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Impaired Judgment

 In The Memorabilia, Socrates says this to Xenophon about beautiful people:

Know that a beautiful person is a more dangerous animal than scorpions, because these cannot wound unless they touch us; but beauty strikes at a distance: from what place soever we can but behold her, she darts her venom upon us, and overthrows our judgment.   And perhaps for this reason the Loves are represented with bows and arrows..

Reading this made me think of beauty in the scope of alluring things that we want to chase after against our better judgement. We start out by loving that thing and wanting it because "she darts her venom upon us, and overthrows our judgment". It reminded me our a conversation I had been B recently - he is retired tech executive and even a decade after hanging up his boots, he is struggling to make sense of what his life is about. That afternoon we were talking about what it takes to be a stellar sales person in our line of work. 

B said that the best sales people he has known have their sense of self-worth completely wrapped up in their professional success to the point its one and the same. For that reason, it is possible to incentivize them to meet and exceed their targets year after year. If as Socrates says this is the effect of those venomous darts that overthrows judgment, it may be why some of these rock-star sales people achieve that status at a great cost to their personal lives. The beautiful person in this case is that high of being the top salesperson. Everywhere you look there are examples of beautiful things casting these poison darts on us, impairing our judgement.


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