


“Love Over Gold” – Dire Straits
You’re a dancer on thin ice
You pay no heed to the danger
And less to advice
Your footsteps are forbidden
But with a knowledge of your sin
You throw your love to all the strangers
And caution to the wind
Just to see what you will find
Leaving nothing to interfere
With the crazy balance of your mind
And when you finally reappear
At the place where you came in
You’ve thrown your love to all the










































And mind over matter
To do what you do that you must
When the things that you hold
Can fall and be shattered
Or run through your fingers like dust.
From Encyclopedia Mythica: QUOTE:
Midas
by Anna Baldwin
Midas was the king of Pessinus, capital of Phrygia, a region in Asia Minor. He was the adopted son of Gordias and Cybele and was well known for his pristine rose garden and love of the pleasures of life.
The most famous myth about King Midas is when he received the golden touch from Dionysus, god of the life force. Dionysus was associated with intoxication and was followed by a group of satyrs — half human, half goat individuals with a lust for wine and sexual pleasures. The leader of the satyrs, entrusted with Dionysus’ education, was Silenus. One day, completely in character for a satyr, Silenus became intoxicated and passed out in Midas’ rose garden. The peasants found him and brought him before their king. Luckily, Midas recognized Silenus and treated him well for five days and nights. During this time, Silenus entertained Midas and his court with fantastic tales.
Dionysus came to Midas and was glad to be reunited with Silenus his surrogate father. He decided to reward Midas for his hospitality and granted him one wish. Midas wished that everything he touched be turned to gold. Dionysus warned him about the dangers of such a wish, but Midas was too distracted with the prospect of being surrounded by gold to listen. Dionysus gave him the gift. Initially, King Midas was thrilled with his new gift and turned everything he could to gold, including his beloved roses. His attitude changed, however, when he was unable to eat or drink since his food and wine were also changed to unappetizing gold. He even accidentally killed his daughter when he touched her, and this truly made him realize the depth of his mistake. Desperate, Midas pleaded to Dionysus for help. Dionysus instructed Midas to bathe in the headwaters of the Pactolus River, and the wish would be washed away. Midas went to the river, and as soon as he touched the water, the river carried away the golden touch. The gold settled in the sands of the Pactolus River and was carried downstream to Lydia, one of the richest kingdoms in the ancient world and the source of the earliest coinage.
This myth is etiological since it explains why the Pactolus River is rich with gold and how Lydia came to be one of the richest kingdoms. In Greek folklore, the Golden Touch is referred to as the “short-sighted wish”. Midas let his greed blind him to the future. Most notably, this myth has aspects characteristic of myths of Dionysus. Child sacrifice is a frequent theme in Dionysian myths. Frequently, Dionysus would punish mortals indirectly by having them kill their own children. King Midas kills his daughter by turning her to gold. He pays for his greed.
After the death of his daughter, Midas hated wealth and splendor and became a worshiper of Pan, god of woodlands. In another myth, Pan challenged Apollo, god of the music, to a test of skill at music. Tmolus, god of the mountain, was the judge at the contest and ruled that Apollo was the victor. Midas, being a follower of Pan, questioned the ruling and this offended Apollo. As a punishment for Midas’ lack of musical “taste”, Apollo changed Midas’ ears into donkey ears. Ashamed of his disfigurement, he hid his ears under a large hat with only his barber knowing about the deformity. It was so hard for the barber to keep the secret that he dug a hole, whispered the secret into the hole and then covered it with earth. From this spot grew reeds that whispered, “Midas has donkey ears!” every time the wind blew. Another version has the queen letting out the secret. In the end, Midas ran away from Phrygia never to be heard from again.
The Pactolus is a small river in Lydia, Asia Minor, once famous for the particles of gold in its sands, which were legendary due to Midas having bathed there. Midas is also called ‘the Berecynthain Hero’, after Mount Berecynthus in Phrygia.
UNQUOTE
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Midas
Midas is the name of at least three members of the royal house of Phrygia.
The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the Golden touch, or the Midas touch. The Phrygian city Midaeum was presumably named after this Midas, and this is probably also the Midas that according to Pausanias founded Ancyra. According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of hunger as a result of his “vain prayer” for the gold touch. The legends told about this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian Knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, well before the Trojan War. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other famed Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus.
Another King Midas ruled Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, up until the sacking of Gordium by the Cimmerians, when he is said to have committed suicide. Most historians believe this Midas is the same person as the Mita, called king of the Mushki in Assyrian texts, who warred with Assyria and its Anatolian provinces during the same period.
A third Midas is said by Herodotus to have been a member of the royal house of Phrygia and the grandfather of an Adrastus who fled Phrygia after accidentally killing his brother and took asylum in Lydia during the reign of Croesus. Phrygia was by that time a Lydian subject. Herodotus says that Croesus regarded the Phrygian royal house as “friends” but does not mention whether the Phrygian royal house still ruled as (vassal) kings of Phrygia.
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Love over Gold
The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s began to change public and political attitudes toward white-collar crime. These types of activities also began to draw more attention thanks in part to advances in the modern media. The 1930s saw the enactment of federal laws that regulated the banking and Securities industries. The Securities and Exchange Commission was established in 1934 to protect investors from illegal stock manipulation, insider trading, and other white-collar offenses perpetrated by stockbrokers. Though the SEC has not always succeeded in policing these white-collar crimes, numerous brokers and deal-makers have been prosecuted over the years.
Over a period of time, numerous regulations covering other areas of business have been enacted by both state and federal government. With more laws on the books violations have led to more prosecutions. The hallmark of many white-collar crimes, however, is sophistication. Perpetrators have specialized knowledge that allows them to commit complex transactions that are often difficult to identify. Law enforcement authorities rarely catch white-collar criminals at the very onset of their activities. The collapse of a business institution may reveal signs of financial irregularities that took place over many years. In addition, the use of computers and electronic financial transactions has complicated the detection and prosecution of white-collar crimes. Though law enforcement may be able to reconstruct electronic records and chains of events, the process is laborious and costly.
Organized Crime has also added white-collar offenses to its repertoire of illegal activities. The federal government passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 1961 et seq.), in 1970 to address these types of crimes. RICO is specifically designed to punish criminal activity by business enterprises controlled by organized crime. Racketeering includes a number of discrete criminal offenses, including gambling, bribery, extortion, bankruptcy fraud, Mail Fraud, securities fraud, prostitution, narcotics trafficking, loan sharking, and murder. The punishment for violating RICO’s criminal provisions is extremely harsh. If convicted, a defendant is fined and sentenced to not more than 20 years in prison for each RICO violation. Moreover, the defendant must forfeit any interest, claim against, or property or contractual right over the criminal enterprise, as well as any property that constitutes the racketeering activity or was derived from the racketeering activity. Finally, RICO contains civil provisions that allow a party injured by a RICO defendant to recover damages from the defendant in civil court.
During the late 1990s, a number of corporations manipulated financial information and made improper financial transactions. Accounting firms helped conceal the illegal nature of these actions, which undermined investor confidence in the stock market and corporate governance in general. The corporate scandals that emerged in 2001 involved Enron, WorldCom, and the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen and were of national importance. Congress responded to these elaborate white-collar crimes by enacting the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, also known as the sarbanes-oxley act (Pub.L. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, [2002]) The act increased penalties for the white-collar crimes of mail fraud and wire fraud from a maximum of five years to 20 years in prison. It also directed the united states sentencing commission to review and amend its sentencing guidelines regarding white-collar crimes. In addition, the law makes it a crime for corporate officers to falsify financial reports. A conviction could result in a $5 million fine and 10 years in prison. Most importantly, the act created a new crime of securities fraud. A person convicted of this white-collar crime could be sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, apart from its substantive provisions, expressed a new recognition of the seriousness of white-collar crime.
UNQUOTE
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So let’s go back to where we left off, shall we? I’d like to repeat what has already been stated earlier – read it well.
Remember later the essence of it even better!

Seven deadly sins
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a classification of vices (part of Christian ethics) that has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity’s tendency to sin. In the currently recognized version, the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.
The Catholic Church divides sin into two categories: venial sins, in which guilt is relatively minor, and the more severe mortal sins. Theologically, a mortal or deadly sin is believed to destroy the life of grace and charity within a person and thus creates the threat of eternal damnation. “Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished [for Catholics] within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation.”
Greed:
Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.” In Dante’s Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.
As defined outside of Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth.
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Dr. Salman Akhtar, MD, is an internationally recognized psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, writer and poet. He has more than 60 books to his credit. The recipient of numerous prestigious awards, Dr. Akhtar is a globally sought-out speaker. He maintains a clinical practice in Philadelphia.
“Greed, ” according to Dr. Akhtar, “is a hippopotamus eating a ten-egg omelette on a golden plate. “He remembers hearing the immortal story of The Golden Goose (from Aesop’s Fables) when he was a ten-year old boy – it best explains this concept.
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg
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Dr. Akhtar remembers thinking to himself ( as a young boy) that the man (in the fable) was stupid, foolish and impatient. Yet many years later, as a middle-aged psychoanalyst, he states that greed has nothing to do with stupidity or smartness: or even with patience and impatience. It involves the capacity or incapacity to be satisfied. The farmer was impatient and deluded by his own greed.
The dictionary definition of greed is that it is, “excessive and reprehensible acquisitiveness.” The threshold of what exactly constitutes greed is not very clear in this definition – however, what is made amply clear is that greed is immoral and lacks a sense of dignity. It is a curse that is looked down upon by society, at large. Greed is about feeling pressured by one’s uncontrollable urges for acquiring more, more and yet even more possessions (“hunger”); it is about “inconsolability” – the lack of basic contentment and the feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction; it is about “ingratitude” because the greedy person is hardly ever thankful because he never feels fulfilled or satified; lastly, greed is about, “selfishness” because greedy people are invariably self-absorbed, self-immersed and self-centered people.Such people hardly ever take into consideration the feelings of others, including the feelings of people who are closest to them.
Dr. Akhtar states that greed is not only about money; it is about being highly materialistic too. It is a case where clothes, jewellery, art, antiques, food and includes intangible objects like fame, power, sexual liaisons and travel-related experiences. Whatever may be the manifestation of greed, the fundamental issues in greed remain the same: grotesque hunger, lack of satiety, ungratefulness and a lack of concern for others.
ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS – TODAY – WHY PEOPLE ARE BEING “USED” AND MATERIAL THINGS ARE BEING “REVERED” IS THE OCCURRENCE OF MORBID GREED WITHIN OUR TEEMING MILLIONS. PEOPLE HAVE FORGOTTEN THE JOY OF THE TIMELESSNESS OF CONTENTMENT. WE CAN ALL LEARN TO BE BETTER PEOPLE BY OVERCOMING OUR ALL-ENCOMPASSING GREED – WE NEED TO BE THANKFUL FOR ALL THAT WE HAVE, LONG BEFORE IT BECOMES SOMETHING THAT WE HAD.
The final message – OVERCOME YOUR GREED OF MATERIAL ACQUISITIONS AND OVERCOME YOUR ENVY OF OTHERS; LEARN INSTEAD THE SANCTITY OF CONTENTMENT, HUMILITY AND BASIC GRATITUDE.
I AM SHIVA AND THIS IS NOT A REQUEST. LET ME NOT HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING IT!
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