Speaker 0 (0s): Dr. David Solomon, welcome back to the true life podcast. I am so thankful. You're here with us. We had a great first episode and we are moving right along into something that I think all of us are guilty of, that all of us kind of enjoy a little bit, you know, sometimes and something that truly moves the needle when it comes to human behavior. And it's, it's this ideal of lust that you dry out in. Why don't you go ahead and just jump in and let us tell us a little bit about it.

Speaker 1 (33s): Sure. George, good to be with you again. Thanks for having me back on. So the, this issue of lust is really an interesting one because it has in many ways shifted over time from a question of morality, to a question of legality. And really, I think that most of our contemporary discussions about lust look at the moral, the legal issue of lust and not the moral, which is the medieval mind would have looked at this as, as a purely moral issue.

But then we passed laws that basically made lust illegal, for lack of another way of putting it. And as a result, that's, that's what we're dealing with now. But it also, as you, as you mentioned in the, in the intro, it it's part of being human. And so you take that away and we become a little bit less human, but once again, lust deals with excess desire.

So it's not the idea that we are not supposed to feel desire. Of course we are, but the excess of the feeling of desire is, is the problem.

Speaker 0 (1m 52s): Yeah, it, it, you started off this chapter was the, one of the world's greatest philosophers Camou and he says, I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. Can you tell us like, why you set up with that and, and what that leads into

Speaker 1 (2m 14s): It's a great line, isn't it, it really is, you know, as, as a devoted New York times reader every morning, I don't know if I can relate or not. I fulfilled the percent of his definition. I think that what Kemo is partially tapping into is that so much of modern life and by that, but that use of that phrase, modern, I'm going to sort of reframe that as being post-World war II, which is really what I think we're looking at here is, is driven by our, our desire, our desire for power, our desire for sexual gratification, our to have more things, so much of it is driven by desire.

And of course, that's one of the main issues behind the seven deadly sins is, is this problem with excess desire and lust is excess sexual desire, excess desire for things we'll deal with when we get to greed in a later chapter. But I think KEMU hits it on the head. You know, it really, I mean, if you look at that Mo the, the state of modern human beings, and again, it, it kind of feeds into what we were talking about last time about that issue with object and subject.

And, you know, I w I was rereading Paul Valerie, the other day, actually, cause I'm getting ready to give a keynote address. And he said something really interesting, which touched exactly on what we were discussing. He says, cut off from experience isolated from the constraints imposed by direct contact the mind in genders, what it needs in its own fashion. So we become completely subjective human beings.

And as a result, then we w we sort of lack the ability to appreciate others and appreciate, and be empathetic with what others are going through. And, you know, really what this chapter on lust comes down to is the question of our humanity and the humanity of those around us and how we treat them. And lust seems to violate both of those sort of tenants. It makes us a little bit less human by dehumanizing the people around us who are the subjects of our lost.

Speaker 0 (4m 47s): Wow. It makes us a little bit less human by dehumanized. Can you just say that part? That was beautiful. Can you say that part again,

Speaker 1 (4m 55s): Humanizes us by making those around us, making us a little less human and turning the, those around us who are the, the, the subjects of our lust and makes them a little bit less human as well.

Speaker 0 (5m 7s): Okay. So I just want to tell everybody, I've got to pause to everybody right here. The book is called seven deadly sins, and it's by Dr. David Solomon. And there's so much in here, you guys, that this is why we're doing seven parts on this. It's, there's a lot in here and it's really, well-researched, it's really well done. And you'll spend a lot of time thinking not only about the seven deadly sins, but how they affect your life and those around you. And, you know, it leads me into, you were talking about a keynote of Paul, Valerie, and, and the cutoff.

And since we're talking about cutoff, can you tell us a little bit about Matthew 1912? It would be the Unix.

Speaker 1 (5m 47s): Yes. So there's a line in Matthew about, about human beings being Unix who been so from birth and their units who have been made Unix by men and their units who have been made themselves Unix for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, who's able to receive this, let him receive it. And the issue when it comes to that, that particular verse is that origin of Alexandria, who is an early Greek philosopher, theologian second century, a brilliant mind who really was the first one to kind of formulate a new way of reading the Bible, but really reading any texts.

He basically misread the verse and in an attempt to just become more, to become closer to God, he had himself castrated, which has to be one of the, the, the, the biggest oops moments in the history of men. And his whole goal was to curb himself of his feelings of lost by having himself castrated. And the story I should know is, is maybe apocryphal.

We don't know, it's mentioned by several people, but th th th the, the, the veracity of it is still offer up for debate. But nevertheless, it becomes a sort of a trademark story when you're talking about origin.

Speaker 0 (7m 21s): Yeah. It's the way you've structured it, this particular chapter, I really felt like it flowed. So we go from origin of Alexandria, and then we can move into the lust. The etymology of the word lust is derived from the Latin Luxuria. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 (7m 39s): Yeah. So, and that's a cognate for our, for our modern English word for luxury, and it really does sort of connote luxury, excess debauchery. And it really isn't an English word until really we get to about the 19th century. It doesn't really come into English, per se, as the word lost it. In fact, there's is a dictionary from the early 19th century that links it to a Latin word, a Louie, or look some which relates to dissolving and loosening the powers of the body and the mind.

So again, it's this sort of unbridled, unrestrained desire.

Speaker 0 (8m 22s): Yeah. And it like that part right there makes me, you really begin to understand the spirituality of when you say things like it, it dissolves that part of the humanity. And do you start to really understand why it is a sin? Because when you think about it, dissolving that part of yourself, you begin how it loosens your morals, your thinking, and it gets into your life and how it, you know, if it can loosen that it can loosen your relationships, you loosen your love on the people that you have and the respect you have for people. And I gotta be honest with you.

I didn't really thoroughly understand how dangerous it was until I read this chapter right here. And then it brings us back to you were talking about how we've moved into the legality of lust. And as, as you painted such a beautiful picture of us moving through the times, you can see the definition changing, and it is slowly morphing into, Hey, it's just a legal thing. It's not that bad. And it takes away all the, the sting out of there.

Speaker 1 (9m 20s): Yeah. And, and, and, and the, the ideal example of that is to look at sadly, to look at politics in America. And so, you know, if we go back to, to, to Jimmy Carter, which some of us remember when Jimmy Carter was running for president famously, he gave an interview to Playboy magazine. And in that interview, he mentioned that he had often lost it in his heart, which meant that he had lustful feelings, but that he had not acted on them.

And people went bananas when this was published and said, oh my goodness, it's such a horrible thing. And he's admitting that he, that he feels lost. Well. I mean, if you, if you deny that you feel lost, you're, you're rather foolish to begin with. And he claims actually that his polling numbers went down after that interview. And then if you contrast that, of course, with Donald Trump and his escapades, least of which the, the inside, what's it called inside.

I can't remember the name of the show, the,

Speaker 0 (10m 31s): The, the actor studio.

Speaker 1 (10m 33s): No, no, no. Or maybe he should have been on inside. I don't know. We probably

Speaker 0 (10m 39s): Wouldn't

Speaker 1 (10m 41s): Access Hollywood. I'm starting to access

Speaker 0 (10m 42s): Hollywood

Speaker 1 (10m 43s): Would the tape from access Hollywood where he admitted to, you know, grabbing women and said that basically he had power. And so he could do whatever he wanted. A couple of weeks later, he was elected president of the United States. And so we've really, even just in the last 40 years, moved from the reaction to this being one of moral outrage to one of, well, legally, he didn't do anything wrong. And so it must be okay.

But you know, the, the issue there is that, as I tell my students, there's a lot of behavior that's ethical and isn't legal, and there's a lot of legal behavior that isn't ethical. They don't necessarily equal out. And I think that what's happened is as our great country has moved forward in its history and developed and codified such a vast legal statutes, it has become rather cloudy.

And it's become more of an issue of, well, is it legal? Okay, it's not moral, but it is illegal because that's really what we're concerned about. You know, if I'm going to Sue you, it's going to be over something. That's a legal issue. I can't Sue you over a moral issue. At least not in court. I can take you to church and shoot you there, but it's not going to get me very far. And so I think that that's, that's a big part of what we're talking about. And it is a big part of what really, I think, contributes to that kind of dehumanizing of a seminar, say in the, in the chapter, I'm not, I'm not passing judgment on Donald Trump, but I am suggesting that the fact that millions of people still voted for him after that says something about our attitudes towards this topic.

Speaker 0 (12m 42s): Yeah. I wanted to ask you're on that note between Jimmy Carter and Trump, like, it seems that people got, maybe they got mad at Jimmy Carter because he was admitting to them Southern. They don't want to admit about themselves. Like, yeah, I do. And then he's saying in a way, he's saying like, this is wrong and I feel bad. And you should too, where Trump is saying like, yeah, I did it. Who cares? Which is like the it's kinda like the fall of man almost, you know, you can kind of see it

Speaker 1 (13m 10s): Well on the one on the one hand is contrition and on the other there's none. And we tend, I think, to feel more sympathy and empathy with folks who are contrite about their behavior, truly contrite, rather than people who basically don't care and say, well, as you just said, you know, I did it. So what, and that attitude is, is, is phenomenally dangerous to us just as a species, nevermind the, the, the, the daily morality of how we treat each other, which I really think is, is fundamental to this.

You know, when we talk about, about pornography, yes, pornography is, is terrible. It is in many instances and in many ways, illegal, it is clearly in most ways immoral. But the biggest problem with it is, is that a dehumanizing and it sets up women in most cases as just objects, it takes away their humanity. And if I engage in that, it also strips me a little bit of my humanity.

Speaker 0 (14m 27s): Yeah. I agree. It forces you to see it forces you to strip the divinity out of the other person like you can't. And if you can't see the beauty or God, or the spirituality in somebody else, and that means that little light in you is dying, you know, it's going out and kind of makes me want to cry a little bit. You know, it's pretty sad to think of

Speaker 1 (14m 46s): It is. It is. But I think that, you know, in, in studying the, of this idea, it's it, you find some solace, for example, you know, it, in the, in the, in the Talmud, in the Jewish Talmud, lust is one of the four things listed that God has said to have regretted that he created. And so it's interesting that, that we can go back and sort of look at so w you know, and when I discovered that it made me go back to the Bible then and say, okay, well, where do we get these stories?

Right? I mean, there, there really isn't any less than the story of Adam and Eve, as much as our culture wants to make it seem like it's about lust. And it was a temptation and, oh my God, the horrible woman, if you look at the Genesis text, there's nothing of that, the actual Genesis text. So she brought the fruit to Adam and he ate that's it it's, it's the, it's the apocryphal, it's the, it's the additional stories that we have about the fall, mostly from Saint Augustan really is where it starts, that we get more of this kind of backstory about what happened and what was going on.

But I went to, to the story of David and best Sheba to look at a sort of prototype of this story in the old Testament. And it was, I was really surprised at what I found. Of course, David supposedly falls in love, and I'll put that in air quotes with best sheep, best sheet. But when he sees her sunbathing essentially on, on her rooftop and he demands that he has to have her, he essentially, what a lot of interpreters read as rapes her, he sends her husband off to war to be killed, and he marries her and they have a child who was the result, supposedly of that first encounter.

And the Bible texts is, is it, there's no punishment. In fact, I, I believe in the, in the following chapter, I think it's Nathan, the prophet says, you know, God is not happy with you or something to that effect, but that's it. And so I started to look at some of the secondary matures, some of the commentary on the Bible, especially in the middle ages to see, well, is there any more elaboration about this? Does anybody talk about this? And it seems to really be glossed over as more of a reach for power than it is about sex.

So that David's act is more about his power as a leader and his power as, as, as well, in this case, as a, as a, as a Jewish king, eventually as the Hebrew king than it is about his lustful feelings for best Shiva. And of course, I mean, in the text best Sheba. I don't, I don't know if she has any words, if she ever says anything for herself, which is of course prompted an entire generation of writers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to start writing these stories in the Bible, from the female perspectives, right.

To give them more agency and to hear about what would their perspective have been. So it's, it's, it's incredibly complicated, but it was, it was really kind of troubling to me as a, as a reader of the Bible, as a child to go back and read that, that story of David and, and find that there's no contrition, there's no punishment. It just is sort of glossed over. And we move on.

Speaker 0 (18m 19s): It's such a fascinating story in so many ways that I have so many questions. Like, do you think that it's just this, the beauty and the magic of scripture, that the store, we keep finding new stuff in the story? Or do you think that maybe we are changing as a species? So we keep finding new stuff in the story.

Speaker 1 (18m 36s): I think we're changing. And we, we, we, we read things differently. I'm in, it is the nature of reading a text. You know, I mean, many have said, you know, you can't read a text twice. The same for the first time I had a professor when I was an undergraduate who claimed that every June, he re-read weathering Heights. And he said, every time he read it, he said he saw something new that he hadn't seen before. And so I do think part of that is our changing as, as readers, certainly someone reading the story of David and Beth Shiva today is not going to read it in the same way that someone did in the middle ages or even in the 19th century.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, the danger and, and I discussed this when I teach the Bible is literature with my students is, is what historians called presentism, which is reading something that is old or reading an event that is old or reading a, a situation that is, that happened in the past, through the lens of today and being critical about it in that way, because that's not fair. It's not fair to the writer.

It's not fair. It's not, it's it's folks who reread Shakespeare today and say, well, you know, Shakespeare was really a massage agonist in this play. And you're like, well, but you're reading that through the lens of 21st century feminism that didn't exist in the 16th century and 16th, 17th centuries. And so it's really not fair to whip that on him because he wasn't aware of that. And so we always have to sort of adjust for, you know, how are we approaching this? And that's why so many, especially when you, when you read books that are commentary on the Bible have to set up sort of, you know, okay, what's your methodology?

What's your angle here, right? How are you approaching this? Are you looking at it from the perspective of today? Are you reading it through the media will Catholic church, are you reading it through the, the, the, the reform church? You know, how are you approaching this? 'cause, that's going to color the way you read the text. And it brings us back to poor origin, you know, lost, lost his goods, But Arjun detailed four different ways of reading the Bible, right? And one of them was the allegorical way, which is the way that we often do now, which is the, essentially what we were referred to as reading between the lines.

Speaker 0 (21m 4s): What, what if we jumped back for a moment, what is your interpretation of why God was upset about creating lust?

Speaker 1 (21m 14s): It's interesting, because again, the Talmud doesn't reflect a lot on the why. It just says that there are four things that God is sorry, that he created and lust is one of them. And don't ask me, but the other three, cause I can't remember off the top of my head. And I mean, why would we think of that? It's interesting because the, the, the biblical commentary on the Genesis false story certainly does imply that Adam is partly driven by feelings of lust.

That Eve is as, as the usual story goes, tempted, Adam to eat the fruit, tempted him with her, her wildly feminine ways. And it, as a result, you know, cast all women as being evil through the middle ages and, and being responsible for the fall and the eventual redemption of man by Mary, through the birth of Jesus is looked at as the parallel there. So by woman, man fell by a man by a woman, man is redeemed, but it certainly poses one of those conundrums, not unlike the problem of evil, you know, why does evil exist?

Why does lust exist? Why do we need to have it now on one level, from a biological standpoint, you would say, well, we needed in order to procreate that it would be difficult to, to, to keep the species alive without some sense of, of desire, sexual desire, which again, not bad, it's an excess that it becomes bad.

And so perhaps it's just part of our, our human nature, that when we get handed, you know, five m&ms, we want 20, I was listening to a podcast yesterday and somebody kept repeating the phrase that we all remember her, our parents probably saying to us, which is, you know, you give them an inch, they'll take a foot. Right. You know, and it it's that same sense that we just, we can never have enough. And so maybe that's part of what goes on here as well.

Although certainly there are, there's an entire contingency of people who historically have distanced themselves from any kind of sexual desire. Now, most of those folks have, of course led what we would call a religious life folks like origin and, and, and people who live a, a cloistered existence. But there's also, you know, pretty strong attitude that just by entering into a religious life, it doesn't mean that your lustful feelings are necessarily necessarily going to go away.

It just means that you, in some ways, learn to curb them a little bit better, but as of course, what's gone on with the Catholic church in the last a hundred years, it's now revealed maybe that's not the case.

Speaker 0 (24m 31s): Yeah. It brings me to another point that you point out on your book, lust has both positive and negative connotations and most people, when they think of loss, they think about what we've talked about so far is it is in like a sexual or an excess of object advocation. But can you maybe talk a little bit about how less there's a lust for life and how maybe there's a positive connotation.

Speaker 1 (24m 55s): Yeah. And, and, and I love that phrase lust for life because it makes me think of the Irving stone novel about Vincent van Gogh, which I, I, I foolishly tried to read in high school, it's about a thousand pages long, and I couldn't get through it even low wise. I love bits of van Gogh, but this, this lust for life. So the ad, the idea that we really yearn to, and I'm going to fall into cliche here, take the biggest bite that we can out of the apple to keep the, the Genesis metaphor, going to enjoy life to its fullest, to have that kind of desire, to get the most that we can out of every day.

It's, it's difficult. It's more difficult for some people than others, more difficult at some times than others. I think, you know, I, I, I, I, I have to handle it to my friend, George here is in Hawaii and, and living his best life and, and certainly having a lust for life, but it is oftentimes difficult. And I think that's one of the challenges that we confront as contemporaries is keeping that, that going, you know, and just from a, from a practical standpoint, there was an article on the front page.

I think it was the Sunday times this week about the new, I think it's 9, 9, 8 number, the suicide prevention line that's supposed to be going into, into effect nationally. And, you know, it's a fact that that numbers of suicides are continually on the rise. And so what is it about balancing that lust for life, with the incredible depression that some people have?

I mean, they seem like polar opposites, right. You know, I, I, I described myself to a friend the other day through an email as, as a, as a cynical Bronx Jew. And she answered me back by saying, well, people have often accused me of being a Pollyanna. So I'm not really sure what that means. And I think that there are, there's a variety of people, but I mean, I enjoy being around people who have that lust for life.

And certainly I think that's, that's, I mean, it's ironic that in fact stone names, his novel was for life considering men goes and, but, and the, and the, the film is very good with Kirk Douglas.

Speaker 0 (27m 35s): Yeah. I had always figured a better to be Pollyanna then Cassandra, but

Speaker 1 (27m 41s): I thought you were a better, it'd be Pollyanna. The Constanza

Speaker 0 (27m 47s): To shame. My friend will plain. I think sometimes one, one thing I think about when I think about lust is that it's such a powerful thing. And maybe what we, maybe what people can do as we talk about the epidemic of suicide and the rising numbers, maybe if somehow people could harness this lust and see in this lust for life and in the darkest moments, think to themselves, gosh, I'm so lucky to be alive and maybe try to harness that power of lust and see the sunrise, or just see the bird singing.

Maybe that powerful emotion could pull them out of there, but it's sad to see that people are doing.

Speaker 1 (28m 27s): And I, I, I think you're right. I think that the only danger there is in comparing us ourselves to others. So let me, let me, let me explain what I mean by that. So we're going through this, this horrible time with this war in Ukraine. And a lot of people are reflecting on that and say, saying how grateful they are that to live in America and the freedoms that we have and et cetera, et cetera. And I always cringe a little bit when people say that, and don't include the fact that millions of people are suffering because it's a very solipsistic approach.

It's almost narcissistic right. In a well . And, you know, for years I taught, I taught a course on, on, in women's studies at a women's college, and it was a freshmen course. And we looked at the plight of women around the world. And the problem that surfaced after some time was that students weren't learning about this in order to understand what was going on. Instead they were coming out of it with, well, I'm glad I don't live there.

And it was like, okay, that is the polar opposite of what we're trying to achieve here. And so we had to reframe what we were doing in order to make sure that they had that understanding and an empathy for what women were experiencing in other parts of the world and not just come out with well, you know, thank God that's not me. And I think that that's the problem at the moment that I see with what's going on in Ukraine. And some of the reactions that we're seeing here at home, which is, you know, well, I'm glad I live in the U S it's like it, but there are millions of people over there who are really suffering.

And, you know, I'm glad I live in the U S too, but that doesn't negate the suffering that those people are experiencing. And it doesn't negate the fact that I should show some, some feeling of empathy for what they're going through. Now, maybe that means balancing my day and, and, you know, not watching CNN for 10 hours of coverage of what's going on and instead going out and appreciating a sunset. And maybe that's the, the balance there. I don't know. I haven't found it myself.

So I can't say I haven't found out what that balance is yet. My, on my own, I tend to carry too much weight of, of the negative that's going on. But I think that's just my, my Bronx roots.

Speaker 0 (31m 6s): Yeah. It's, it's, it's well put. And the more that we talk about this, and it makes me think, you know, we see what's happening over there, but I wish everybody could see what's happening in Ukraine is causing people over here to commit suicide. Like we're so connected. And we don't think about that. Like, this is the reason there's so much just this dark cloud of despair hanging over us. It's because our brothers and sisters are dying and we're, we're connected to them. We think we're not, you think you're separated, but you're not like you can feel their despair, you know?

And I

Speaker 1 (31m 40s): It's, it's a, it's a spiritual malaise that sort of just settles over us. And it's the same kinds of things that some folks like Paul, Valerie and DH Lawrence. So I talk about a lot in the book wrote about in the wake of world war one, and then during world war two, that where we're experiencing in many ways, a lot of that same sense, but what's missing and having not lived through world war II.

I can't say this personally. I can only say this from what I've read, but if you go back and look at newspapers that were published during the war years, and look at the, the tenor of the conversation, the tone of the editorial page, the attitudes, even an advertising, it was more of it's. We got a band together here. I mean, Georgia probably remember victory gardens.

And remember what those are, people planted, victory gardens, right? This idea that you grow your own food and it would, it would help us win the war because it wouldn't take resources away from the troops. I could not imagine us today having a kind of a project like that again, where everybody would join in we're too polarized. I mean, I guess the closest we came to, it was probably after nine 11, but it, it wore off fast, didn't it?

Speaker 0 (33m 15s): And it took such a tremendous thing to get us there, to wipe away.

Speaker 1 (33m 20s): Yeah, probably it's sad that that's what has to happen in order to make us kind of wake up. I mean, it's a similar thing with COVID right. For the two years of COVID is now making, you know, big, larger companies starting to realize that, oh, you mean we have to pay our employees better or, oh, we need to treat our employees better, or we can let people tell our work and it's not going to be the end of the world. And, you know, COVID had to happen in order for us to realize that that's, that's, that's a tough, a tough price to pay.

You know, it really is. And I, I wish we didn't do that. I wish we listened more to each other, but the fact of the matter is, and I don't know if it's the nature of our, our capitalist culture that we, we don't do that until it hits people in the, in the pocket book, perhaps. I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 0 (34m 19s): Yeah. I, I, this whole topic of advertising and, and lust and going back to the twenties and, and seeing the beginning of, Hey, let's, let's make women smoke cigarettes, you know, by, by dressing up models and having them walk down the street. And on a side note, as we talk about technology, as we talk about loss, as we talk about advertising, isn't it interesting that the logo for apple is an apple with a bite out of it. This symbolizes symbolizes that like,

Speaker 1 (34m 47s): Oh yeah,

Speaker 0 (34m 48s): Gosh, darn it. Like, I, I, I have apple. I like to buy apples the third time. I see that every time I see it, I'm like, what am I doing, man? My pain.

Speaker 1 (34m 56s): I, I, I don't know the history behind how they came up with that as their logo. It'd be interesting to look at. I, I don't know if it was a conscious, conscious connection to, to the Genesis story or not. I don't know.

Speaker 0 (35m 9s): Yeah. It's, it's interesting to think about, but in your book, you get, you do get into the advertising and how they've commodified lust and kind of tapped into this, this driver of human behavior. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Speaker 1 (35m 21s): Yeah. I, I, you know, one of my favorite things is to Google old advertising, right? Either on YouTube or images and they're, they're, they're humorous. So they're also kind of horrifying because you look at it. Oh my God. In fact, last week I went, we had the Beatles tribute. Rain was here on campus and I went last Wednesday night. I'm a big Beatles fan. And during one of the set changes, they showed commercials from 1967, the audience was roaring, but they were so inappropriate and they included my beloved Flintstones when they, when they did a cigarette commercial, you know, it's just, it's hilarious.

These commercials are hysterical. And a lot of them did mostly make women into objects and, and still do that today. I mean, you know, if you look at, oh, there was a, an ad campaign for Carl's Jr, which is a hamburger chain a couple of years ago, and it was Paris Hilton in a bikini washing a car. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's still goes on and all you have to do is pick up a fashion magazine and thumb through it.

And you'll see it on both sides. Really men objectified and women objectified and advertising, you know, goes back. I mean, it goes back to the mad men, era of sex sells that draws people in, it draws their attention. You know, one of my, my, my favorite commercials is this, this ad, I think it's Norwegian and it's shows a, a young guy, maybe he's in his late twenties, in a grocery store.

He's got his grocery cart and he has a little boy with him and the boy starts throwing a tantrum that he wants candy. And he just has a full-out. I mean, he's on the, on the floor of the grocery store, flailing around, he wants his candy, he wants his candy. And that hilarious thing is the ad is for condoms. It's perfect though. But, you know, so, I mean, we also have learned how to use sex for humor. Right.

And I think that, you know, in, in many people oftentimes get into trouble when, you know, again, there's that Razor's edge, right? Where you're you go over the line, but it's it, it's it, we have a funny attitude towards this, especially in our country, in the us. Right. You know, I I've mentioned in the book, you know, as like I called it nipple gate, right. I mean, when, when Janet Jackson's nipple was exposed in the Superbowl halftime show for about a millisecond and people went nuts.

And part of that is because in the United States, we so sexualized the breast, that if you look at the debate that's going on at the moment, over public breastfeeding, you can see what that's all about. Whereas if you go to other countries, go to Europe, go to, you know, African countries, South Africa. I mean, that's not an issue. And so why is it why, what has happened here that has made that made the breasts a sexual target in, in the United States?

I can't say in the west, because it really isn't in the west. It's the U S and I'm not sure, you know, myself how that developed, but you can certainly see it.

Speaker 0 (38m 50s): Yeah. Yeah. It's, I don't know if it's our Puritan roots or if maybe I think that it's, it's sad for me to think about this. However, I know it to be true, that there's so many problems with abuse, you know, be it sexual abuse or molestation with kids, and you can see it in our news all the time. And it's for anybody who's ever been a victim of that, my heart goes out to you. It ruins the family, because then there's this idea of, Hey, let's not talk about this.

Hey, let's not, let's not do that. And I think that it's so prevalent, but that's one reason we're so objectified here and we don't know how to handle cause no one talks about it. We're in Europe or, or maybe in Africa where civilization is, has deeper roots are a little bit older. They figured out a way to not to deal with it in a better way or talk about,

Speaker 1 (39m 43s): And you may be right. And of course, you know, the, the issue is that that kind of abuse has been going on for a long time. You know, the, it seems like it has increased in recent years, but studies have shown that really the only thing that increases the reporting of it it's happened for a long time behind closed doors where no one ever knew. And didn't talk about it. I wonder, without, without, you know, making the mistake here of, of falling into a, an UN politically correct hole of, of looking at certain parts of African cultures and noting the, the more tribal nature of the family unit and that, that may have something to do with it.

But I'm completely talking off the top of my head. I'm not a sociologist, I'm not an anthropologist. So I don't know that for sure. But certainly there is a different dynamic in the American family than there is say in, in an African family who is still living in a, in a tribal village.

Speaker 0 (40m 50s): Yeah. I would agree on that. It seems, it seems so sad to me that in the west, we take our, our kupuna, our older generation and we put them in a home, we take our kids and we put them in an institution and the parents go to work. It's just a separation. And so much more happens when you separate the family like that. Versus my, my beautiful wife, who is the most beautiful woman in the world. And I love her she's Laotian and in her family, and even in the east, you see this tight family unit where the kids take care of the mom and dad and the mom and dad can take care of the house.

And, you know, it's, it's so beautiful in a way that I think so many people, hunger, maybe they lust for that. Or you could have like a good lesson for us,

Speaker 1 (41m 30s): Maybe. Yeah. I mean, and, and I mean, you're right. I mean, look at most of most Chinese culture, which really reveres the elderly. Whereas as you say, you know, we, we put people in homes and we do it in many ways in sometimes it's in the name of expediency. You know, if, if, if somebody has to work a full-time job and can't take care of an elderly person, you would say, you know what?

You would be better, you know, in a home where someone can, can watch after you. And, and, and the like, but maybe we need to sort of back that up a little bit and say, well, why did we have to work so many hours a week? Why is that necessary? That we can't spend more time with family. It's, it's, it's one of those curious things about work-life balance, right? Which has become a catchphrase in the last few years.

And, and which no one I know has been able to really figure out it's very hard to do, right. To make sure that you've got a balance there. It, for most people work is their dominant mode, their dominant mode of existence. And I I'm I'm as guilty probably as anybody, but it's, I think you're right. It, it would do us well to look at a lot of those cultures in the Eastern.

A lot of them tend to be in the east who really have figured out how to retain that family unit and, and not really splinter out, which yeah. You know, here, the kids are in nursery school or in daycare, as soon as you can get them in daycare. Right. Cause people have to go back to work. Now, do they, you know, as my, one of my professors in grad school would say, do they have to go back to work or do they want to go back to work? Right. And that's, I guess what it comes down to, you know, I used to say to him, I have to go to the library and he'd say, no, you want to go to the library.

Right. You don't have to, you don't have to do anything. But th th guess there is that part of part of maybe we need to kind of reframe. And I think COVID is also challenging us to do that. Right. What do we really need to be doing? And what do we want to do?

Speaker 0 (43m 58s): Yeah. I think it presents us with a beautiful opportunity when, whenever there's a breakdown like this, and I think conversations like this, and especially your book, the seven deadly sins, it gives us an opportunity to restructure the world in the way we would like to see it. And I think what you spoke about, about us getting to go to work or having to go to work, is it, that's where the lust is able to creep in. It's like when you let go of, of the things you care about most and allow someone else to, to teach them, they're going to be touched by lust or be more open to the suggestion of loss, if you weren't there to protect them.

And I, I, I just think that, you know, in, in your book, you talk about lust as the enemy of serious thought. And I think that's kind of what it is. Can you continue to go down that road a little bit?

Speaker 1 (44m 46s): Yeah. Well, and it's also, you know, Agustine says lust disturbs the whole man, right? It really, in many ways, the commentators remark about the fact that these feelings of lost and in particular more than the feelings, but the acting out of it really does get in the way of rational thought. And the, the conventional idea that as human beings, our gift is our, is our reason that if we let our, our lustful feelings get out of control, it, then dominates reasons.

So this goes back to a debate in the 17th century, between reason and passion. And so as far back as Thomas Aquinas in the 12th century, there's this idea of something called faculty psychology, right? And the idea is that in your mind, there are several different faculties at work. So you've got reason. You've got passion, you've got faith, you've got all these different sort of compartmentalize. They imagined them areas in your brain. When you have to make a decision, the faculties basically battle it out together to try to come to a conclusion.

John Milton in paradise lost says that God gave man conscience as an umpire in that battle. It's beautifully written the way that he says that. So he gave us a conscience in order to umpire, to, to, to referee that that battle in paradise lost. And John Milton's paradise lost Adam experiences, a battle between reason and passion when he decides whether or not to eat the fruit. And the reason that that is a, is a, is a debate is in paradise loss.

God has told him exactly what to do. He knows he is not supposed to eat from that tree. It's not a mistake. He knows where the fruit came from, but he also has been told that if they eat from the fruit, it means they're going to die. And he knows that Eve has eaten the fruit. And so what he rationalizes what he works out in his mind in this wonderful interior, it's almost a soliloquy in the poem is so evil die, and I'll get another Eve.

And he says, that's terrible because he's so in love with Eve, he can't imagine being away from her. And so that's what causes some to eat the fruit, his passion for her overrides, his reason, which tells him you're not supposed to eat the fruit, but his passion and his desire to be with her. It, it trumps anything else that he's been told, even what he's been told by God. And so it does get in the way it can get in the way of our rational thinking.

But on one level, then, you know, we might not be married, George, you know, not to each other. Thanks. I love you, George, but

Speaker 0 (47m 53s): I love you

Speaker 1 (47m 53s): Too. But you know, we wouldn't, I, you know, so there's something we need to have desire. It's just a, can't get out of our control. And when it gets out of our control, then any kind of rational thought goes out the window. And we start doing things that we should not be doing, but because our reason has been subjugated, our passion or a lost takes the driver's seat.

Speaker 0 (48m 18s): Wow. That's really well said. I, it makes me think, you know, what a gift it can be to, to have this idea of lust. And it's almost like it's incomprehensible in some ways, because it's such a great power. It's such a great driver of behavior. And to, to come to that conclusion of like, wait a minute, I love this woman more than anything in the world, and she's going then we're going, and it just symbolizes the unity of them. And it's a, it's a beautiful idea.

It's such a dangerous idea.

Speaker 1 (48m 52s): That's love though. That's what we need to sort of figure out what's going on here and the relationship between love and lost. So, you know, in the history of theology, you know, love good thing, right? Spiritual love, spiritual love for another human being. And that's what th the love that, that two people have for each other when they get married is, is theoretically supposed to be about right. I love my wife's spirit.

Right. I love her soul, you know? Yes. I'm physically attracted to her too. That's a bonus, but I am physically, I'm attracted to her soul and that's the spiritual love that has to be there if that's not there. And you only have the lost, it's not going to work.

Speaker 0 (49m 42s): Yeah. It reminds me of what Herman has says in Siddhartha, where Siddhartha comes up on the first girl bathing in the stream, and he's just drawn to her another beautiful writer and a beautifully well-dressed. And isn't it interesting how it comes up that this particular subject, I guess, subject object comes up in different writings, be it spiritual or, or, or something like that. Do you know, can you be compare and contrast that in different literature a little bit for us to kind of flesh it out?

Speaker 1 (50m 13s): Yeah. Let me think for a second here. I mean, I suppose that, you know, if we look at some of the stereotypes of lusty or lustful DH Lawrence, one of my favorite writers, his novel lady Chatterley's lover, which was deemed obscene when it was first published, went through a big case in the, went to the U S Supreme court in this country, because it was imported and thought to be obscene.

It has a lot of scenes of really incredible sexual desire and as do many of Lawrence's novels and Lawrence often accused of, of being pornographic in that sense. And he was very much in tune with what he would refer to as kind of the primitiveness of our humanity, right. That, yes, we can't be all intellect. We are physical beings.

We have physical urges, whether that's I'm hungry and I want to eat lunch, or I'm feeling feelings of lust. And I want on, I want sexual desire. I want sexual release. He would respond to that by saying again, there has to be that, that, that middle road, you have to find a balance. There has to be some way to still retain our respect and our humanity and still experience the physical pleasures of our bodies.

That I think is something which we struggle with. I mean, again, if you go back to the Janet Jackson thing, I mean, you know, who got hurt by seeing Janet Jackson's nipple for a millisecond, they cut away to a commercial so fast. You weren't even sure what you looked at. In fact, it wasn't until it started showing up on the internet where you could replay it over and over again, that people are like, yeah, I saw her nipple. It's like, okay. So, so are you scarred now because you've seen a woman's nipple?

What, what is that gun to you now? It's, it's, it's not. And the interesting thing of course, is that in the two decades, almost since that happened, there's been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, no pun intended to the NFL about that incident, because it seemed that at least initially Janet Jackson was punished more heavily than Justin Timberlake was when he was the one who actually was the one who ripped the piece of clothing off of her that exposed her nipple.

But I think what we're, we're doing in looking back on it now is realizing, you know, I mean, did, did, did anybody die because of that? Did, and it was, wasn't it more about my, and as you've mentioned earlier, perhaps puritanical attitudes, you know, breast that should be laned, then a Janet Jackson should be blamed. So I it's it's, it's, it's, it's complicated as they would say on Facebook.

It's accomp it's.

Speaker 0 (53m 41s): Yeah, it is. It's it says so much about us. I, I want to be mindful of your time doctor. How are you doing

Speaker 1 (53m 46s): On time? Yep. We're good.

Speaker 0 (53m 48s): Okay. Do you mean we're good as in, we should continue to talk for a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (53m 53s): We can do another five minutes or so. Okay,

Speaker 0 (53m 55s): Perfect. I just had a, towards the end here, I had

Speaker 1 (53m 59s): Kind of your great cats going back there.

Speaker 0 (54m 0s): Oh, these guys are such Rascals. There's so much fun to be around and you can see the animalistic lust when they want to go outside or they want to get their food, which, you know, I think something important to talk about maybe to end up here is some of Charles Taylor's work about sources of self and the inner. And, and can you maybe just kind of flush that out before we,

Speaker 1 (54m 23s): So Taylor's Canadian philosopher and he wrote this a while he's written two mammoth books. One is called the secular age and the other's called sources of self. They are not easy reads, but birth both certainly worth your time. If you're willing to put, put it into it. And he really, especially in sources of self elaborates, a good deal on what I see in Agustine and in Carl Young, which is this focus on inner self and outer self and the interior and the exterior and our relationship between those.

And so what I mean is, and I keep coming back to this really in just about everything that I write is part of our issue with modern life, with the speed of modern life. Some of which we can blame technology on is it has really prevented us from taking the time to reflect, to contemplate, to sit quietly and just think we are constantly bombarded with data.

It's difficult to get away from it. And without that, we are losing as a result, that sense of who we are, our sense of self, because we live almost an entirely exterior existence. It's all about my relationship to the world and to others. And I've moved away from thinking about, well, what about my relationship to me? And, you know, perhaps as we mentioned, I think last time, this is the cause of all of the, the, the increase in people meditating and doing yoga.

And isn't it interesting that so much of the practice that people engage in when it comes to this comes from Eastern thought and not the west. And, and I think there's a reason for that. And it's, it's a fundamental sort of difference between Western religion and an Eastern religion. Western religion tends to focus much more on the exterior. The, what is beyond you and the Eastern religion is more on the interior.

And my, my, the easiest example of that is that in the three major Western religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, you pray to God in most Eastern religions when you meditate, it is looking within. So if you want to make a change, make it, you're not praying to a divinity, the divinity is within you. And so you have the power to make those changes. It's just somehow you have thrown up obstacles to being able to do that.

And in many cases, I think it's just one of the obstacles is our inability to really look within and to, to look at ourselves. You know, we mentioned, we were talking last week about the subject object divide. And, and I think it's really interesting because mirrors at just the metaphor of a mirror, right. Of sitting and looking at yourself, there's a great scene in Hamlet where Hamlet wants his mother to sit down and look at herself in a mirror to see, to look at her soul.

He wants it to look at her soul because he's employed. He's implying that she is somehow involved, was involved in the death of his, of his father. And it's a, it's a wonderful scene because he makes her sit down and look at her self in the mirror, and then he drills it down further. And he says, you know, essentially, I want you to look at your soul, look past the surface, look at what's inside.

And we can't do that if we never have the time, if we never disconnect. And many people don't, you know, I could walk through my office on campus. Here is in our library, beautiful building, filled with students working, and I could walk through here. And I could probably count on one hand, the number of students who were sitting, working either just with a book and a pad and no earbuds in there.

Very few I'm sure. You know, and, and again, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to come off as being hypocritical. I'm guilty of this as anybody. I can't work in silence. I have a hard time doing that, but I do realize the importance of it. I realized that it is important to disconnect because it's really the only way that I'm going to get in touch with. What's really important.

Speaker 0 (59m 31s): Yeah. That that's sums it up. I mean, I that's really well said, and it's something that we should, we, we can all work on ourselves and it's something that's also a beautiful thing to do. And it takes a lot of courage to do

Speaker 1 (59m 44s): It. Does

Speaker 0 (59m 45s): It really does. I really enjoy our conversations and I've gotten a lot of great feedback from, from it so far. And I just want to let everybody know the book again is called seven deadly sins. All his links are below. He's got an awesome blog that I'm gonna put down there. Maybe who knows he might have a newsletter coming someday or something, but can you tell people where they can find you if they want to?

Speaker 1 (1h 0m 6s): Sure. My website is David A. Solomon, S a L O M O n.com. And you can contact me through there. And if you have the book and you would like me to sign it for you, I'd be happy to do that. Just contact me through the website. And we can arrange that. Sadly, I don't have enough copies of the book to sell them on my website, but you can get them from Amazon and, you know, any, any, any other place where you can order books. I encourage you to do that. And other, other places where you, where you can possibly order a book and not just on Amazon.

Speaker 0 (1h 0m 39s): Fantastic. And we'll be back next Tuesday to do it again. And if, and we'll be back at seven o'clock Hawaii standard time. So thank you very much, doctor, for spending time with me and my audience today, we had a great conversation and I will look forward to seeing you next Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (1h 0m 57s): Thanks George.

Speaker 0 (1h 0m 59s): Alright, Aloha.

Speaker 1 (1h 0m 60s): Bye. Bye.