Pirates at the Helm
Reason must rule and appetite and emotion obey (Cicero)
What a fisherman sees
A successful life is a well run boat. Reason is the helm; it is the vantage point from where you have vision all around and where you can reach the controls. The motor, or motive power, is emotion. Without a motor, you’re not going anywhere. Those who have a lot of emotion are fortunate; their powerful motors give them great potential. However, emotion is dangerous, for those who steer blind, at full speed, from the engine room end up on the rocks or going is circles. Appetite is the fuel. Emotion demands to be fed, but emotion over fed becomes a demanding master, which enslaves the Captain. Emotion starved leads to depression, leaving your life dead in the water. Further, a motor that is fed the wrong fuel sputters and dies in a way that requires much effort and time to get it running again. Therefore, we must run our boats from the helm, maintain our motors in operating and healthy condition, and regulate the fuel that is fed to our emotions to the proper types and amounts. As one additional advice, when you work on your motor, you need to take down time. A friend went into his motor room with the motor running and lost three fingers to a belt when the boat pitched. That is what a fisherman thinks when he reads Cicero, “Reason must rule, and emotion and appetite obey.”
A corollary is that emotional and appetite based decisions lead to ruin. That is true for an individual or for a country. A main concern at present is that we have placed men of greed, emotion and appetite at our country’s helm. We have allowed the moneychangers to take charge of our temples or reason and law. Goldman and JPM have infiltrated the agencies that were built to restrain. Don’t misunderstand me, I proclaim that the greedy people in our society are its motor; however, the motor is emotion that knows no restraint. When we allow the interests of the motor to take the helm; that results in the helm’s controls being used to feed the motor the wrong fuel in the wrong amounts. Controls are for application of reason, which is restraint of appetite, and control of emotion.
In the Biblical story, Christ threw the moneychangers out of the temple. In our day, the moneychangers have thrown men and women of reason out of the temple. Reason no longer controls the helm, the helm’s controls have been taken by emotional pirates, who lack vision because they are stationed in the engine room; they know nothing of the world except appetite. It would be a good idea to remove the pirates, or at least locate the survival suits. It is not yet time to abandon ship, but we must resolve retake the Helm or you might as well put your survival suit on, and wait on the deck.
Between these two choices, retaking the helm is better. As men and women of reason, the helm is ours by right. To retake the helm is a matter of the virtue of honor seeking. It is correct to seek the position that is proper to your virtue and character. The vice that is an excess of honor seeking is called vanity, where someone puts themselves forward who lacks ability, or worse, character. This is what happens when men and women of reason withhold themselves. The vice that is a deficiency in honor seeking is call pusillanimity, and the person of virtue and worth who will not advance themselves is called pusillanimous; or in more common language, he is called a pussy. Now you know how the pirates have taken the ship’s controls, and you know who is at fault.
The idea that honor-seeking is the correct virtue, and that pusillanimity is the vice of its deficiency and vanity the vice of its excess comes out of Aristotle
