As I look out the window, I see clouds today, but I’m seeing them from a different perspective, as I fly above, home from Vegas. It was a pretty good trip which I would wax poetically more about, if I hadn’t been charged by you to think about more philosophical concepts. I truly appreciate the invitation to think about the concepts of greed and violence. Furthermore, merely knowing you’re noodling on this gives me hope for your generation. So, here’s the plan, now somewhere over the Rockies, I’m going to free associate my thoughts while I tap the keyboard. Who knows what we’ll know at the bottom of the page. While I have no idea what the true answer or great paper might look like for you, I hope my note gives you either a perspective, idea, word or phrase that can help you with your assignment. I’m looking forward to reading your finished product!
Greed – complex yet primitive at the same time. Dualities always suck me in like the jet engine out to my left. My Dante is a mite bit rusty, but I think greed is a top three deadly? Not being raised Catholic in this case means most of my knowledge on the subject comes from a movie titled “Se7en” which I found disturbing as hell. If you’ve never seen it – give it a go. While it’s an outstanding film, it is disturbing. And if you notice how OCD I am with my written words, the fact that I used disturbing twice (now three times) in a paragraph should mean something to you.
I look in the mirror for greed as I recall I’ve written you about my work, and the desire for making money. And if there’s one thing in the universe one can truly know, that one thing should be thyself (f’n biblical words!, I know, right?). From that perspective I wonder am I greedy? Yes I believe I am, because I believe all people are to some extent. I think one’s individual greed is strangely born in self-preservation and want for survival. One has a finite working career to earn money, so that trying to build a nest egg to be able to retire with.. So, I’m not trying to make money for money’s sake, I’m doing it for security. In this case, I’m hoping my thought is not a deadly sin. I think that what looks like greed isn’t always, and even if that’s untrue, there’s definitely a spectrum. Greed seems relative, not absolute.
Like love and lust, it’s a raw guttural emotional instinct that all men face, but I know greed is seen in the animal kingdom as well. I’ve seen it firsthand in some dogs and would argue that all wild animals that fight for territory, morsels, and mates are exhibiting greed.
Being a Michigan fan, I remember a couple years ago I took it upon myself to read up on exactly what the hell a wolverine is. It’s kind of a larger, fiercer badger (side note, look up “honey badger with Randell” on YouTube sometime). I learned that wolverines if they find an abundance of food will eat until they are absolutely stuffed and then, if there’s still food left, they’ll ruin it so no other animals can eat it. That’s a pretty shitty thing to do to someone which seems to epitomize greed.
“Greed is good” entered our collective conscious jargon library the year I graduated high school in 1987’s movie “Wall Street”. I think Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko. I never put two & two together before on it, but today, at 7:15am over east Texas at thirty-three thousand feet, I realize that Gekko relates to geckos which are those cute little insurance selling lizards. But the 2+2 thought is it must reference “lizard brain” which is another phrase I hear from time to time to reference the part of our brain ((stem)which you’re all too familiar with) that harbors and creates our most primitive instinctual thoughts. So, the writers of the film were trying to tie together the idea that greed is a powerful primitive instinct. I love the symbolism, but now I worry about all the movies I’ve watched. I mean, c’mon, I just realized I’ve likely missed the gist or at least subtle nuance of 100’s of movies.
Let’s take a break from greed and get violent! Violence is clearly (I’m certain there’s a better word I don’t know) “tangible” as opposed to the “intangibleness” of greed. I immediately see the same duality of primitive and complex. Things that spring to mind. Those terrible videos of men on the street just walking up and cold-cocking (I need to research the origins of that phrase and I’m hoping I spelt it wrong) people for no reason at all. Just knocking them out ffs. In the past couple years I’ve seen dozens of videos showing it. On the other hand, I haven’t witnessed it in person myself and I trust the media with my guard up. But if those attacks are real – it’s a bad part of what humanity has to offer.
I think of other violence, that’s not intrinsically bad. Everything about it seems terrible and it pulls at my emotions, but have you seen a nature program where they show killer whales hunting and eating seals? It’s horrific. They stalk, chase, and herd those aqua-puppies and chomp flippers and fat until the water turns bloody. The seals must be terrified, and it’s got to hurt like a bitch to get a flipper chewed off. It’s not something I need to see again. But is it evil? Is it wrong? no,no. It’s just the food chain taking its natural course. It’s how Shamu and Willy go to McDonald’s. I’m no marine biologist, but the other type of whales without teeth just suck in a bunch of seawater and when they push back out, microscopic plankton are filter/trapped in whatever that stuff they have instead of teeth – but it doesn’t seem violent at all.
I used to hunt in my younger days. I’ve killed things. At the time, I loved to hunt. I could try to say I didn’t hunt for sport because I had the deer butchered and we ate it. Realistically, there were much easier and efficient ways for me to get a meal at the time. Why did I do that? Was it just the testosterone of a young man? I gave up hunting before you were born, and gave up pondering why I hunted a decade after that. Nowadays, I’m such an animal lover. In a great example of a sentence that you’d never dream you’d ever read. – I have a story about a grieving woodpecker in the middle of Caves Road I can tell you sometime.
Although I’ve written across at least five states, I couldn’t stop without mentioning the war in Ukraine which is f’d up as a soup sandwich in my opinion. I follow a couple feeds on twitter from both sides, and man’s violence upon man is stomach turning. I don’t have the answers kid, but as a species we should be well past this type of bullshit. If I were an alien race, I’d fly right by earth and find some non-violent, non-carbon based life form with tentacles to make friends and share technology with instead of humans.
But there’s a kernel there. Clearly someone is greedy about something in Ukraine. Who really wants what, whether it’s them or us, will be written by the victors I s’pose. And someday after that, we may learn the truth. Maybe that’s a thread you can pull on. When greed goes un-satiated, violence is next up on stage, like “Destiny” at the strip club.
Which now brings me to my song selection today, which would have been something else, which incidentally is the same song I’ve thought to send you each and every week since we started. But every damn week, a different song pops into my head that seems required or more appropriate.
The song is named “The Winner” by I believe Bobby Bare. I never really thought about it before, because I just enjoyed the funniness of the words. But today, thirty-thousand feet over Kentucky, I think it’s exactly what you’re researching. It’s got greed/covetousness and violence in spades.
Give it a couple listens and think about the young man’s viewpoint at the start, what the old man’s message is, and how the young man changes. There may be a message in it for you Stu, your paper, and the rest of humanity as well, kid.