Getting "hot" over greed: Defining the financial crisis

A Dear Reader of my recent post "CEOs and greed: tell me something I don't know" asked me why I left out the AIG story, the one where the managers go and spend millions at a spa just after the government has ponied up a $85 billion bailout. My reader wondered why I did not explain in detail what they drank, what they ate, the tab for champagne, and who knows, maybe they even got in a little lap dancing. My Dear Reader wanted me to crank up the energy and get readers on board.

My Dear Reader is right that I would get more attention if I spelled out gory details of the mind-boggling AIG greed. We, the people, have been "educated" to get hot (stimulated, titilated, and angry) over this stuff. But I resist, I refuse, I object. It's a prurient high I don't want to offer up to My Dear Readers nor to myself. It's the American Puritan tradition in me that resists inauthentic joy.

This goes for watching T.V. news. as well. I am appalled, horrified, embittered by t.v. news. As soon as I hear the word "accident" or "terrorist attack", I know I am going to get an object lesson in the importance of having a strong stomach and how to identify detached body parts. I remember, as you do, the incessant replays of 9-11, the planes crashing over and over into the Twin Towers and us with our eyelids stuck open a la Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange .. without the Beethovan. Yes, we were sickened; yes, we wanted to respond. But all we got operant conditioning outcomes: numbing impotence and sleepless anxiety.

Of course, the networks did not do anything illegal; we were being "informed". And if in the process, our hearts and minds were damaged, whose fault is that? If we had been stronger, we would have shut off the television, closed the "Department of Homeland Security" (a Soviet-style sound-bite ministry of fear) and turned out in mass demonstrations against the war in Iraq and the crime of torturing prisoners. We would have elected John Kerry, no savior of course, but at least not four more years of Bush incompetence and corruption.

Not that we weren't angry, of course. We just could not overcome the feelings of impotence and anxiety. And though the saner, authentic part of us yearned for public dialog about the horrors of Iraq and the decline of America, we watched on television the death and destruction and we did precious little about it.

I deeply dislike t.v. news -- all of it from Fox to CNN. I dislike pornography for similar reasons. Both damage our innate authentic response to experience.

As I have commented elsewhere, if you are watching pornography and not doing "it", that's pretty bad because that ought to make you wonder why that you're watching it and not doing it; if you are watching it because you need it in order to do it, that's not so great either. What happened to passionate, joyful sex between consenting adults who found sufficient material in their own bodies to work with?

So there we have it. None news news and none sex sex. Non news news inures us to the issues that matter and to the hurts and problems we can do something about. And as for sex, which ought to be the source of our greatest physical joys is just another commodity. Woody Allen was wrong when he said that When sex is good it's good and when it's bad it's still good. Bad sex is bad for us just as violence masquerading as news is bad for us.

When we are battered with violent images and when we participate in gratuitous sexual acts, we lose our ability to recognize and engage in authentic information and experience. In effect, we sacrifice our freedom of will.

My argument may sound a bit "touchy feely" for some of you; I recognize that the reductionist categorization of complex human experience. In particular, I realize that sexuality is unfriendly to moralizing. And yet, I believe that the argument is mostly right.

If I am right, where does this message lead us? In America, experience as greed became the substitute for what the great Greek philosophers called "happiness" and the American Declaration of Independence wisely termed our "inalienable right ... to the pursuit of happiness". Happiness is an outcome, not a feeling. Greed is a feeling, a superficial response to experience that only offers temporary satisfaction, like pornography. Greed has no long-term objective, and as such worries little about who losses out as greed has its way.

When there are enough powerful people whose brains are wired so that they confuse Greed with Happiness, we the people get screwed. As the financial crisis unfolds, the daily news now brings us the spectacle of the powerful getting "hot" as they see the great unwashed "deservedly" go down the tubes.

This is my definition of the financial crisis.

Comments

[Artem]

Hi David, I am reading your postings on Strategy since finished MBA at IE 2 years ago.

As always your conclusion is straightforward and provoking. Anyway, I agree with you except your point on news. Indeed, news are made for purpose but they still show what is going on in the world and if one filter crap and ads than one can see patterns and trends. Otherwise, how to get to know what is happening in other counrties?

Artem

[Panic Away]

Thanks alot for the information. Really appreciate it. I've Subscribed to your RSS feed for Further updated. I indeed agree with you. Great post!

Best Regards,
Debra@Panic Away