This is the second part of my interview with Max Gladstone, the author of\u00a0Three Parts Dead<\/em><\/a>. You can read part one of the Q&A here<\/a>, and stay tuned for the review of his newest novel\u00a0Two Serpents Rise<\/em><\/a> tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In Three Parts Dead, you reframed parts of our complicated financial system through a theological lens. \u00a0Is there any theological practice that your think the financial world should steal? \u00a0Are there any places where the financial world has appropriated priestly qualities without perhaps-necessary traditional, ritual, or cultural safeguards?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Paul Tillich wrote that faith was the state of being ultimately concerned: of one\u2019s entire being revolving around a single concept. \u00a0But if that concept is not itself ultimate, then making it the subject of ultimate concern results in a disordered personality, like a top spun off-center.<\/p>\n It seems to me that our financial system is ultimately concerned with ideas that are themselves not ultimate. \u00a0The singleminded pursuit of short-term growth (serve the shareholders! make money! protect our percentage!) can lead us down paths that defeat more ultimate goals (keep the economy healthy! protect the world from depression!). \u00a0I doubt this could be solved without a wholesale psychological realignment, though\u2014it\u2019s the province of education.<\/p>\n One way a religious approach really could help the modern financial world would be to adopt the traditional Hindu ages of man. \u00a0Regulation is a big problem in the financial world right now, because finance is so fussy and complicated that only economists and financiers can manage it, but many of these have clear conflicts of interest. \u00a0When a person jumps from a \u2018poorly-paid\u2019 SEC position to a seven-figure Wall Street job and back, where do her loyalties really lie?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve heard that traditional Hindu culture separates life into four stages: as a child, learn. \u00a0As a youth, conquer. \u00a0In maturity, consolidate. \u00a0And then, in old age, put aside worldly things & devote oneself to spiritual development, for one\u2019s own sake and the community\u2019s. \u00a0Imagine a cultural norm where people left private enterprise for the SEC or similar regulatory industries in a one-way manner, to devote themselves to the preservation of the community. \u00a0Something a little like this happens now\u2014Hank Paulson used to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs after all\u2014but to really work it would have to be a more profound shift, like entering a monastery. \u00a0Ending your previous life and all associations with it, and embracing your new role as protector and priest.<\/p>\n Plus, how awesome would it be if the Department of Treasury all went around dressed up like monks? \u00a0Which, I suppose, would make the Secret Service Templars, or Hospitaliers\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I like the Alan Perlis quote about never learning a programming language if it doesn\u2019t change the way you think. \u00a0What are some books\/plays\/etc that have changed the way you think?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHow to Serve Man\u201d<\/a> introduced me to new and innovative culinary technique! \u00a0But seriously, I hope every book I read will change (or expand) my worldview a little. \u00a0Some succeed more than others. \u00a0Fiction and plays change me on a deep level, in ways that often don\u2019t surface for weeks or months afterward; books like the Lymond Chronicles or Lord of Light or Little, Big or The Hero and the Crown transformed the way I write and think in ways that have taken me years to realize and would probably take therapy to really plumb the depths. \u00a0With scholarship, at least for me, the experience tends to be more dramatic. \u00a0A good scholarly work presents a whole new lens through which to see reality\u2014or a seed crystal onto which a bunch of other free-floating insights instantly glom. \u00a0So when you ask this question, my thoughts jump immediately to works of theory:<\/p>\n Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith<\/em><\/a>\u2014If everyone in the universe would just read Tillich\u2019s examination of what faith is and means, we\u2019d be spare an endless number of arguments in which people speak passionately and blindly about religion. \u00a0Understanding faith as a state of being ultimately concerned\u2014faith as a state of being in general, rather than a set of truth claims\u2014was a gateway and a transformation for me.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Rudolph Bultmann, \u201cThe New Testament and Mythology\u201d<\/a>\u2014Bultmann\u2019s brief, intense essay is a tuning fork humming at the resonant frequency of naive theology.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n David Graeber, Debt: the First 5000 Years<\/em><\/a>\u2014Graeber\u2019s work is an anthropologist\u2019s investigation into the origins (and often the theology and myth) of money and debt down human history across a wide variety of cultures. \u00a0If you swallowed the Econ 101 line about how cash money comes about due to natural inefficiencies in barter systems, you really need to read this book. \u00a0I kept wanting Graeber to tie the whole story together into a greater thesis, but whatever\u2014as a survey alone it\u2019s more than worth the price of admission, and anyway, it features witches and bloodthirsty zombies!<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America<\/em><\/a>\u2014chewy anthropology and history with a creamy center of enlightenment. \u00a0Taussig analyzes the way that Western capitalist world-systems, when brought to rural communities in South America, became linked in local minds with necromancy and demon-worship. \u00a0I came up with the idea for Three Parts Dead and the Craft Sequence generally before I read Taussig, and wrote Three Parts Dead first, which made discovering and reading this book plain eerie.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n\n