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At the Crossroads

The crossroads are where Oedipus slew his father; where in Athens the pharmakos was burned as a human sacrifice to purify the sick society; where Hermes the Divine Trickster stood his erect cock pointing the wrong road to travelers; and where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn to play the blues guitar.  Two roads both crooked, one rising into the woods to a ruined house, the other going you don't know where:  Here at the crossroads you have a two-faced guide who has at heart only your getting lost. 

Pharmakos

Prior to being burned alive crackling and sputtering at the crossroads, the Pharmakos, was kept at public expense, as a kind of medicine (pharmakon), to be used to cure the body politic in time of plague, or social unrest. Sometimes the Pharmakoi were chosen at random, other times they were chosen among the most deformed. At other times the Pharmokoi were volunteers, drawn from the poor section of town where even a well fed reprieve was a sufficient inducement. Even then the free market system worked for the good of all.

Marsyas

Marsyas was a Satyr, part man, part goat, a friend of Dionysus. Often a Satyr play, or satire, preceded the tragedies at the Festival of Dionysus. Anyway, Marsyas challenged Apollo to a flute playing contest. Marsyas lost and was skinned alive. His skin was nailed to a tree. Makes me think of how satirists go up against reason even down to our own time. When the satirist loses, he loses more than his hair shirt. When the satirist wins, the laugh heals us, and we don't need the barbaric rituals of human or animal sacrifice.

Scapegoat

When a city, or nation, is ill, the scapegoat is sent beyond the pale, to wander lost until it dies. In this way the sins of the community, or the sickness, is carried from "us," to "them." Gone!

Saint Awaits Burning

Heretics and Saints too were burned alive, as were witches. In early Athens, they kept stables of human sacrifices (pharmakoi) handy to be burned alive in time of trouble. In this way social order and the health of the body politic, or of a dogma, is assured.

Two Fools

He squats at the foot of the podium, inside the hollow space, wherever I give a speech on My Journey from Success to Significance. It is his laughter you hear, and that is his Royal Scepter you hear knocking against the mahogany to punctuate my straight-faced moral discourse. "We must transform ourselves, if we will transform society. We must be the change we seek in the world." And the knocking and laughter gets louder and louder, until the whole podium begins to shake and move across the floor - "Behold a miracle!," cries the crowd.

Herm

Hermes was the winged messenger of the gods. He was also the god of the crossroads, sacred to travelers, beggars, thieves, merchants, spies, prostitutes, minstrels, and itinerant poets. The Herm stood at the crossroads as a marker. Alcibiades, a student of Socrates, in a time of war went around knocking the cock off the gods. For that Socrates was convicted of teaching students to dishonor the gods, and as you know he was made to drink poison and die.

Awaiting Trial

The Military Tribunal meets at some point, but they are pretty well backlogged. In the mean time Positive Psychology provides some uplift between the beatings.

From My Trip to Red China

With Nixon I helped open Red China. Now they are Free. And soon through the orderly operation of the Free Market, they will own us. Such ls life. The strong prevail and the running dogs are leashed to the Master's hand.

Dumpster Patriots

Have you noticed that we who have least are often the most patriotic?

Phil Cubeta, Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families

I am serious about this.

Candidia Cruikshanks

My boss and generous patron, she who rules us all, Candidia Cruikshanks. I would like to think that in some small way I have helped her on her own Journey from Success to Significance.

Wealth Bondage Private Bank

The Bank of Wealth Bondage Private Client Services Center. I used to work here as an apprentice Dungeon Master to the Stars. (My office is not visible in the photo, I was in the third basement, by the shredder.) That was when I was young and foolish, before I got Born Again as a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families.

The Happy Tutor

The Happy Tutor, Morals Tutor to The Wealthiest Families in Every Empire Since Time Immemorial. Some say he is immortal. Here is is from Holbein's Illustrations to Erasmus' "The Praise of Folly." Note that the teacher wears a jester's cap and bells pushed back on his neck. So, Foolish Morals Tutors have always been retained to teach virtue to the rich. Maybe the truth is best expressed in fun ("serio ludere," serious play). Spare the rod and spoil the inheritor. The rich have their responsibilities no less than the poor.

Tutor's Abode

Where Tutor lives, out behind the Wealth Bondage Distribution Center in Dallas. Started his Career with the Company as a Pick and Pack Specialist Third Class. Now, even though he has risen to become Dungeon Master to the Stars, he lives here to stay in touch with the common people. Also, as pro bono Morals Tutor, despite all the glory, the worldly rewards are not really all that great. Drop by and see him if you ever get to Dallas. We can join him in the Dumpster, share a bottle of Thunderbird, and trade best practices for working with the wealthy on their morals.

Tutor's Dumpster: Inside View

Not that bad, really, if you line the bottom with newspapers, except in the summers when it does get very hot here in Dallas, but Tutor says it strengthens his resolve to succeed in his job. The nights are cool and he catches breeze from the parking lot outside the Store of Convenience. The Dumpster reminds us of the Barrel of Diogenes, the progrenitor of the line of Fools running through Erasmus's Praise of Folly, to Rabelais, to the Happy Tutor, my own mentor during my sojourn in Wealth Bondage, down to my own work as a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Family here at Gifthub. Forgive me for being so explicit, but some people seem to prefer the literal truth. Did I forget to mention Oscar Wilde's, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People"? Well, as my detractors always remind me, he ended up in Reading Goal. A dumpster of another sort, I guess.

Our Noble Trade

Here is where Tutor, in imitation of Jesus, Horace, Pindar, Socrates, and Diogenes, plies his noble trade as Dungeon Master to the Stars. Tutor in his private practice gets into the whole area of non-consensual morals consulting, or what he calls satire as vigilante justice. I find that approach morally ambiguous, as well as dangerous to my own financial security as a business person in my own right. A guy like that can end up as pharmakos (scapegoat), rather than a healer/trickster (pharmakeus). So, in my world, all the beatings are half-hearted and just for fun.

Diogenes on the Job

Another fine precedent, Diogenes.

Would philanthropy be more effective and efficient if fundraisers, advisors, and donors got naked? You could make a good case for that, really, maybe starting with King Lear whose estate plan only came together once he got naked on the heath with his Fool. As long as we are each of us dressed in our proper business attire, reflective of our official roles and status in life, it may be hard to get down to the real issues that connect us all as human beings. Anyway, doing  morals consulting naked sure worked for Diogenes, a beggar in his own right, as that bowl shows. The staff was for supporting his steps, and for beating those who did not get it.  The dog whether eating scraps from the dirt, licking his privates in public, or lifting his leg upon the statues of the great, was a role model. If you want to avoid masks and pretense and be authentic, here is how.

Jesus Scourging the Money Changers

Jesus scourging the money changers in Wealth Bondage. Horace is another model for me as a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families. "Let us have a rule to assign just penalties to offenses, lest you flay with the terrible scourge what calls for the strap." Pindar comes into this too. He wrote, "Let us praise what deserves praise and sow blame for wrong doers." How can we help the rich become better people? That is the theme that unites Jesus, Pindar, Diogenes, Juvenal, Horace, Socrates, Erasmus, Swift, The Happy Tutor, Lear's Fool and me too. I hope to carry on that tradition as best I can, while avoiding the pitfalls of my profession - getting scourged myself, or crucified, made to drink poison, being strangled to death, forced slit my wrists, or sent to some Dungeon. I feel pretty good about even having a Dumpster to call my own. If Jesus was born in a Manger and died on a Cross, presumably hhttp://www.typepad.com/t/app/gallery/manage?__mode=edit_photo&photo_id=50760278
Next Photo >e meant to tell us something about worldly success.

Jesus: Crucified

Arguably, the best Morals Tutor who ever lived. Made a virtue of the inevitable and taught those who would tutor the powers that be to expect their rewards in another life. His Journey from Success to Significance has often been imitated but never equaled. They call it the Way of the Cross. His religion is popular; his Journey not so much.

Boethius Imprisoned, Tortured, Executed

Boethius was as a fine a Morals Tutor as a man can be. Yet he was imprisoned for his temerity by his top client, Emperor Theodric, a relative barbarian, but not the kind of man you mess with. Boethius in prison wrote a fine book, The Consolations of Philosophy, but it didn't help him much when push came to shove. He was tortured for months, and then taken into the courtyard, strangled with cords until the eyes popped from his skull, before being beaten to death with cudgels. Later it is said the Emperor regretted the execution. About the way it goes.

Cicero Executed

Cicero was a patriot, eloquent defender of the Republic and the most esteemed morals tutor of the wealthiest and most powerful Roman families. His name is a byword for self-restraint, good sense, and eloquence. Result? He is executed in political shakeup. His hands and tongue are cut off and nailed to the rostrum in the Senate. The wife of a value-based planning client runs that eloquent tongue through with her hat pin. A Journey from Success to Significance? I suspect he would have invoked Fortune's Wheel as a better image.

Thomas Becket Assasinated

Here we go again. Another world class Morals Tutor to the most powerful man of his time, Henry II. You don't have to ask where that got Thomas Becket. Murdered at the hands of the Kings Men for speaking truth to power. The Happy Tutor might try that; not me. Clients have a right to their own value system. Who am I to judge?

Seneca: Suicide on Demand

Seneca was a top-rated Morals Tutor to the Wealthiest Families in Rome. Fat lot of good it did him. His suicide was a command performance by order of his best client, Nero. There is a lesson in that somehow. Socrates, Seneca, Jesus, Boethius, Thomas a Becket, they were all fine Morals Tutors and they all end up dead at the behest of the clients they tried to serve and save. That is why I take Diogenes as my model. He may have lived in a Dumpster, but he died of old age.

The Choice of Herucles

Here is Hercules on his Journey from Success to Significance. At the crossroads he must choose between Virtue and Profit. I tell my client's they can have both. It may not be true, but they like the advice and it is good for sales.

Socrates Applies the Forceps

Socrates described himself as "the midwife" to his fellow citizen's soul. Given that most of his interlocutors were men, he must have had in mind the expression on the man's face as he labored to give birth to himself. Sad it is when the client labors and the soul is still born. "Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps," as one of Samuel Beckett's bums once noted.

Clyster, 19th Century

Removes toxins from the human body as satirists do from the body politic. Can also be used as a bellows for inspired preachers. (Sorry, that is an old joke upon enthusiastic preachers, from Dean Jonathan Swift, the greatest Master of our Noble Trade.) As a preacher himself, I guess he is allowed to satirize same.

I Stand Corrected

We learn early the rules of decorum. We learn to show respect for those in charge. We learn to stand in line for recess. We learn to memorize stock answers to stock questions. We learn not to question the authority of those set above us. We learn not to use bad language or to make disrespectful jokes. See if you can find the Happy Tutor in this picture. (Hint: He is not the one doing the spanking. But you can see why he turned out the way he did. Abused children become abusers in their turn.) I am reminded of this image when I read the giving blogs and public press on philanthropy. The writers are so well socialized. It almost seems that they are scared of being beaten, or maybe they have been beaten down so much that truckling by now is second nature. I know it is for me. Better to go along. Better safe than sorry.

Jongleur

"Kind people, gather round and listen. The jongleur is here! I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the bigshots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate. Gather round, for now is the time and place that I begin to clown and teach you. I tumble, I sing and I joke! Look how my tongue whirls, almost like a knife. Remember that." Dario Fo, The Birth of The Jongleur

Carnival turns the world upside down. Mardi Gras is a case in point, though it has been quite commercialized. Once you get people in that festive mood, and they begin to get naked in public, or drunk and disorderly, and when you are wearing a mask, you can say and do all kinds of things in the service of life that are normally forbidden, including telling the truth.

Dungeon

In Wealth Bondage do they really torture people? I guess it depends on what you mean by "torture" and by "people," for that matter. (By Wealth Bondage we mean Freedom and the institutions that support it.) I generally leave the whole issue of torture out of my work. Some things are more than a man's life is worth to discuss. I would like to believe that any violence in Wealth Bondage is strictly consensual, like that between Producer and consumer, or Boss and subordinate, or Grantmaker and grant seeker. We play at torturing people and they love it.

Office of the CEO

To the victor go the spoils. "Is this the Oval Office?," I am often asked. No, it is just another Wealth Bondage Scene Room.

Cake Walk at the Big House

Grant Seekers approaching the Big House for the Annual Wealth Bondage Charity Ball, where they will perform for the entertainment of the guests.

Wealth Bondage Charity Ball

That is Tutor facing you on the left, working on a new Customer.

Happy Tutor Plying his Noble Trade

Here in the 19th century, The Happy Tutor takes in hand a young nobleman, preparing his charge for a life of service to the Empire. I have tried in my own work as Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, in imitation of my mentor, to bring thrashing back into vogue. There are times where you have to beat into the bottom what you can't drive into the skull. Best to start young, though, I find that many a wealth holder is incorrigible by the time he or she starts to think about their "lasting legacy," or "journey from success to significance," "passing on the family values along with the valuables," or whatever other sanctimonious narrative they are caught up in. To thrash the grownups is much more of a challenge, than thrashing a child, but more important for the health of society, if you think about it. How much harm can a kid do?

Pony Boy

A public servant running for office with Candidia Cruikshanks in the sulky.

Diogenes

Women have always been attracted to philosophers in a Dumpster. Highly idealized image, though. Remember that Diogenes was naked, had a mangy cur of a dog, and carried a stick to beat inheritors those here, and their parents too. If anything Diogenes here is sulking because he will not be patronized by a patron, be she ever so beguiling.

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius - Gilded Bronze Equestrian Statue. Capitoline Hill. circa A.D. 161-180. Reason astride animal energy, as the leader masters himself, and his battle charger, to lead his people in a just society.

Talk to the Hand

The Ventriloquist and his Sock Puppet. Again, from the illustrations to Erasmus, The Praise of Folly. Some people accuse me of using sock puppets to make my points. But what important person writes his or her own speeches? Most of what we hear on TV, including the news and news conferences, are pretty well scripted. Who is to say what is authentic?

Venture Pilgrim

Social Venture Pilgrim in pursuit of wealth and virtue, missing both at the cross roads. This one is about Social Venture Philanthropy and is meant to evoke Pilgrim's Progress, Calvinism, and also the famous pictures of Hercules at the Crossroads choosing between Virtue and Virtue, imaged as two lovely women, one dressed modestly, the other provocatively attired. Our double bottom line culture wants it both ways, of course. Our journeys from Success to Significance are a guided by Mapquest, and involve no sacrifice.

Phyllis and Aristotle

Reason ridden hard by Desire. Kind of like and upside down version, don't you think, of the statue of Marcus Aurelius on his horse, or of Candidia pulled by a politician in her sulky? Still, for some think tank thinkers in Wealth Bondage, this is all they know of love.

Thunderbird

Official Tipple of Wealth Bondage. ("Once in Wealth Bondage Always in Wealth Bondage is our toast.") Bird is the Word is our greeting. Symbolically, the bottle is meant to evoke the world view and best practices of Rabelais. Please don't mistake it for just another Bum Wine. It is a kind of sacrament taken in our secret fellowship. It leaves the tongue black which is how we recognize our co-conspirators for the good. Come let us drink!