I was doing my Autogenics this morning (it’s damn near afternoon, but I have little that has to be done today; I’m usually either too busy or not busy enough), and it hit me that Covetousness is really about having but not being able to enjoy.
I think the myth of Tantalus is relevant. Everything he tried to grasp fled from him.
Here is a question: why do people become super wealthy? Answer: they are unable to enjoy what they have and who they are.
Now, you might say, say, Jeff Bezos, LOVES competition, loves competence, and has a large private yacht waiting for him with full crew in each of the 7 seas. He’s engaging in Flow, and has plenty of moments for authentic pleasure.
Maybe. I don’t know the guy. But my GUESS is that to get where he is you need insane focus, a LOT of 100 hour weeks, and a pronounced willingness to compromise ethically in all sorts of ways. To fuck people over, in other words. This is a trait virtually all Survivors in that world have. Competition is too intense not to be cutthroat, at least in some places and some times. There can be little doubt he has intentionally put people out of business in a variety of ways.
So what is most likely really going on? Well, for one, most likely a powerful sense of shame and inadequacy. He likely had, at least, and still often has, a terrible time relaxing and doing nothing. He had something to prove, to himself and the world. And has he proved it? Only he can answer that, but I very much doubt it.
And here is my first point: we call greed “a sin”. If you want your neighbors stuff, or wife, or more generally, we call that a sin.
Here is what I will suggest: a “sin” is ALWAYS downriver from emotional maladjustments of various sorts. Sins are the Emergent Properties of underlying disorders of concordance and symmetry.
Lust is healthy. It is normal to want to touch and feel and huff and puff, and then smoke a cigarette afterwards with a smile on your face and a glow on your cheeks.
But obviously there is unhealthy lust, too, isn’t there? The one that pushes you into “sin”.
At the abstract level there is a lot of room for negotiation as to what constitutes healthy sexuality. Men and women are wired a bit differently, and for obvious evolutionary reasons. But we all crave stability, and I would argue over the long term that is what is most important.
[Has anyone ever suggested polyandrous polygamy, in which 5 men marry 5 women they share in both directions?]
However we discuss the nuts and bolts of this, so to speak, most of the time we all have an innate sense of what is healthy and good for us, and what is not. If you pursue this sense, if you pursue calm and emotional honesty, your specific moral code is irrelevant. On balance, you will tend to do the best thing–to in most cases reach the best compromise–without tedious ethical theory.
This was, as I read him, Lao Tzu’s view. People and societies are formally Complex Orders. If you organize them according to flexible and healthy principles, good things will tend to happen organically and without much effort.
Prayer: we tend to ask God (or Goddess: if you posit that what is really actually THERE is an energy without gender–within which swim many spiritual beings of all sorts, then it’s really up to you) for help of various sorts. I tend to ask for help in understanding and having the strength to face my fears and challenges.
It occurred to me this morning–and a short prayer is part of my morning ritual–that I could equally announce what I was going to do TODAY to further the ends to which all spiritual teachers point.
I could pray “God, today I am going to meditate, and do Neurofeedback, and go for a long walk, etc. Please shine your light on me.”
I am always looking for homologies, patterns of similarity. If you can square your prayer with concrete physical action, that is the best of both worlds.
As I mentioned, I am reading The Plague, and as I understand it, Camus is making the point that, while God is a mystery, there is a certain value which is really indisputable–the opposite of a mystery–to providing palliative care to the dying, and working to rid the world, at least for a time, of disease.
I have a few more chapters, and may or may not comment on it when I finish.
But I might put it this way: you can’t go wrong with a prayer that would make sense to an atheist also.
Is that true? Not true? Ponder it. Reach your own conclusion, then change it if further considerations muddy your initial certainty. It’s OK to not know. Most of us don’t really know anything, so most of our ‘knowing’ is really habit buttressed by laziness, pride, and ignorance we choose to leave intact. His ignorance was apparently Socrates’ most cherished accomplishment, one which arguably provided the basis for modern science.
Live in the middle. Nothing heroic in that, except when everyone around you is trying to pull you into one vortex or another.
I might actually say that diligent and principled moderation is perhaps the most effective form of radicalism at the moment.