Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Winter Moon<\/p>\n
Kate and I both read a zine called the Tablet. \u00a0It’s a hip Jew commentary on whatever. \u00a0It contained this today: \u00a0“The Hebrew year is 5774 and the Chinese year is 4710. That must mean, the joke goes, that against all odds the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years.” \u00a0We follow, as I wrote before, Jewish tradition by going to movies and eating Chinese on Christmas.<\/p>\n
Today we stayed close to home, eating lunch at the Mandarin Buffet, greeted by r challenged waiters and waitresses who greeted with holiday cheer anyhow. \u00a0After that we saw the Desolation of Smaug, the second of the Hobbit trilogy. \u00a0It’s a non-stop action flik with Evangeline Lilly as an action elfess, as beautiful here as she was all those seasons on Lost. \u00a0The time went fast as the dwarves escaped the Wood Elves in barrels, road coal and metal carriers to escape Smaug and Gandalf seemed to be defeated by Sauron. \u00a0If you haven’t seen it, it’s a lot of fun.<\/p>\n
This was at the Andover Cinema and our second choice, Hunger Games II, had just ended its run and we didn’t know that. \u00a0So, we had to decide on a second movie on the spur of the moment. \u00a0We chose Wolf of Wall Street. This is a more difficult movie to parse. \u00a0First, it’s too long. \u00a0Could have stood 45 minutes worth of cutting. \u00a0It’s a Martin Scorsese movie so he apparently got the cut he wanted. \u00a0Second, I hope, as Kate imagines, it’s broadly drawn. \u00a0I’ll explain that in a bit.<\/p>\n
Wolf’s great strength is its unflinching look at what happens to people who cannot answer the question, what is enough? \u00a0If you make money and power the focus of your life, they will become your center of value, what H. Richard Niebuhr called your God. \u00a0 With them in the center of your ethical system your value choices will not be about people or beauty or justice or the natural world, but how about how you can get more. \u00a0More money. \u00a0More power.<\/p>\n
You will not be able to answer the question, how much is enough, because the amount of money and power you need will always be just a bit more than you have. \u00a0This is ambition. This is greed. \u00a0This is eagerness to have positional authority. \u00a0This ultimate honey trap gets strokes by the culture. \u00a0We lionize billionaires and barely recognize the teachers, doctors, mechanics, nurses, clerks, postal workers who do the important work in our culture.<\/p>\n
I’m not, this time, trying to make a political point, but a theological one. \u00a0What you place at your center, your center of value, shapes all the decisions that you make. \u00a0It’s a critical decision and it is just that, a decision. \u00a0You can choose to have other people, the natural world, beauty, health or justice as your center; you can also choose money and power.<\/p>\n
In Wolf we see the terrible personal and social cost of choosing money and power. \u00a0Other people are tools. \u00a0Stocks are, as\u00a0Matthew McConaughey’s character, Mark Hanna says, “Fairy dust…they exist for one reason. \u00a0To take money out of the clients pocket and put it our pocket.” \u00a0The only yardstick for success is money and the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods: \u00a0Armani suits, Ferrari’s, yachts, estates, drugs, whores, planes.<\/p>\n
Kate saw it as drawn broadly. \u00a0That may be, but the motive force, the need for more and the sense that life has no moral limits characterize so many striving folks. \u00a0Not just Americans. \u00a0Chinese, too. \u00a0Singapore. \u00a0Mumbai. \u00a0This movie is, at bottom, about seduction and shows what few people ever realize. \u00a0We don’t need the devil. \u00a0We seduce ourselves.<\/p>\n
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Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Winter Moon Kate and I both read a zine called the Tablet. \u00a0It’s a hip Jew commentary on whatever. \u00a0It contained this today: \u00a0“The Hebrew year is 5774 and … Continue reading How Much Is Enough?<\/span>