We can love a tiger, but might not want one for a pet. We can love corporations, because they create the wealth to which we are addicted, but can a global corporation be restrained or trained? Can these "non-natural persons" endowed by law with immortal life be educated in the humanities, can they be taught the liberal arts, the arts of liberality and freedom of mere humans? My friend from Yale Grad School, Tom Matrullo, ponders these questions in the light of Robert Lessig on Robert Reich's book, Super Capitalism. Tom credits me with the Foolish goal of teaching "non-natural persons" and those who run them a moral code. Clearly, I present myself as a Fool, Tom, in order to say, "Of course what we are talking about is not largess, or good taste, or high culture, but, say, Ameya Preserve." There Geniuses are hired as entertainers to circulate among the wealthy, bestowing culture amidst nature in a community of commerce and conscience.
The Stoics, like Seneca, held the belief that Teacher/Student is a peer to peer relationship in which either plays the other's role reciprocally. The student is the teacher's teacher, and both bring the other's thought and character into being, in reasoned dialog with the other. So, for me is conversation with Tom. By contrast when I go to Candidia Cruikshanks, as her Morals Tutor, and to educate her guests in Wealth Bondage, it is she who educates me to kiss her boots, and I do: I need the money, and have enough sense not to alienate my boss. I am not all Fool, unlike a certain Tutor I could name, whose reward for impertinence is to live in a Dumpster. Wisdom and Virtue and the Good Life are all well and good in theory. In practice, I aspire a little higher and have a good lifestyle to maintain.
