March 2019 – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue

“Kim Kardashian is so sexy, her butt is like a big mountain of pudding.” – South Park

I hear the only way they can be avoided is if you don’t have any money.

This is the last of the series of three posts about virtue, at least for now. The other two are linked near the bottom.

If you look at rich people, you can see fairly rapidly that being wealthy isn’t a sign of a virtuous life. There are no shortages of bimbos in Hollywood® who get famous by “leaking” a sex tape to get famous, in fact it’s odd now to have a famous person who doesn’t have a series of sex tapes, although if you take my advice you’ll skip the Ruth Bader Ginsburg tape.

This unearned fame is perplexing to me. It seems to be that to progress as a celebrity you should have done as little as possible to help mankind. The entire idea that people willingly give money to the Kardashian family makes me vaguely ill, or maybe that’s just thinking of the Kardashians in general. The Kardashians look like a species that’s closely related to humanity, but just far enough apart from us that mating with them would be illegal in almost every state, except maybe California.

Come to think of it, they do live in California. Hmmm.

A Kardashian in its natural state. I believe they have insurance against Velcro.

As I’ve mentioned before, Epictetus (a dead Stoic Greek philosopher dude) felt that wealth was neither virtue nor vice in and of itself. The Stoics certainly thought that preferring wealth was okay, but getting all bent out of shape about it (or about anything) wasn’t. But, Kardashians aside, are there virtues that are associated with getting wealthy?

I looked and found (LINK) a study of traits were found to be present more in high earners than “average” earners. They were:

High earning people don’t hate or worship money – they don’t avoid wealth nor place too much importance on money. Of course, when you’re pulling down $400,000 a year, a few extra bucks for a giant-sized plutonium-plated Elvis™ PEZ® dispenser doesn’t even get your attention. However, if you’re making $14,000 a year, counting the grains of rice in a box of Rice-a-Roni® (The San Francisco Treat™!) makes sense to make sure that the Dollar Store© isn’t cheating you again.

All hail Elpezvis! And thanks to Karl for this wonderful photo!

Not fans of luck. The psychological name for this was “internal locus of control.” Yeah, sounds like part of the navigation system on the U.S.S. Enterprise. In human-speak, it means whether or not they felt they were lucky (or unlucky) or their situation in life was due to their hard work and effort. My bet is if you ask any really successful person this question that they’ll give that answer – but I’m also aware that MANY people work even harder than the average CEO, putting in more hours doing harder, messier, more thankless work.
Rich people wanted to be wealthy and put more value on it than average income people. Part of this might have been related to average income people rationalizing – I know that I put less importance on hair now that it’s left my scalp like Guatemalans leaving Guatemala because it’s Guatemala. I wonder what my hair had against my scalp? Could I build a wall to keep it from migrating down my back?
Had more “financial knowledge” – this was self-reported – they didn’t give them a test.
Workaholics had more wealth, which doesn’t surprise me, and high-earners were “enablers” – loaning money to deadbeat relatives. I’m guessing this is a function of “not trying to borrow money from people who don’t have it.”

The only virtuous bit I could find in all of that (and I had to stretch to do it) was that the rich seem to develop an indifference to money when they have some. It’s like an indifference to pizza after you’ve had enough lasagna to stuff Sardinia, however. Sure, it’s virtuous, but only just barely.

What I didn’t see on the list was conscientiousness, or faithfulness, or discipline or even self-control. True virtues seemed to be missing. I guess I have to deal with facts: jerks get rich. Unscrupulous people get rich, nepotists get rich (a lot!). CEOs trade in wives like used Yugos®, and CEOs move from company to company the way I move from room to room in my house.

Ahhh, all the luxury of communist Eastern Europe combined with the reliability of an Italian car. How could it lose?

Do I hate wealth? I absolutely do not. Do I hate the wealthy? Not a chance, some of them are awesome. Do I think that churches preaching “prosperity gospel” are helping Christianity? Probably not. I’m pretty sure that God wants your faith more than he wants you to have a Mercedes-Benz®, even if all your friends do drive Porsches©.

But wealth is fleeting. Companies fail over time. Sears™ used to dominate multiple fields – appliances, tools, insurance, even their own credit card. Now they’re tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. And that serves a purpose, just like the death of an individual. The economy must be cleansed over time, or else it becomes, well, sick.

Stealing from Eaton Rapids Joe (LINK) where he compares the economy to a salmon stream:

At one time it was commonly believed that dams would benefit salmon spawning. It was believed that regulating the flow so that it was constant would be most beneficial.

The unintended consequence was that the constant stream cut a deep and narrow channel, just like a band saw.

The narrow channels intercepted very little sunlight…the driver of nearly all life on the planet. The channel was devoid of pools and riffles, gravel beds of various coarseness, rocks to break the current and beds of seaweed. They were a desert for salmon fry.

His blog is excellent, and you should visit it daily (LINK).

But like that salmon stream, when we seek to get wealth without virtue, have a country without virtue (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) or even attempt to become immortal (Books, Stoics, Immortality (Now Available on Stick)) we condemn ourselves to a world where hairy near-human Kardashians are free to wander without fear of a razor.

And that is a world no man wants to live in.

It’s . . . spreading!

Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python

“Romanes Eunt Domus? People called Romans they go the house?” – Life of Brian

Okay, you could argue that the last R should be a W. But I need all the exposure I can get.

“Delenda est Carthago.”

Cato the Elder was a Roman Senator during the time of the Roman Republic. Every time Cato spoke in the Senate he ended his speech with that phrase (or some variant, I don’t want to get into an ancient Latin grammar slapfight). Translated, Cato meant: “Carthage must be destroyed.” Since I knew that fact when I was in high school also directly led to the loss of my virginity (really), but that’s a much longer story for another day . . . .

“Romans go home . . . “

The Punic (yes, that’s spelled right) Wars were the wars that Rome fought against Carthage. In the First Punic War, (264-241 B.C.) there were 400,000 or so Carthaginians killed to 350,000 Romans. The Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) is the one most people know about, where Hannibal (a Carthaginian) took his elephants through the Alps to sneak into Rome via the back door. Sneaking with elephants is quite an accomplishment, and Hannibal roamed around Italy, destroying over 400 towns before he (and Carthage) were defeated again. The Romans lost 300,000 dead, but the Roman general Scipio Africanus finally defeated Hannibal when he was forced to withdraw to Carthaginian territory after years spent ravaging Italy.

Is it just me, or could they have made it easier for the ten guys rowing if they got off the elephant?

It was after this war that Cato just wouldn’t stop talking about Carthage. Eventually, he got his way and the Romans made an excuse and started the Third (and final) Punic War. When the war was over, Carthage had been destroyed – and not destroyed just a little, but destroyed – the Romans burned the town for 17 days. The few people that survived were sold into slavery. Salt was plowed into the ground at the site of the city so that nothing would ever grow there again. Despite all of this, they still couldn’t manage to cancel their FaceBook© account or get rid of their tracking cookies.

Part of me thinks that the Carthaginians just pissed the Romans off, even more than trade or greed would account for. It’s now certain that Carthaginians burned their children alive as sacrifices to Baal. Yes. Alive. And the ritual required that the child be awake. Oh, one other goodie – you couldn’t just adopt a local urchin and toss that one in the fire. Nope, that just brought bad luck. It had to be your kid. Your favorite child.

This was thought at one time to have been Roman propaganda, but it turns out to have been utterly true. The Carthaginians were evil on a biblical level. Everything about their religion and public life was against the Roman ideals of virtue, and Roman virtue was a big deal. In Rome, virtue acted hand in hand with two other pillars: the law and religion. Each of them were a leg that helped make Roman society stable enough to last and thrive for hundreds of years, until they discovered Netflix®.

Roman law and Roman virtue are foundational to all of Western Civilization. What were the Roman virtues? This list is based on the Wikipedia entry:

Fides – the root for fidelity, and really covered by the word faithfulness, to gods, country, and family. You’ll see that trio again.
Pietas – respect to gods, country, and family. Told ya.
Regilio – following traditional religious practices.
Disciplina – this one is pretty straightforward.
Gravitas/Constantia – dignified self-control and perseverance.
Virtus – ideal male values, knowing good from evil, shame from dishonor, pilsner from bock.

The end goal was Dignitas and Auctoritas. Dignitas was a reputation for worth, along with the honor and esteem it brought. Auctoritas was the prestige and respect that came from being virtuous, along with one of those cool leafy hats.

If you did a bad thing in Senate they made you sit in time-out.

This threesome – law, religion and virtue was what made Rome great. Rome was a culture where these things were held by all to be of value – old Roman politicians would try to ruin their competitors just by destroying their reputations. Roman youth all the way up to Julius Caesar tried to prove their worth on the field of battle to show that virtue. From The Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

“No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.”

I’m worried that our standard of public discourse has now become “If it’s not against the law, it’s virtuous and must be celebrated.” Public life in the past (before my time, certainly) was different. The law was one leg, but a person’s virtue was also important. Prior for a mortgage to be issued, it wasn’t uncommon for the bank to see if a person was a faithful churchgoer. In public, if you were misbehaving in a grocery store, any lady would have felt free to tell you to get your behavior in line. I can recall buying a comic book when I was 10 and taking crap from the clerk (who knew my mom) about biting my fingernails.

How has life changed in 120 years?

In 1900, your only contact (on an average day) with anything related to the Federal government was limited to the cash in your pocket (which was backed by gold) and the Post Office. And that’s it for almost every day.

In 2019, you wake up with EPA electricity running an alarm clock that pulls in FCC-sanctioned FM radio, and turn on light bulbs that are of a government-mandated type. You brush your teeth with FDA approved toothpaste and shower with water that’s also regulated by the EPA. We won’t cover the trade agreements that cover your coffee. Or the DOT and FHWA road that you drive on. And we’re not even to 8AM yet.

That’s just the Federal government. Has life gotten better since intact families (including real, actual fathers) declined in popularity? Since the number of sex partners is up? Is FaceBook® really better than getting together to play cards and catch up? The Romans largely got it right. They brought together virtue and tied it to law and created stability.

Or is it Baltimore?

Beyond that, the Roman ideas of virtue are familiar to because they are the foundation of Western Civilization. Other things that provide a basis:

You don’t have to be a Christian. You don’t even have to believe in any god of any type. But the values that flow from Christianity are fundamentally compatible with the Roman virtues and have produced the society where we still (more or less) trust each other.
Q. It’s important. Different countries have different I.Q.’s and economic output is tied to I.Q. Also tied to I.Q.? The ability to self-govern.
History/European Culture. History, good and bad, is important. I read that on a poster somewhere.
I read about a researcher who looked into British genealogy. He found that almost every person of British descent was descended from a majority of royalty/upper class. What happened to the poor? They didn’t have kids, didn’t reproduce. I’d bet that was repeated all over Europe for hundreds of years. Not only have we created Western Civilization, Western Civilization has created us.

When you reflect on the virtues of the Romans of the Republic and the ideals that they aspired to, I’m sure 200 years later in the days of the Roman Empire they were viewed as antiquated. Virtue was silly. “Do what thou wilt,” became the plan, but from time to time you gotta burn some kids.

Thank heavens we’re still a society that values virtue, religion and the law!

Books, Stoics, Immortality (Now Available on Stick)

“I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.” – Highlander

Or maybe it was the scotch that made him immortal? When I drink scotch I’m bulletproof.

I once had a Grandboss (my boss’s boss) that once said, “Reading is the only way that you can know great minds across centuries.” He was deeply philosophical and attempted to use that philosophy to improve business results, and also to use history as analogy for business conditions. Prior to the movie 300 coming out, he was discussing the battle of Thermopylae and the courage of the Spartans to fight to the last man as a business analogy. Needless to say, when you’re using a battle where every single solder dies as an analogy, business isn’t going all that well.

Grandboss also assigned On War (a treatise on war and strategy during the Napoleonic era) by Von Clausewitz for us to read. I’m probably the only guy who actually did read it, and still have my copy. Needless to say, I loved my Grandboss, and still send him cards on Grandboss day. When I quit that job to take a new one, I told him first, and as a goodbye present? I gave him a book.

My Grandboss was right, though – reading allows us to know great minds across centuries. The nice thing is we can read the thoughts of dead Greeks like Epictetus. Epictetus spent his entire life studying and living stoic philosophy, which was a pretty hard thing to do when you were a slave with a gimpy leg. Epictetus eventually became free – we don’t know how, but I imagine he won the annual caddy’s golf tournament and got a scholarship from Judge Smails.

I bet Epictetus just wishes he wrote, “You’ll get nothing and like it.”

One thing we do know is that Epictetus did was spend a lot of time thinking about virtue and vice. We’ll spend more time on virtue on Monday’s post, but Epictetus came to the conclusion that the following things were neither vice nor virtue:

Wealth
Health
Life
Death
Pleasure
Pain

As wealth and health are at least two nominal themes of this blog (this is Friday, so I’m stretching it and saying this is a health post) it might seem a bit hypocritical that I spend time talking about health and wealth and then quote a dead lame Greek that says that neither of those are virtuous. But I would argue that my message on wealth is that true wealth is in having few needs (Seneca, Stoics, Money and You), and although I prefer pleasure to pain, I recognize that a pleasure repeated too often is a punishment (Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick). And we also know that health is more controllable by our choices today than Epictetus did.

Immortal and omnipotent. And good on the mariachi trumpet.

Heck, I even got challenged by an Orthodox priest friend on whether or not learning for learning’s sake was, in a religious context, a vice. If so, there goes most of my Monday posts. The priest and I (as I recall, over a BBQ lunch) came to the conclusion that learning for learning’s sake was maybe a vice. Since he was also a fan of learning for learning’s sake, if it was a vice we were both guilty.

Going back to Epictetus’ list, Life and Death are on it as being neither virtues nor vices. I’m not sure about you, but I really prefer Wealth to Poverty, Health to Illness, and Life to Death. Epictetus felt the same way – it was okay to have preferences with the understanding that neither condition is, in itself, virtuous. I finally came to understand that while not virtuous, death is required for life. Oddly, I thank Bill Clinton for this realization.

It was during the Clinton presidency that I first looked around at the national leaders for both parties and thought, “Jeez, what a bunch of bozos.” Both sides were stupid or corrupt. Some were stupid and corrupt at the same time (looking at you, ghost of Ted Kennedy, I’ve imagined you’ve been plenty warm this winter). Back then I was a capital-L libertarian, and could see that both sides had as primary goals the restriction of freedom on their agenda in addition to being incompetent.

Beyond that, they were . . . awful. Spineless. They were tools of groups with different names but the same objectives – objectives that mostly didn’t favor you or me. Throw into this mix that one day at lunch I was thinking about immortality and the implications of living forever, which was spurred on by eating a tuna fish sandwich which might have been as old as Epictetus, who died in 135 A.D.

Elvis will never die. Mobility? That might be an issue.

If people were generally immortal? Our birthrate would plummet – 200 year old women have very few kids. As for me, I’d have plenty of time so rather than putting things off until next week, I’d put stuff off until next century. But the worst consequence?

Bill Clinton would forever be an elder statesman, always trying to increase his (and Hillary’s) power for all of eternity. Our current batch of elected officials would be about the best we’d get, or maybe the only ones we’d get. Senators and congresscritters already stay in office until the only way to keep them alive is though that experimental technique that turns them into zombie-like creatures that feast on living human flesh like Nancy Pelosi, or immortal robots like the Ruth Bader-Ginsbot™ 3000.

Thankfully, we live in a world where things die and the world moves on – just like a cell in a human body ceases to exist so new cells can take over. We have a name for immortal cells – cancer. Just like cells pass away, so do we to leave this world to the youth. I didn’t say death is “good” – just that it serves a purpose.

Okay, this is one boy who loved his mother.

Part of that purpose is focusing us on the here and now: in this way we don’t lose sight that life is precious and fleeting, like sedation dentistry. Perhaps the most precious thing we have is the shared time with those who have meaning to us (like your friendly blogger). But for those who have left us, honor them with the virtue that they helped you obtain. Be glad you had a part of their life, and had a chance to witness their virtue and learn from their vices. Look at how they have changed you, made you better so that they live on through their influence on you.

Lastly, for heaven’s sake, write something down. It’s the only way that someone can know your mind when you’re gone, unless they check your browser history.