Caturday
5 hours ago
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Selling a soul
Selling one's soul to the devil is such a cliché. Just the other day I saw the idea used in a comic strip. It's part of the culture. We think of a horned demon tempting some mortal with the riches of the world.
In the real world people sell their souls all the time. They don't sell it to a red monster with cloven feet, but sell it they do. Every time a scientist accepts money to “bend” the facts, a bit of his soul is bought and paid for. Anyone selling their professional opinion is selling their integrity and bits of their soul. When bureaucrats leave regulatory agencies to work for the companies they were supposed to regulate, they make a deal with the devil.
The devil doesn't appear with the stench of brimstone. Sometimes he appears as an old classmate. Some years back I was approached by an acquaintance from high school. He offered me a well paying job as a financial advisor. I told him I didn't know anything about the financial instruments he was pushing. No problem, he said, I didn't need to know. That wasn't important. What he wanted was my reputation. It was a lot of money and the family could have used it. All I would have to do is sell a bit of soul to convince people to buy something they didn't need. I walked away.
Sociopaths do really well in business, having no soul to sell.
Sell a soul is pretty easy if it's a shriveled up thing that never got any care or nourishment.
-Sixbears
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Many years ago my very attractive teenage daughter started working as a temp office worker in a double glazing firm.
ReplyDeleteAfter two weeks she was offered a more highly paid post as trainee saleswoman.
She resigned at the end of her first week and told me it was because she just couldn't stand working with people who went into customers homes and lied to them!
Unemployed again but still honest - no complaints from me.
Good for her, and you!
DeleteMost are sold amazingly cheap, too.
ReplyDeleteYou would think they'd at least hold out for a better deal.
DeleteThen there are people who don't have a soul. . . or sure don't seem to have one.
ReplyDeleteAll too many of them in positions of power.
DeleteI worked at a Starbucks while my hubs on a labor strike he could not collect unemployment cause it was a labor dispute..The people there mostly white and highly educated thought it okay to raid the tip jar for gas money, I took my bike to work daily back and forth, the only ones who did not raid the tip jar was myself a black man who just got out of the pen for something about constantly getting tickets and did not pay for it and another gal who got a job with the city and thought that practice sucked, the asst. manager bitched guess what I quit the fellow quit the other gal got a really great job and the assistant manager quit, raiding the tip jars really just as dishonest at telling people bs to sell them crap that doesn't work and they don't need, enough said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's rare to work in a place where the feeling is "we are all in this together." Too bad, really.
DeleteLove you, Dad.
ReplyDeleteLove you too Jess.
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