Vices: What are the "seven deadly sins" and how do they affect my life and society?
Recently I was at a birthday party and the topic of gluttony came up. Surprise! The food was plenteous and delicious.
Then we went on to discuss the “seven deadly sins”, mostly focusing on the real big one: pride and that got me thinking about the sins and their opposites, the virtues – and Wikipedia* (below) gave me a wonderful description not only with the sins, but their opposites… these opposites, the virtues, look very much like what Daniel Goleman calls EQ, or Emotional Intelligence.
Let’s look at the sins first in this blog, and then the opposites in the next, and finally tie them to EQ in the final blog in this series; EQ has come up in a recent hiring round I am part of, btw., as it is one of the asked for characteristics of most new hires.
Sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride.
1. Lust is a psychological force producing intense desire for something, or circumstance while already having a significant amount of the desired object. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality (see libido), money, or power.
2. Gluttony (Latin: gula, derived from the Latin gluttire meaning "to gulp down or swallow") means over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items, particularly as status symbols.
3. Greed (or avarice) is an uncontrolled longing for increase in the acquisition or use of material gain (be it food, money, land, or animate/inanimate possessions); or social value, such as status, or power. Greed has been identified as undesirable throughout known human history because it creates behavior-conflict between personal and social goals.
4. Sloth is one of the seven capital sins in Catholic teachings. It is the most difficult sin to define and credit as sin, since it refers to an assortment of ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[1] One definition is a habitual disinclination to exertion, or laziness.
5. Envy is an emotion which occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.[1] Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another's good fortune, stirred by "those who have what we ought to have".
6. Wrath (ira) can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. Wrath often reveals itself in the wish to seek vengeance.[37] In its purest form, wrath presents with injury, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another grievous wrong dies. Feelings of wrath can manifest in different ways, including impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse, or suicide.
7. Pride sometimes is used interchangeably with "conceit" or "arrogance" (among other words) which are negative.[2][3] Oxford defines it as "the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance."[4] This may be related to one's own abilities or achievements, positive characteristics of friends or family, or one's country….when viewed as a vice it is often known to be self-idolatry, sadistic contempt, vanity or vainglory. Pride is often related to vanity, and in many religions, vanity is considered a form of self-idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God. The stories of Lucifer and Narcissus (who gave us the term narcissism), and others, attend to a pernicious aspect of vanity
What I notice here is that modern Western culture seems to be “based on” some of these sins. The wanting of more and more (overextension of capitalism and consumerism), creating bigger and bigger cars and houses to live in, for example is an acting out of lust and gluttony. Greed is quite apparent in the way countries hoard their resources from other countries, for example. I think many of us (I can sometimes raise my hand) are guilty of laziness and wanting to just stay in bed, especially at this time of year where it gets light at about 8am. Envy of the “rich and famous” or of the coworkers and neighbors around us is often one of our secret sins. Road rage is an example of wrath, as is abuse of all kinds (to self and to others). Finally, for pride, just look at the news and then look at ourselves. We even try to justify it in nationalism and other forms of the “ins” and “outs”.
When thinking of these sins, we can either justify them or reflect.
Here are some questions for reflection. This Advent let us reflect (it is meant to be a time to do just that) – first on these sins and how they have wormed their way into our lives, so reflect on these:
· What do I want for Christmas? Do I need it? Do I want it? Is it (very much) like something I already have? Can I live without it? What can I give (away) this December, including some of my time and talents?
· When was the last time I overate, indulged too much in something (movie binging, gaming, reading all day), or overdrank (all of this is gluttony, btw)?
· When have I hoarded my stuff, my talents, my time to the deficit of others?
· When have I done as little as possible? (This is not to be confused with doing ENOUGH rather than being a perfectionist, though!) When have I shirked duties and work?
· When have I thought that my neighbor, my colleague, or “them” had it better and/or easier and thus “othered” those people?
· When have I muttered an explicative under my breath because of someone or something? When have I shouted at a car cutting me off, or going too slowly in front of me?
· When have I thought myself, my work, my knowledge, my stuff as better than someone else’s? When has my pride broken a relationship?
You see, these sins are all around and in us.
So, what can we do? Focus on the good, the opposites of these sins. More on this later
Have a virtuous week,
Patricia Jehle
*The information on the sins/virtues is from Wikipedia. The editing out, comments, and thoughts on them are mine
