Aristotle and The Face of the Oppressed

Perhaps this is already obvious to you, but just now occured to me. Aristotle on excellence, that we all read now and are enthralled by in the very best of the best upper wealth planning circles, wrote from within an economy of plunder, commerce, and slavery. He tutored Alexander the Great, for example. The warrior ethos (innovate disrupt plunder); the warrior values of audacity and ruthlessnes; the disdain for the servile, and plebs. What was Jesus but a rebuke to that noble excellence? Jesus taught that he could best be found among the down trodden, the slaves, the imprisioned, the leper, the whore, the tax collector, even. Excellence, he taught, is God's image in every human face, unless the coinage is rubbed smooth or debased.

We are now accepting (as determining our reality and a just reality) of a sorting system in which winners and their progeny are plied with Aristotle and the least among us are stripped of dignity. You have seen it, I am sure. The billionaire whose face reddens when he hears that teachers who have taught in public school for 45 years can retire on $34,000 in socialistic state pensions! Entitlements like dynastic trust funds are for the winners. They achieved it through commercial conquest. It is their property. They can do with it what they like. That is Freedom! How about their kids? That is where blue blood is seeking to find its way back into the moral economy. And it can't. So we have all this mega-BS, that my advisor friends cannot help explaining to each other over and over, about the Four Capitals and Human Excellence and Flourishing Families. The Dynasts are not only rich unto the tenth generation, they are deservingly so. Why? Because they get Wise Counsel. They have Trusted Advisors. They have a Secular Priest. I have been called an imbecile, by my boss, and she would know, but this sounds crazy to me. If Wealth and Virtue Counselors  gave a good thrashing, like my mentor, The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, I could see how that could help, if it started young and continued throughout life, when deserved. But Wise and Virtuous Counsel seems more like flattery sort of. Have you noticed? Wise and Virtuous suck ups. I should do better in that way myself. I just keep re-reading King Lear and identifying with the Fool. Wise, yes, but not too clever by half. Any wiser and like Oedipus they would tear the eyes from their skulls and cry: "I called myself the wisest of men, and sold my services like a Faithful Servant or maid of all work but how blind was I when I could see."

I realize I am taking all this much too seriously. It is just another scam, or maybe theater, and I am just ticked off that I got into morals coaching as an emergent mental health profession, like nurse's aid, a decade ago, here on Gifthub and seem to have missed the uptrend, in that I still have no paying clients. Now every insurance agent, attorney, trust banker, and fundraiser I know wants to give wise and virtous counsel for flourishing families of Substance. Are there actually billionaires and centa-millionaires who buy into this? Or, is it a minstrel show, cakewalk at the big house, for their amusement? To see wisdom and virtue prostituted is a kind of kick. I do see that in Wealth Bondage, and clean the scene room after. There too, in the bleary-eyed face of Your Wisdom Navigator for the Night, I see the face of God. Until the last breath, redemption is possible. May I be forgiven as I forgive. I may yet give wise and virtuous counsel; God forgive me. But I need the money. 

Comments

[AKMA]

Sounds right to me, Tutor. I wrote an essay in grad school addressing a similar point many years ago, suggesting that simply baptising Aristotle might open the door to some pretty dysangelical consequences for those who were not manly enough — slaves, women, children, helots, barbarians — to measure up to Aristotle’s vision of aretê.

[Phil]

So good to hear from you, AKMA. A born again Aristotle is staggering thought. I miss your presence .

[AKMA]

Constant reader, Phil, but I don't usually have anything to add to your adventures in a very different world.

[Phil Cubeta]

And I read you all the time, too, AKA, following your recent change of ink, for example. I hope you are well! If you ever are defrocked, I know several Private Banks that would love to have your morals consulting services for their billionaire clients from all over the world. You could design your own Chapel in a vacant conference room. It would be best to avoid overtly Christian references, nailed down to the wall, but if you could keep the cross, star of David, and the crescent moon in a drawer, along with a volume of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and De Man you could start Socraticly, then pivot to the faith or unfaith tradition that moves things forward to a good conclusion, in the time allotted. You will be rated against the other Morals Tutors and if you do better than the norm, by client ratings, and assets under management for the firm, you may yet be able to retire in respectable penury. Who are we to impose our values on our betters? We just embrace and extend what values we find there, and make sure they are passed on to the next generation, at least in a written mission statement, or lip service.