The View from Middle Spunk Creek

Greed: An Aphrodisiac

I saw the movie, Vice, last week; the alleged story of former Vice President Dick Cheney, dressed up in a rather odd, art house style package. Notwithstanding the distractions caused by film editing and the director’s effort to be artsy, the movie is worth seeing.

It’s a reminder (or a window, if you weren’t old enough to remember) of a bit of recent nasty political history. But, more than that, Vice is another story that emanates from, and illustrates, one of the seven deadly sins. GREED.

In the movie, the object of Cheney’s greed is political power. It is a story of of what can happen when a person of moral ambivalence attains power at its highest echelons; the corruption power wreaks on the soul as one approaches its vortex;  and the chaos and disaster that occurs when it is exercised without regard for humanity, social consequences or environmental fallout.

Power, in and of itself, is not evil. In fact, its exercise is a necessary and integral element of the ordering of society. But when bereft of altruism; when motivated by personal greed or political greed, or corporate greed, or nationalistic greed, power becomes weaponized.  It is no longer used for the good of all, but for the benefit of the some, the few, the one.

As we discussed Vice (the movie, not my personal flaws) with friends, it dawned on me that Cloud Warriors is a story in the same genre. I wrote it and tweaked it and rewrote it and edited it and rewrote it and…you get the picture…and it took watching a movie for me to realize that the underlying theme of the book is greed versus altruism; an eternal struggle of mankind since serpents and apples and fig leafs.

I’ve been asked about the book’s cover: “What do the hands holding fire have to do with story?” Well, sometimes, when the greedy are within reach of their obsession, they get burned.

Be careful what you lust for.