I

March   23rd

THE STRAITJACKETED  SOUL

“The    diseases    of  the rational    soul    are long-standing   and hardened    vices,  such    as  greed   and

ambition—they   have    put the soul    in  a   straitjacket    and have    begun   to  be  permanent   evils   inside  it.

To  put it  briefly,    this    sickness    is  an  unrelenting distortion  of  judgment,   so  things  that    are only

mildly  desirable   are vigorously  sought  after.”

—SENECA,    MORAL   LETTERS,    75.11

n the financial disaster of the late 2000s, hundreds of smart, rational people lost trillions of dollars’
worth of wealth. How could such smart people have been so foolish? These people knew the system,
knew how the markets were supposed to work, and had managed billions, if not trillions, of dollars. And
yet, almost to a person, they were wrong—and wrong to the tune of global market havoc.
It’s not hard to look at that situation and understand that greed was some part of the problem. Greed
was what led people to create complex markets that no one understood in the hope of making a quick
buck. Greed caused other people to make trades on strange pools of debt. Greed prevented anyone from
calling out this situation for what it was—a house of cards just waiting for the slightest breeze to knock it
all down.
It doesn’t do you much good to criticize those folks after the fact. It’s better to look at how greed and
vices might be having a similar effect in your own life. What lapses in judgment might your vices be
causing you? What “sicknesses” might you have?
And how can your rational mind step in and regulate them?