, it's hard to tell. I think that there are some people who certainly have personalities that are predisposed to that. and that may be the driving factor. It will be interesting to look at Young's personality types and see how that all falls out there, which, you know, would be telling. But I do think that there are certain things to put people's personalities that lend them towards this kind of behavior. And really all of the sins more so than others.

I mean, certainly there are situations of, of, of possibility and of convenience where things happen. But in most cases, these are somewhat premeditated, I would think. Yeah, I was going to ask you, it reminds me, do you think that greed in the American sense is different than greed in other parts of the world? I think that, I mean, we do have an interesting history in this country. It is the close affiliation of American democracy with capitalism right from the beginning. And so I think in this chapter, I think I mention and quote the Toakville, who mentions what he sees in America, which is basically this kind of unrestrained greed, that we are people that really operate that way.

And so some of it is cultural, to be sure. Certainly in other parts of the world, you don't see this as strong as a strong a trait in people. And people are much more philanthropic and empathetic. It does seem to be, I don't want to say it's uniquely American, but it certainly does seem to be an American trait. Yeah, I just wanted to read this piece that you put in by Tocqueville that it just really sums it up. A taste for material well-being. He's talking about on the greed of Americans or on the personality of Americans when he came to see.

A taste for material well-being which makes them perpetually unhappy with what they have in the quest for what they do not yet possess. How true is it's no more true than it is today. It's it's it's just so in your face. It's it blows my mind a little bit. I don't it's that sense. And I think the Toadville saw that that Americans are never sort of happy, right? It's always about I want more. I want more.

I want more. I want more. And that is something which has led us to, I mean, and I talk about this in the chapter on gluttony, you know, being an obese society. And certainly as we have entered the 21st, century being increasingly a society that is really economically socially polarized when it comes to the haves and the haves nots right i mean that's the whole one percent idea um and that is is probably more evident today than it ever has been before i mean even if we go back to the late 19th century

with the age of of carnegie and people like that um you know to look at the way that they gain their wealth made their wealth and then what they did with it is quite different from what most people do today. I mean, the fact that you can go around this country and identify libraries that are Carnegie libraries, because they were built with Andrew Carnegie's money. And, you know, I taught for years at Russell Sage College in upstate New York, and Russell Sage was a big railroad guy in the late 19th century made his fortune on the railroads as many of these early folks did and by all accounts was a very unpleasant human being and his his wife mrs sage the apocryphal story is when he died he left her all of his wealth and for a while she was

actually the wealthiest woman in the world of the country excuse me margaret olivia slocum sage and And the apocryphal story is that he hated the idea of educating women. So she founded a women's college in his name. Maybe true, may not be true, but it's a good story. But we do know that he was very unpleasant. I mean, when she died, she wasn't even buried near him. They're buried in different cemeteries. She didn't be close to him.

But you could go around the country and see, as a colleague of mine has done on occasion, and be in different cities in this country. And you will find occasionally you'll walk into a park and there'll be a park and there'll be a plaque that it was, you know, the money to build this park was donated by Margaret Olivia Slocom Sage. I mean, she was the wealthiest person in America for a while and she gave it all away. We don't see that as often today, although this recent philanthropic project that people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have signed on to is, I think, an effort to replicate that.

Yeah, I hope so. Sometimes the cynic in me says, wow, what a great way to write out and I have to pay taxes. When you take your money and you put it into a foundation and then that foundation starts making money. Yeah. You know, I hate becoming too cynical like that. It's way better to, you know, believe in what someone tells you until you otherwise have evidence against that. And so all of the, really all of the great institutions in this country, are the result of philanthropic activity.

I mean, look at the Smithsonian Institution and James Smithson. I mean, all of these big institutions, we only have them because very wealthy people gave money in order to make them happen. And so, you know, we've always had this sort of love-hate relationship with those who are sort of obscenely wealthy because it's so different from most of us that we can't comprehend it. And by the same token, without them, we wouldn't have public libraries in this country.

Yeah, it's in some ways it seems to me that giving is the only antidote to greed. And people who really have a lot of money probably at some point in time come to see money as a total different entity than someone like you or I or the majority of people. I can't imagine the family members that come out of the woodworks or the people around you, no longer being friends, but being people that want something. It would change you as a person, right? Well, yeah, and it would make you start to doubt their motives, right? Which is really just sort of horrible. But, I mean, you could see how people would do that.

But, I mean, you're right. I mean, and, you know, if I can go back to the middle ages for a moment, you know, somebody like Augustine, he, argued that really the sin that was committed in the Garden of Evil was what he called cupiditas cupiditas was basically a love of things that can be lost so what we would call material things right it's things that are not going to last they are and in an in an augustinian context that means not going to last eternally he countered that so the opposite of that for him was caritas which most christians would recognize as being

love, but really in Augustine's text in his book on Christian doctrine, where he talks about this in detail, he refers to that as selfless love. So you sort of have these two opposites. Selfless love is the opposite of love of things that can be lost. And the one is a kind of carnal love, according to Augustine, and the other is a spiritual love. And of course, he is in favor of embracing the spiritual love, caritas, selfless love. And I think that that is where the giving comes from, the person who gives when they don't even have a whole lot, right? I mean, that's always when we're so incredibly touched when that happens because that person

has the most to lose. whereas somebody who is, you know, very wealthy giving away something, it's like, oh, well, you know, the cynic and us says, well, it's a drop in the bucket. You know, that was a, that was two hours work for them and, you know, whatever that means. So, but I do think that, you know, if we go back to the original ideas of these things, we, we learn a lot. So greed is love of things that can be lost. They're not going to last. And in some sense, you know, I was thinking about this as I was preparing for our talk today. And we've mentioned and talked a lot about the Ten Commandments as sort of a code for Western society and the very basic building blocks of Western jurisprudence.

And of course, one of the Ten Commandments is, is thou shalt not covet what thy neighbor has, right? And I thought, I was like, wait a moment, what is it? What's the difference in coveting and greed? And so I went to the Oxford English Dictionary, my go-to for these kinds of things. And the word covet means to desire eagerly. It's a desire for goods of any kind. And the Bible, the OED even says, often understood in the terms of Genesis, as Coppititas, desire for goods of any kind, whereas coveting in Hebrew is more related to envy, which is a different sin.

So if I covet what you have, it's not necessarily I want to own it. It's I envy that you have it. And there's a subtle difference there, because the one implies, you know, okay, I want to have that. the other is well i'm just i'm i'm i'm envious of what you have it's not that i want it i mean i might want it but but it's not that i'm going to even try to get it it's just that i envy the fact that you have it's not that i want it there's a little there's a little bit of a distinction there right yeah i think there's a big distinction it comes down to a whole different root cause you know you know there could there could be plenty of reasons why you envy somebody versus

if you want something, you think that that thing would make you better. If you envy somebody, it's maybe you feel inferior to them or something along those lines. It should be sure. And we'll talk about envy because it's a later sin. But, you know, I think envy often comes into play when it's something that you can't have. So I might envy the fact that, you know, Rory McElroy is a great golfer. I'm not a great golfer, right? So I envy that in him.

And that's a different sort of emotional sense than greed, which is, you know, oh, I want to play golf 24-7, right? Because that's possible, right? That's possible. I'm not going to be as good as Roy McElroy, and so I envy him. Yeah. And it's, I think it's worth pointing out that. All of these sins are like a branch on a different tree. They're really, they're tied closely.

And if you slip into one, you could very slip into the next one. Absolutely. So it's, it's worth, ladies and gentlemen, that alone is worth buying this book so that you can see which different tree may or which different branch you find yourself climbing on sometimes. Well, and we've talked about the fact that, I mean, in the Middle Ages, the depiction of this was that it is a tree of vices, right? that pride is the trunk and all of the other vices grow out of that. And it is interesting to see how they might be connected. Or, you know, one branch is sort of peripheral to another. You know, it's interesting because if you look at some of those illustrations

and medieval manuscripts of the tree of vices, I often think about what that would look like if a medieval monk were to redo that today in 2022, there probably would be a pretty top-heavy tree. We have a lot, many more vices than they, they certainly probably dreamt of. Yeah, we'd have a whole forest of them out there. Yeah, probably. It's so funny how there's so many references to trees in,

in the biblical or scriptures, be it the tree of life or the tree of vices or your family tree, you know, it goes on. I wanted to come back to this idea of America and Tokeville, and greed. You have done something that I, you've done a lot of things that I really enjoyed in this chapter, but specifically the idea of the symbology on the dollar, the pyramid and the gap in it. Could you tell people about that a little bit? Sure. So the dollar bill, which fewer and fewer people see because nobody actually uses his money anymore. But if you turn over the dollar bill

and you look at the symbol of the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, you will see that. You will see that that is constructed in a very intentional way. You still with me, George? You froze up. You there? No sound. How about now? There you are.

Okay, nice. Yeah. Much better. Get to see the... So we left up... The headphone list, George. Yes. So...

Yeah, it's much better. The symbols on the back of the dollar bill. I mean, the dollar bill was designed by a guy named Charles Thompson in 1782, that seal, the great seal of the United States. And it is a pyramid of 13 levels, supposedly the 13 colonies, that leads up to the eye of Providence, which is basically the eye of God. And the pyramid was said to be a symbol of American strength and durability, but the pyramid doesn't actually reach all the way to the eye.

There's a gap between the top, the penultimate level and the eye. And the idea is that that is where we have to make that leap of faith. So this idea that reason is going to get you everywhere. You know, in the book I go through this in greater detail. That really the first levels are about reason and the age of reason. There's a lot of numerological significance in the numbers there, 13 and 21 and 1776. And then, but that last bit where you're going to make that leap to the eye of God is going to have to be a kind of a leap of faith. But the pyramid, you know, symbolically in history, I mean, in ancient Egypt, the pyramid was a symbol of wealth, symbol of wealth and power.

And here were early Americans using that on their money. and it has endured. We still have it today. But the interesting thing here is that there's a lot of, well, I don't want to say Christian imagery, but there is a lot of sort of traditional Judeo-Christian imagery involved in that, the back of the dollar bill. And I think what's happened over time is that we have moved away from that. We've moved away from having religion at the center of our culture.

The same way that cities as they moved forward in history moved away from, in the Middle Ages, the cathedral was at the center, right? Now the center of most big cities are financial centers. And so we've almost built that monument to greed and made that the center of our cities. we're no longer as I say is it a cathedral that that's that's at the center but it is it is problematic to be sure and I don't know what the solution to it is I mean these are basically monuments to to to Maymon right to to greed and wealth and and we we do we we seem to worship it. Yeah, it seems like that gap between the pyramid and the eye has just grown so far. I heard an interesting quote from Joseph Campbell one time. It says you can actually see the idea of God change by

going to one of these ancient cities where it used to be the castle was the center and people worship that and then the church or the cathedral and now we're over here to this, you know, the financial towers of London or whatever it is. It's yeah. It's crazy to think about. And it's absolutely right. I mean, you know, you see it more, of course, if you go to cities in Europe and and Central Asia, which are older than cities in the U.S., but you're right. I mean, if you go to someplace like London where, you know, in its day, yes, you're right. I mean, the castle of the king was the center of everything,

and then eventually became the church, the cathedral, was the center of everything. And now it is the financial part of the country. and financial and political. So maybe we just need to build a huge library in front of every city now. I'll make it the biggest tower there. People will worship books. To look at what the tallest structure is in a given city, right?

I think it tells you a lot about what people are valuing. I mean, for the longest time, of course, I mean, the World Trade Center was not only the tallest structure in New York City, but one of the tallest structures in the world. And what was that place? what was the World Trade Center. It was a trade center. It was all about commerce. Yeah. It's interesting, too, when we talk about the symbology of money. I think you go on later in the book to say that that gap also in the eye of providence represents the fact that you'll never achieve, you know, divine knowledge or rationality through money. You can get here, but you'll never be able to make it. It won't give you that. Right. Yeah, I mean, and that goes, that's actually a medieval idea, which is, I mean, you can't attain nosis, divine knowledge. You can't attain that kind of level of spiritual oneness through reason. You can, reason will get you so far. But then you have to take that, that stereotypical leap of faith in order to get the last part. And that's very difficult for most people to do.

to make that leap. It's even, even folks who are engaged in the, the religious life, even today, oftentimes have that difficulty. I know I have a very close friend who is a Sistercian monk in Massachusetts, and I spend a lot of time at the monastery there with him and the guys, as we call them. And they are, of course, increasingly old because people aren't going into that kind of life. anymore. There's very few who are young, but it's interesting because he will tell me stories about guys who will come in and want to devote themselves to that kind of a life. And they have a pretty stringent regiment that they have to go through quite a few years of training and testing, quite honestly. There's a lot of psychological testing to make sure this is the right place

for them and the right thing for them to do. And a lot of them don't make it. And I see oftentimes in those guys, it oftentimes is that inability to make that last leap, right? Reason brings you so far, but then you need to just trust and make that last leap and they just can't do it. And so they leave. They don't continue. Yeah. I wish people were much more, and myself included, I'm trying to learn more. but I think there's so much to be said about the wisdom of symbols and what they convey to us.

And it's weird that we have that on the dollar. But most people, like you said, we don't really use money. But here it is in front of you. It's like this is, you can wall yourself off right here, but you'll never make this last faith right here. Well, and even the symbolism just of money itself, right? I mean, you could do a whole podcast on that, right? I mean, looking at the symbolism of this piece of paper that, that for some reason is worth a dollar, $100, $1,000, I mean, whatever it is.

You know, that and checks, right? I mean, they're all symbols. As we moved away from using actually gold and other things to actually barter that have worth, we use these symbols for the money. And I've always thought it was kind of strange, right? And unless you really study and look at money historically and go back to the ancient world and look at the way that they sort of did business. I mean, some of the first, the earliest writing that we have are clay tablets that basically are receipts for commercial transactions. And so that has always been at the heart of really who we are as human beings, I guess.

And it's just when it runs unrestrained and rampant that it becomes ugly. Yeah, it's really quite ridiculous. Have you ever thought, like, let's say George Monty comes over and he does, he builds a wall for David Solomon. And then I present you with a bill for $100. And then you reach in your pocket and you give me a $100 bill. You know, like, now who, does that mean that you owe me money or does I owe you? There's all these bills going around. But we don't really ever pay anything off.

No, no, I mean, and, and, you know, if, if you look at it from that, you know, then you could get into the whole question of credit and, and the way that credit has, you know, almost destroyed our, our society with credit card debt and, and student loan debt and mortgage debt, right? I mean, you know, we, our, our capitalist culture is based on borrowing money and then paying it back, you know, I mean, it's, it's odd that, that usury is looked at so poorly in the Bible and look down upon in so many of the world's religions and we practice it every day. I think it was our good friend

Alan Greenspan who said he actually found a flaw in the way he sees the world so. Yeah. That's so funny. Sorry about that. Just found a flaw. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Whoops. Oh, man. So here's one. If we can go back in time a little bit. How about the story between Jeffrey Chaucer and the partner? Can you tell people about that? I thought that was a fascinating way to get people into this. Yeah, I mean, I chose two pieces of literature to talk about in this chapter,

just really just at random, to be honest. One is the partner's tale by Jeffrey Chaucer from the Canterbury Tales. And briefly, the partner who tells this tale, he is by profession he is a professional partner he goes around in the countryside and for money he will pardon you of your sins he is completely corrupt he makes no bones about that he the fact that he is corrupt he really has no authority to be doing this it is he carries with him supposed relics that he will sell you I think he I think he says he has a piece of the Virgin Mary's veil, and he'll sell you those and it will then help to absolve you

of your sins. Well, the partner's tale in Chaucer, the tale the partner tells is a tale of three good friends who lose a friend and decide that they're going to go out and find death because he has taken their friend. Along the way, drunk out of their minds, they stumble upon this cash of, I think it's gold coins. And they find this and decide that they're going to split it up. But it's the middle of the day and they really don't have a plan for transporting this. It's very heavy. So they're going to wait. And while they wait, each one of them plots against the other, to kill the other so that they can have more of the pot. And in the end, of course, all three of them die as a result of their plotting.

And the pardoner's moral for his tale is, as he says, what it always is in his sermons, which is money is the root of all evil. Grieve is the problem. Now this, of course, is ironic in Chaucer because the partner himself is guilty of this, and he makes no effort to try to hide that. And so, you know, I always read that tale and wondering, you know, what is Chaucer trying to tell us here? What's he saying about greed? What's he saying about friendship?

Because these three guys are supposed to be good friends. And I'm not sure I've ever been able to figure it out. The tale was adopted then in the 20th century and adapted to the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which people may know with, oh, who is in that? Humphrey Bogart is it? I think it's Bogart. I think so, yeah. And it's the same tale. The three guys are going to make off with this money and they end up plotting against each other to knock each other off

so they can take away more money than the other guy. So it none of this and and Chaucer's tale is told as as an exemplar as with a moral But I've always had trouble and I and my students have always had trouble how do you accept the moral from the partner when he's guilty of the very thing that he's preaching And maybe that conundrum is sort of part of the point is that it's difficult You know what is what is the old phrase? you know, people live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, right? And maybe it's this attitude

and Chaucer is telling us that really we shouldn't have anybody who sermonizes to us and preaches to us because no one's perfect. Maybe that's it. I don't know. I don't know. I wish I had the answer. That's why I still teach, because I don't have the answers. But the other piece of literature that I use in this chapter is a more moderate,

an example, which is Saul Bellow's novel Seize the Day, which was first published in, I guess it's the late 50s, early 60s. It was Bellow's first novel, Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize novelist. And it is a story about a young man, Tommy Wilhelm, who's down on his luck and who goes to see his retired and very wealthy father, who was a doctor, and basically ask him for him. help, financial help, but also emotional help and support. And in the process, Tommy gets taken by a sheister and loses what little money he actually has left. His father essentially disowns him.

And the final scene in the book, Tommy is running through the city looking for the guy who hoodwinked him. and he stumbles into a funeral. And as he walks up to the coffin at the front of the chapel, he breaks out in sobs, he breaks out crying. He doesn't know the guy who's in the coffin, and he really is crying for himself, crying for humanity.

And I've always read that final scene as both a low point for Tommy Wilhelm, but also the beginning, a new beginning, it's a rebirth. All that crying is symbolic of baptism, all that water, and that he's going to come out of this. We don't see it. The novel ends. And so we're left to wonder about, you know, what is his state? But it sets up a very interesting sort of dichotomy in the book. I mean, Tommy's father, if not guilty of greed, he is only focused on money and success.

He lies about his son's successes to his friends at the retirement home and boasts about money that's been made that hasn't been made. And when Tommy talks about things that are important to him spiritually and personally, his father really wants to hear nothing about it. And instead it's about, well, how are you going to support your family? What are you going to do? And as a result, he is easily taken in by this con artist, to whom he gives his last remaining money to supposedly invest. And the con artist disappears.

and Tommy is left with absolutely nothing. And so it too, just like Chaucer, is a morality tale. It is a real depiction of wealth and greed in 20th century America, mid-20th century America. And I still think the story still has relevance today. I still have taught the novel and students can relate. they understand. They can see what time he's going through. Yeah, it seems there's so many interpretations.

When I was reading it, I was thinking about, maybe this is telling you that if you chase money, you know, you are going to find yourself like his father. It can turn you into his father, like someone who just sees money as money in such lying because that's all that matters. And I don't want to talk about these other things that do matter because I don't know any of that stuff.

And I've never given myself there. Yeah, I mean, part of it is that that old adage about you become what you, what you most want, what you most desire, right? And in many instances, of course, that's not a good thing. But I do think, you know, as you say, I mean, we've touched on this in other episodes. It is interesting in the ways in which we avoid talking about what really are the important things. and focus on as augustine would say the things that just don't last um and that's just part of our the problem of modern man i think and woman um that we focus too often on on the things that really don't have lasting importance and i don't know if it's because we've become myopic and we just can't see it

I don't know if it's a choice. I tend to think it's more a characteristic of the culture in which we live. And so it's difficult for us to separate from that. I mean, we talk all the time about work-life balance, right? Work-life balance. I mean, it's ironic. I have a book sitting on my desk here that I just got the other day, which is the Harvard Business Review Guide to Work Life Balance,

because I'm so attractive. But here is something at my desk at work, right? I mean, maybe that's not where it should be. But we really struggle with that, and part of that goes back to what the Tockville said, which is, you know, part of that's just the American way. I mean, no other culture on the planet works as many hours a week as we do. no other culture on the planet

wastes and refuses to take vacation as much as Americans do. I mean, I forget there was a study several years ago about the number of vacation hours that Americans squander. We just don't use it. We give it vacation, but we don't take it. And then even when we do, what do we do?

What does vacation actually look like? And I'm as guilty of it as anybody. I'm not trying to say that I'm not but it is a struggle it's an ongoing struggle I think of being an American in 2020

yeah it's I was I was reading I don't have the book in front of him but I think it was John Ruskin or something like that he was a middle was it that the middle age or somewhere around the 19th century

okay 19th century Early nights, late 18th. He had some fascinating ideas about where we were going and some counter ideas about what was going to happen. And, you know, he really brought up this idea of work-life balance. And it just made me think of that when you spoke about us as Americans moving down this road of excess consumption. And it's so weird, too, how we talk about especially individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies and CEOs and CEOs and board. of directors. We talk about this idea of using less and sustainability, but all the business models are built on excess consumption. So today you see less is more, but you still pay more money.

You get the same size bag, but half the stuff in there. You know, it's still a weed infecting. Less, more, but more of less, right? It is. And of course, we're running through this right now with the inflation rates skyrocketing and the fact that, you know, just the staples of every day life, groceries, the grocery prices are going through the roof. And in many ways, in many cases, what companies are doing is in an effort to not raise the price, they shrink the package. So they actually are raising the price. It's just your perception of it is not that, right? I forget there was a comparison several years ago of the size of cereal boxes. If you go back and look at cereal boxes from the 1970s and 80s and compare them today,

and see how much cereal you're actually getting for the money that you're spending. The boxes have shrunken size, and of course the price has gone up. Yeah. It's so weird how things happen at certain times. And as we're talking about this particular sin, and it got me thinking about the book, The Seven Deadly Sins, which is a fantastic book. Everybody should check it out.

And I don't know if it's, it seems beautiful, but also a little frightening to me for us to be going so in depth about all these sins and seeing where we are right now as a world. I want people to read this book and listen to what we have to say. However, I can't help but think, like, maybe we are doing this for a reason bigger than we have any idea. There's a real opportunity that these things we're talking about are going to be needed to be talked about by. society really quick. I think so. And I mean, you know, if listeners sort of hang in there with all seven sins and we get to the conclusion, I mean, I do have some, you know, concluding remarks

and recommendations on what we need to do to sort of set ourselves on the right path. You know, the idea that we can make these changes overnight is foolhardy because it ain't going to happen. it's like anything else with a with a with a change that's needed in culture culture change takes a long time it does not happen overnight but nevertheless you do need to have buy-in from your audience as it may be that we are going to dedicate ourselves to that culture change as slow as it may take but i mean what's the the line you know every long journey starts with a single step right um we're not going to anywhere unless we start and we really do need to start I mean we talked about last week the problems with the environment as those were related to gluttony and we see it as well in this chapter on

greed I mean the environment effects of greed have this been mind-boggling and and just from the perspective from the standpoint and I get into this in the chapter and talking about about the phenomenon it really is a phenomenon to me of hoarding right of people just having lots of stuff just to have stuff and what that means and now we've got you know as is a good capitalist society we've got people who are willing to jump in and you know well pay me 20 bucks and I'll help you organize your stuff right the Marie condo organizing principle that the Japanese woman who basically has this cottage industry now and these companies that have popped up where they'll you know you call a hundred number and they'll drive up

and take away your stuff and your junk right um you don't want this anymore we'll come take it but you got to pay them for it um which is kind of funny that you're paying somebody to take away your stuff but uh it it's it's a significant problem this as i said going back to the beginning of our discussion today it's about over abundance um we have too much We don't know, and we don't know what to do with it. We don't know what to keep and what not to keep. We don't know what's of value. You know, I mean, if you're familiar with the Marie Kondo philosophy,

the idea is that you look at a thing and ask whether it, quote, unquote, sparks joy, right? And if it doesn't spark joy, then you either give it away or donate it or toss it or toss it out. But a big part of that is a very obviously Eastern sort of intention of meditating and thinking about these things to think about, well, what does that mean for something to spark joy in me? And it is a very personal thing because obviously what has that effect on me may not have that effect on you. And I think that that's one of the freeing things about what she says, which is. It's not about just some objective value that things have, which is probably why people have flocked to it. But of course, it's also...

Well, hopefully it's enriched some lives and some people as well, you know, when people can find something like that that's worthwhile to help them live a better life. To be sure. Yeah. You know, it's being from the West, it seems like we always want to ask why. Why?

And we can reach into the DSM-5 and look at some of these reasons why. Or, you know, you tell a pretty interesting story about, you know, some survivors from the Holocaust and the prescribed hunger. I thought that was, I had to set the book down for a minute. You know, can you want to share a little bit about like prescribed hunger and artificial scarcity? Yeah. So, I mean, this comes out of a lot of Holocaust studies and Holocaust memoirs. of survivors. And if you look even at something like Spiegelman's mouse, you see this because

you start to understand why certain people keep everything. And it became a cultural thing. So, for example, I mean, my grandmother who did not go through the Holocaust, she was in the U.S. already by this point. But still, I think it was a cultural thing. She kept, and a lot of our grandmothers did this when we were kids, right?

I mean, she kept brown paper and string. She had a closet full of the stuff. It was the kind of thing that packages used to come wrapped in. It was this heavy brown paper and this sort of string, this twine. And it was always the attitude that, well, you never know

when you're going to need this someday. And so we better keep it. And that kind of attitude about existence really does come out of this experience of the survivors in the camps, not knowing where their next little piece of bread or anything is going to come from. And so they just started saving everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, there's, I think in the, in the DSM manual, you also spoke about it maybe being tied to memory or as an extension of yourself somehow. Yeah, well, hoarding seems to be, I mean, hoarding is certainly a psychological issue, right?

Yeah. People who do hoard, and there's something psychological behind it, and the DSM now acknowledges that. And there is something that they, that they refer to as hoarding disorder. but it can also become an extension of memory. So oftentimes people who hoard things have had some sort of trauma in their lives, which has caused them to sort of just misfire. And their memory of something either isn't enough or it needs to be reinforced by a physical thing that they insist on hanging on to.

and it might be, you know, and then it gets out of control. You know, again, my students last night, we talked about this a little bit because we were talking about this overabundance question. And they were talking about their being, they said there was a big difference between somebody who has kept every Coke can that he's drank from. And, you know, museums keeping art from the 16th century, right? I mean, we were making some of something of a comparison. between those things and the fact that we just don't have enough room for all this stuff. And there is something different there, but they both are in some ways extensions of memory. I mean, the one might be an extension of personal memory, porting Coke cans.

The other is an extension of cultural memory and keeping this artwork and keeping these artifacts of cultures which are gone by in order to to remember them. I mean, that, after all, is what the Holocaust museums are all about, right? Is about remembering. I mean, most of them, their motto was never forget. There was a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times, which was just so startling, sponsored by about a dozen Holocaust museums about the situation in Ukraine. And it was incredibly telling.

And it was again, you know, don't forget. Remember what happened. And by remembering what happened, we hopefully could prevent it from happening again. And their fear, of course, is that it is happening in the Ukraine at the moment. But they felt the need to speak out. It was a very interesting full-page ad in the Times on Sunday. Yeah, like the spiraling of history, it seems to rhyme. And hopefully we learn a little bit from each time or we're able to, you know, that's why I often wonder if the idea of storytelling, be it hero stories or mythologies are better than books because it's something acted out, passed down.

It's made to be repeated perfectly for the next person who's presenting it. and it seems to hold the memories, or at least the morality or the moral of the more, better than an interpretation of a book. Well, it's that oral tradition, right? Yeah. And in some ways, you know, some of the stories that we most clearly remember

are the ones that we are told, even if it was just having somebody, a parent read a book to us when we were a child, right? That auditory experience and that creation of imagery in your own mind that makes something, come alive in a way that it doesn't perhaps when it's just written down. Although, you know, I mean, I'm certainly, and as are you, a staunch defender of reading books, but there is certainly something to be said about that oral tradition. And perhaps it's why we have this huge

explosion at the moment in podcasts, right? Yeah. I mean, all these podcasts are telling stories. and people are listening. We hope. Yeah. I agree. How are you doing on time? I'm good. I'm good.

You good? Okay. Let's cover a little bit more than I want. Okay. This is a, I love Joseph Campbell. I love Mitz. I love storytellers.

I find so much wisdom in there. And you give a great quote, kind of on the acquisition of wealth, but a quote from Joseph Campbell that you give is, what destroys reason is passion, the principal passion and politics. is greed, and that is what pulls you down. Can you dissect that a little bit? Maybe unpack that? Well, I mean, it's this, it's an age-old battle between reason and passion. It's something which is not

necessarily new, but certainly, as Campbell says, the principal passion in politics is greed. It is about more, more, more. And that is really what seems to, to a, to a, affect us the most and infect us the most. You know, it's interesting that if you go back and read, for example, Aristotle's politics and read about what politics really meant in the Greek world. It is not what we talk about today, what we talk about politics. And it would really be quite helpful if we could get back to some of that, away from politics being purely about power and authority and instead being about principles of civic engagement and civic unity. We have moved far away from that. It was interesting. There was, again, an op-ed on

Sunday's times about this. And the author mentioned that we no longer live in America that's divided red states and blue states, but we really are living in a world which is divided red and blue. We've become polarized, and we're talking about politics. It's politically polarized. And the fear, of course, is that we're becoming, we're growing so far apart from each other that it's going to be very difficult to come back together again. We talk all the time in the news about bipartisanship in our country. And we don't have that anymore. We don't have anything that even looks like bipartisanship.

And for many of us, you know, the most that we can remember of it is from when we were maybe children and maybe not even then. But this idea that people will work together for a common good, that's what Aristotle's politics is about. That's what democracy is supposed to. to be about if you read about it in ancient Athens and instead what it's become as as Campbell says is it's a heck read and that's what pulls us down that's what really destroys us yeah it seems like we're running from the very thing that would free us the ability to see yourself and the other or the ability

to see how similar we are versus comparing ourselves and coveting and and and thinking that if I just had more, I'd be this. But that's such a, it's such a false premise and it's such a destructive idea to think that any one thing would make you something else. Like you make you. And I get it. I mean, I fall into the trap all the time. Like I see people that have so much more.

And then my brain is like, wow, you know, how come they have that? And it's just this spiraling rabbit hole of nonsense that it's difficult to get out of sometimes. You know, and I think everybody finds themselves in that place. matter where you are on the spectrum. Well, there's something somewhat unique about us as human beings that instead of looking at the positives, we look at the negatives, right? So instead of looking at how much we have, we look at what we don't have and what you have that I want.

It's a curious thing. It's a curious thing about not being, and I don't want to go down the, the, rabbit hole, but it is partially about not being grateful for what one has and not appreciating that and focusing on that instead of focusing on what you don't have. And again, to go back to the just the fundamental split between East and West, I mean, there's an Eastern philosophical approach versus the Western, right? Right. The four noble, the four noble truths of the Buddha that you write about. Absolutely. The desire is the thing that makes us miserable, right? that's what the Buddha says yeah you know but there is a solution he also says you know we can get

out of that but it's it's it's difficult it's going to be a lot of work we have to dedicate ourselves to it and again in our our particularly um western world of instant gratification it ain't going to happen overnight you know we think you know oh well i'll go on a retreat and i'll I'll do everything I need to do for the long weekend and I'll meditate and I'll get a mud bath and a massage and everything will be fine. And that's just not the way it works. This is a lifelong pursuit. And again, following from what Jung says, it's that long journey to individuation. And as Young said, and this drives my students nuts.

They always will say, well, did Jung ever achieve it? And I say, I don't know, I don't know that he would say that he did. And then so the reaction is, well, that's just crazy then. You know, why would you want to see this if it's not achievable? And I think that it aligns in many ways with the medieval mystical idea that you cannot achieve that level of spiritual existence in this life, that it is to come in the next life, that you work towards that and you can get as close as you can to it.

I mean, that's what mysticism is all about. You know, what is mystical is hidden. And if you have a mystical experience, you get a glimpse of the hidden. Yeah. You know, a mystic hopes to prolong that glimpse as much as he or she can. And in most cases, you know, you can't. And so, you know, if you read the medieval mystics and then, you know, 20th century mystics, I mean, if you read Thomas Merton, for example, you know, you see that you can achieve glimpses of the divinity and glimpses of the one, as Plotinus would say. But you can't sustain it because we're stuck in these physical bodies, which are preventing us from becoming purely spiritual.

And that can only happen, they would argue, when we are freed of this physical being. Yeah, one of the, it reminds me of Jorge Borges in the book the Aleph. And, you know, it's amazing to have had it, to be able to walk up to the cavern and get one little look over. But then to try to describe that. There's no linguistic pathway to describe what it is that you saw. So you can't really bring anything back to the tribe to do. Can I share one technique with you that I've found that really helps me out when I find myself in a despair or greed or anger or a lot of these sins for me is, you know, I see myself. I'll get angry.

I will be jealous. I will be envious. And I let it run its course. And I, you know what? It's this person that does that. They do this. but I sometimes it takes longer than other times however I force myself to come to the conclusion that the thing I despise most about that person is something I despise about myself right and that

person is showing that to me right it just yeah it takes away the sting a little bit because then I have no one to blame but myself well and you can look at it then as a learning and as a growth experience because you have seen something in yourself that you weren't even aware of or couldn't identify before. And, you know, the first step to, to resolving that is identifying it. So now you've done that first step. I think that's very, that's very true. And oftentimes those things that we really dislike and other people are really just reflections of what we dislike about themselves. That's so true. That's tough to deal with. It's tough to admit. Right. So who wants to

admit that. They're not good things. Yeah. You know, again, it's young shadow self, right? Looking at that part of you that you keep repressed and suppressed for a variety of reasons, most of which are defense mechanisms, but you're not going to progress to any kind of a next level of existence without first confronting that. because it's in the way. It's an obstacle.

You know, I mean, again, you've got to go through the cave before you can continue on the journey. I was watching yesterday, The Empire Strikes Back was on my favorite of the films. Nice. And there's that fantastic scene where he has to go on. And I actually, that was the seat. When I turned it on, they were on that scene where, you know, Yoda tells Luke that he has to go through the cave and confront. and what he has to confront is himself, his own dark side. And it's painful.

It's very painful. And I think most people are either unwilling to deal with that. I mean, who wants to deal with that kind of pain? But I think that if you have done it, and I'm sure plenty of your listeners have, it can really be incredibly enriching to be on the other side of that. Getting to it, not so fun, but...

Yeah, it's difficult. In some ways, I think that it harkens back to the symbol of that pyramid and that gap right there. You can build this giant pyramid, and sometimes if we use that as a metaphor for greed, yes, you can build immense wealth. You can build something immense that will stand the test of time.

But in some ways, you're building these walls around you so that you'll never see or get to see through the lens of the eye of providence. Right. Well, I mean, you use a good metaphor there. And when you were saying that, the walls are building the walls around you. It makes me think of somebody like Citizen Kane, right? Of course, the Wells film based on William Randolph Hearst. You know, I mean, he builds this, this kingdom. And he ends up just gating himself in and, and just completely walling himself off from everyone,

including those who were supposedly closest to him. And, you know, so many brilliant scenes in that film that are evocative of Jungian ideas. You know, is that great scene where he's. he's what where the older uh charles kane is walking through all the all the mirrors and seeing himself in the mirrors you know and that that just having to just having to see yourself like that is uh it's it's metaphorical but it's you know it really is telling yeah and the fact that at the end it all comes down to his sled brosbud give it away to anybody who hasn't seen it but you happen, you must go see it because it is a brilliant film.

But it just, it shows. And I think, you know, in talking about when you see things in other people, you know, I think we all have ways of processing and dealing with that. And, you know, I think about the things that I use for that. I mean, I have a couple of things sitting around my desk here, which I use when, you know, if things are incredibly difficult or stressful, I will go to those things because they hold particular memories or they are connected for me with some kind of meditation technique.

And it's important to have those, I think. It is important to have those. I mean, if, you know, I mean, the Buddhist monk, would say, well, you have that. It's in your mind. You don't need anything physical. You know, and maybe this is my compromise as a Westerner of, you know, well, you know, I just need these couple of things to hang on to because they are the triggers for me that will bring me to that spot.

And it's interesting because for me, they are all either tactile or through smell. and smell is supposed to be our best trigger for memory. Yeah, absolutely. That brings me back to the idea of a living language. You can say that seeing yourself and the other is a form of communication. You can say that having some sort of token or a sense of smell. And I think if people pay attention, I think that our circle tends to be pretty big readers and enjoy learning. And one thing I really like about that is when you find yourself in a situation, be it greed or any of these sins or even just depressed, I believe the world will show you something.

Maybe it triggers a story from Joseph Campbell or maybe you'll find a penny on the ground or you can find some sort of symbolic reference to a beautiful story that I believe that's the world saying, hey, remember this thing? Hey, look at this. You know, and it's so darn beautiful. You know, there's been so many times where I've been so down and out, and I just sat there and then I got my head in my hands, and then I see this, you know, story about Homer or something. I started thinking of heroes. And then I said, wait a minute, this is my turn to be a hero.

You know, and it can change everything if you just pay attention to what the world's trying to tell you. And sometimes I think that when we talk about greed and these people that have so much, you know, I think the story there, is a tragedy. And I wish, I don't wish a tragedy on anybody. However, I think that if people saw the idea of Bezos or the idea of some of these billionaires, not so much as an American story of success,

but an American tragedy. You know, so many of these people, they lose their families. They lose their wives. They lose all these things that are the true beauty and worth in life, and they replace it with a mega-yadded. and a cup of a real-life Barbie doll or, you know, just these these symbolic gestures. Here's what it is. It's being degrades into having, having degrades into appearance.

And it's, that's what the, that's what greed and these specifically greed. I think it steals from you and it gives you the illusion of these other things. Well, you're right. And I mean, and I think you're, you're touching back on. Campbell again I mean really symbols are all around us but they're only symbols if we see them for what they are right and so you know I mean and again this is talking about the value of things right I mean you know if I've got something I mean I've got something silly in my desk drawer here and I'll share with you nice it's it's a it's a spalding ball

A pink spalding ball And we had these when I was a kid growing up in the Bronx We had poodles of them Because we lost so many of them down the sewer And we used this to play everything Everything And several years ago I was able to get one

They still make them Although they're not exactly the way that they were But they're pretty darn close And they have a certain feel to them And they have a certain smell to them And it sits in my drawer And it is a symbol for me of what of my youth sure it's a symbol of the bronx for me it's a symbol of a lot it's right but anybody else

opening up that floor is going to see a ball in there and says it's a ball in your word right it's not what's a ball yeah and so you know the symbols are around us if we would pay attention to them like as you say um you know it's interesting several weeks ago and and talking about symbols and dreams right i had a i had a dream one night in which my one I've I've had four important mentors in my life educational mentors and I had a dream in which my my biology teacher from high school showed up and I've been in touch with him over the years but it's been too many years I keep meaning to get back in touch with him and I haven't and I had the dream where he was in the dream and I woke up the next morning and I went on to

Facebook and I got a message that it was his birthday. He's turning 81. I said, oh, I got to call him. I mean, here's, talk about symbols. I mean, here's, here's message. And so I got back in touch with them and we talked for about a half hour, 45 minutes by phone. It was wonderful and we're going to talk some more. But, you know, it's about paying attention to the things that pop up like that and ascribing meaning to them, which on the surface may not always be obvious. Maybe we need to work a little bit to figure out, well, what does that mean? Why did that happen? And, you know, too often in our fast-paced lives, you know, we're not willing to even

take the time to stop and think about that and figure it out. You know, we always used to be told to keep a pad and paper by your bed, right? Because when you woke up and you had a dream, you could write it down. Because you would almost instantly forget it once you were awake. I don't know if a lot of people still do that. You know, we get up and we're just on the go right away. There really isn't any time to do that kind of work. And it is work.

But it's work on ourselves, right? that we are often guilty of neglecting, myself included, to be sure. Man, when you say it like that, it's almost like we've forgotten how to dream. Maybe that's kind of what our world looks like right now. Yeah, well, I mean, I think we do have something of a crisis of imagination going on, right? Lack of. I was talking to a colleague this morning, and she was complaining that the situation in higher education at the moment is just completely lacks any creativity.

And I said, well, that's because for the last three decades, we've been trying to just tread water and stay afloat. You know, there's been such a crisis in higher ed, really since the 1980s and budget problems and things like, you know, fighting for our livelihood that who has time to be innovative and creative? You're worried about making budget. And so, you know, we just, we lost a lot of that time when we could be creative. It's really sad. Hopefully people will try to get back to that in some way. And I don't mean just

being creative in a creative life as in painting or playing the guitar. I mean also being creative in your job and your daily life and what you do for a living. Why should that be a slog? Right. I mean, there should be some creativity and innovation and room for that there. I mean, anything, I mean, you know, what is that, that line from, I think it's in Annie Hall when Woody Allen says, talking about the relationship he has with Annie Hall, he says, you know, a shark always has to be moving or it dies. He says, what we have on our hands is a dead shark.

We're just kind of stuck. And I think a lot of people feel that. They feel that malaise, that spiritual malaise. We're going to talk about sloth next week, and that's really what sloth is about. It's about that spiritual malaise. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I'm hopeful.

It seems to me that, you know, you can't see the stars until it gets really dark. Right. And so, you know, it's pretty dark outside, so I can't look for those. stars, you know. Well, and here, I'll be the cynical Bronx Jew. We can't see them because we've got so much light, artificial light, you know. You are the Bronx. Yes, I am.

Thank you for that. The voice of reason somehow, you know. Well, I don't know about that. Oh, Blan. Well, Dr. Sleman, do you have anything else? else you want to leave us with or maybe no i mean we'll we'll talk about sloth next week and um try to get people out of their their uh their their their slothly ways and um if you uh visit my website which is david a solomon.com um all of my uh my blog is linked there and lots of other information

and you can contact me through the website as well if you would like to uh send a copy of the book to me and I will be happy to sign it for you and send it back. What is the next blog article going to be about? Can you give us a little hint? I think I'm going to write about this overabundance of just data and input and our inability to be able to decide what do I need to listen to what's important. And hopefully, you know, that I don't come out of the day with the only thing that I learned being that Britney Spears is pregnant.

you know um congratulations brittany but you know yeah not the most important thing in the world to everybody it is to you i'm sure but yeah well fantastic i have a great time talking to you and i i'm i just want to tell everybody the book is called the seven deadly sins check it out it's it's one of the books you can read over and over and it creates a new pathway for you to go down and there's so many like i said There's so many breadcrumbs from so many different books from different times. It's a fun read and it's an enjoyable read, and I hope everybody takes the opportunity to get it. And we will be back next week, ladies and gentlemen. Have a great afternoon, and we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, George. Thank you.