The Solipsist is celebrating the high academic holy days (intersession), whiling away the hours reading and blogging and eating unhealthy amounts of Cheez-It Snack Mix (seriously, the stuff's better than crack). Yesterday, a Facebook friend playfully (?) accused us of sloth, the most adorable of the seven deadly sins, especially when hanging upside down from a tree branch.
Speaking of deadly sins, without googling, can you name all seven? We got sloth, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath, and pride right off the bat. Armchair psychoanalysts may read what they will into our difficulty coming up with the seventh (lust); perhaps we don't think it should be a sin? Perhaps we don't.
Looking at the list, though, we noticed only two or, at most, three distinct sins. After all sloth, gluttony, greed, envy, and lust are just five sides of the same. . .uh, five-sided coin: desire--desire for sleep, food, stuff, other people's stuff, or sex. Even pride is really just the desire for status. The only deadly sin predominantly directed externally is wrath. We could economize tremendously by streamlining the list: Desire and wrath.
Of course, if you put it like that--making people feel bad for wanting anything--you're really laying a bummer of a trip on folks. People might start to question a religion that transforms basic human drives into mortal sins. We know we would.
A: As I'm sure you know, the sin isn't in the behaviour, but in the excessiveness of the behaviour.
ReplyDeleteB: However, even that needs some tempering. I have ALWAYS lived a life of almost TOTAL sloth. And it's finally paid off! At my age, when friends of mine (yes, I have some) complain that they can no longer do so many things they used to do, I point out that I can do almost everything I used to do since what I used to do was, well, as little as possible!