TrueLife - Dr. Salomon - 7 Deadly Sins “Anger”

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, 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 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 incredible Dr. David Solomon, and we have been going over his beautiful new book, The Seven Deadly Sins. If you haven't got it yet, that might be a sin in itself. I hope you decide to pick it up. We've covered pride. We've covered lust. And now we are on to anger all the way from the Western ideas to the Bible. And then we're going to get into some genetics. And without any further ado, let me just, let me just introduce it. Maybe you could introduce it with

the quote from Paul Verily about anger, how this whole thing starts off. Do I have a quote from Valerie about anger? I have it right here. I think it is the, we are aware. We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life. Yes, yes. Gosh, that's deep right there. Opens.

That's correct. Thanks for having me back here, George. Appreciate it. I'm excited to be here. And, you know, the beginning of this chapter starts off with Western history and how it's been predicated on feelings of anger and the Luddite movement to I Love Lucy. Where do you feel like jumping in over there? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this actually is the first chapter that I wrote for the book originally. And somebody came to me and said, you know, they were doing a book called Understanding Angry Groups, which eventually was published, a nice volume. And it has a mix of all different disciplines in it. And a colleague who was one of the editors said, I want you to chat about hanging on the bio.

That's my. my area of studying and teaching is often the Bible. And I said, oh, yeah, I said that could be amazing. I wrote the chapter and it was published. And then the publisher asked me if I would do all seven deadly sins, do them all. And so this chapter was actually the first one that I wrote. And what's interesting is that if you study the history of anger as just an idea, and then you attempt to try to use your understanding of that history to figure out what in the heck is going on today,

it's pretty frustrating because the answers don't necessarily present themselves. And I think that one of the key differences is in discussing the difference between anger and hatred. And a lot of what we're dealing with today globally, we're currently talking and we're in the midst of what the horrors are going on over in the Ukraine. A lot of the global conflict that occurs in the world today has more to do with hatred than it does anger. And how can we really talk about those two things? the sort of the dictionary definitions and the distinction in the dictionary is that hatred is prolonged anger tends to be brief so you can't sort of stay angry the definition of the word kind of tells us that you can't do that if anger is prolonged it turns into hatred and of course hatred is much more deep-seated

in our beings and difficult to get rid of. And oftentimes as the motivator for the kind of conflict that we see every day, whether it's so-called now hate crimes or the kind of war that we're seeing going on in Eastern Europe. Yeah, it reminds me of our good friend Blake wrote a poem about anger. and he says, I was angry with my friend. I told my wrath. My wrath did end. I was angry with my foe.

I told it not. My wrath did grow. And it seems like that is the festering of anger can become the cancer of hatred. Is there something that we can do you think to maybe, I guess if we could solve the problem of hatred, we would be a better world. But what do you see as maybe something we can do to? stop anger from becoming hatred. It's tough. And I'll tell you, I'm as guilty as anybody.

And it's interesting because I was looking online last night in preparation for our talk today. And there's a new poll that you can actually take. It's a survey about anger. And it asks you, it asked a series of 38 questions that you respond to on a scale. and then it gives you back some sort of generic feedback on angry you all compared to the general population. And I'm sad to this morning. I'm pretty angry, but I'm also having a rough day.

But I think that the interesting thing for me, at least personally, the way to counterbalance anger is to look at the corresponding virtue, which is patience. And when you talk about patience, I have not done a lot of work looking at patients as a Judeo-Christian virtue. I have looked more and studied more personally about patience as a Buddhist context, a Buddhist lifestyle. And the famous, unfortunately just died, Tickna Han wrote a wonderful book called Anger, and the subtitle of it is the wisdom for cooling the flames. And his entire, of course, his entire advice is based on the kind of mindfulness that he wrote about throughout his entire life.

But he really is counseling patients that when you feel that emotion on the rise, that you take one or two steps back and engage. and some patience and some reflection and some for him a lot of breathing um and uh you know it's that old sort of you know count to 10 um too much of what we do in response i think to our anger is rather knee-jerk we do it thoughtlessly and that's we get into a lot of the problems yeah i agree it's it's it's such a powerful emotion and i that's probably why it's one of the seven deadly sense. You know, it has this ability to overwhelm us or even take control of us. And, you know, it's, I often wonder if humor could be some sort of antidote to anger. You know, I think we're

going to get into that in a little bit. But yeah, it, it may be. I mean, that's part of, you know, I mean, I use humor a lot. And maybe that's my, my way of dealing with it. I don't know. But I think you're right. I mean, a lot of what we're talking about, just as we were talking about with lust and pride, is this, the uncontrolled nature of it. Anger uncontrolled is really what this is the sin, right? Everyone has some anger, and I don't think that's necessarily the issue. The issue is when it becomes out of, when it goes to be out of your control and essentially just sort of take over and is driving, it's driving the bus, I think it's a metaphor I used the last time. But what I think is interesting is the connection then when you get to

that point between anger and fear. And that anger can often exhibit itself as either a response to fear or as the anecdote to fear. You know, I'm afraid of something. And so as a result, I don't like it. it's it's edward saeed's notion of the other right i don't like what i don't understand so that can grow to become well i'm angry about that because i don't understand it and i take my anger out on that subject rather than the problem is really me because i don't understand it uh it reminds of students will say you know oh i hate math right it's like well why well i don't understand it well that's why you hate it right Right. It's pretty simple. And, you know, not to use math, but it's a simple equation, right?

I mean, if you hate something, you're probably not going to like it. And vice versa. You don't do well at it. And as a result, you're frustrated with it. And so I think that patience is probably, you know, we say patience is a virtue, right? And it is in this case. but it's difficult in our modern world to handle that. And I mentioned in the chapter various sort of pop culture stuff, early 20th century in particular. I love Charlie Chaplin and scenes from Charlie Chaplin's modern times where he essentially is really commenting on our modern existence and how fast things are moving. And we sometimes will react to that by lashing out. And you see it, I think, with people every day, even if it's just in the grocery store. I mean, it's that old thing about how you sort of reach your boiling point, right?

And when something reaches this boiling point, it boil over. And that's where the anger comes in. Yeah. I think you mentioned speed, how it ramps up our emotions. And for those of who are unaware, could you explain to them the scene? And I Love Lucy, which is working at the chocolate factory? Oh, that's a great scene, yeah. So, and I Love Lucy, the wonderful sitcom from the 50s,

Lucy and Ethel are hired to work at a chocolate factory. They have to wrap the pieces of chocolate as they come down a conveyor belt in an assembly line. And they have to keep up. And so the two of them are standing there next to each other. And they are wrapped. Each piece has to be wrapped individually. This is before machines really were able to do this and everything was automated.

And they're doing okay. And eventually, after not too long, of course, they start to fall behind. And Lucy starts making up for this by taking the pieces of chocolate and first stuffing them in her mouth and then putting them into her shirt because you've got to hide it from the fore. lady who's about to come back. And the four lady, the four woman comes back in after she stopped the assembly line. And both Lucy and

Ethel are standing in their mouths full with chocolate. And Lucy's got tons of chocolate in her blouse all way down. And the four woman looks at the assembly line and says, okay, good. Beat it up. And of course, that just

completely derails them. But that's kind of You know, I mean, and that was in the 1950s. That was, what, 70 years ago? And now everything in our lives move so quickly that it is hard to keep up with the assembly line. And oftentimes, our resulting emotion is anger. And the way a lot of folks deal with it, myself included, is to every night just to do a little bit of meditation. I believe that in some ways it's it's the old metaphor of the pressure cooker, right?

I mean, the meditation at least lets some of the steam out so it doesn't explode. But I would think that, you know, without that, if you don't have that release, you end up with extreme hatred, which is really ugly in so many ways, right? Yeah, that brings us to the point where there's a difference between the way the West handles anger and the East handles anger. You kind of got into it a little bit. Could you flesh it out a little bit more for us? Yeah, I mean, it's a fundamental thing about just the way that you got me there? I do. The sound is a little bit kind of cutting out a little bit. Let me check my mic here. Hang on.

Okay. It's not bad, but it keeps cutting a little bit, like a little bit. like a little delay. Hmm. Okay. Okay, that sounds a little better. I'll let you know if it starts crushing again. Yeah, yeah. So the fundamental difference between the West and the East,

look at anger is, again, that external internal thing, right? I mean, in the West, in general, and I'm speaking in generalities now, in general, if I'm angry, I'm angry at something or at someone. Whereas in the East and Eastern philosophy, the, really the impulses instead to look within. Oftentimes, the Buddhist texts will talk about the anger being within you and that you need to look at that and come to sort of reconciliation with it.

Whereas in the West, we often are looking for something to sort of hang our blame on. It's the blame game again. I want to blame something for the reason why I feel like. this when in most of the Buddhist texts the response would be that you know you're to blame it's it's your problem not someone else's and you need to figure this out and I think that that difference is so it's such a startling difference of the way that we look at the world really and you know again you know I go back to somebody like Tickna who you know if you if you read him and his his his his counseling about mindfulness, which is not, you know, Buddhism doesn't have the, the market on that.

Certainly, you know, somebody like Basil Pennington in the Cistercian tradition who came up with centering prayer, that's mindfulness. We see it. It's just called different things, right? It has different names. And if we can engage with that, we certainly would be better off. I feel like something's going on that's funky with my sound, though. Yes, there was a little bit of an echo. It seems better now. I wonder is there a, there could be a bandwidth issue with just being so far apart or whatever or having multiple screens open or something like that.

However, I think it sounds fine. There's a few hiccups here in there, however. Yeah, it is good. It is good. And it brought me to another point when we were talking about the East versus West. and it seems to me that mindfulness is the answer to anger in the east. However, I was curious if you think that maybe stand-up comedy is the answer to anger in the West. It seems to be a uniquely Western, or at least it seems like it evolved in the West.

And you have some incredible stories about seeing the great Louis Black and his response to anger. Could you maybe share that? Yeah, I remember the first time I saw Lewis Black, and I was actually genuinely concerned for the health of the man. I thought he was just going to have a stroke right there on the stage. He was so angry. And I remember going home and I had to sort of Google him at the time you could already do that, just to see, was this a persona? Or was this really who he was? And I was, you know, certainly relieved to know that much of it was a persona and that, you know, he wasn't going to have a heart attack right there on the story.

stage. But I think that that the connection between humor and anger is interesting. Because if you go back to the earliest days of film, for example, and you go back to like the silent slapstick comedies of the 1910s and 20s and then the 30s, much of that by the time you get to the 30s is a direct sort of reaction to the depression, the great depression. People were literally depressed and also financially depressed, and they wanted to laugh. And so you went to the movies and you could see Abbott and Costello, you could see the Three Stooges, you could see Laurel and Hardy. It was this physical humor which, you know, for whatever reason these days is only mostly enjoyed by men. I don't know why. Most women, of course, famously find the Three Stooges ridiculous and don't understand why we think they're so funny.

But they're beating the hell out of each other, and we're laughing. And I think maybe part of that is a cathartic bit, right? We're letting go of our anger by watching them engage in that kind of physical activity. And it may also be part of the justification for why physical sports are so popular in the U.S. and globally, but in the U.S., I mean, if you look at a professional football and how just basically violent it is as a game, you know, it's all predicated on, you know, let's hit the other guy as hard as we can and try to get the ball from him. And I'm a football fan. It, that is clearly, you know, I mean, I remember my uncle watching television, watching the game when I was a kid. And I mean,

Boy, I mean, it was a cathartic extent. He was screaming and yell him and he yelled at the TV. But you could tell it was the way of him getting some kind of a release on a Sunday afternoon that I think he needed. And so, you know, that kind of sport, of course, goes back to the ancient world when those kinds of physical games were devised in order to keep the military occupied when they weren't at war. It's how the Olympics began. you know and this this whole idea of engaging in that physical sport to to have that kind of release when there's nobody to fight as far as you're concerned with a battle with another country yeah it's um it's it's it's which which brings us almost back to the east like this interconnectedness

you know be it be it comedy to anger or mindfulness to understanding or it's just it's fascinating to think about how we have two hemispheres in the brain, you know, the, the two sides there. And then we also have the east and the west. And we kind of need both of them in order to really understand what it is we're angry about or to find some understanding. And that, I thought it was also interesting to when you brought up anger in the Bible and how there's so many different kind of takes on it versus the Old Testament versus the New Testament. Maybe you could start with with what Augustine writes about the anger of God seemed inconsistent with his beneficence. Right.

You know, the Old Testament God is an angry dude. You know, I mean, there's no getting around it. I mean, from the initial story in Genesis when Adam and Eve eat the fruit, his response is get out of the garden. You're both going to die now. it seems rather harsh. And that doesn't really cease until we get to the New Testament. God is an angry figure in the Old Testament stories, whether he is directly punishing figures or punishing the people.

We see it in the book of Exodus, when Moses, for example, when he first comes down from Sinai with the tablets and sees the golden calf, and he gets so angry, about the idolatry of the people while he was gone, that he destroys the tablets, he throws them at the calf. And God punishes him for that by saying, okay, you can't go to the promised land now. And he, sure enough, dies on the other side of the river, looking at the promised land that he led the people to. You know, probably the most troubling story for my students when we look at this story of Isaiah, who's carrying the other guys is carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

And I think an ox stumbles. And he reaches down to grab the ark to keep it from falling to the ground. And the Israelites have been strictly forbidden from touching the ark. And as a result of touching the ark, God smites him right on the spot. And you're like, wait a minute. And so we have to kind of look at the commentary in order to get what's going on there because the commentators had the same problem looking at that and trying to explain it. And their response is, well, he didn't have faith that the arc would be able to support itself. And so as a result, he was punished.

It seems, as my students would say, pretty lame. But it's what the commentators come up with for an explanation. and it's one of the only ones we've got because it's a very strange story. Of course, once we tend to the New Testament, there is very little in the gospel about Jesus being angry and showing any kind of anger with really one exception, and that's seen with the money changers

when he throws over the tables. Other than that, most of what is in the New Testament comes from Paul, who is understandably and expectantly, incredibly conservative about it, and essentially has the same feeling about anger that he does about lust, which is if you feel angry, you've already committed the sin. It's not about necessarily the display of it. It's the thought of it.

He wants us to be pure of mind, which is incredibly difficult to do. but again, when I deal with this with my students, I have to remind them that Paul was living at a different time. He's living right after the death of Jesus. He is living at a time when he expected Jesus said he was going to come back, and he's coming back like next week. You better get yourself an order here. And a lot of what he counsels in his epistles doesn't seem like it was necessarily meant for us to, be living necessarily today in 2022. What he was thinking about would work in, you know, 50 and 60 AD.

And I don't think he thought about the kind of data smog that we live in that we have this bombardment of information hitting us and a life that moves so fast. I mean, you know, I joke, but, you know, Paul walked around sandals. you know and george living in hawaii you know sandals too i don't know but you know uh maybe it's a pauline thing but it our pace of life is just different today yeah it really is and it getting back to in the beginning of the book you talk about even with the luddites and i love lucy there's been this form of dehumanization and it's when we refuse to see the humanity in one another it's easy to quantify people and look at them as a number and look at them as a means of production.

But when we do that, it makes me want to be more like the Old Testament God. And in a way, maybe that's the cycle that's kind of happening here. Maybe we're moving back into this angry side of the Old Testament, and we've gotten away from the newer Testament because that's the time. You write something really profound, I thought, that if you, the Old Testament, a fool gives full vent to his anger and it's aimed at the sinner. These are just kind of the thoughts that I had written down that came from the sign. And then the New Testament is, in your anger, do not sin, aimed at the sin.

So the Old Testament is aimed at the sinner. The New Testament is aimed at the sin. And it just seems like a nice evolution to move towards, you know, maybe when it was fresh, when it was this, it is aimed at the center. But it just brings me back to the idea. excuse me. I mean, yeah,

please. Maybe we are going back to that because now we do focus much more on punishing the sinner than we do the sin, which is much more of an Old Testament approach to things. And not necessarily the best way to go, I don't think. It was, you know,

it's the way God operates in the Old Testament. But that is a different, different world. And, you know, we've got to remember that what's going on through most of those Old Testament stories is the attempt to establish Yahweh as the one God in a culture, in a world at the time, which was anything but monotheistic. And in fact, the three Western religions, the major Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not really following monotheism at heart. They are monotry, right? Monotry is the acknowledgement that there are other gods, but we believe in this one. We're going to stick with this one. So as you go through the Old Testament stories, there's still mention of some of those other gods that existed and that people were believing and worshipping.

And one of the things that separates the Israelites, of course, is their devotion to this one God, Yahweh. and we're getting their story in the Old Testament. You know, it's always interesting to look at some of the other texts that we have, and they're few and far between from the ancient world, of these cultures that instead responded to an alternate God, maybe had the same kind of monotry with their God, but ours won out. And in many ways, a lot of the tales in the Old Testament are about Yahweh really winning out.

I mean, he says when Moses goes up to Sinai, he says, I'm a jealous God. Even in some of the translations, and if you read the Hebrew, he calls himself jealous. He says, as if that's his name. He's angry. Yeah. I wonder, this is, let me throw this out at you here. You know, could it be that like the word of God, like in monotheism and Yahweh, he wants his word to be law. And now today's, like you said, there's like a data smog. There's all these

chaos and different words out there. Might it be that returning to the word of God could be returning to the truth of the world we live in? Like there's just so much data smog out there that the word can't get out. We can't agree on anything because no one knows what the truth is. And when you have no truth, all you have is correlation and no causation. And when you have correlation. That's like the weakest form of communication because it doesn't really mean anything. And that's why maybe there's so much anger out there. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, I mean, the contemporary world is certainly indicated by complexity. Right. I mean, people will say it all times, a cliche at this point, right? We live in complex times.

Yes, we do. What does that mean? As opposed to living in simple times? I don't know. Is that the opposite? And certainly, you know, if we look at ancient cultures as depicted in the Bible, they were living in much more simple times than we are when you compare it on that kind of a level. Is that necessarily, you know, and I think you're right on the one hand, if we could get back to, and I think that's what the Buddhist texts try to teach, is to get back to that kind of simplicity. because that simplicity, again, it's all about giving us the space to sit back and reflect. And maybe if I do that, I wouldn't be so angry at John if I had a chance to really think about this. You know, we talk about today and we throw around the phrase, you know, well, you haven't walked in his shoes.

You don't know what it's like. Well, no, I don't. And, you know, the next sentence would often be. And I don't have time to do that, right? And it's interesting that there's an event that goes on across the country. I participated in a couple times where men will walk in women's high heels. It's a walk against violence against women. And it is a walk in their shoes kind of thing.

And man, those high heels are hard to walk in. But, you know, there is something about that. And I have tried to, over the years, even engage in that on like college campuses, where we'll be instituting some kind of a new policy or a new procedure. And I'll say to an administrator, we really need to spend a day walking in the students' shoes to see what that's actually like. Because we've gotten so far away from that. And I think that that's culturally and socially, that's because,

come a problem. We have people up on high who are making decisions about things that affect millions of people, but they really don't understand what those people are going through. And the resulting emotion that the people feel then is anger, right? I'm angry. I mean, I don't know what Jeff Bezos's day is like. I have no idea, you know, but he has no idea what my day is like. And he has no idea. what, you know, the average worker at Amazon's day is like, I imagine, and they're constantly trying to tell us what that's like, but people don't want to listen and they're not hearing. And, you know, the walking in someone's shoes, I think, is a very important thing to do, whether it's just displaying the humanity that you feel for other people.

You know, I'm always baffled by colleagues who essentially ignore housekeepers and the cleaning staff in building companies wherever. As if they just don't exist, we have to acknowledge each other's human. That's the only solution to any of this. I mean, and that's really, in my book, that's the ultimate conclusion that I make is it's all about acknowledging other people's humanity. And by that, we can acknowledge and improve our own humanity, our own humanness, and what makes us human and get back to that. in many ways the technology has so gotten in the way of that. You know, and it starts, as I mentioned before, you know,

go back to Chaplin and modern times, look at Lang's metropolis where the workers are at the beginning of the film, just robots basically walking into work. It's so startled if they were underground. And he cuts to the big wigs, of course, work up on the top, far away from the workers. And I think the reaction that a lot of people have today to that is to feel anger. And unfortunately, when it's left festering, it becomes hatred.

And then we see the kinds of criminal acts that we witness, the kinds of, you know, the mass shootings, which, you know, yes, oftentimes because someone is mentally ill. What does that mean? I mean, is somebody who's angry mentally ill? You could argue that. I mean, the DSM is, it covers anger. It tells us about it and how to deal with it.

But it's, you know, we live in interesting times, cliche. Put an asterisk over that, right? And it doesn't seem like we are going in the right direction on this. You know, not to go back to it, but I will. And to talk about Ukraine because it's so in the forefront of our minds at the moment for many of us. And the millions of people who have left Ukraine now and are refugees, most of whom are children and women who left their husbands behind. and what's going to happen to them?

How are we supposed to deal with that? As human beings, we need to start figuring that out. We need to start figuring out how we're going to take care of each other on so many different levels. Because quite honestly, since World War I, we've done a pretty lousy job of it. And it is not, you know, We founded the United Nations after World War II, and the United Nations is a wonderful body.

They've done great things. The problem is today they have teeth. And so they're coming out with these statements against Russia, against what Putin is doing, supporting the Ukrainies. But it's words, and we need actions more than words right now. when it comes to dealing with people who need our help. I was driving home last night, and there were two folks sitting by the side of the road near the Dunkin' Donuts, clearly homeless, was a couple,

and the woman was, it looked to me consoling the man. They were both sitting on the side of a curb. I could only see her because he was kind of hunched over, almost in a fetal position. And as I drove past, I just, I couldn't help but wonder, what is the situation? What is their situation? How can I help? And I oftentimes will stop and try to help.

And it's more than just giving them money. They need more than money. They need help. And we need to kind of reconfigure what that looks like to help other people. It's, yes, you know, it's great if you donated. $10 to some fund that's going to help Ukrainian refugees. Wonderful. And that may be the only thing that you feel like you can do right now. We need to figure out a way that we could do more. Yeah. I often wonder, like, how is it that we continually make the same mistakes? How is it

possible that, look, we understand what war does. We understand what the mass productions of weapons does. And yet, you know, I was thinking about this yesterday. After 9-11, there was, there was this camaraderie, albeit misplaced, but there was this incredible, you know, idea of like, hey, we're all Americans. We're all this. You know, there was a, I remember this, there was a campaign and it was like this, there was an African-Americans. It's like, I'm an American. And then a white guy, I'm an American. And like, we're all Americans.

And it is possible if our leaders wanted to unify our country, they could do it. You could have on CNN and Fox like, hey, here's a guy, here's a young kid who designed this new thing that's going to help our country. Here's a young kid helping another kid. Like, we could have a really incredible campaign. pain that unifies our country. And so if we agree that we could do that, if the people in charge wanted to do that, they could. If we can agree to that, then we must also agree that they don't

want to do that because they're not doing that. And I think there's so many people right now that are just trying so hard to put gas in their tank, to talk to their parents, to help out the people in their neighborhood that we need our leaders to step up and do what's right. We need them to lead. We need them to lead. And do you think that's, is that our fault for not putting the right leaders in charge?

Or what does that say about us? And how can we- Leadership today is a very difficult issue. And part of it is, and it seems like a silly response, but part of it is, most of our countries have gotten so large that the idea that you would have one leader of that country

is really kind of ridiculous. You know, I mean, I grew up in New York City. For years, there have been complaints that it's ridiculous to have one mayor for the whole city of New York. It's too big. One man can't govern the entire city. And to think that one person as president can govern the entire country of the United States,

States with its vast population, its geographic differences, it's demographic differences. It's really kind of foolhardy. Nonetheless, that's the system we have. So what have we done? Well, have we elected the wrong folks? Maybe. Maybe it's the system that's problematic more than who we've elected, you know, not to go down that rabbit hole, but, you know, the system has certainly gotten in the way in recent years,

as far as the elections are concerned. But I think part of the greater issue here is not just the leaders, but we need to kind of reframe what it means to be a leader. What are we looking for? You know, I mentioned last time we chatted that when Jimmy Carter mentioned that he had lusted in his heart, his poll numbers went down 15 points. He was still elected president. And then, you know, later on, of course, we have Donald Trump who, when he said what he said, was elected president a couple weeks later.

What does it mean to be a leader? What are we looking for? With the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet now, we know much more about our leaders than we ever knew before. And so people will often say, well, you know, I can't imagine that, you know, I don't know, pick somebody. Herbert Hoover was ever like this. And it's probably was. You probably just didn't know about it. And so, you know, I go back to the interesting sort of compact that FDR set up with the press, which was they would never film him in the wheelchair.

They would never film him from the waist down in the wheelchair because he was afraid that that was going to convey weakness. And the man brought us through World War II. So what are we looking for in a leader? And maybe it's not such a bad idea to go back to texts like the Bible and look at what those leaders were like. but to understand that they also were not perfect. You know, oftentimes students will go back and they'll write a paper about Moses as a great leader. I'll say, okay, what are you basing this on? They say, well, the story's an exit.

Well, you know that that's the polished version of the story, right? And a lot of the texts about Moses that you should look at, file of Alexandria, the Greek Jew philosopher who lived at the time of Jesus wrote two volumes about Moses that are absolutely brilliant and are incredibly insightful about not only the good things but also the bad things. You know, none of us is perfect.

And so I think part of the problem could be that we're looking for leaders who are. And we're not going to find that because, again, we're human beings. We're flawed. That's the nature of being a human being. And, you know, I was listening to a podcast yesterday, and it was Pat and Oswald, who I really like. And he and his wife have a podcast that's called, Did You Get My Text?

It's a weekly podcast. And he was talking about the fact that he's hoping that in a couple of weeks, something horrible doesn't come out about Vladimir Zelensky. Because we all love the guy. And we're hoping that, you know, something isn't reviewed. in a couple of weeks that all of a sudden makes him into a horrible figure and just we all feel terrible and he patten looked back at mario quomo who were all you know cheering on during COVID and then all of a sudden talk about a fall from grace we're looking for people to be perfect people are not perfect they are not perfect we sin we're human beings

If we weren't, we be saints. And, you know, I don't know anybody who is. I don't know anybody who's even, you know, in the running. We've all got our flaws. And I think probably one of the best things that we can do, and again, this is a kind of a Jungian approach, is to do that reflection and that to look inside and realize and understand what our own flaws are.

and to understand how we can negotiate and reconcile those flaws to still leading a productive and what Aristotle would call a good life. Yeah, that's a lot right there. I couldn't agree more. Maybe that's one reason like we are so angry is because like we have such high standards for other people. Yeah. And it's like, why is this leader not perfect?

or, you know, and the truth is maybe the things we're most angry about in the other are the things we're most upset about ourselves, you know, and if we could, that takes us right back to the Eastern philosophy is like, oh, maybe these people are mirrors. Maybe these people that you despise, that you see the negative in is something that you're being shown because it's something that you should be working on. Right. You know, I can't tell you how many times I've got upset at people and I thought I knew why. And after some meditation or reflection, I almost have to put my head and my hands on my knees and go,

gosh, darn it, I'm the one. It's me. I'm the one that doesn't like that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, if anger could be turned around or, you know, it's interesting to think about anger and comedy like a magnet. Maybe they're not the opposite,

but they're the extreme ends of the same. Because they have the same energy just going the other way. And if you can, if we can begin to see the things we're angry about as things that we need to work on ourselves, that that causes me to laugh sometimes, you know, because there's nothing left to do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's having the ability, I guess, to laugh at yourself and to be self-deprecating, which is, is really, you know, oftentimes viewed as being such a positive trait. and that idea of not taking yourself too seriously. Yeah. And I think that maybe what happens is if someone is taking themselves too seriously and is probably somewhere on the pride spectrum because they're a little bit of people involved,

they have then that inability to really relate to other people and understand what's going on because it's all about them. but they also have the inability to really do the reflection. They can't look with him. They're unable to. They look at the mirror and all they see is wonderful. Whereas, you know, George and I look at the mirror and go, oh, God, you would get? You brought up an interesting point when you spoke about pride briefly. Do you think that maybe some of these sins, like let's just take anger, for example,

Do you think that anger can be a bridge or a shortcut to pride and lust? Like they kind of feed off each other? Yeah, I mean, often all of these sins do have a connection. They are all connected. And in fact, I mean, in the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon to see there are lots of art. You can Google it and find a lot of the images of the tree of vices. And pride is usually at the base of the trunk because that's the first sin. the sin that Adam and Eve committed, the sin of pride.

And then all of the other vices are depicted as growing out of that one sin. And so oftentimes, if you go to, for example, the rule of St. Benedict, where he's counseling monks about how to behave, he will talk about one sin leading to another. It's interesting because in the chapter on sloth, which we'll get to eventually, Benedict is particularly vocal about that, and he is clear that sloth is going to lead to pride. There's a connection. And so, yeah, I do think that they are all somehow.

There's a bridge between them. And oftentimes, I imagine if someone is guilty of excess in one, they probably struggle with at least one of the others as well. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder, like, in the world we live in today with be it Ukraine or, you know, some of the ideas of our leaders or there's so many examples of all of these sins being played out on the world's stage around us. And you spoke about how there was a, who was it that you just spoke about the tree of life, or not the tree of life? The tree of vices. The tree of vices. So I see forms of artwork being symbolic of the different vices. Maybe what we are living in today is a form of artwork where all around us we see these vices. And it's our job to say this is horrible over here.

This is an example of this. What can we learn from this? And maybe all these things are happening so that we can show the next generation. This is what can happen. but here's what we can do to do it. And I, you know what, what is your thoughts on that?

But the problem is we don't learn. We don't seem to learn. We have terrible memories. We don't learn. And, um, oftentimes our reaction to that is instead of learning, we want to punish.

Hmm. And again, it's about, you know, the difference between internal external, right? Learning would be about me, making me better.

Punishing is about punishing the person who's doing whatever it is. It's not going to help me. Um, It's not going to help me at all. But, you know, going back to the discussion about the leaders, I mean, in the U.S., our sort of, really are terms for a lot of these positions. I mean, four years for a president, not a long time. A president doesn't have a long time to get anything accomplished. And I'm oversimplifying the job of a president.

But, you know, I mean, a president gets elected. and in that first term, by year three, they're already campaigning to be reelected, and then they're reelected, and automatically they're a lame duck. How are we getting anything accomplished? It's kind of a moment anything happens. And that happens at so many different levels in our government structure at the national and the state and the local level,

where you know, you wonder how we're able to accomplish anything. But I think it is, you're right in we should be, learning, but we don't seem to be. I mean, what do historians always tell us about learning from the past, right? We don't seem to be doing a very good job of that. I was having coffee this morning with a good friend, and we were talking about what's going on in Ukraine and should be done. And I say, you know, I don't know. I walk back and forth between we should be intervening, we should be doing something to help, and we're not the world's place. And I can't figure out which way to go.

But, of course, nothing in the back of my mind, almost daily, is World War II, which the U.S. sat out of until we were attacked. And I just wonder, I hope not, but is that what it's going to take to get us involved in this and to stop what is clearly becoming a genocide? side. Yeah, it's, they say the world maybe it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And if you were to look at some of the similarities between, you know, we had the world's greatest, or you could say that Werner von Braun was the world's greatest rocket scientists and he created a rocket, but really it was a military delivery system. You could also argue that what's happening today is Elon Musk is the world's greatest rocket scientist and he has a satellite system. But I think you can make a fair argument. that that is also a weapon.

Sure. And you can see so many similarities happening. But I hold strong to my belief in the goodness of people that what we are witnessing is an opportunity for us to see things the way they've never been and say, why not? Like, why can't we come to terms? Why can't we put everything out in the open and have a debate or a debate or a. at least like what else is happening there that we're not aware of is are people trying to steal resources from there is this is this is this is this something that's been festering for a while that we are being shown one side of yeah yeah well and i and i think that's the key though

i mean for me what makes us unique as human beings is potential yes we out we are a living potential yeah and whether or not we fulfill that potential or even attempt is entirely in our hands. We could sit on our hands and just say, well, I'm not going to do anything. Or we could try to become functionaries of potential. And Paul Valerie talks about potential a lot in his prose and the fact that human beings, we are about potential, the potentiality of our existence is what's so unique us being human, separates us from anything else really that exists. And, you know, it's always

disappointing slash depressing when you see somebody who is not living up to their potential or who is not challenging themselves to live up to their potential and is just instead sort of happy to sit back on mediocrity. And I'm talking here because I, after three decades in higher ed, right, deal a lot with educating and students and convincing students of their potential. Oftentimes they come in and they feel like, you know, oh, you know, some teacher in high school told me I was a bad writer. And so they believe that.

It's like, well, wait a minute. What? Why? And can't that change? Right? I mean, so even if you were a bad writer, quote unquote, whatever the hell that means, why does that mean that you're condemned now? Why can't you change?

Why can't you improve? We are about potential. So if you have at the age of 18 decided, I'm a bad writer and that's it, we're going to put that on your tombstone, right? You're done. you're never going to, so you're telling me, you've given up, you've thrown up your hands and said, that's it. You know, I can't do it. And, you know, I always tell a student who tells me that, who'll say, you know, my, some high school English teacher told me I was a bad writer. And I'll say them, so you're basing your entire existence as a writer on the opinion of one person. How crazy is that? And I only realized that myself, when I started teaching, and I would go in to see my mentor after a really bad day in the classroom

and tell him about some student who just was just really giving me a hard time. And I would say, you know, oh, I'm a lousy teacher, and you start questioning your entire existence. And he would say to me, you're basing your entire existence on one person's opinion. And that's nuts. Really, the only person that I have to live up to, and the only person's expectations that I need to live up to, are on my own. And I don't know about you, but, I mean, my expectations for myself are pretty darn high, which itself could be a problem. But, you know, I think that the opposite is even worse if you have no expectations of yourself.

right and you're just happy just to sort of exist what what a boring life one would lead to never see one's potential um you know i was always amazed when the first time i visited the united kingdom and i was on the the london underground and was just stunned by the fact that just about everybody sitting there is reading a book reading a book and not And they're reading, like, literature. I was like, wait a minute. I don't see that on the New York City subway. What's going on over here?

And sure enough, when you would take the escalator to go down to the London underground, on the wall would be posters for new books that were coming out. And, of course, any little village you go to throughout England has usually a pub, general store, and a bookstore. It's just part of the culture. And we in the U.S. have moved so far away from living that kind of an intellectual existence. And maybe technology certainly hasn't helped it. People are happy to sit and just, you know, stare at their phone for hours. But, boy, we could be so much more productive than that.

And we have potential. We have the potential. We do. Six million dollar man, right? We can rebuild them. I think so. And I really think, like, I believe this in my soul that what you're going to see come out of the Ukraine and Russia is going to be something beautiful. I know it's so difficult for people to think about that right now. But I believe, like, I have faith in all of us as humans. and I have faith that humanity's better side is going to prevail.

And I see this as like a test right now for all of us. Like here's this side saying this and here's this sign saying this. But when I look into the eyes of the just the Russian people or the Ukrainian people, I see myself and I see people that are scared and that have pride. But I also see people that have hope and that they want change. And I think that the pressures to put us at war, are such a small few, and they're just feeding the fear and anger of these two sides

to get them to do things that they really don't want to do. And I know in my heart that what we're going to see come out of this is going to be something that's beautiful. As someone is like a scholar like you, I have read so many accounts of people that in the madness of war, they find community. If you read back at some of the accounts of people, they say, you know, although there were bombs going off here and there, it was the best time of my life.

I was around the people that I cared about. Have you heard those experiences before? I have. Not in recent years. Yeah, not in recent years. I mean, I've heard them come out of, I mean, I've heard accounts of that come out of World War II. Right. But it just seemed that we were more united. And I mean, we as in people, not Americans. Right. We are more united as human beings. And again, maybe this is part of the fault of technology of sending us all to our own little corners that we are increasingly losing our connection to other people.

And so as a result, when something like this occurs, it makes it even more difficult to come together. You know, it was wonderful. I guess it was last week, I think, that we raised a Ukrainian flag here on campus. And we had a fantastic turnout for the event. Everybody very supportive. But I think that when it came down to it, you know, most people walked away from that feeling good. But then if they were anything like me walking back to my office, it was like, okay, now what? Right? I mean, that was a kumbaya moment. We all felt good about it. I'm glad we did it. The flag is flying out there. It's a symbol of our support, but it's a symbol. And symbols aren't going to save people. Symbols aren't going to save people. Symbols are not going to save the people of Kharkiv, whose city is being bombed as we're talking.

Symbols aren't going to do it. They're nice, but we need action. And we need to figure out what it is that we can do, actually do. That active verb, do. What can I do? right to make a change and to to help people and maybe it's it's it's it's it's small things um maybe it's things that just affect one person uh last summer um going back to my neighborhood there was another homeless couple who showed up in the summer they would stand out on the

the corner of one of the blocks that i drive past every every day um every day they were there the two of a relatively young couple. And the young woman had a very high forehead. And I was really worried because it was the middle of summer and the sun was just beating down on them. And, you know, I could have given them $10. I mean, I'm sure over the time, I probably did give them some money.

I don't remember. But the thing that I do remember consciously doing is one day I brought her a baseball cap. Because I said, I'm really worried about your skin sitting out here in this boiling sun day to day, day. And she was, she hugged me. She was very grateful and very thankful. And I was disappointed because the next day when I saw them, she had given the hat to the guy. Which I thought was kind of interesting.

But, you know, maybe it's just about helping one person. Maybe that's all we can do at our level. Right. I'm not the president. I'm not a senator. Maybe I can only help one person. And maybe in just doing that and making that effort, I'm contributing to some kind of, you know, cosmic karma. I'll get all new agey. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I should have tapestries behind. You know, maybe it's part of that, right? We're just contributing. I mean, and that's what Young is talking about, right? collective unconscious is this kind of ongoing universal thing that we're a part of. And when we agree to engage in that, I think we become better human beings. Yeah. Do you remember that there was a sort of a co-on.

Am I saying that right? Like a sort of a, I think it was, gosh darn it. Do you know that one off the hand that Young referred to the Bible in sort of a co-on? Is it Genesis 1823? Yeah, I think I characterize it as a co-in. You did, yes. About what the line was. Hang on a second.

I know what page is. I know which side of the book it's on. Yeah. He said there was a mid-Rash, a Jewish text on Genesis 1823, which says, if how desirous the world to endure, there can be no absolute justice. Well, if thou desirest absolute justice, the world cannot endure. Yet thou wouldst hold the cord by both ends, desiring both the world and justice.

What does that make you think about Ukraine? We want it all. We want it all. We want to have it all. We want there to be justice. And we want the world to be the way that it is, a nicer, kinder place. But, you know, I mean, what are we talking about over the last couple of weeks?

I mean, again, you know, we're not looking necessarily at the sin. We're looking at the sinner. So what are we already talking about? Well, prosecuting Putin for war crimes, right? That is going to help somebody who died in Kharkiv. Right. It's never going to happen either. No. Right.

But, you know, but that's what we're talking about, right? Instead of how do we help people and stop the war? We're already thinking about how are we going to, what is the punishment for this? Yeah. It's, it's faulty to think that we have any sort of control over, over that. And then, you know, do we, do we send weapons to then? And then how many innocent people die because we build weapons and send them over there, you know? And it's, the problem is that we're dealing as we have.

so often with someone who is so sure that he's right, that really there's no talking to them. And we all know people like that, right? Yeah. There's just no convincing them otherwise. And I think the real trick here is how do we deal with people like that? Whether they're living in our house or whether we work with them or whether they're, you know, running one of the largest countries in the world, how do you deal with someone who's so sure that they're right, that they are just unwilling to listen to any other viewpoint.

I think the only way to do that is to try to understand why they think that. Like, regardless of what people, like, they have a reason. It might not be a good reason, but they have a reason. And if you can listen to them or allow them to say what their reason is, at the very least, you could understand their motivations. And understanding that, right? Correlation and causation. Yeah, absolutely.

Because, yeah. But oftentimes, especially when it comes to the way that the human mind works, causes are confusing and unclear. Yeah. Why we do things? I mean, you know, why do I eat something when I know I shouldn't? I mean, you know, it's all kinds of things like that. I mean, you know, I always joke with students. If they have an eight o'clock class, you know, your alarm goes off and you roll over and you go, oh, I got to go to class.

and it's so nice and cozy here. I don't want to go to class. I always joke with them, and they don't get it because they're young. The scene in animal house where he has devil on one shoulder and he's trying to control him into making one choice over another, and it's really what it comes down to. It's how do we make the choices that we make?

Why do we make the choices that we make? And that why question, that's a tough one, right? Why do we do what we do? Why do people do what they do? I mean, oftentimes, I don't know about you, but I'm baffled by why people do what they do. And I'm not even talking about, you know, somebody ordering the invasion of another country. I'm talking just about, you know, everyday stuff. So we're a curiosity as a species, to be sure.

But I think we're pretty interesting as a curiosity. the end. Without its existence would be very boring. Yeah. I think there's something to be said about. I wish that instead of people going and watching, you know, 50,000 people watching football, that 50,000 people would feel a debate stadium. And we could hear people talk about why you think this and why you think that. Imagine having Putin and, you know, Zelensky on a stage and each one given an hour to present their case of why they're doing what they're doing and who's representing them. And imagine that was on CNN and Fox for four hours a day and you could listen to the different people debating.

We would live in such a better world where people could express their ideas and it was brought to you by Pfizer. You know, you can have this debate that was sponsored about things. And I think we're close to that. Like the technology that we have could present. us with something like that. Sure. I mean, it's more easily done now than ever before. Yeah. I mean, the idea when you go back and study, you know,

the histories of World War I and World War II and look at what the, the machinations that had to be put in place to get those leaders in the same room, we don't have to worry about that now, right? Yeah. Turn on your camera. We've got Zoom, right? Yeah. We can talk that way.

Exactly. I'm going to try to find a representative from like the Russian Orthodox Church. Maybe if I can find one, we can all. you, him and I could have a talk together. That would be very interesting. Fascinating, right? Yeah, sure. To hear a man of faith from a different place in the world telling you, hey, well, here's how I see the sunrise or here's how I see the sunset. I bet you we would see in him the same dreams and the same desires that we see in ourselves that we see in the mirror, right? Just a different perspective. Yeah. It's a different perspective on the same thing.

Yeah. We look at the same thing. We just see it differently. I agree. I want to be, how are you doing on time? Are you, I got to go soon because I got another meeting coming on. I figured so. Well, I, I, I really enjoy talking to you. And I think that we, uh, I think that the things that you've talked about so far are going to help more people than you possibly know. And I'm grateful for your time.

Is there anything you want to leave us with before we, in today's session? No, next week we're on to gluttony. So get your, uh, your fast food ready. Because, uh, we're going to talk about the pains of gluttony that we have, experience in the last hundred years and how we might cope with it today. Fair enough. Okay, well, all your links are below. The book is Seven Deadly Sins, and we are, we're on number three, moving to number four.

And thank you so much for being here and spreading a little bit of a lohan, some love to all my listeners. And I hope your day is phenomenal from here on out. So thank you for your time today. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. Okay. Aloha.