Commentary: Today's white collar criminals could use a little cosmic

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jul 15, 2005 by Fred Guy

Ancient Greek mythology held that if you were guilty of hubris, a level of arrogance so great that it offended the gods, then the Furies, monstrous hags from hell, would hound you for your sin until they drove you insane and you died in a furor.

Three female goddesses, eyes dripping blood, hair a tangled mass of serpents, claw-like fingers, would simply not leave you alone. Morning, noon and night, awake and asleep, they were there to remind you of the wrong you had done and what was in store for you.

This was cosmic justice at its best - what goes around comes around, and then some. You just didn't offend the gods in Greek mythology without paying the price big time.

My question is, where are the Furies when we really need them?

Are there any greater examples of hubris today than the arrogance and greed of former Tyco CEO Dennis (The Big) Kozlowski, who spent $2 million of his company's money on a party for his wife and $6,000 on a shower curtain?

Or what about former Adelphia Communications CEO John Rigas, who stole $100 million from his investors only to say to the judge who sentenced him, If I did anything wrong, I apologize.

Add Ken Lay of Enron, the accountants at Arthur Andersen and Martha Stewart, and you have the lineup of a hubris all-star team.

Imagine the field day the Furies would have with our white- collar criminals. It would have been fitting, for example, for them to show up at the Big Kozlowski's party and simply hover, whispering to him repeatedly in hoarse, threatening voices: Does a mere mortal need to spend $6,000 on a shower curtain? Do you think yourself a god? We think not.

Or consider how they could hound Rigas with the mocking chant, If I've done anything wrong? If? If? This would be followed by a chorus of hideous laughter.

I can envision the Furies waving Enron's code of ethics (yes, they actually had one) in Ken Lay's face and simply smiling other- worldly smiles; or singing to the boys at Arthur Andersen, Have I done wrong? Let me count the ways. And Martha? She may be the toughest to crack, but let the Furies loose in her kitchen for a while and I think she would get the message.

We may be amused by the above scenarios, but of course this is not the way our justice system works today. Indeed, all of the above culprits except Ken Lay have been tried and sentenced to prison terms. One may argue then that justice has been served and we have no need of ancient mythological Furies to right our wrongs anymore, if even in a metaphorical sense.

But I believe it would be unwise to assume that the law by itself is capable of seriously dissuading the greedy folk among us from stealing as much money as they can from their shareholders.

For every celebrity corporate criminal there remain a dozen more just daring our justice system to find them guilty, and finding them guilty is not an easy thing to do. Just ask the Justice Department attorneys who recently failed to convict former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy, even after 15 former company executives testified against him.

So if the court system is no real threat to curbing corporate greed, what is?

I say bring back the Furies. Only this time not the Furies of Greek mythology. After all, Athena herself, goddess of wisdom, changed the Furies into the Eumenides, the kindly ones, to show the gods and mortals that they could not find justice in vengeance, but only by exercising self-control, which led to balance and harmony in one's life.

The problem today is that self-control, balance and harmony are in short supply within the corporate world, but there's no shortage of hubris. That's where the modern-day Furies come in. Not because we wish to see corporate criminals literally driven mad unto death; but because they have shown us that they have no moral conscience, no sense of shame, no inkling of appropriate human limits or self control; in short, no souls.

Unlike the mythological Furies, our modern furies are real but their duty remains the same - to remind us when we are guilty of a special kind of hubris, i.e., inordinate greed, the view that enough is never enough; that we always need more, more, more.

Modern day furies are the ills that stalk us just as surely as the old Furies hounded their victims. Today's furies (to name but a few) are mind-numbing worry, paralyzing insecurities, professional hostilities, corrosive marriages, estranged children, envy, arrogance, and, of course, rampant greed.

Once these self-inflicted furies visit us they can hound us until they drive us to our own undoing. Indeed, unbridled greed becomes its own reward, as it can never be satisfied. As Epictetus, an ancient Greek philosopher noted, The poor man is one for whom enough is never enough. Those guilty of corporate greed, then, will always remain impoverished, the ultimate irony of cosmic justice.

On the other hand, we can hope that would-be corporate criminals may now choose to follow Athena's path and change their furies into modern day Eumenides, the kindly ones - something the corporate world, and all the rest of us, could use a little more of these days.