TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - ENVY

Episode Date: April 19, 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. Hears 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 Codex Seraphini. 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 our friend, an amazing scholar, an amazing man, who's wrote an amazing book called The Seven Deadly Sins, and we are working our way through them. Today we are on envy, which I got to tell you, Dr. Solomon,

as I've read through these sins and we speak with them, I feel like I live these sins every week because I'm studying them, I'm reading them, and I'm more aware of them. And this is kind of a tough one. This one hit home for me. It does really do with me. It makes you a little bit more self-conscious about things, doesn't it? It really does.

And especially this one, I, I felt that this one is something that kind of seeps into me. And I find myself, you know, trying to be the best human I can. But sometimes you see other people and they have these things and you look for reasons why you don't have them. And that's probably the wrong path to go down. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem, right? It's not a question of, and envy really isn't about I want what that guy has.

It's that I don't like that he has it and that I don't. It seems unfair. And so in this chapter, I talk a lot about the distinction between equality and equity, right? It's really what we're talking about is we want equity. We don't really want equality. And envy becomes most often a question about justice. It just, it doesn't seem fair that you have a nice car and I don't. And it's not necessarily the case that I want to take it from you.

it's just that I am envious of the fact that you have it and I don't. Because as I say, it just seems to be a question of fairness. And in the chapter, I mean, I start at the obvious place, which is the story of Canaan Abel, two brothers who don't exactly have the relationship with God in the book of Genesis that is equal to be sure. And when Abel is blessed by God, Cain becomes envious. We more often today say jealous, but it really is envy.

And as a result, he kills his brother. But he's warned about it ahead of time. I mean, you know, the text talks about sin crouching at the door. I mean, you have to be careful. You have to watch for that. And I mean, I opened the chapter with the story of hitting my own brother. or the head with a block when we were when we were young. And probably for a similar reason of being envious.

But in that case, as I say in the book, I received no punishment. Cain's punishment is a little bit more severe. And it's an interesting legacy that he leaves them, of course. Yeah. The fact that you've carried it with you for so long, I don't know about the punishment, you know. It's so fun. So the story is my brother and I, I'm three years older than he is. And when we were very, very young, I think I was probably, I don't know, I was probably six and he was probably three.

And I don't even remember what perpetuated it, but I hit him in the head with a block, a wooden block and opened up a gash in his forehead. And of course my mother completely freaked out and we went and I remember we went down to the to our pediatrician who was who lived in our building as was not unusual in New York City of the 60s and 70s and he needed stitches and I remember walking around in the hallway outside the the examination room hearing my brother screaming thinking this is just horrible and I wanted to to go in there and save him. But it was the hilarious part about this is that my mother never knew the truth about it until we were both in our mid-30s. And we had come home to visit once and we were watching home movies. And for some reason got on to that topic. And we told her what had actually happened.

That she was absolutely horrified because the story that we had told was that the block fell off the shelf and hit him in the head. And she bought that for about three decades. Man. And it's, you know, it's bringing it back to the story of Cain, and able, in the book you say he was exiled, not for envy, but for the murder of his brother. That's kind of an interesting point right there. Yeah, I mean, you know, we think about Cain as being the first murderer, right? And he's always invoked in that kind of a of a situation.

But, I mean, really, I mean, before the murder, what he's guilty of is the sin of envy. And he really, that is what. what compels him to commit the murder in many ways. And his exile is a punishment. I mean, he is, of course, he complains, he worries that, you know, people will see him and they're going to want to kill him as retribution. And so God gives him what's called the mark of Cain, the mark on his forehead, warning people not to kill him,

that he needs to live out his life in exile with that. guilt. Yeah, it's that's that's a second point where you know, envy can actually change your appearance. In that particular story, I guess he gets the mark, but it's still changing his appearance. And then you also talk about, you know, envy having the ability, we hear stuff like green with envy and how it changed your appearance. It kind of changes one's countenance, right? It, it changes your, um, your physical appearance. But, but also in some ways your emotional appearance, if you will, you project differently.

And to be sure, we talk about people being green with envy, and that's an old medieval trope. But no one's really sure where it originates from. But it's the sense that, and I think the Genesis text also refers to Kane's countenance changing. right it's just his his entire um sense of being has shifted and that that you know we have often sort of characterized somebody who's being envious as it just being pretty ugly right envy is an ugly thing um and i think that we we use that word as a as a euphemism but but it it has some credibility because of course as you say

I mean Kane's appearance does in fact change yeah when I look at it in myself and if I ever find myself slipping into it I feel it changes the way I see the environment and it changes the way I act in the environment and not only that but it's contagious it's like looking for

other people like hey do you see what these people have or do you see that and hopefully you have someone around you strong enough to be like hey what's wrong with you man look at all the stuff you have Yeah, it's a problem of falling into to comparing yourself with everybody else. And of course, you know, the age of social media has just been an unbelievable black hole for that, right? I mean, social media is all about comparison with others. And I talk in the chapter quite a bit about how social media has contributed to our culture being more and more hung up on envy and being envious of other. other people. And oftentimes, of course, the real sort of tragedy of this is that oftentimes

when you're envious of someone on social media, it's actually pretty empty because what they're projecting that you're envious of is a complete artifice. It's made up. It has no very little to know relationship to what reality really is like. So, you know, I'll have friends on social media on Facebook who will post and seem like they're living this ideal life. And, you know, for a moment, you know, I do have these pangs of envy and say, gee, you know, I wish I were living that kind of a life. But then I have to take that step back, as you say, George, and separate myself from the situation and say, well, that's not entirely real

and that's not the whole story. Yeah. We can all project what we want online. There's that famous New Yorker cartoon from, oh my gosh, it must be the early 90s, late 80s, where the dog says no one knows you're a dog online. Any kind of persona that you want. Yeah. A lot of people do that, right?

They curate their persona for an online world. Yeah, like no one, very few people go online and show like the sadness of their life or the, hey I don't get to spend any time with my child look at me just working all the time you know and if they do it's almost as if that's a pendulum that's swung too far to the other end right and that's the sort of the woe is me

sort of poster who does nothing but complain about their existence in the hopes of securing some sort of sympathy and empathy from others it's I forget what the kids call it but you know when you post these sort of

open-ended strange postings that are sort of just this really nebulous sort of thing. And it's like, what? Something's wrong? And they sort of want somebody to say, you know, oh, what's wrong? And maybe that's just, you know, part of it is a characteristic of modern life, I guess, and the fact that people tend, especially after COVID, to be very lonely. and social media can really reinforce that loneliness and exaggerate it. And as a result, people feel the need to post these sort of, you know,

cryptic messages that evoke interaction from their friends online. Yeah, it's so sad in a way. It's almost like people are envious that people have real friends or they're envious of relationships or they're lacking relationships of some sort. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, modern life is a tough thing, isn't it? You know, and, you know, we can we can go back and say, oh, well, everyone has always said that, right? That contemporary life is difficult. They probably said it in the 18th century and they probably said it in the fourth century

because we always see the world through our own lens. But it does seem that we are living in incredible. complicated times. And of course, the irony of it is that we ourselves are really responsible for making it that complicated. Yeah. If we will fast forward and we'll come back. Sure.

Gene, I'm going to butcher her last name. Gene Bouliard. Is that how you say that? Jean Baudreard. John Baudreard. You read in your book about his Imagine 1981 Treaties, Simulacra simulation, and that, that modern day society has become a simulation, an invitation to the real world, which I think ties nicely with social media that we're talking about.

Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, Baudreard, a brilliant French philosopher, and his theory of the simulation is essentially that our existence is a simulation, that he would argue that there's very little to our existence that is real in the true sense of the word. And when I talk about that with students, I always use the two easiest examples, which is we're sitting inside in a classroom with artificial light and artificial heat or air conditioning. That's a simulation. None of that is real. And so I think that certainly social media, what we once called virtual reality, although I guess that phrase is sort of falling out of favor, is.

is completely a curated, constructed artifice. And if we get sucked into it, as sadly many people do with things like, you know, Instagram, especially kids, it can really be, have a tragic outcome where you just lose all ability to become objective. and you see everything through the lens of, well, I don't have what he has. I'm not doing what she is. You know, I mean, and some of it is certainly social media, the way that it is constructed invites that, right?

If you, if you, I mean, I have an Instagram account. I don't post on it because I'm still not entirely sure. it works. But I do kind of look around on Instagram and I see people posting just the strangest, strangest things. It's, you know, there's this whole obsession with posting your food that you're like, but I could see someone sitting there saying, oh, well, you know, that looks really good. And here I am, you know, with my TV dinner. And so what am I doing wrong? And so it really does beg that kind of constant comparison. And of course, almost always, it's a comparison where you come out on the short end.

Why am I not as good as them? And it's a, as is the case with a lot of these sins that we've talked about, a lot of it ends up being very, very damaging to self-esteem. Yeah, it's true. what in the event that you know we run with the simulation theory do you think that what in the event that it is a simulation is envy the antidote to the simulation like is it like oh gosh like i can see envy that means that it's just a simulation and i shouldn't worry about it or is it more of this tapping into to get you to perpetuate it what if you can see that it's envy then it's a positive thing

and you've broken out of the simulation. If you have an inability to see that it's envy, then you are stuck inside the simulation and you're caught up in the whirlpool. So a lot of this comes down to, again, perspective and something which we talked about in one of our first conversations, the problem of objectivity and subjectivity

and our growing inability to be objective about the world around us. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that book. It seems like just doing that research and reading. It tends to be French philosophers for some reason. It really have nailed this thing down. I think a good companion book is Guide Aboard's The Spectacle of the Society. And he talks about the degradation of, you know, being into having.

Like we're human beings and now it's like we're not, we're no longer being. We're just having. And then having slips into the appearance of having and it just continues to degrade. you can see that timeline. Like, I can see it in my own life. Like, you used to own a house. Now you have a mortgage and you have a house, but you just kind of have the appearance of it because you never really own it,

especially if you have homeowner fees, you know? So it's, what do you think it is about these homes? Well, part of it is our obsessively material culture. Right. It's a problem where we still do measurements. ourselves and measure our worth oftentimes in terms of the things that we own or the or as you say the things that we have they probably don't even own them true have them and and and and that's that's a problem it's it's it's it's it's an economic problem um it's it's a psychological problem it really does um just create a a a a a whole just milieu of people who are just obsessed with having and owning things.

It's the it's the supersized culture, right? It's it can't be big enough. It can you know give me bigger. We were talking I was talking about this with my wife the other day. It was funny we were we I forget where we were we we got out to lunch on Saturday, something we rarely do. and we just went to a burger place. My wife is vegan and I'm vegetarian. They have veggie burgers at this place.

And we literally ordered veggie burgers, fries, and a soda, and it cost us 40 bucks. Whoa. And it was just, you know, when did that happen? And we, you know, both became kind of nostalgic thinking about when we were kids and how much that would have cost. I mean, I very vividly remember going into a luncheonette one summer when I was probably about 10. It was the first time anyone ever called me, sir. I had babysitting money, and I wanted to treat myself to lunch. And it was a luncheonette, it was a burger, fries, and a soda for $1.99.

And, man, it was good. But, you know, what happened that now it's $40 to go out and have a couple of burgers and fries? And I think that the economics of it is troubling. I can't say I understand it all. I'm not an economist. I've been trying to read and study more about what capitalism has really done to our culture. But it is difficult because it's very politically charged those discussions. And so it's difficult to really sort out.

what's going on there. But as I mean, you know, George, you live in Hawaii. I'm sure your prices are much higher than my prices living here in Virginia, even when it wasn't COVID and a war in Ukraine. But, you know, it, so I don't know, I don't know what the solution is there. I don't know what I don't know what the solution is. I think that part of the issue, as you mentioned earlier, is having that ability to be objective about it. So if you're not a objective about envy. And I'll say this again, you're in the simulation.

If you can be objective about it, then you're outside of the simulation and looking in. Yeah. Let me ask you this question and bring it back in doing so. We've spoken about what we know today about envy, and that's social media, and that's seeing our lives

change. Obviously, there wasn't social media back in the days of Cain and Abel and the biblical times. However, the rich awareness of it had to be stoked by something. What was it that people were envious of back then? Or what inspired

people to know how powerful of a sin this was back then? I think in many ways, people have always been envious of power. And so totally what it comes down to it, even when we say being envious of my neighbor's nice

car, it's still a power issue because that means that he has the power to buy that car, and I don't. So a lot of it does come down to who has the power. And that was the issue when a lot of the preaching through the Middle Ages on this. And even as we get into the English Renaissance and a great poem like Milton's Paradise Lost, where I mean, his Satan is a picture. of envy when he first sees Adam and Eve in the garden. I love his first line. He says, oh, hell. He sees them. He sees how much they love each other,

and he's envious of that relationship that they have, so much so that he even says at one point, in a different situation, I could love them. But he's out for revenge, and so he can. But he does feel those pangs of envy. It's one of those curiosities about human beings, right? There was a, there's a this conundrum that's gone on for a long time and it's the conundrum of forbidden knowledge. We were given the ability to be curious and to want to know, but it's some strange way if we are going to go back to the Garden of Eden. We were told that we weren't allowed to know because it's the tree of knowledge that we're not allowed to eat from. So it's it's dangling something in front of us that's

them were not allowed to have. And that's very confusing. It's very confusing. And I think that for a lot of people, if they could figure out that, the answer to that problem, they can lead a heck of a lot more just rich and fruitful life if they can understand that issue. I mean, and, I mean, I speak from experience because I've gone through it myself, right? I mean, this idea that, well, we have the ability to know we were created to be curious, but we're not allowed to. That doesn't make any sense. And even Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost even notes that when he overhears them talking about the fact that they're not allowed to eat from that tree.

Satan even says, you know, I don't understand what could be so bad about? knowing. They're not allowed to know. And really, that's what's driven us as a species for millennia is this desire to know. I mean, even if you look at what's happened in the last few years, mapping the human genome, what an incredible thing. What an incredible thing. Only happened because we are incredibly curious and we want to know. Now, the problem, that could come up, as some have suggested is, if we get to the point where we have answered all the questions, then what? What are we left with? And so, you know, it's like when I teach Shakespeare and students say, oh, well, there's nothing more to say about Shakespeare. Everybody's

already said it. Well, if that were the case, we so wouldn't be talking about it. They'll ask a question about something that happens in a particular play, in a passage. and I'll say, well, there are several different takes on this. What do you think? And, you know, of course, the very logical folks in the crowd say, well, what's the answer, right? There must be a right answer to this. And it's not a math problem. You know, human nature is not, not solvable in that way.

But that's what makes it a joy to live, I guess. You know, that's, as you call your podcast, true life, right? That's right. Yeah, it's amazing the mysteries that continue to unfold once we think they're solved. And the further we go along, the further we go along, the more we realized we didn't know anything. Yeah. Whether it's the planets being in glass or the spheres or us being the center of the universe, there's always these Galileo moments where like, oh, gosh, darn it.

I forgot who said it, but someone said science progresses, the death of, one professor, one scientist at a time, right? But even if you go back to Socrates, I mean, right? I mean, Socrates said the one thing he was sure about is that he didn't know anything. You know, and that's really, that's a way of approaching this. And it's something which I particularly really love about Plato is that attitude about knowledge, that it's something that we don't, we don't really know anything. And, you know, you can go, I mean, you mentioned Galileo.

I mean, you can go to somebody like Descartes, right? Descartes who has to start all the way at the beginning. I think, therefore I am. Right. That's where he says, I don't understand anything in the universe. I got to start from scratch here. And the first thing I got to start with is my own existence. Do I exist?

And he said, okay, I think, therefore I am. And Descartes was a Catholic. And he had faith. But he had to start from. scratch because largely what it occurred in the in the preceding hundred years is a complete shift in the really the literally the ground that we stand on with the Copernican revolution and Galileo discovering that gee this the earth isn't at the center of the universe and so you know an entire generation and that that shift that paradigm shift right what Thomas Cune calls a paradigm shift

We've experienced another one in the last 50 years with computers and the internet. It's just that's happened so fast and it's moving so quickly that few people have had time to really assess what the hell has happened. Whereas in the 16th and 17th century, things are moving slower, right? I mean, Tillier, the great scholar, called it the Elizabethan world picture, right? that the world picture had shifted. The entire attitude about the way the universe works had shifted from the earth is at the center to the sun is at the center and the earth just revolves around it. Oh my God, that's just unbelievable.

And we've experienced shifts like that as well today. It's just everything happened so quick. We barely have time to digest one thing before the next thing's coming along. I saw an ad this morning. first time I've seen this ad and it's being run by I think it was being run by a yes it was a political ad because they wanted you to write to Congress and it was opposing self-driving cars and it was this cabalcade of video from inside teslas self-driving teslas of them either getting into accidents or nearly getting into accidents and it was this

one after another there must have been 10 of them and then it was this you know right to to your congressman and tell them to, you know, outlaw this. You know, and I use that example a lot with my students and say, you know, we've got self-driving cars. We should have to figure out whether or not we should. Right, right. And so much of what technology and science and what happens in the name of progress, while it may be ultimately beneficial to mankind and mankind and positive for us as a species,

we don't give ourselves enough time to really reflect on whether or not it is, because we're on to the next thing. Now, that wasn't the case back in the Renaissance, for example. I mean, you know, the telescope, which Galileo used to prove Copernicus's theories, was something which had been invented for commerce. You looked out at CED to predict when shipping was going to arrive so you could set the price on your goods. Galileo pointed it up in the stars and said,

oh, my gosh, look at this. Those kinds of things are just incredible. And they're still happening today. It's just I fear that we don't hear enough about them because we're just moving so fast. If you want to read some, a really great scholar, a guy I really respect. And, you know, in the one in a million chance that he's listening to this, please contact me because I've tried to contact you. His name is Hallel Schwartz.

Halel Schwartz is an independent scholar. He's written, oh, I don't know, five or six books. And he's written three in particular, which are, they're mammoth, their doorstops. they are about things like sound or the facsimile and copy culture. And they're intriguing. They're incredibly meticulously researched and very, very well written. And he oftentimes has been able to pick up on those little nuanced changes and inventions that made a big difference, but because it was happening so fast, we barely caught it.

You know, I was reading this morning that Thomas Edison said something to the effect that he didn't invent anything, that it was all out there. He just was able to kind of pull it together. It was a very interesting approach and an attitude about invention for a guy who holds, I think, some of the most important patents in the history of the United States, to be sure, if not of mankind. Yeah, that seems par for the course. If you listen to Tesla, he says, oh, you know, I was told this information or a lot of these inventors say, oh, yeah, well, I just, it was always there. I just put it together, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

It makes me, maybe that the idea of philosophy, this idea of going all the way back to the beginning of like, okay, let me start from scratch. I think therefore, maybe that is the cure for envy. Maybe once you become envious, it's a signal for you to. say, okay, I'm way out in the weeks. You know, and I think in your book, you write that envy is a sort of poisoning of the mind, and it causes you to no longer see the world the way it is. In fact, you see this tainted idea of self-conscious, you know, falling or something like that. Yeah, and that idea that that the, you know, as you say, Tesla said, you know, it came to him

And Edison says he's kind of pulling things together. It reminds me of the piece of Jewish folklore that before we are born, we have all knowledge. We know everything. And there's a folk tale that at the moment of our birth, an angel comes down and presses his finger on the top of your lip. And that gives us that little indentation, which biologists know has a medical name that I can. can never remember. And when the angel does that, it takes away all knowledge and we're born tabula rasa, clean slate. And from a Jewish perspective, that is the equivalent of the punishment for original sin that Catholics have and need to be baptized to rid themselves of. So we are,

that is Jewish, the Jewish punishment in some sense for original sin is we had all knowledge, but our punishment is now we got to start from scratch. And so there's this idea, it's philosophical, it's theological as well, that the knowledge is all out there, right? I mean, it's the kind of the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious. It's all out there. It's just we have to figure out how to tap into it. Yeah, and you see that sometimes with like the mystic tradition or some, the burning bush or these people that get a glimpse of a remembrance maybe. Yeah, it's either a glimpse.

or like they say, remembrance, right? Because it's there somewhere. We just have to be reminded of it. And so, you know, there are people who have an incredible propensity for learning languages. Now, aside from the psychological phenomenon, which is real, which is, I mean, some people, just their minds function in a certain way. And they're more likely to be able to pick up languages like that. There are others who would think that, well, you know, you know it all. It's just a matter of you being able to piece it all together in the right way.

And I think there's something to that. There's something to the idea that a lot of these, I don't want to say facts because they're not really facts, but a lot of these nuggets is a terrible word. A lot of these nuggets are, they're back there in our collective unconscious. and it's our job as human beings on that journey, on the journey to individuation, to piece together the pieces of the puzzle.

And sometimes the pieces don't fit, and sometimes the pieces make a really ugly part of the puzzle, but we still have to deal with that because it's all part of the big picture. And without that, and without our, our desire to put the puzzle together, not double label the metaphor. You know, I mean, then what have we got?

We've got this disconnected kind of existence, which is just a bunch of pieces sitting out on the table, and we can't really figure out, it's the age-old question of, you know, why am I here? What's my purpose? And, you know, we would be probably, probably would be a good place to start with somebody like Descartes. and say, you know, well, I think, therefore I am. We are thinking human beings.

And some of us use that ability to a greater extent than others. And some of us are more curious than others. And I think that's part of that's what makes the world go around. Yeah. It's interesting, too. When you look at it from that angle, it seems to me, while languages are great is gift, it seems so inadequate. It's so difficult to thoroughly explain to someone exactly what you're seeing or you're feeling. You know, interpretation means, I always mess this one up.

It's a, when you interpret something, you, you, what's, I can't think of the word, but yeah, the way, the language may be one reason why we envy people, because we don't understand why they have things. We just know that we don't have it. And so you can't explain it. There's no linguistic pathway and so then you become this irrational thinker this irrational way at looking at life which just it sends you down like the wrong rabbit hole and then we get back to the you know you make a great point about equality evokes envy yeah what do you mean by that well if we really want equality is not really what we want we want equity so equality is everybody has the same stuff right everybody has the same thing

everybody has access to the same exact thing and that's not really really what we want because that doesn't allow for any kind of merit if i do something better if i happen to be harder working what we want is equity we want the in many ways we want the ends to justify the means right we we want what we get to make sense and be just according to some law of the universe that we only we can construct. Now, for many people, that law is constructed for them, right, in various forms of organized religion and codes. But for more and more people today, it is a law which we construct ourselves. And it's almost made up, it's almost a smorgasbord of the different religious traditions, right? You know, so maybe I, I, I prescribe to the Ten Commandments and I buy that code, but it doesn't mean that I buy everything that's in the Old Testament. And instead, I'm going to look at the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha,

and I'm going to throw that. You know, it becomes a kind of a stew. And that, I think, is where we have gotten to as a species here in the 24th. century, right? Through all of our challenges to faith and our challenges to science, that we've come to an interesting point today where we're, and we'll talk about this when we do our wrap up on the book in a couple of weeks, we really are, I think, sort of on a precipice here. And it's an exciting time, but it's also, it's also scary. Yeah, it does seem like that to me.

I truly believe we are in a Copernicus moment. Like we are building up to something greater than we could possibly imagine. You know, we are, we are breaking down so many barriers and so many walls. And it's, it's, it's, it's, everything dissipates before it comes back together. I heard a good, a good analogy one time. I think it was Alan Watts that said, think of us as like a bottle of, of ink and you take it and you throw it against the wall and smash and all the ink begins to flow down the wall in this blot and then as it gets down it makes these really beautiful curly

cues and intricate marks and then we look at those little intricate parts like oh that's us you know but actually it's all of us we're all the same thing and it's it's us becoming and maybe that's part of envy maybe part of envy is saying like yeah that is you like look at that and look how awesome that is that's you congratulations you did it you know Or this can be you. And if people can learn to see envy from instead of it inside the simulation where it's upsetting you and it's poisoning you, maybe the idea of envy can be like, hey, congratulations. Look at us. Look at what we did.

This is love. Envy can be a form of love if you're willing to notice that other as yourself. Maybe that could be a better definition of what envy is trying to show. I think I think you're right. I mean, envy can transform into love and respect, given the right mindset. But if you are really engaged in envy and you are a truly envious person, that is really going to be a challenging thing for you to overcome.

To get to that point where you can move away from, you know, oh, I'm, I'm envious of what you just did to, I respect what you just did. Congratulations, great job. That's difficult. And it's difficult, I think, because we've been taught from a very young age to compare ourselves to others. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think in the latter part of this chapter, you begin to talk about how it's, I think you quote Charles Taylor and say that it's an idea of radical reflexivity. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, so Taylor is a Canadian philosopher, written several really, really important landmark books. And he talks about this concept called radical reflexivity, which largely really grows out of Augusta. And it is this idea of just this extreme ability to reflect, to look within instead of constantly looking without.

And we tend to, especially in the Western world, be so focused on the exterior that we've lost our ability to really do that kind of reflexivity that he's talking about where we can reflect and look inward. It's a very important part of being a human being. And in many ways, it is something which has been lost. And again, I don't mean to beat a drum, but a lot of it has been. because of technology. And our inability to shut off, turn off, you know, I mean, what was Timothy O'Leary's thing about it was turn on, tune in and drop out? That's it, yeah.

So, I mean, this is, you know, this is sort of the opposite, right? This idea that, you know, really what we need to do is for the plug. And people, people do that now, right? I mean, they go on these treats where they give up their cell phone for a week or whatever it is. And it's just, it's very strange that we have to do that. But it's that insidiousness of the technology that we just can't get away from it. And it does really promote that that comparison, that constantly, you know, I'm one that that responds to email as soon as I get it. if I get an email, I'm responding right away.

And to be honest, most of that is because I'm afraid that I'm going to forget. And because I get so much email that it's going to go down into my inbox and I will forget. And so people always say, oh, you respond. You're very quick about responding. And that will set up a comparison. I'll say, oh, well, I don't respond. You know, I'm really bad about doing that. It's like, but why does there have to be that constant comparison?

and one isn't necessarily good, right? I'm not proud of the fact that I'm constant, but I respond to the email. I don't think it's always necessarily a good thing. But it's that we're always set up comparing ourselves to others. And as I say, you know, it started in the school yard, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it appears to be a system of self-worth in a sad sort of way.

Yeah. Yeah. It really is. And then we just reinforce it as kids grow up with our obsession with standardized testing and, you know, you're in the accelerated group and, you know, then we do class rankings. I mean, it goes right up the ladder here. And, you know, I think the thing is we want to recognize excellence. We want to appreciate it. As you said earlier, we want to love it. We want to respect it. But we can do that and not set it up so that, oh, you're better than him.

It shouldn't be always that, you know, well, let's look at the two of you together and you're really a lot better than this other guy. And I don't know how we get away from that. I mean, I guess part of it is we have to be that way in some sense. I mean, you think about when you interview people for a job, they all want the job. One person is going to get it because one person is the better candidate for whatever reason, arbitrary or not. But it can be really troubling because it can promote a society in which there's a lot of resentment. Yeah. Yeah, you write about that.

you know, envy can turn into resentment and resentment is just this. It's like terminal cancer. Yeah. It's like a festering wound. When it gets to that point, it is very, very difficult to rid yourself of. You know, we can be envious on, we can do envy light, if you will, you know. And then if it gets really serious, it becomes resentment. And resentment is almost visceral.

I mean, even when you say the word, it sounds visceral. Resentment. Yeah. It's very painful to have that feeling of resentment. Do you think resentment is like part of you dying almost? Like it's like you've lost part of you when you become resentful. And then all of a sudden it's not the thing that you were envious or resentful of it's that you don't have this thing inside of you anymore. Yeah.

And really, that's it. what all of these sins are about is that part of you dies when you when you commit these these sins when you engage in this kind of activity a part of what makes you a human being is is is lost um and i think that there there is the possibility of regaining it i don't think it's lost forever um there is redemption uh in in a both in a religious and a secular sense but it is it does make us a little bit less human and that really is what the early writers on these sins people like avagrius ponticus and Gregory the Great that's what they keep coming back to over and over again is engaging in this kind of activity makes you less human which then of course you know begs the ultimate question of what is it to be human it's amazing the wisdom that those who came before us had. This is some really deep thinking on a really long timeline. And regardless of whether or not people are religious or if they have a faith of monotheism or pantheism or whatever

faith they have, to take time to think about these particular areas, these sins that we call them, it's so amazing to me that people had the ability to think this stuff through and like in one person's lifetime it's very difficult to come to the the ideas that these people have had it's been thought about for so long and they're so true it's it's it's it's like this owner's manual and you know and like you said it's always changing just like shakespeare you can look at these sins and see them through the filter of george monte or the filter of david solomon and they're a different they're like an Instagram filter, you know, since we're talking about that kind of stuff. And it's, maybe one thing is for us to do what we're doing and give people our interpretation so they could take a piece of that

and use it and use it that way. It's just amazing to me how much power they have. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for us to discuss this and give our different takes. I mean, it was Nietzsche who said, you know, there are no facts, only interpretations, right? So, you know, it really is. is about interpretation. And I think the more that you read about this, the more that you think about these kinds of issues about what it is that makes us human, it does advance us just as human beings. I mean, I started reading a novel that I had gotten about two years ago. I had read somewhere, something of Paul Valerie's writings, that his favorite novel was this book called Against Nature. It was written by a, a French writer in the 19th century. I'd never heard of the guy. Never heard of the book. And I ordered a copy of it, and it's been sitting on my shelf,

and I finally pulled it down the other day and started reading it. Because I wanted to see what he thought. I mean, this was his favorite book. What was just so brilliant in here? And, you know, I'm only about 30 pages in, but I can already start to see it. But the issues that come up, I mean, it's a very heavily philosophical

book, for lack of another way of putting it, it is a book about ideas. It is not a book about action. This is not Harry Potter. It is a book about ideas. I mean, there's four pages about color. But it's brilliant stuff. And it really is being inside a fictitious character in this case, a fictitious character's mind. And all that comes with that that is both good and bad. There are aspects of him that have already surfaced in the first 30 pages that are despicable, but there are aspects of us that are not very likable. And oftentimes we just don't like to deal with it. It is, again, going back to Young, it's looking at that shadow self and reconciling one with it in order to come out the other end. So I think that that constant

quest, right, life as a quest, life is a journey and a quest. And this again is, you know, Joseph Campbell, right? Pure Joseph Campbell. Right. You know, incredibly Arthurian, right? The question is always that. But I mean, this, this, really this idea of life as a quest that we are all looking for something. And it's probably different for each one of us.

And we might not even be able to articulate exactly what it is. but we probably don't stop looking for it. And in fact, and maybe this is the tragedy of existence, we're probably not going to find it. We may get glimpses a la the mystic, but actually hold it in the palm of our hand for any extended period of time, probably not going to happen.

But that doesn't mean the quest isn't worth going on. You know, Arthur's Knights pretty much knew most of them. We ain't find it in the Holy Grail. We don't even know where it is in most cases. It's this, you know, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking. We shouldn't be searching. And in some ways, it's existentialism. It's this looking at our existence and what it means to exist,

which is one of the things that I like so much about somebody like Jean-Paul Sart and really looking at those questions about what does it mean to be? What does it mean to exist? And then when you go to somebody like Samuel Beckett and waiting for Godot, it too is about that same question. What does it mean to exist? They're waiting for a character named Godot. They wait, wait, wait, he doesn't come.

The play ends. that's existence we are constantly waiting and maybe that thing never arrives and then our lives end and so how do we reconcile all of that with our existence to justify our existence because i think that's what a lot of us are trying to do and to make our lives worth living and worth being around for other people yeah i I'm leaning towards the great don quixote for my idea of what existence is. Like, I've just decided, you know what, that is a dragon, and I am going to slay it. You know, why not? Even as the window blades smack you in the head? Me and Rosenonti, we are writing out there and figured this thing out. There you go.

That's what we got to do. And I think that people who live that kind of, I don't want to call it a fantasy life, but there is something about using our imagination in everyday existence. I mean, if we imagine ourselves as being on that quest like Don Quixote, right? Yeah. You know, maybe that's not something so bad about that. You know, we look down our noses at that and say, well, isn't that silly and that guy's delusional? But, you know, some of the craziest people in history have been geniuses, right?

Yeah, I think that's how Walter Isaacson and Steve Jobs biography starts the book by saying, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are usually the people they can. Yeah. And Isaacson has made that point clear in his books on high. Einstein, his books on Da Vinci, right? It's it's the same thing. Yeah. And in some ways, you know, when we look about envy or these, these ideas, sometimes if you can break the simulation, you can see the absurdity of it. Like, yeah. If you watch the Kardashians, like, these people have fake everything. Like, what? This is so absurd. But some people are so enamored by, like, oh, whoa. And they, or the real housewives, you know, and. I remember I was watching The Real House with my wife one time, and it was this old, old episode where,

you know, the guy ended up committing suicide and he was abusive, and it's like, what are we watching? I can't watch this. This is ridiculous. This is horrible. Yeah.

You know, and when I think of envy, one way for me that I'm able to pull myself out is to see, hey, this is, you could be envious about this, but maybe this is an example of what I need to work on.

Or maybe this is an example of, what the problem is that I can help. You know, if you can just shut off the, the bells and whistles for a minute and go, okay, what is this really telling me? Okay, I need to work on myself here. You know, that's a good way to get out of it.

George, you're big on the mirror, right? You see this stuff as a mirror to look at yourself, which is an interesting way to be, to engage in that kind of radical reflexivity, right? To really use those experiences. and say, well, what does that mean and what does that say about me? And I think that that's an admirable thing to do. I think, sadly, enough people don't do it.

And, you know, all you have to do is see the popularity of all of that kind of reality television, which boggles my mind. I just don't get it. And I often wonder, you know, people watch. watching it, a lot of them will say, oh, well, I know it's not real. It's like, okay. So then I have to ask, so why are you watching it? And, you know, I have a good friend who is listening to this podcast, so she'll appreciate this, but she likes to watch the hoarding shows and the, my 600-pound life or whatever the heck that show is.

It's like, why are you watching? that. These people are miserable. And, you know, some of it is, let's bring it back to envy, it's, well, you know, I'm better than them. Yeah. Right. You know, it's regardless of how bad I might be, at least I'm not that bad. Yeah. And I don't know. That's, that's just a troubling sign of our times, I think.

Q the Prince song Yeah, this is what it sounds like when doves cry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I... We'll be on the road next week, folks. Yeah. The revival. We've got a long revival.

Yeah, yeah. Well, fantastic. I want to be mindful of your time. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to leave us with as far as envy or sins or what we coming up next i don't think so i mean next week we'll talk about sloth which uh is is essentially most people think of as laziness but it isn't really laziness we'll talk about why um and uh it is the last sin that i covered in the book uh perhaps not ironically and uh and we'll talk about what that

means and and why it is a sin considered a sin and then uh from there we'll move on the following week and wrap things up and and solve all the world's problems. People are probably so envious. All right, Dr. Well, I appreciate your time. Have a great rest of your day, and we'll get back at him next week. Thanks, George.