TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - Mysticism, Mystics, & Metaphor

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Today we continue our journey into the mystic tradition with an incredible individual Dr. David Salomon. Mysticism is popularly known as any kind of ecstasy or altered states of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning, but may refer to becoming one with God or the Absolute. It also refers to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.http://www.davidasalomon.com/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.com/https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5537Chttps://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-Influenced-Middle/dp/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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, furious 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 the one and only David Solomon, who is the author of multiple great books. The last one I read was the seven deadly say, and I felt I came out the other side a little bit more intelligent, a little bit more informed and with a smile on my face.

So thank you for that. If you haven't read the book, what are you doing? Pick it up and get a copy. It's going to be awesome for you. So David, how are you today? Thanks, George. Good to have you.

Good, good. Things are going well. Oh, you know, it's a Wednesday. Right? The Tuesday. Tuesday. Even better, you get one more day to celebrate. I know.

It must be a, what are the better people say? It's the most Wednesday, Tuesday ever. I never heard that before. Yeah, the party's not even halfway over, man. Yeah, yeah. We're just getting warmed up. So we are down this pathway of these ideas of mysticism and mystics.

And I was, I found myself in this rabbit hole of this world called Thomas Aquinas. And, you know, I think he said something about everything. So if you look at it for something, there's your guy. But one part that I was interested in was his ideas of essence and existence. Are you familiar with this? Yeah, I mean, it's one of the big issues in Aquinas. And it's really one of the big issues in religious philosophy in general, right? I mean, we see it really starting as a question with Plato and Aristotle read up through Aquinas

and up to modern day with people like Heidegger and Jean-Campal Sart. So this question between essence and existence is one that has really baffled philosophers for a long time. And Aquinas has a lot to say on it. I don't know if he clears anything up because Aquinas oftentimes can leave you a little bit more baffled than you were when he went in. I should say, George sent me an email last night and gave me homework here. He's taking on the professorial role and gave me a bunch of things to think about. And I had to go back myself and look at my notes on somebody like Aquinas to see more of the specifics about what do you have to say. Well, you know, an A means I have nothing to say.

That's that. It's true. Very good. I mean, essentially the difference here is that the essence of a thing is what it is, whereas the existence is that it is. So the illustration of that is that you consider yourself a human being. being, your essence is what makes you a human, but your existence is what makes you a being. So there's a, there's a fundamental difference there. And, you know, depending on who we're reading, they have certainly different attitudes about it. I mean, you know, Plato argues that,

that the problem really doesn't exist because for him, essence is perfect. And so it only exists on the plane of the ideal forms, which doesn't exist in reality. But then Aristotle changes that and says it's not separated. The essence, for example, he writes of a horse actually exists in the individual horse. So essence is part of existence. It becomes, I think, a really interesting, and as you say, I mean, Aquinas, if you want to read just about anything, Aquinas has said something about it and there are Aquinas scholars who are much more eloquent on him than I could ever ever be he's just so complicated to read and you know

it overlaps with the other other issue that you raised in the email which was this this question of of what's called the Caboad in Hebrew and I was thinking about this this morning as I was scrambling to find my note on this stuff for you. So much of this comes down to problems of translation, right, and how we understand language. Because we're talking here. I mean, Aquinas, of course, is writing in Latin. And so we're only reading him in an English translation, unless you can read the Latin.

And, you know, Hebrew word like Cabot is incredibly complex in the Old Testament and just in the Hebrew language in general. And it just reminds me of how complicated the art, and it really is an art of translation is, because a translator has the power to really change meaning. I remember I first encountered this when I was in graduate school, work on my dissertation, and I had read actually speaking about being. It was a book on being by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Marillon. It had not been translated into English at that point.

I can read sort of cocktail French. And so I got a copy of the book in French, and I read it, and there were certain sections I wanted to quote. And so I quoted a couple of his lines and translated them myself into English. And then I continued working on my dissertation. And I think about six, nine months later, the English translation was published. I said, oh, I should get it and see how I do. did, you know, comparing it. And I got the English translation and I read it. I said, this is a completely different book. This isn't the same book I read because translators really do have a lot

of power. And, you know, just the, you know, we talked about the ineffability of things earlier in an earlier discussion. I mean, you know, language itself is just such a curiosity. And I think translation just makes it that much more complicated. It's almost like this long generational game of telephone where you say something and then by the time it gets to the back it's it could be something totally different yeah well i mean and and it comes down to you know if you read german philosophy um if you read people like heidegger and emmanuel kahn you will always almost always see in german english translations there will be words that the translator will all always provide for you in parentheses in the original german as if to say i can't really translate this into

English, but here's my best shot, but this is the German word for it. And there are German words like, like, Delt and Schum, right? You know, there are words like that, which carry such a deep kind of meaning to them that just goes beyond trying to translate into any kind of English meaning. I mean, even the word angst, right? You know, angst, people think, you know, it sounds like anxiety, but it's more than that, because, you know, I think I wrote about it in the book on sin about people having a kind of existence. Yeah, you did.

Right. And that being part of the sin of sloth of having that existential angst. And it's just sort of like, it's just more, it's more in the bone. Yeah, it's, you know, I think of the concept of Chaden Freud. But more than that, I just think of different concepts that you can't even think about the, entirety of that word if you can't grasp the concept of it. And then that maybe brings us back to culture or environment or, I mean,

it goes back to the Tower of Babel if we wanted to go that far, right? Yeah, well, I mean, and the ways that that words change their meaning over time as well, that, you know, there are words that have meaning today that, you know, one of my favorite is the word business, right? Business, which really, when you break down is about busyness, right? And, and, you know, from that, we got business. And so if you think about business as being busyness, it just brings a whole different meaning to the word.

Yeah. It's interesting. Like, if you look back at some classic books, you know, maybe like Tom soy or even just, just from that genre, you can see words that are totally different books today. Like even that, like you could use like the stranger or something like how does it is a different meaning for different generations. Sure. So too to different words have different meanings for different generations. And it can be a totally different book.

Like you said, like the book you read, the French one, you know. That was translation through a different translator, but so too is it translated by generations, right? Sure, absolutely. I mean, and you know, one of my favorite examples of this is to talk about the word remembrance.

Right. And that when you remember somebody, you are literally putting them back together. It's the opposite of dismember. You are remunited. And so we talk about, you know, the power of memory. And the fact that really what you're doing when you do that is you're piecing back together an event or a person or, you know, and putting it back together, making it whole. Yeah, to remember.

Every time you have a memory, you're reconstructing it like that. Absolutely. I wonder, there's got to be something. something there with Alzheimer's too. I think that that's got to be in the literature for the solution maybe, you know, kind of up on a side note there. But yeah, so I was, what hung me up on Aquinas, I found myself thinking about some of the experience the prophets had or someone in the glory of God or someone that has a mystical experience. And that made me come to the idea of, okay, is this thing, is this entity, is this power, is this fire, this cloud, or this entity?

Is there an essence there, you know, or is there an existence there? Right. Tynist starts talking about the potential, the potentiality and stuff like that. So you kind of get into the weeds there, but what are some of the mystics thinking about the entities or that which they encounter? Well, it has to do with the question of what, uh, whether something is a visible manifestation of the presence of divinity, right? And that's what that Hebrew word Kabud means, right? Okay. And it's an interesting word because, you know, I was looking in some of my Old Testament

dictionaries, and in Hebrew, the word actually appears in the Hebrew Bible 376 times. but oftentimes its meaning is it means heavy or importance. And then eventually it becomes the root word for liver and interior and soul in a lot of Semitic languages. So you can see how it kind of develops to become what it becomes eventually. But it really does sort of denote a kind of a weight, a heaviness. it's only used a hundred times in the in the old testament to actually refer to God. The other times it's used it to talk about things that are heavy.

And so I think, you know, the prototype for this kind of thing for me growing up as a Jewish kid was Moses with the burning bush, right? Exodus 24 being in the presence and what does that mean? And I mean, personally, I was always taken with that scene in Exodus, which, you know, I saw acted out as a kid by Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments, which really stuck with me as a kid. And this question of, when we say it's a visible manifestation, visible to who? It doesn't necessarily mean, I mean, you know, there's a contradiction. prediction and terms here, visible a manifestation and presence. Those are the three words. And I just, when I was looking at my notes on this, it just struck me that those three words in that definition are kind of at battle with each other. I mean, a manifestation seems to imply a real existence of something, something that's tangible that you can touch. That's something. That's something. thing is visible is subjective, because it's visible to me, but it may not be visible to you. And the question of presence, the presence of divinity, for example, in Exodus, in the burning bush,

what does that mean? What does that presence? You know, can that presence exist in other forms, as you mentioned earlier, in dreams, in things that we hear, and visions? and certainly the mystics believe that it can. And many modern and not so modern psychologists believe that it can. You know, if you look at the work of W. Meisner, he wrote a terrific book on Ignatius Loyola and talks about, and Meisner was a psychologist or psychiatrist, I believe. And he talks about the visions that Loyola had.

and the visions that he experienced and how we understand those in terms of psychology, that it doesn't necessarily mean it was something that everybody could see. But he saw it. And a lot of the mystics will experience this. And of course, that's the curiosity about the mystical experience, is that it is personal and it is subjective, and it isn't necessarily something that can be corroborated through observation. Yeah, I'm fascinated by the power that, you know, when you think of the Burning Bush, or you think of Ezekiel or Daniel, you see these prophets that have this vision that maybe no one else sees, but the people around them believe enough in them to follow them.

That's charisma, right? That's, that's charisma. the charisma of the cult of personality, right? The charismatic leader maybe. You know, and we see that even outside of the religious world, right? We've got a cult of personality in our midst. Absolutely. Yeah, and it's fascinating.

You know, I never thought about it like that, but yeah, like maybe we're not that too far removed from some of the scriptures. It just has a different narrative to it, or a different background to it. And, you know, even today, like, if we were inclined to, we could use the power of the media to bring about a new profit, right? If we were really inclined to, if we were all together on the same page, we could bring about some real revelations or real revival in that kind of sense.

Well, I think some people do try that, right? Whether it's through politics or through religion, they do try. to promulgate that kind of a profit and think of the folks in those ways. I'm thinking about the televangelists, for example. You know, the power, I mean, it would be interesting to drop one of the medieval mystics into the world of social media and 24-7 news and see what happened. I'm not sure that they would come out all that. positively because we are today as a species just so skeptical of anything that can't be seen and touched and

and tasted and smelled and heard by the by the general group now when you develop a kind of a cult right? I mean, that by definition means that everyone believes the same thing that you do. But it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone outside of the cult buys it. You know, we often use that awkward phrase about drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Is, you know, but it's true. You know, I mean, some people have drunk the Kool-Aid and they see it from a different perspective. and if you, you know, using that, that turn of phrase, having drunk the Kool-Aid, it means that, well, you know, you see it differently.

Yeah, I think on some level, like we've all drinking someone's Kool-Aid, you know, like. And so that's why we're aware of that situation. Like, I don't really like that fruit punch, you know. That's probably true. I mean, I suppose, you know, even if I haven't drunk yours, I've drunk somebody else, and we've been drunk my own. Some of it's probably been spiked. a little bit, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do think sometimes about this almost a

congruency between the mystics and people like Jim Jones or Charles Manson or, you know, pick your charismatic cult leader. But, you know, some of the speeches they give are very rewarding. You know, they may not be really powerful to you as an individual, but you find yourself in a group setting with like-minded people and maybe you face similar demons. And here's this person that's speaking almost directly to you because they've went through the same thing. When we look at it negatively, it's a cult. Well, we look at it positively, they have a following, right? Jesus had a following.

Yes. That was a cult. Yeah, absolutely. You know, John the Baptist had a cult. These were groups. They were cults. You know, it's just in modern parlance, we've come to carry, that has such a negative connotation that we don't want to use it.

but that's really what it was. It is. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. And, you know, it's, I live in Hawaii and there's a,

there's a few minor outlying islands that people may not be aware of. One of them is called Lanai, and that's pretty much owned by Larry Ellison. And then there's one that right, right next to it that is, it's called Molokai. And on Molokai, I've been fortunate to go there at times.

It's really beautiful, and there's so much beauty there. And it's a lot like Hawaii used to be. At least that's what I'm told. However, there is a cult there. And, you know, as I've spent a lot of time on Molokai, so I've gotten to know a little bit about this particular cult. The religious cult. Yeah.

And they have, and part of their rules are the men and women cannot live together. They have this weird ceremony where, like, one person will sit in the middle and then everyone will bring their grievances to them, including their kids, and like just kind of shame them. You know what I mean? And it's like, it sounds like activist on sign-go. Yeah, it kind of does. They got to wrestle and stuff. Yeah, it's kind of like the grievances thing. Do they have a poll?

Yeah. That part, I don't know. I know they have like kind of two, one for the men and one for the women. You don't know they're coming after us now, right? Yeah, probably, probably. All the money goes like, and they all, they all have pretty, there's not a whole lot of jobs there, but these people all hold pretty decent jobs for a small island. And they, like, at the one, it's like high up in the post office, but they all give

their money to like the top the top person or the top counsel or whatever but it seems some it seemed pretty dark in some ways the way they describe the the grieving like you know you sit there and you have all these people just yell at you and i thought to myself like what an incredible way to break somebody down to have the people that love them the most tell them why they don't like them that would destroy you and keep you tighter to that group because then you would feel like you had nothing without them you know true yeah yeah i mean you know it it's Those, I mean, but we've had those just, I mean, historically, they've, I mean, you know, while you were talking, I was thinking about the Essines, right? The group that probably was responsible for writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. I mean, that was a sect, a break-off sect of early Judaism intertestamental right around the time of Jesus, right after Jesus. And the reason why they disappeared is because they had, you know, kind of crazy rules, which, you know, one of which was that they pretty much took vows of chastity.

Like, you know, that's the way to end a group, right? You know, I mean, you're not going to have many people that are going to continue if you're all chased. So, you know, it's interesting the way that these, that or, but every organization has rules, right? Right. I mean, every organization, in some sense, I suppose, is, is a cult. I mean, we need a sociologist to be able to confirm that definition, but, you know, within the religious world, certainly there is a whole school of research on this in not only new religious movements, but also contemporary cults. And it's interesting to see the way that they almost always seem to originate in the so-called mainstream, right? And then there's just a little like a branch, almost like a shoot off of a plant,

that just all of a sudden just grows on itself. And it just ends up being so far out there that it's so far away from the original that it's almost indistinguishable. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because it makes me think of the family tree or any sort of plant you look at. Like sometimes an odd color flower will grow on a red rose bush, you know, or if you look back to the days of the tulip mania, they had like a little crack on them or something,

and they became this beautiful thing, which was more fragile or something. But yeah, I'm curious. What were some of the things that you learned when you did a deep dive into some of the profits as far as the actual experience that they had? Well, I mean, the experience that they have is obviously one that they believed was real themselves.

and the the perpetuation of it is successful only insofar as you've got people around you who trust and believe you because they have no other evidence

and so you know I'm again going back to the medieval mystics and thinking about their experiences I mean Marjorie Kemp I mean what she told people of what she went through they thought she was nuts. You know, and that was added to that was also there was a whole gender issue because the men

thought she was nuts because here was a woman talking about these experiences that she'd had and people were not happy with that. The men around her were not happy with that because the women would gather and listen to her. And oh, you know, 14th century, we're not having that. And I think that there's some sort of just creatives. to that also when it comes to the the prophets and if you think I mean and I'm just going to stick with with my boy Moses you know because I mean also a prophet in many ways and is able to gather around him a group who follow him based on him relaying what he's been told by God. And they have no other evidence to go on. So there's got to be something

again there about charisma and that cult of personality that he has to have. I mean, there's a reason why in contemporary leadership studies, the two figures that they often go to are Moses and Jesus, right, to look at as leaders. What did they do? Because both of them, it's not like they've got a resume. So, you know, what is it that people are attracted to?

Yeah, it's fascinating to me. I was curious. So let me see. I had, this is, okay. This is similar, but somewhat separated from it. When I think about essence and experience, I think it was in my notes down here

I wrote a little bit about my monadies and he talks about the highest possible spiritual experience occurs with the perfection of imagination and intellect working in concert might that almost be

essence and existence working together too yeah but what's really interesting is is the the joining there of memoramomides of imagination and intellect, two things that we usually don't think of as working together because we think about imagination as being the creative element, intellect,

being the rational side of us. And so what he's saying is that the best times occur, those best experiences will occur when those two faculties are working together. And so some of that then has to do, I think, between finding a balance between reason and faith. where faith is imagination and intellect is reason. They have to somehow be working together. I was thinking about this last night in preparing for our chat today.

Some years ago, it must have been about a decade ago, I decided that after many years I was going to go to the High Holy Day services at synagogue. for Yom Kippur, the new year, Jewish New Year. I had not been, since I had been, since I was a kid. There was a conservative synagogue right around the corner from our house, which I had attended a couple of times on Friday nights, but they had high holy day services, and I had a graduate student who was working for me,

who was Jewish and was also looking for someplace to go. And I had told her about this place, and I said, I might go and she said, oh, can I go with you? I said, sure. So we were at the service, and I will never forget. I was standing at one point praying. We were, I think it was when we were praying the cottage, the prayer for the dead. And I distinctly heard my grandmother call me, so much so that I remember looking over my shoulder because I thought she was back there.

It was the most strange thing I've ever had happened. It completely threw me, and I kept turning around, and I'm like, my grandmother's been dead since 1976. But I thought she was back there. And, you know, it brings me back to something that we had discussed earlier. You know, the day that I was walking when I heard of that my aunt died, and that butterfly came Yeah. Next to me. And I took that to be, you know, oh, that's my aunt coming to say goodbye.

And it brings me sort of back full circle to the discussion about symbols that we've had. Okay. Right. I was watching the Queen's funeral yesterday. Okay. You know, if you saw the actual end of it, the internment at Windsor Castle, when symbolically the crown, the orb and the scepter were removed, the coffin and symbolically the Lord Chamberlain broke his staff and laid it on the coffin before it was

lowered into the into the tomb. I mean the symbolism was just powerful, just absolutely powerful. And even if I would say you're not a royalist and you don't care about any of this, watching that when the crown was removed from the top of her casket, that seemed to end. That was the end of her reign. And you could almost feel it in, you know, the room. And I mean, and even now King Charles seemed to shed a tear and get emotional at that point. You know, it's just there's certain things that really strike us symbolically. And so that day in the synagogue, hearing what I thought was my grandmother,

I mean, you know, I'm, I guess, I mean, I'm a rational adult human being. And I know it wasn't my grandmother. My grandmother was dead. But something happened. I heard something. And it was something that no one else heard. You know, I couldn't have turned to the person standing next to me and said, did you just hear that?

Because I know they were. But, you know, again, so I'm, if you interpret something symbolically and it creates that meaning for you, that's also this experience perhaps that these prophets are having in melding together as Memomedi says, imagination and intellect. Right. I mean, that's what happened there when I heard my grandmother was imagination and intellect. My imagination, my imagination wants to hear. right my intellect knows that she's dead but nonetheless we were also we were presiding the prayer for the dead and so maybe that was her you know it's just and those are the kinds of things i think that the prophets report or any the prophets and prophets in general can report that if you are charismatic

may draw a following um again whether you're you know, John the Baptist or or Jim Jones, right? Or Donald Trump. Yeah. And okay, so imagine you're there and that your grandma says to you, David, please don't leave until 7.30. And then at 7.30, this magical event happens.

Like, you know, like, then you're really, really close to having not only the vision and the melding of intellect and imagination, but the foresight that was given to you. And who's, you see, and this is where I think it's a great area. Like maybe that was your grandmother. Maybe there was, maybe you were somehow in the perfect spot with the perfect resonance to actually contact. Like I believe that there's something bigger. Yeah. You know, it's possible.

And maybe people back then, maybe, maybe profits had some sort of direct line or maybe the time. Maybe there were different neurotransmitters or maybe it was something they were eating, you know? Well, I mean, for a lot of it in the Old Testament, it's the simple fact that, I mean, now, if we're going to go back and when I teach the Bible, I teach the Bible as literature. So that's the course. So I'm not teaching the Bible as doctrinal text or as theological. We're looking at them as stories. And if you go back to the Old Testament stories, I mean, as you progress through further and further chronologically, God, Yahweh, is more and more removed from the people further and further away. That's why eventually it becomes that if the smoke is on the mountain, when Moses goes, that means God is present there. And, you know, so this question about God's presence. And so the fact of the matter is that part of the reason for building the temple

is for God to have a home. right? I mean, you got to remember these ancient, you know, in these ancient religious beliefs, you got all these competing gods. I mean, the God, you know, and that's the thing about the Old Testament, of course, is that Yahweh doesn't say he's the only God. He says that he's the God for that group that they should believe in. You know, and that's a whole other discussion, but, you know, so this idea that the gods live in certain locations was not something that was foreign to them. They understood that. And so the fact that the matter is they're carrying the Ark of the Covenant because that's where God lives. And so this idea that once God removes himself from the people, they have to rely on the prophets to have that line of communication. So the individual is almost cut off from direct communication and has to rely on an intermediary, whether it's a Moses, or an Ezekiel or an Amos or any of the prophets in order to have that, to relay the conversation.

And that's what happens in the Old Testament prophets, right? I mean, the prophets are the ones who basically negotiate with God on behalf of the people. Yeah, it makes me think of a couple of things. I want to backtrack a minute so that we can move forward. And that is to go back and look at the symbolism of the queen dying. That is a ritual that must be done in a way that has been done the way it's always been done. And there's enough money and tradition there to make sure what happened there is the same thing that happened to her mother and her mother before. So we're really getting a snapshot of the medieval ages when we watch that ceremony, at least to the maximum that we can.

Maybe there were some small changes for television. but what we got to see was probably something very similar to what was seen by people a thousand years ago. A thousand years ago. The commentators were saying, you know, this is the way they buried the monarchs in, in Great Britain for a thousand years. Yeah. And so imagine, if you can, try and imagine that being the scene without any modern day technology.

You know, without the same way you go out and you look at the sky at night versus the way you would look. look at the sky without any light pollution. Like when there's no distractions, when there's no pollution, you can see things clearly. And the reason I'm just trying to say as a ritual, imagine how powerful that ritual was you saw it on TV, but imagine if you saw it a thousand years ago and you believed in the divinity of the queen and the divine right and you had all the holy fathers there, might that also be a similar place where other people could hear their grandma speak to them or they could have a somewhat religious experience?

You would be in a state receptive to hearing things. Maybe that's why there was prophets and minor prophets and this word of God was out there. Maybe it's a clearer. Maybe you hear a voice in your head when you're thinking clear. Well, I think you picked up on the right word there, being receptive to it. Yes.

Right. And that's a big part of the mystical experience as being receptive to it, of the prophetic experience of any religious experience, is to be receptive to it. And really, in many ways to any experience, I mean, I remember, you know, I mean, I've gone over the years for acupuncture treatments. And people always say, oh, does that work? And I say, if you believe it works, it works.

If you go in there thinking, oh, this is never going to work, it's not going to work. Right. I mean, you've got to be receptive. You've got to be open to the experience. If you're closed off to the experience, then hell is never going to happen. Whether you're talking about, you know, talking to God or, you know, curing your head. from the acupuncture, if you're going to go in saying, oh, this is never going to work, this is not going to work. So we need to be receptive. There's something about us. And again,

I talk about this in the book on sin throughout, about being just open to new experiences and ideas. And if we are, we become richer human beings, whether that's being open to new knowledge or open to, you know, having a vision or whatever the case may be. I would say that probably, you know, every day, if we are receptive, we can see something that will speak to us in that way. Of course, part of the issue is that in our busyness and the effective technology and the rate of modern life, it's become difficult to, you know, know, stop and smell the roses because we just don't have time. And so a lot of those experiences,

I think we miss. But if you're not receptive to it, it ain't going to happen. I mean, you know, when I took the students, took students on a study abroad trip this summer to the UK. And the first thing I said to them when we got to the first site we were visiting was experience being here. Don't just take pictures with your phone, right? Because that's their, their inclination is to record everything on the phone. And I said, you know, yes, take pictures. but have the experience of being here. We miss out on that a lot of the times, it seems. We're too busy recording the experience so that we don't forget it, ironically,

to actually have the experience. Yeah, it's funny. I was re-listened to some George Carlin, and he was... I love George Carlin. He's so funny. You know, and it's, like, it's so interesting to me because so much of the joke still work, and even the ones that may not work on the same. level, like a snapshot, then they still work. And there was particular joke he was saying that,

I don't understand one hour photo. You just saw the dang thing. You got to see it again. And I'm thinking like, gosh, if he was around today, like now it's not even an hour. Now it's like, I'm taking a picture now. I know. I'm looking at that thing through my screen. One hour photo. Yeah, I remember when I was when I was teaching in South Dakota, one of my good friends, she had a son. And he must have been about four at the time. And they were watching television and there was an infomercial commercial for the Dean Martin Roasts. And this four-year-old kid for some reason thought this was the funniest thing you'd ever seen.

And he begged his mother, he said, please, can we order this? Because it was available on tape or something. And so she finally caved and called in, because this is, before you could order things on the internet, called in and ordered the tapes and hung up the phone. And he said, okay, let's go. And she said, where?

And he said, the mailbox. that's we got to get him. And he was just under the impression that it would be instant, it would be there. And of course, now it is. You know, we are becoming such an instant culture that it's almost frightening. My wife and I were discussing this this weekend because the convenience of Amazon, you know, I don't know how you're, how fast you get your orders there in Hawaii if it's as fast as here. but, you know, my wife got a new laptop on Saturday.

And Sunday, I was in the front yard doing some yard work at 2 o'clock, and Amazon drove up with a package. And I said, you're not going to tell me this is your new laptop cover. She said, yeah. I said, what did Jeff Bezos, like, figure out that you wanted it when we were discussing buying a laptop? How did it get here? It's so fast. And we're just, we want things instantly.

We expect them instantly. And that's not a good, to me, that's not a good thing. It's convenient, sure. And isn't it great and isn't it wonderful? But I think we're missing something in the process. And, you know, there was something about the anticipation of waiting for those photos to come in the mail when they had to be developed, even before one hour photo. And that's gone now. You know, everything is, it's instant gratification.

Things can't happen fast enough. I saw something online this morning that Amazon is trying a new thing. I think they're trying it in 60 stores out west in the western U.S. where people can actually pay now using their palm print. It scans your palm. And the reason for this was the article said, it's faster than, you know, having to scan your card or anything like that. It's like how fast can we do things?

You know, it's just, I don't know. And to what, to what end? Right. So we can sit and binge watch the Kardashians? I mean, you know, what are we doing? I think we have the wrong people that are in control of the levers of power. You know, I always try to stand in line with I go to the grocery store. I do my best to not use the machines because I find myself on team human.

in. You know, and I, and I actually saw the store owner, and he's a really nice guy. And he's like, oh, did you want to use one of these nine machines? Because we've only got one employee working. Like, you can see that they're totally doing it on purpose. And I just respect it. Oh, no, I think I'm going to just wait in line over here. And I could see him like a little bit bummed. He's like, can I ask you why? And I go, absolutely. I'm like, I just, I feel a connection with a human, you know, and to me, don't take this the wrong way, sir. But you have all these machines. Like, it's first you don't want to give us a bag anymore. Now you want us to bag our own groceries.

And I don't see the prices coming down. Like you're going to not pay your employees. You're just going to mark everything up and then you get all the money. Like, what about us? I mean, we're a partner here in a weird sort of way. I respect what you do. But what about these people, man? I enjoy talking to this person.

And I feel it does something there. Well, well, Wegmans, which is a big grocery store chain on the East Coast here and has its devotees, to be sure, announced the other day that they're, getting rid of the self-checkout and they have a way they've had a way where if you have the Wegman's app you can actually just scan things yourself and pay that way and you just then you leave the store and so you never even have stand in line and you're like okay great they're getting rid of all of this and um i was like okay good because i i don't like those self-checkout because you I would rather go, and you're like, why are they doing it?

Because of shrinkage. They're losing too much money by that people are stealing stuff. So it has nothing to do with the reasons why we would hope. It's because of capitalism and money. You know, it reminds me of that fantastic scene in Charlie Chaplin's modern times, right, where he, the boss brings in this automated machine, which is supposed to feed the worker while he's still on the assembly line.

So he doesn't have to come off the assembly line for lunch. It automatically feeds him. And they come in to demo it, and Chaplin is they take him off the line to demo the machine. And of course, it goes all wonky. And it's ridiculous. So it ends up smack on him in the head. It's hilarious.

And at the end of the scene, the boss says, a chaplain is just, I mean, he's been bludgeoned by the thing and hasn't eaten, really. And the boss says something to the effect of, no, it won't work. It's something, I think he says, it's not practical. You know, never mind what it did to your employee. It's just not practical.

And when I saw that article about Wegmans, that's what I thought about. It's just like, okay, so you're not getting rid of it because you want people have jobs and et cetera, et cetera. You get rid of it because you're losing money. Yeah, it's such a fat, like, Sometimes, sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or to cry when I see the way in which we treat each other in the business setting. You know, when I read articles about billionaires or visionaries, you know, and boards of directors. And it seems to me the problem really begins when the company goes public because then you transition from maybe more of a family setting or an environmental we care about our people setting to a now we're beholden to the shareholders.

When you don't know personally, the person who owns the place or you're working, that makes a big difference. And I saw that. I had a bookstore in the 1980s in New Jersey. And small private bookstore owned by these two brothers. And we knew the brothers. They were in the store just about every day. And our workers had a completely different work ethic and attitude about the store than people who worked in any. of the big box bookstores did who didn't know the boss when you know the person who's your boss

not just your boss but the owner of the company i think that makes a tremendous difference in how how you operate and how you think about things because if you don't know them then it's just you're working for the company right you're not working for the owner you're working for the company I mean, I don't think anybody who works at Whole Foods thinks they work with Jeff Bezos. I don't think they think of that in those terms, you know. And that just, that casts a whole different shadow on things, you know. It changes the nature of customer service. I mean, I run into this constantly where I'll, you know, I'll say to somebody, you know,

I know this isn't your fault, but you represent the company. right now you know and so i've got to talk to you i've got to hear my complaint and it's very frustrating um you know it's funny that you mentioned this before because at saturday when we bought that new computer so we we went to the one of the big stores to buy the computer and we bought the computer there and this store is no longer giving bags out now there's no bag law in virginia yet they haven't passed the law some states do have it they're no longer giving out bags. If you want a bag, it costs 10 cents. And so when we checked out and the guy handed my wife the $1,200 laptop and asked if she wanted a bag that it would be 10 cents, well, and my wife thought,

probably thinks I was crazy for this, but an hour later, we were back there and I returned the computer and we bought it somewhere else. And when I walked in with it, we had no I mean, we never even went home. I walked in with it literally about two hours after we bought it and brought it to the customer service counter to return it. I said, I want to return this. And the young woman started to put the information. I had my receipt, started to put the information in the computer. She said, you just bought this today.

And I said, yep. And she said, what can I ask, you know, why you're bringing it back? And I said, buyer's remorse. That's all I could say, you know, and then she tried to do the, you know, well, what could we do? You know, it's like, nothing because it's not going to work. Right. But, I mean, I was really ticked off about the fact that here I'm spending $1,200 on a computer and you're expecting me to pay 10 cents for a bag. Come on.

Come on. And as I say, it would be one thing if it was a Virginia law, but it's not the law yet in Virginia about bags. That's a decision. Yeah. Like, in my mind, and it's even more sense. sinister when you think about them doing it under the guise of like protecting the earth or global warming. Like, we're doing our part. That's a decision in a boardroom.

And you know what the other one is? It's like, I can see somebody in a boardroom. Like, you know, I got a great room to help solve global warming. We're not going to give away any free bags. And someone else is like, yeah, we're not going to give away straws anymore either. You know what I mean? Like they just found a way to not give away stuff they were giving away. That's a business decision.

We can add on top of our profit and we'll just lie to everybody about it. I don't care how much money they spend. We're going to add that on there. Like, that's just the manifestation of greed. Like, we need more. Give us this. It's like, just take it easy, you know. Look at how airplane seats are shrinking again.

Oh, man. You know, it's just so you can get more people on the plane. Yeah. Yeah, it's what I don't, I don't know if anybody thoroughly understands it. But it just seems like all of a sudden we've gone into overdrive as far as trying to take as much money from the. average individual as possible, whether it's airline seats, bags, straws, taxes. At some point in time, people are going to start throwing tea off of boats. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's greed, isn't it? I mean, it's just, it's it's unabashed greed. And it's a few making outrageous amounts of money that they don't know what to do with. I mean, you know, I, I, there's a very interesting commercial campaign that Ford is running. And I'm no particular lover of Ford. But Ford is running this commercial and there's an obvious dig at Elon Musk in the opening line of it. Because they show a rocket ship taking off and talk about, you know, we're not spending our, our money on, you know, making all our money on this world and then only so we can take a rocket ship to go away to another war. you know, it's obviously a dig at Elon Musk.

But it's, I think it's, it's partially on target. I mean, you know, given the, the humanitarian crises in the world right now, and I mean, just the absolute horrors that are going on that could be solved with money, and here we are with people like that who are using it to do what? It just, it just doesn't make any sense. It's not, I don't get it. I don't get it. And I don't understand it.

I don't understand what motivates those folks. I mean, I want to be as comfortable as anybody else financially and in my life. But if I had that much money, I mean, I forget what Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are worth these days. I mean, wouldn't you want to use it to somehow make the world a better place? And I'm not sure that they're doing that. Maybe I'm wrong. And maybe there will be people who will chime in and will respond and say, you know, oh, but no, Bezos, you know, gives billions of dollars to feed babies in the Sudan.

And if he doesn't, great, then I don't know about it. But it just seems to me that we've got screwed up priorities. Yeah, I would agree 100% with you. And I, you know, I was watching a little bit about the queen. And when she passed away, like some of the things they said about her for her accomplishments were she's the longest reigning monarch. She's the richest monarch. And she has her name on the most money. And I thought to myself, like, I'm not sure those are things.

like to who much is given, much is expected, right? Yeah. And if you are given all these things, and I had a, in my men's group, I brought this up, and I says, I am a little offended that someone that has so much, that these are the things they talk about. Like, shouldn't at the end of that your time be like, this person brought more people out of poverty than China? Yeah.

You know, and like this person had accomplished that. And what was told to me was like, you know, George, I see what you're saying. However, think about the first part What you said, these things were given to her If something was given to you, George, you wouldn't be able to do those things Because it was given to you Then the fact, like what you just said about

These people have so much money Like they could feed these babies in Sudan Maybe because it was given to them They can't do that Maybe because it was given to them They become an example for guys like us to look at And go, wow, these guys aren't I don't see the

rocket scientist taking us to Mars. I see a guy that's got a problem with infidelity. I see a guy that has everything and is making a mockery of it. Don't get me wrong, the guy's a genius and I admire the technology he's doing. And maybe it's unfair to put anybody on a pedestal because none of us are perfect. But I think maybe the spotlight on some of these people that claim to be visionaries aren't for us to see just their visionary spirit, but to see ourselves in them and ask our how could we do it better? What would maybe that's the question. Maybe that's what we're supposed to do is what would we do different and then apply that to

our own lives. Because when I go down this rabbit, I get mad sometimes. And then I have to stop and be like, wait a minute. I am also the one person. There's people in third world countries don't have anything that probably look at me the same way I look at these guys. Exactly. And that brings me back.

It still makes me upset, but it brings me back to the ground. Like, okay, what can I do in my life to make it better? You know, can I talk to somebody or can I, can I give some, can I help out the guy down the street or can I help my neighbor or what am I doing to make everyone around me better? And I think that that comes down to the best thing you can do is try to make everyone around you better. And that seems to solve a lot of those issues for me. Well said, well said. I don't know if that's essence or existence, but. Wow.

Well, that's what we got going on. Did you have anything else you want to talk about? No, not right now. I mean, I've got my website's David A. Solomon.com, S-A-L-O-M-O-M-O-N, and all my books, my blog, all the good stuff's up there, and hope folks will come visit. Yeah. So all the links will be down there. And once again, the last book was the seven deadly sons. It's really good, ladies and gentlemen. I really hope you get a chance to check it out. I hope you're enjoying the content we're putting out there. You can reach David at his website. He does have another book coming out probably in the next, in the upcoming future. In the next year. And we will be talking about it as we go forward. And we will see you next Tuesday. Thank you so much for being here. And that's what we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, hello. Oh, ha.