TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - The Conclusion

Episode Date: May 3, 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/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.com/https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-Influenced-Middle/dp/1440858799https://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.davidasalomon.com%2F&sa=D&source=calendar&usd=2&usg=AOvVaw2BHRbXoSK-s7l7WFD5yDfm 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, 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 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 Dr. David Solomon. And we have been on a bit of a spiritual journey, the two of us. We have been covering a very not only interesting but fulfilling and I think wonderful book that Dr. Solomon has written, The Seven Deadly Sins. We've gone through them all and we're going to wrap it up today and try to put a nice bow on it and give everybody one last, one last Hail Mary here, I guess.

You got a lot of metaphor going on there. That's pretty fun. So here we are at the conclusion, Dr. Dr. Davidson. What do you think about the conclusion? What would you like to start at? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, the book was a journey for me as well as I imagine for readers. And ultimately, it was sort of a decision about where do I want to end up with this? What do I want to say? And the conclusion, I hope, is a little optimistic, but tempered with some warnings, the kinds of warning. the kinds of warnings that have peppered the book about excess and allowing technology to really take over our lives

and the dangers that that presents. You know, it's interesting. There's been quite a bit in the news, just ironically, in the last week, about these issues about empathy and loneliness. There was an interesting op-ed in the Sunday time, this week on what Charles Blow called the empathy deficit there was an article there was a piece that I was reading I think it was in yesterday's times on loneliness and then just before I

got on to the podcast with you George I just read on the online that now they're saying that Naomi Judd actually took her own life it was suicide and we do live in a in a troubled world and I think part of my message in the book is when it comes down to it, all we've got is each other. And so we have to learn how to treat each other in a more humane way. And if that means consideration of these sins and what they mean, then maybe that's a good place to start. Yeah, I agree. In a world that was promised, in a technological world that promised us togetherness, there's never been more. loneliness. Yeah, it's ironic, isn't it? You know, Sherry Turkle's most recent book, I think, is called Alone Together.

And it's just perfectly said that, you know, that's really what's going on here. And of course, the two years of the pandemic exacerbated that. And I'm sure that that certainly, you know, certainly didn't help. But we were certainly headed there before that. And, I saw it starting really after 9-11 when people started to kind of get into that bunker mentality and hunker down at home. We saw an explosion in home fix-it shows on TV. All of that really contributed to this isolation, which we have as a modern culture. Interestingly, we seem to encourage it. Isolation and also a separation from each other.

You know, so much so that you think about the ways in which technology has taken over in so many sectors of our lives and replace the human connection. I had to call AAA yesterday. I hadn't called AAA in literally decades, but that's why you have it. And I called AAA and I was really amazed. There's nobody there anymore. It's all automated. And I thought, well, how are they going to find my car? And they texted me while I was on the phone with them, a map of my immediate area and said,

move the dot and put it where your car is. And if the guy didn't drive right off my car, an hour later, it was just amazing. So, you know, there are incredible things that technology can do. but it did seem a little bit weird reporting this and going through all this and never actually talking to anybody live. And that removal that we've seen, you know, the replacement of cashiers at the grocery store would self-checkout. All of these things have just encouraged us to have less and less contact with each other.

And I think in many ways, and this is what a lot of people were saying after COVID, is they were really craving human contact. Yeah. You know, I don't understand if it's a, if it is this idea of becoming profitable to get people out of the workforce. You know, there was this idea that technology was going to give people more leisure time. But that never, that never unfold. It never happens. It just, it seems to make more profits for the people on top.

And when it comes to human contact, I often wonder, are we not one organism? And if you don't be in contact with each other, like you lose, you lose that relationship to other people. And it seems like that losing of ourselves is manifested in the, by magnifying these sins. I know that doesn't quite make sense, but, you know, when we lose ourselves, we find ourselves more in these sins. Yeah. No, I think that's true. I think that, and this is one of the things that even some of the early writers were concerned about, is that that that, that loneliness, that separation was going to make it a more conducive environment for you to fall into these sinful behaviors. It's certainly what the monks were concerned about in the monastery.

That, you know, if they were engaged in nothing but meditation and prayer all day long and remain separated from others, that that was going to be a problem and possibly open the door as the Genesis text says to sin, right? Sin is crouching at the door, God tells Cain and Abel. And so I think that that is a real concern as we move forward into this new century. What we're going to do? I mean, you know, we started the 20th century with Henry Ford and the automated assembly line. And here we are now in the 21st century, and now we're so far beyond that, that, you know, if you go back and look at Charlie Chaplin's modern times, which tries to kind of lampoon the whole idea of the automated assembly line and show why it's problematic. I can't imagine what Chaplin would think today, looking at the way things, the way things were. work. And I do think a lot of it, as you say, George, it does come down to profit motive,

the capitalistic society, the way the economy works. And it is about, in many cases, it seems to be about profit over people. Yeah. No matter how many times, you know, the execs we'll say that's not what we're doing. It sure as hell looks like that. And I just, I don't, I don't understand that. I don't understand how we've lost so much of our humanity that we think profit before people. It's a really sad state. Yeah, I agree. I, I work for a Fortune 500 company. And I don't know this to be true of all major corporations, but I do know it to be true of mine. And that is you're given an employee number. And the moment you're given a number, that's the beginning of dehumanizing someone.

Absolutely. Much easier. Hey, this 075, but it's not working real well would you get rid of it. Hey, maybe 075's kid died. Yeah. Maybe they're having problems at home. You know, and when you, it's so much easier. Isn't that like one of the first laws of genocide or war as you dehumanize the other side?

So in fact, they're dehumanizing one half of the people they need to be successful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and it's what we say in higher ed too, right? I mean, whenever you go to a smaller size institution, you'll always hear them touting about the fact that you're not just a number here. Right? Because if you're at an institution that has 50,000 students, you tend to be a number. You know, your number 212 in this class of 500, whereas it's a lot more difficult to be a number. in a class of 18 students.

You know, you become more individual. But I do think that that's very true. That the way that our economy is set up with the top 1% making most of the money. And it just, it doesn't work for the rest of us, that's for sure. Yeah. You know, it may work for the one percent. And certainly I'm no economist. I have the most rudimentary understanding of it.

But as I've gotten older, I certainly have come to understand a little bit about what capitalism is all about. And I'm not saying that it's necessarily an all-encompassing evil. But if we go back and look at some of the original writing on capitalism, we can see how far away we are from that. Agreed. Yeah, it's, you know, in the conclusion, you write about the, the confusion of subject with object. And I think there's a lot of that we'll just talk about a little bit. Can you kind of flesh that out a little bit? What you meant by that? Yeah, I mean, we've talked about that quite a bit. You know, the ability to separate oneself from a situation. Yeah. And really kind of have distance, right? Be able to look at. at something with a less subjective eye and look at it objectively. So it's not just about how this situation affects me, right? That would be the subjective perspective. But it's about, well, what does this mean for others? How do other people? How is the world dealing with this?

And so when we look at something like the environment and we think about what's going on with climate change and our role in that. On the one hand, from a very subjective perspective, it would be, well, I'm doing what I need to do for me. It costs me more money to buy things that are environmentally friendly. It costs me more money to recycle. And so I'm not going to do that because it all affects me. It's all about me.

I, I, I, I, I, I, but if we think objectively and think about, well, what is this doing to the world, you get away from that eye perspective and you say, well, look at the impact on nature. Look at the impact on animals. Look at the impact on other people. Look at the impact on people just at the level of a country, of a nation, and what it does. I think that the ability to do that is probably one of the greatest characteristics that we have as human beings to separate and to be objective and not be completely subjective, but for some people, especially folks who are tied up in some of these sins, like pride, they get so self-involved that it's very difficult to see anything from any other perspective.

And we all know people like that, right, who operate like that on a daily basis. And what I'm talking about is something which is obviously taken to the next level where that really begins to affect and have an effect on the world around you. Yeah, it's, it's, it makes me sad in a lot of ways that, you know, even if you look at it from a medieval point of view where the king had subjects, now they have objects. And, you know, just gets us back to the whole giving people numbers and stuff. I thought it was interesting how you kind of compared it to Metropolis and drone-like workers.

Yeah, in the Flang film where, you know, the opening of the film, the workers have basically become robots. And they are very mechanical. And they, in that film, walk off to work

in some sort of subterranean environment. And then Lange switches the shot to the company owners and the wealthy who are basking in the sunshine up above, I think they're actually on the roof of a building, as far away as they can get from

the workers. And we see that every day, don't we? You know, if you go into any chain store, any corporate-owned store, you know, one of the things that I've always, it always bothered me about those kinds of places. Now, I had a bookstore in the 1980s, and it, it, it, always struck me that, I mean, I knew who the owner was. I was a manager for the bookstore. The owners were these two brothers. I knew them. They were in the store almost every day. And so you knew who the owners were. And that, I think, made you operate on a daily basis in a different way than if you work in some big corporate environment where I don't know who the owner is. you know, maybe the only person I know who's above me is my immediate supervisor.

Beyond that, I don't know who anybody is. And so it's about an ability to care about the nature of your work. And I think that puts a whole different spin on things. And again, you know, in Chaplin's modern times, there's a fantastic scene where he is on the assembly line and he basically has become robotic by he's got to turn a wrench on these bolts and he does it over and over again. He's not even thinking about it anymore. But my favorite scene in that film then is he's pulled off of the assembly line by the boss, who has a company has come in to sell him a new product that will allow his workers to continue working so their hands will be free.

They can continue working while they're having their lunch. So it's an automated feeding machine. And the scene is very funny. They strap chaplain into this machine and his sort of a turntable turns and a mechanical arm pushes food into his mouth. And as you can well imagine, I mean, it doesn't work. It's a colossal disaster. and at the end of it, by the end of the scene,

the machine has gone completely haywire and Chaplin's getting smacked in the face with one of the arms and he just looks like he's just been beaten down. And the boss says, you know, it's no good. It's just not efficient enough. It's not effective. It's got nothing to do with what it's doing to the worker. Yeah.

You know, and I think that's telling. Yeah, I do too. And that film is almost 100 years old. Yeah, I guess it just goes to show it's been going on since the beginning. Yeah, it probably has. Certainly it has since we've devised these various economic structures. I think that if you look at somebody like, you know, Yusuf Harari's books, Sapiens and Homo Deiast and Homo dais and.

and the others that he's written. He kind of goes through how it wasn't necessarily all that way, always that way. If you go back to pre-modern cultures, it was a different kind of a system. And perhaps workers were more cared for them. Yeah, it's interesting that we have the label worker, which you just call those slaves,

because it's very similar. you know, when you start delineating, I'm this and you're that, you're this and on that, you know, it seems to me that like we're right back into almost envy again when we start using these kind of labels. Yeah, well, it's pigeonholing people, right? Yeah, it's, as you say, it's labeling them and it's pigeonholing them. But the thing is that once you label them, you can pigeonhole them, right? And so pigeonholing, meaning that, you know, we're putting them into this little box, right, like a pigeonhole.

And they can't really spread their wings, literally, and they can't move about, and they can't really move from one box to the other, that's who you are. And that's, for me, that's always been the problem with Freudian psychology. It's a pigeon. I'm more attracted to Jung because Young gives you the opportunity to grow and move forward, whereas Freud basically tells you, you know, it was all your mother's fault, and there's nothing you can do about it. And so, you know, I'm much more in favor, obviously, and I think, probably we all are, of a system where somebody is permitted to grow. You know, we have this idea that even in a work environment, people can, we say, move up, right? Yeah. That, you know, you don't have to be in that same position forever and ever.

If you aspire to something higher, there might be a possibility. And I know, you know, at counseling students, when they go out on the job market and are being interviewed for jobs, you know, one of the questions that they always are prompted to ask is, you know, what are the opportunities for growth, right? Am I going to be stuck in this position forever and ever? Because this is not what I want to do forever and ever. Yeah. But, you know, and so it's, it's, but it does provide interesting opportunities for. for potholes, right? Like these sins, right? So, you know, you could see where it could encourage envy, right? That I'm envious of what that guy does, and he's got a higher title than I do,

and he makes more money than I do, and he works, you know, 40 hours a week, and I work 48 hours a week, whatever the case may be. So there is certainly that, that opportunity. And it's something which is interesting. And I think if I had continued to work on this topic, specifically, I would look more at the relationship between the concept of sin and our capitalist economy. Yeah. It's, you know, a lot of, you hear a lot of people talk with the

disappearance of God or religion, you begin to see a society that has a lot less empathy. And when we look at the, when we cover the sins like we did, and we understand how each one is sort of an off ramp on this super highway. And here's another off ramp. Here's another one. It's, it really, I think, it really reinforces the need for some sort of spiritual nature, not only in the individual, but in the group as a whole so that we can't avoid these potholes that you talk about. Sure. And I think you're right.

I think it can be an individual spirituality. I don't think it necessarily has to be something that we all agree on. So it doesn't have to necessarily be an organized religion. If it is terrific, if that's what works for you, then great. But if it comes down to just having an individual, spiritual sort of, I don't know what the word is, spiritual philosophy, spiritual ethos, then I think that that's wonderful. And a lot of people have developed that. And if you haven't developed that, I think you're right. A lot of the times you can fall into an issue where one of the things that we see most prevalent, as you mentioned,

is lack of empathy, because we don't understand and we can't appreciate what other people are going through, right? And that's really what empathy is, right? I mean, the difference between empathy and sympathy, right? Sympathy is, you know, I'm sorry for what you're going through. Empathy is, I know what you're going through it. I'm sorry. There's a difference there. And so if I can empathize with you, it implies that, you know, I know what you're going through. I understand. I feel for you. And as a result, your pain is shared. right i mean i share in in what you're going through and um i think that that can be a beautiful thing as a yeah yeah i think so too i um you know you write to something that i thought was

that kind of got me thinking for quite some time was that the standards of moral behavior moved from external verification to internal monitoring and i think that that's a big part, you can apply that to almost everything we see in society right now, the sort of internal self-governing that needs no approval from the outside. Yeah, I think when it comes to morality, that certainly is the truth. As we've moved these questions of sin to become more legal issues in our culture, it really has kind of confused things so that, you know, it's no, for years we'd always heard that in just about every jurisdiction in the country, I believe, adultery, you know, technically is against the law.

If you actually commit adultery, you have broken the law. And so you can be, in theory, arrested and held for committing adultery. But I think that the more pressing issue for us is what it means spiritually and morally, not necessarily legally. And too often we get caught up in thinking about the legality of these issues. And we've lost the morality of them, which is really what's more important. What do you think the relationship between morality and shame is? And is shame something that could be a positive thing?

Shame is a really interesting emotion, right? I suppose it can be a positive thing in most instances that I've dealt with in the reading that I've done and the work that I've done myself personally on this ain't very positive. I've got to tell you. It's a tough thing to deal with. It's a tough thing to reconcile. But certainly I think that ultimately, as with any of these things, it can ultimately be a part. positive. You know, I've got this quote on my wall here in the office. I happen to be looking at it this morning, and so I'm pulling it off the wall to read to you. This is from St. Thomas Aquinas. And it's in a section of his sumatelagica where he's talking about sex and about particularly about copulation. His question is, is copulation a sin. And this is how he responds. He says, a sin in human acts is that which is against the order of reason. Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting

manner. Wherefore it is no sin if one by the dictator reason makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for the end to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good. So again, it's it's about moderation. It's about what's the ultimate aim of the behavior, right? Is the ultimate aim within, as Aquinas would say, within reason? And is it, is it a good? Is it going to result in a good? And some of these things, I mean, you know, as we talked about, you know, it isn't necessarily a sin to like or want to make money. Right. It's when it is, when those desires become excessive that we run into the problem, it becomes greed. Yeah. Right. And, and, and, It works like that on every level here with every one of these sins, whether it's lust.

And, you know, it's not bad necessarily to have amorous feelings for another human being when it becomes excessive problem. Yeah, and I think it's something that all of us find ourselves slipping into from time to time. And we're lucky. A lot of us have family or friends or a book or some sort of token that we can look at to of pull ourselves back out of that. And again, this brings us back to empathy because once you've been in that situation, you can better recognize that and see somebody else in that situation and maybe help them out a little bit. But I agree. This idea of excessiveness and this idea of

is it ultimately for something good. I think those are two things if people can just keep in their mind. In fact, I would argue that that are two great lessons that I have learned amongst others from this book about these sins is that empathy seems to be the key that unlocks the door to freedom from them. Yeah, I think of that. I mean, having empathy and experience. Yeah, exactly. And experiencing the world, experiencing existence.

And so, you know, the remedy here is not to lock yourself off in a room somewhere, right? Which was, you know, in many ways, a lot of the, traditionally, that's the way. many people have dealt with it. Right. You know, going back to the desert fathers, right, who left this big city to go out into the desert to pray and be closer to God, to the medieval mystics and the anchorites who hold themselves up in these rooms and lived out their existence completely alone. So that supposedly they become closer to the divine. And that, you know, it can be really helpful to experience that for a little while.

to go on, you know, a retreat, to go somewhere where you can spend a week where you're, you know, pretty much isolated where you can be alone, we say alone with your thoughts, right, really kind of reflecting. But then you got to get back in the game, right? I mean, you can't sit on the sideline because that's just, you're not part of the game then. And you're not going to learn anything. So, you know, it's only from experience, I think, that we learn. empathy. It's not something that we're born with. We, we, we, we, we talk a lot about people being empaths, right? That, you know, and that seems to imply that there's something that's just sort of out of the womb. That's the way that you are. I don't think that's true, though. I think that that's a learned, a learned behavior. I think it's something that we learn not only from parents and teachers and others, but from just the experience of living.

Yeah, on that level, would you say that, you know, we could maybe see sin as a classroom? And I mean, in some ways, I hate to use this word, but in some ways, it may be good, or maybe a learning experience that we can learn from and that if you realize you are going to do these things, you are going to be victim of these things, you're going to do it, people are going to do it to you. And if you can look at it from that angle somewhat objectively, you can say, okay, this is a lesson for me to learn. Sure. In some ways, yeah. I love that analogy of it being like a classroom.

I think the key is that you got to graduate. At some point, you got to leave. You know, if you keep failing and you're stuck in that same classroom, that's not good. So, you know, we want to learn from the experience and then move on, right? Right. Yeah, that opens up a whole other set of ideas. How many people do you know that just keep repeating the same class? Or if you look at the earth as a classroom or this life is a classroom, you're like, you fail that class again?

Come on. People are making the same mistakes over and over again, right? And the interesting thing is if you go back and you look at the books of the prophets in the Old Testament, the Israelites as a group continually make the same mistakes over and over again. right they they they offend god god punishes them they repent and it starts all over again and it's like every generation just goes through the same and and ultimately in in the stories it's interesting the way that god finally tries to to reconcile right and so look you know i keep giving you second chances here there's only you know you can only fail a class so many times before they get you know that's about

labor the analogy you know i don't think it's a it's a bad analogy this idea that you know yeah i mean it is a learning experience but you you got to graduate sometime yeah it's it's funny the way we twist stuff around if you use that same example and god keeps punishing the israeliites and they're like so what you're saying is we're the chosen people he's like i'm choosing you to go it again they're like so we're chosen you know yeah yeah yeah there's a great line uh what film it's in where uh Somebody says, you know, so you're the chosen people and says, yeah, that's something I would really like to talk to God about Sunday. I can't remember what film that is now. But it's, it is interesting, isn't it?

That the idea of being chosen for whatever that means. Yeah. And then the burden that that places on you. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I've learned from three decades of teaching that you have to be very careful when you really praise a student for his or her abilities and potential. Because sometimes that can be too much of a burden. You know, my daughter just finished her first year in college.

She took her final exam in German yesterday, and she wasn't happy with it when she left. She said, and it was interesting, the thing that was, she texted me was, I don't want to disappoint the professor. She's done well all semester, and she's afraid that if she doesn't do well in the final, it will disappoint him because it'll let him down because he'll think less of her. And I think that that's a real issue. And I've learned as a teacher, as a professor, that you kind of have to walk a line between really supporting students, really supporting other people and encouraging them, and implying that, you know, oh, I think you can do everything. And then when they slip up, it seems like it's the end of the

world for them that they've let you down. And I don't think we give people enough room for failure and enough grace. And I talked a lot about this during COVID, about giving people grace, especially when it came to these incredible issues that we were dealing with of literally life and death and just cutting people some slack. And it doesn't necessarily mean lowering the bar. I mean, my students will tell you, I have very high standards. It's not lowering the bar, it's showing you humanity. right it's it's it's it's the student who's one point away from you know a higher grade and

giving them that because it's a point they missed it by a point and otherwise they were a good students there's nothing really to to to indicate that they shouldn't you know so why my i can't count numbers personally as a as a professor i've never graded using numbers I always tell my students I don't grade using a calculator. I don't even have one. I look at grading as being much more holistic. And I think the way that we judge each other should be based on a more holistic perspective and not based on, well, what did you do today? Right. And is that then somehow extrapolated to indicate something about your character overall? No. You screwed up with something that you did today. It was a mistake. You're owning it. important part. You admit you got made a mistake. You're going to grow from it. You're going to learn from it. Move on. I'm not going to hold it against you for the rest of your life. And I think that some people are really harsh and can't can't, can't, can't let that go. Now, I'm not saying that, that, that in cases of murder and things like that, that's different, right? But I'm talking about

these, these slight lapses and judgment that we will have. have. Cut us some slack. We're humans. We're not perfect. Right. I mean, one day when we are perfect and we enter the singularity and we can download our consciousnesses from a computer and all be perfect, then that'll be a different situation. But we are not perfect. If there's one thing we know as human beings is that we are not perfect. You know what? I had a friend of mine that he's been listening to our series, and we got off on a conversation that was almost this exact thing. And I was hopeful to get your thoughts on this. He says to me, George, I'm struggling with the idea that as humans were not perfect,

but God made us perfect. So how can that be? What's this paradox? What would you say to something like that? Well, I mean, if you're going to subscribe to this idea, right? I mean, God may have made us perfect, but we are by nature imperfect as human beings. So God may have created human beings as perfect, but once we have become a part of reality, we become imperfect because reality is imperfect. I always explain this to my students using the platonic theory of the forms, right?

And that there's a different plane of existence on which exists, the perfect example of, you know, this mug, right? this, what I've got here is an imperfect representation of that perfect form of the mug. In my mind, I can conceive of the perfect circle. As soon as I draw it on the board, it becomes imperfect because it becomes part of this reality, and this reality is not perfect. The mystics were striving to get a glimpse of that perfection, right? I mean, that's what so many of mystical tradition is about. I mean, Plotinus and the Gnostics and, you know, on and on,

is about gaining some access to that perfection while you are in this life. The hope is that once you are freed of this imperfect body, that you become pure spirit and you can then join that perfection, right? or in some cases, depending on the tradition, rejoin that perfection. Yeah. But while we're here, the idea that we can be perfect is fool party, because we are not. Far from it.

We're far from it. And I mean, even just on the level of, you know, not even thinking about emotional and spiritual perfection. I'm talking about just physical perfection. Our body is a mess. Yeah. You know, some more than others, to be sure. But, you know, physically, we are not perfect human beings.

I mean, we are flawed. We have, we are prone to disease. There are all sorts of issues here. And, you know, that sort of gets you into a next level discussion about theodicy and the problem of evil. Well, if God created us perfect, then, you know, why are our bodies prone to disease? That just doesn't make any sense. But, you know, that's a whole other, whole other level of discourse. But I do think, you know, the striving for it is what's important, right?

The quest, the reaching for it is what's important. Even though we may know we're never going to achieve it. And if we think about that, I mean, we do that with all other aspects of our lives, right? I mean, the gymnast is continuing to strive to get the perfect score in a routine, right? They may never get it. It just may never happen. But that doesn't mean they're not going to stop trying. Yeah, it's, and maybe that is one of the most beautiful things about the human condition,

is that even though we know we may not ever attain it, some of us never, stop trying to get there. You know, and that's a miracle in itself and such a beautiful thing. It's like, yeah, you know what? You can, you mean, the thing is you'll never probably achieve it, but you must not lay down the tools and stop working.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's that whole bit about, you know, what is does Yoda say, you know, try not do or, you know, you need to to just, you need to, and I talk about this in the book, it's important to make an effort, right? Yeah.

It's what we were talking about last week, right? I mean, Blake's, you know, expect poison from standing water, right? We've got to make an effort and constantly be looking for, I don't know if it's success. I don't think it is success. I think it's looking for achievements. and for some, that achievement may have to come externally, where they're recognized. But for a lot of people, that achievement is internal. Yeah.

Knowing, you know, I mean, we, you know, our parents used to say, you know, knowing the, the feeling of a job well done, right? I mean, you know, that's, right? I mean, it's not about, you know, having somebody pat you on the head and say, you know, oh, very good, here's an award. I mean, yeah, those things are nice, but that shouldn't be what motivates us. Yeah. I'm often reminded of, I can't tell you what number it is, but there's a quote that says,

I was born with a thorn in my side, a messenger from Satan to torment me. I prayed to the Lord to take the thorn from my side. And in his infinite compassion, I heard him say to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for in weakness, my power is made perfect. Like that seems to sum it all up to me. Like, yeah, you're born with this poison. You're born with this thorn and you can't. But don't worry.

You stand tall. You stand strong. And I will work through you. And it gives me goosebumps to think about that because we're all imperfect. And we all have this thorn. But that is the story of the hero, be it Joseph Campbell or be it King Arthur. Is this person or even Carl Young in the shadow is like,

you stand up and you face the fire and see what happens. Have a little bit of faith. You know, and it's so beautiful to me. I love it. Yeah, I mean, you do have to have faith. And even if we're not talking again about faith in a divinity, you have to have faith in yourself. Exactly. Exactly.

No one gets anywhere without having some sense of faith in themselves. And I'm wary to say have self-confidence because that's a little bit more. on the level of, well, have pride in yourself. Having faith in yourself is, you know, I believe I can do this. You know, and I think that that ability is something which is so important to our growth as human beings. I mean, I see it in young people in college. You know, the student who will take a chance and, you know, I'm going to take this class. well why would you take that you know well I've never taken that class and I think it would be kind of

interesting and I want to challenge myself hey bingo sign you up you're great challenge yourself I'm all for that you know not taking the the kind of the easy way out but um that you know what's implied in that is also a the danger of failure right is you may not may not succeed yeah but I think that the important thing from that is what do you learn in the process right so maybe you failed what did you learn in the process i think i may have told you this story once before when i was an undergraduate at fortem university i had a um intro of philosophy class which um i've really struggled with really struggled with um it was my first introduction to any of these concepts i was really interested in them but i was also probably overly argumentative about

it and I really had a hard time with it and the professor and I did not get along. He liked to have the stage and I made a joke once in class and I think that was the end of our relationship. And years later it was interesting because I took a course in political philosophy probably four or five years later and wrote a final paper for that course that used Plato and Aristotle all over the place. And I got a good grade on the paper and so I copied I copied the paper and I wrote him a letter at Fordham and I said, you see, because I think I got a D in that intro to philosophy column. I said, you see, I said, grades don't always indicate what you learned. I learned a lot in that class and a lot from you, even though I got a D. You know, and typical Jesuit, you know, he wrote me back because he had a last word that he said. You know, he had a response for everything. It's not just about grades, right?

And I try to tell students that. And in our grade-hungry culture, that's really hard. But, you know, the last thing I say in most of my courses at the last class is, I hope you got something out of this class other than a grade. And it's true. I want them to take something away from it other than just a grade on a transcript. And oftentimes, you know, and other teachers will tell you this, the best evaluations they get are from students who say, you know, I think I'm going to get a C in this class,

but I should have worked harder. You know, I know I didn't do my best. It's like, okay, you know, rather than, you know, I think I'm going to get a see in this class, since you're a lousy professor and blaming it on me, right? Which, I mean, you know, and certainly I'm not saying there are lousy professors and there might end up be justified. But in many cases, it is that necessary part of it. And I do this at the end of my young course. Students have to do this reflective essay where they reflect on, you know, what did I get out of this semester? What did I contribute?

What could I've done better? What was a surprise? Those kinds of things. And those reflective essays they write are absolutely incredible. I've saved a lot of them over the years. They're amazing pieces. Just so insightful. So insightful.

Yeah. It makes me hopeful for our hopeful future. Can you tell us a little bit about Victor Cohen's book? Yeah, Victor Cohen. So he wrote this book back in the 1950s. I think it was 59, predicting what the world was going to be like in 1999. And I believe it's called 1999, Our Hopeful Future. And he predicted things like there would no longer be umpires at a baseball game.

it would all be computerized balls and strikes. And some of the things that he predicted did certainly come true. But the interesting thing is that, you know, I still do teach a course called Hamlet and Hyperspace. It's a course on writing and technology and ideas. And I remember when I taught the course in the year 2000, I had an opening page for the web page, for the web page that played a sound bite, I believe it was James Earl Jones.

It was some commercial running at the time. And he says something like, it's the year 2000. And, you know, where are the flying cars? I thought they were going to be flying cars. And I always think it's interesting when I teach that course on the first day. I show them the opening sequence for the Jetsons.

Yeah. Because that was supposed to be the future. Yeah, I remember. And some of that, you know, we do kind of have. But certainly a lot of it we don't. And I think, you know, this question of whether and of what our future is going to look like. Right. So Cohn wrote that book.

Now it's about probably 60 years ago. And if you think 60 years from now in 2080, what will our future look like then? we often joke about the fact that for folks of my age, when people say 20 years ago, we think 1980, you know, time doesn't work in the same way. But it's kind of hard to believe when you look at certain things, how much time has passed since some of these things that now we just take for absolutely for granted.

I played my students last week and ad from 1995, I think it was, for a new video telephone that had just come out. And the ad is hilarious. I mean, it's like something out of a science fiction film. And of course, the video phone was a disaster. It didn't go anywhere. But we have it now, easily enough.

I mean, we're talking right now in ways that we've been before. And so, you know, I think our future, I mean, it has to be hopeful. Maybe the increase that we're seeing in suicide and depression is an indication that as a culture, we've lost a little bit of hope. I'm not sure. It's one of those things that I'm still myself kind of struggling with on a daily basis. I was watching CNN last night, which I've, I've. I've tried to cut back on my news watching because of what's going on in the world and not wanting to be exposed to that so constantly.

And the images that are coming out of Ukraine are just heartbreaking. Yeah. And it's just, I don't know how we move forward from that. But I'm sure that people had the same sentiment after World War II. I'm sure that our vets felt that way coming back from Vietnam. You know, how do we move forward? I'm sure our veterans felt the same way coming back from Afghanistan. And it really does, we unfortunately tend to measure our historical eras based on conflict.

I mean, really, with the exception of the Great Depression, pretty much everything that we study in history involves a conflict, the American Revolution, the War of 1812. You go through them, right? I mean, if you think about what we learned in school, the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. You know, it's sad, I think, that we use that as our, um, our posts that we measure things by and instead it would be nicer if we could do that by some of the positive things that human beings have achieved but we tend not to do that yeah it's it makes me sad it's it's almost like it's almost pornographic in a way the way that we have this uninterrupted presence of the visible, always there.

It's just uninterrupted. In Hawaii, we don't have any billboards. But when I go back to the mainland, it's just this uninterrupted presence, and it's always around you, and it's the TV, and it's the radio, and it's a billboard. And you don't even have time to think without someone, hey, come here, let me look at this thing.

And it's, and it is conflict. It's never conflict resolution. It's conflict. You know, and on my darker days, I believe it's engineered. that way, be it conscious or unconscious. However, the good thing about it is, if we can recognize that,

then we can make a conscious decision. Oh, we got conflict? Let's talk about the conflict resolution. Let's not talk about the war. Let's talk about what we did to fix it. All our focus should be on the solution. We should, okay, what happened? Okay, let's find a solution.

And I think it can be turned around. And I think a lot of people are seeing that. I think a lot of people are tired of these horrific images of people who are being treated less than human. And we have all played that role. And I don't want anyone to keep playing that role when we can play the role of the person who fixes it. And I think while we may have a little further to go, what you're seeing is a turning point. And after we've covered Carl Jung and Valerie and what this book has helped me to learn is that, yeah, we've gone through these sins.

We've done it. And now it's this, I think that what this book represents is conflict resolution. Hey, here's all the battles and here's what we're moving forward. You know, what, let me ask you this. What, what, let me, it's a two-part question. Number one, what did you get most out of writing this book? And number two, what is it that you want people to take away from it? I think the answer to that may be, maybe the same thing, which is encouraging the use of imagination.

We need to engage our imagination. I mean, you talk about the fact that, you know, in Hawaii, you don't have billboards. I didn't know that. You know, we have gotten away from really engaging and encouraging people to use their imagination. And all of the great things that have happened in history to human beings have been the result of imagination. And innovation comes from imagination. Now, one of the issues that we've been dealing with recently in our history, seems to be that we are moving so quickly and that we are so concerned about remaining above

the water and treading water that there isn't time to to engage in the imagination. And I think that that I just I think that is so vital. It's so vital. And it's the only thing that that's that helps us move. forward. I mean, even if you go back, I was reading about Steve Jobs and Wozniak this morning, and, you know, inventing Apple, founding Apple and inventing the Macintosh and the other devices that came out of that. And all of that was rooted in wild imagination. I mean, when you think about, you know, and if you go back and read about the process that they were going through, I mean, in those earliest days, I mean, it was lunacy. It was like,

What are you doing? What? You know, and if you Google the earliest version of the Macintosh computer, it's hilarious. It's made out of wood. You know, it looks hilarious. But it was, that was imagination. And it is just so important for us to engage in that. I'm about to go off on a trip with students to the UK in a couple of weeks.

And one of our stops is Tintern Abbey. Tinturn Abbey, the site of Wordsworth's poem Tinturn Abbey, which is one of my favorite poems of all time. And I fully plan to bring that group to Tinturn Abbey and stand there and read that poem out loud with them. Because it is just, it's a brilliant piece about how you use current experience in the future. Wow. How you can be grateful for what you're experiencing now because what you realize is, as he says in the poem, it will be food in the future.

I'm going to use that in the future. And we just, we don't do enough of that. Yeah. What's the name of that poem again? Tinterna Abbey. I'll send it to you. Okay. Perfect.

Thank you. Yeah. It's a brilliant, brilliant poem. It's a poem that reflects on the fact that he had been. into this spot five years earlier and he's reflecting on what he had gained in the five years and now what he knows he's

going to use being here now in the next five years and the future out once he leaves. So it's about the importance of memory and really about the importance of imagination. I mean it was when I was, the last time I was there was, I guess

it was three summers ago and walking around just on the ground there, it just, I got just shivers because knowing that he had been there as part of it, to be sure, but, and looking at the same exact thing that I'm looking at, because the abbey is in ruins, it's the ruins of an abbey that he was, that he was at. But it's right on the bank of the, the Y River there. And just standing there by the Y River, I just, all I could think about was the line in the poem where he talks about standing by the bank of the Y River. It's that, that

imagination. And it's been three years and I'm still using that. So I mean, I'm engaging in exactly what words worth, hopefully we would. I'm using that memory as true today. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. I really like that. It's it's so beautiful how people we admire, regardless of how long ago they lived, never die if we continue to learn from their lessons. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know what? George, we should do. We should do a live. We should do a podcast. When I'm at intern abbey, we should do a live podcast.

Yeah. You know what I was just going to tell you that? We should do a live reading with your students. Let's see if we could make that happen. I'm just looking to see what the date is when we're going to be there. We'll work that out. I think it's a, it's a Saturday. It's a Saturday.

Perfect. I'm wide open Saturdays. But yeah, we should do that because it's an incredible spot. Yeah. If you have any free time over there, just let me know. We'll do a on location show. Absolutely. There's a lot of people that'll never get to go there that could see that.

That would be really cool. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I learned so much from this book. I'm thankful for this book, and I just really want to let people know. The book is called Seven Deadly Sins, and there's so much in there. You know, after the conclusion, there's like four chapters of footnotes. which is always the mark of a great author and a true thinker because it allows you to go back and maybe to read where you got that stuff from and also pull the nuggets for yourself.

Maybe there's something that you did that they don't see, you know? So I really appreciate that. It's a great book, everybody. Go and read it and put it on your bookshelf or keep it on your nightstand because I think you can, there's been times where I'm like, oh, what did you say again? And I can go back. It's a really rich experience. And I hope more people go out and buy it and learn from it and get it signed by you.

Well, I would appreciate it. I appreciate that, George. I appreciate your kind words. Yeah, I'm happy to sign books. If folks want to get in touch with me on my website, which is David A. Solomon.com. I'd be happy to arrange to have a signed book and send it to you. But I've got a blog, which is also a link from there. a new blog was posted this morning,

which is about the power of memes and the way that we are not a reading culture and needs to really, really change that. I had to call us this because I was listening to the radio the other day and James Brown came on singing, it's a man's world. Do you know that song, George? Yeah, I do. And so I thought, oh, that's the perfect title for this.

I'm going to call it, it's a memes world. And so I called it it's a memes, memes world. And I had to put in parentheses apologies to James Brown because I wasn't sure my readers would get the illusion. Yeah, I thought it was awesome. I was thinking, I'm about halfway through, but I was wondering if maybe what we're seeing is a condensing of the languages to become symbols. Like, what if we struck all these memes together?

Maybe there's so much in a meme that we're, One meme could be a large, symbolic paragraph. And maybe we're on a hike back to the Tower of Babel in a way. I think it could. I think the problem is that most people aren't scratching below the surface, right? So we're not getting into that depth. And that's one of the things that I write about in that blog is, you know, the kind of the death of sustained reading where people really do any kind of sustained reading.

And so, you know, memes are short and bite-sized. and, you know, they go like that. But I think if they do give you a lot to think about and you probe it, that would be a really interesting way to go. But sadly, I don't think that's what most people do. I wonder if we could create like an alphabet of memes. Yeah. Well, Doctor, I want to be mindful of your time.

You've been so kind and it's been such a rich conversation for me and several other people. And everyone that watches this, I think we'll be able to take away something. that's personal. Is there anything else you want to leave anybody else with? No. I mean, I really appreciate this time with you, George, and I've really enjoyed the conversations and look forward to more in the future on various other topics. Of course. Of course. Well, I know you've got a busy time ahead of you, and we'll let you go. And we'll be back. We're going to take a few weeks off,

ladies and gentlemen, but you cannot get rid of us that easy. So we will be back, and you'll be seeing notes from us. So check out his blog. Check out the book. And I hope, I think, We all hope you have a phenomenal day for listening to this today. Thank you. Thanks, George. Okay. Aloha. Bye-bye.