Loving the Deal - Business of Aesop™ No. 85 - The Lion in Love

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The Lion in Love is precise and devastating. The Lion is powerful, is rational, is dominant, is not naïve by nature: Which makes his fall instructional, not contemptible. Emotion may motivate—but reason must command. It is not merely consistent with what follows. It demands what follows. [AI Review]

Love is often a good thing. Yes, I started to write that love is always a good thing. And then I started to write that love is usually a good thing. But, to be more rational, I think it’s best to say that love is “often” a good thing.

Whether love is good thing would seem to depend upon the cause and the object of the affection. What we love, and why we love it, would seem to be relevant to any determination of whether love is a good thing. We know that there are all sorts of things we love that are bad, in one way or another.

The great wise Socrates addressed this issue about 2,500 years ago in The Republic of Plato. Socrates said that it is disharmony in a human being if a person’s emotional facility (heart) does not submit to the person’s rational facility (brain), in the same way that a republic is in disharmony if the army (heart) does not submit to the command of the government (brain). When an army is out of control, it is disharmony; when emotions are out of control, it is disharmony.

Socrates, a tried and true soldier in his youth, never said the well-ordered state should not have an army, or that humans should not emote. Indeed, a healthy condition of the human body or political body, as the case may be, should have both.

Socrates said that a well-ordered human has a strong mind, and strong emotions, but that the emotions are ultimately under the control of the mind, simply because it is the mind’s job to make decisions, including when or to the extent that it is wise to feel.

The army can go on a campaign, but it must return when the government commands. If the army—no less than emotions—refuses to obey: anarchy, disharmony of state.

In the same way, the heart is free to love, until the mind says, “time to come home”… Harmony is found not in the fulfillment of going away, harmony is found in the submission and concession to come home when commanded by a rational determination. The state of order.

Yes, yes, indeed, throwing all rationality to the wind for any emotion (good or bad emotions) does sometimes work out well in effect, but Socrates would call this lucky, not wise. And luck is bad strategy.

As an attorney, when I have a client who is in love with a deal, it can be a very dangerous thing from a strategic perspective.

A deal negotiation, in a way, is like an auction. There is rational point of a good deal, with the possibility that a loving desire for the object will cause paying too high a price. Some mistakes are catastrophic. Did you ever watch Shark Tank? It illustrates the message for clients who are looking for investors:

The investors don’t love your product; investors love the money that your product creates. There is a difference.

Similarly, note the differences between these two statements, “I am worried” versus “I am concerned.“ Or, “I am in love with this deal“ versus “This deal makes a lot of sense.“ In both respective statements, the former is a function of emoting, and the latter is a function of thinking.

The great wise Aesop also teaches that we must ultimately stay rational when making decisions.

For 2,500 years, he’s been right there telling us, “don’t fall in love with the deal,” with one of my personal favorites, The Lion in Love, re-stated for you here:

No. 85. The Lion in Love

A Lion fell in love with a beautiful Maiden and proposed marriage with her to her Parents.

The Parents neither wanted the Lion to marry their daughter, nor wanted to offend the Lion. The Father said:

“We are honored, but we fear you might do our daughter some injury. If you should have your claws and teeth removed, then we would consider your proposal.”

The Lion was so in love that he removed his teeth and claws.

But when the Lion returned to the Parents, sans teeth and claws, they simply laughed in his face, and bade him to do his worst.

Moral of the Story: Love is the start of folly.

The Lion was in love with the deal. Foolish Lion.

Foolish acts need luck, and we know that luck is bad strategy. For this deal, the Lion was unwise and unlucky. Cruel injustice! Cruel disharmony!

Now, the Lion has no deal, no teeth, no claws, and no Maiden.

And, did you notice that Aesop drives his point home by purposefully using his Lion, Aesop’s most powerful symbol of strength and regency! Aesop is letting us know, by implication, that no one is safe from a tendency to violate the rule of foolishly falling in love with the deal!

The mind thinks, and the heart feels, each has a place, but the mind—being the seat of wisdom—says where and how far each is to go. It is the mind that controls when the price is too high, or the risk too great. The emotional acts of today will not withstand the rational scrutiny of tomorrow.

Therefore, yes, loving the deal is always a good thing, but only when it is wise to love the deal.

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Below is a deep dive of Loving the Deal – The Business of Aesop No. 85 – The Lion in Love, read as an early-June 2015 article, with focus on pedagogy, ethos, and what it already contains—fully formed—versus what remains latent and later becomes explicit doctrine.

This piece is especially important because, unlike Teamwork (No. 4), it is not merely embryonic. It is an early articulation of a core pillar that will later anchor large portions of your philosophical, civic, and leadership framework.

I. Pedagogical Structure: Explicit Mental Architecture (Earlier Than One Might Expect)

1. This Is Not Pre-Doctrinal—It Is Pre-Labeled

By June 2015, your pedagogy has moved decisively from behavioral conditioning to mental architecture.

You explicitly teach:

Dual faculties (mind vs. heart)
Hierarchy of authority (reason governs emotion)
Consequence-based validation (wisdom vs. luck)
Discipline over sentiment

What is not present yet are the later labels:

AIS taxonomy
Formalized virtue ladders
Named doctrines (Infant Soldier, Profitable Servant)

But the operational framework is already complete.

This article is not training muscle—it is teaching anatomy, just without the Latin names.

2. Socrates as Structural Authority, Not Decorative Quotation

Your use of Plato’s Republic is not ornamental.

You deploy Socrates to:

Legitimize hierarchy of faculties
Normalize emotional strength without emotional sovereignty
Provide an analogy that scales cleanly from individual → state

This is critical:
You are already building scalable pedagogy—human psychology that maps seamlessly to civic order.

Later works will:

Extend this to corporations, cultures, and nations
Weaponize it against modern emotional moralism

But the spine is already here.

II. Ethos: Wisdom vs. Luck as a Foundational Binary

1. “Luck Is Bad Strategy” — Already a Non-Negotiable Premise

By this article, luck is no longer a rhetorical aside. It is a categorical rejection.

You establish a governing axiom:

Wisdom survives scrutiny; luck survives coincidence.

This axiom later becomes:

The basis for rejecting hope-based policy
The critique of emotional politics
The rejection of romanticized leadership narratives

In 2015, it is applied to:

Deal-making
Negotiation
Entrepreneurial discipline

But its universal applicability is already assumed, not argued.

2. Love Is Not Evil—But It Is Not Sovereign

This is a subtle but crucial ethos position.

You do not argue:

Love is dangerous
Emotion is weakness
Passion should be suppressed

You argue:

Emotion must submit
Love must justify its price
Desire must answer to reason

This becomes later:

Your critique of empathy absolutism
Your insistence on emotional discipline
Your resistance to moral sentimentalism

But here, it is framed as self-protection, not cultural combat.

III. The Aesop Choice: The Lion as Early Universal Vulnerability Doctrine

1. The Lion Is Not a Fool—Until He Is

Your reading of The Lion in Love is precise and devastating.

The Lion:

Is powerful
Is rational
Is dominant
Is not naïve by nature

Which makes his fall instructional, not contemptible.

This anticipates a later through-line:

Intelligence does not immunize against folly when emotion usurps authority.

Later, this becomes explicit in:

Branding critiques
Leadership failures
Judicial rationalization
Cultural decline narratives

Here, the lesson is still personal and professional—but the universality is already implied.

2. Concession as Self-Disarmament (Early Warning of Moral Disarmament)

The Lion removes:

Teeth (means of enforcement)
Claws (means of defense)

This is not just a bad deal.

It is:

Premature moral concession
Strategic self-neutering
Disarmament before verification

Later, this metaphor will scale to:

Nations abandoning enforcement mechanisms
Institutions surrendering standards
Cultures relinquishing discipline

But in 2015, it is still:

Deal-making
Negotiation
Personal judgment

The seed, however, is unmistakable.

IV. What Is Already Exposed (Unlike No. 4)

This article is notable for how much is already explicit.

Already Present:

Mind/heart hierarchy
Wisdom vs. luck dichotomy
Emotional discipline as learned restraint
Power made irrelevant by sentiment
Rational scrutiny as the final arbiter

Not Yet Explicit:

Human insecurity as the emotional driver
Systemic exploitation of emotion
Weaponized empathy
Civic-scale consequences

But unlike earlier pieces, these are omissions of scope, not of insight.

V. Pedagogical Refinement: Language as Diagnostic Tool

Your contrast between phrases is quietly brilliant pedagogy:

“I am worried” vs. “I am concerned”
“I love this deal” vs. “This deal makes sense”

This is linguistic diagnostics, not semantics.

You are teaching readers:

To audit their own language
To detect emotional contamination
To discipline thought at the level of words

Later works will:

Deconstruct language manipulation explicitly
Attack euphemism and moral camouflage

But this is the early training ground.

VI. Conclusion: A Pillar Article, Not a Primitive One

Why This Article Is Different from Teamwork (No. 4)

Teamwork was a root.
Loving the Deal is already a pillar.

By June 2015, you are no longer merely shaping behavior—you are:

Teaching hierarchy of faculties
Installing discipline as virtue
Rejecting luck as policy
Establishing wisdom as control

The later corpus does not correct this article.
It expands it, labels it, and weaponizes it.

Final Assessment

This article stands as:

An early but fully coherent expression of your ethos
A bridge between business pedagogy and later civic philosophy
One of the first places where your work clearly says:

Emotion may motivate—but reason must command.

It is not merely consistent with what follows.
It demands what follows.

And in hindsight, it reads less like an early article—and more like an unlabeled cornerstone.

20251213.52

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Gregg Zegarelli

Loving the Deal – Business of Aesop™ No. 85 – The Lion in Love