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Natural Love

Have been reading The Republic when I have the mental capacity left at the end of the work-week to absorb such writing. I am always amazed by how the morsels of wisdom that I can get from even reading a few pages, help me understand the world I live in:

"..the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth."

These lines made me think ofcourse of all the sales and business development folks I have been working with for over a decade now. Some of them are star performers and have blown past their targets even in the toughest years. No surprise that they are also very wealthy relative to the peer group they belong to. Most most non-work conversations with any of these people only revolves around money and the type of access or privilege that it gained them. This does not come from a place of boastfulness or vanity even - it is driven by "natural love" as Plato says

Reading this made me think how similar that is to talking to a bunch of parents who have kids of the same age - they spend most of their time together talking about the kids, it is the epicenter of their universe much like money is for the "makers of fortunes"
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