15 November 2004
| Uncompleted
Accepting God's Will for the World
Understanding the Christian mandate given through George Bush
- / -
Introduction
God, wrath and weaponry
Reframing, promotion, exploitation and incarceration
Introduction
The world can now be deeply grateful to the American people -- the greatest
people on Earth -- for confirming so clearly God's mandate for their Christian
leader -- the most powerful leader on Earth -- in the furtherance of the Christian-inspired
policies of the world's only superpower. The prayers of American Christians
have evoked the comprehensible guidance from God that the world so desperately
needs for the 21st century. As the most developed country, the spiritual guidance
is reflected in the convictions of the majority of American voters -- the
remainder will, as is their custom as loyal citizens, stand dutifully behind
their President in whatever actions he deems appropriate.
As noted in the UK by Martin Kettle (The
fervour behind the push to put 'America first' : Don't underestimate the centrality
of the old belief in manifest destiny, The Guardian, 2 November
2004):
Bush's apparent acceptance of the view that he may be doing God's work in
the White House has been much noted in this country as the campaign has wound
through the autumn. But this is not some idiosyncratic hubris on the president's
part. It is shared by millions of American conservative evangelical protestants,
many of whom believe, along with the attorney-general John Ashcroft, that
the very existence of the United States is proof of a divine purpose. In that
context, the idea that America should reject ties with necessarily less blessed
nations becomes existential, an exceptionalism of another order altogether.
The world should be in no doubt that, thanks to the prescience of the American
people and their privileged understanding of God's will, the 21st century calls
for the following.
God, wrath and weaponry
God
- Action in God's name: constant proclamation that every action
is done in the name of the God of Christianity and to ensure his peaceful
reign -- in order to obscure any recognition of the level of destruction
wrecked upon other cultures and the tragic cruelties to their peoples
- Prayer: for praying for guidance so assiduously to the God whom
as yet you know not how to share with ours -- may your God truly bless
you for your sacrificial use of us to increase your understanding
- Trust: for your God-given trust, and lack of doubt, that you
have a historical mission to safeguard civilization -- including our own,
even though it is so distant from yours in many ways
- Understanding God's Will: for endangering your own souls in the
higher scheme of things by taking into your hands an understanding of
God's will, guided by your Leader’s spiritual advisors -- in dying
we pray that you have made the right choice
Wrath (ira) includes madness, blasphemy, insanity, provoking others
to wrath, spreading scandal, homicide, and ferocity. Its contrary virtue is
Hope (spes), because it rejoices in the future, rather than dwelling on the
turmoil of the present.
Weaponry
- development: more weaponry of every kind imaginable to Christian
creativity -- to keep God's people safe and enable them to completely
annihilate any who oppose their will / developing every more horrific
weapons of war, purportedly for defence -- whilst prohibiting access to
weapons by those in need of defence
- deployment: for bringing weapons of mass destruction ("daisy
cutters", "toxics" and depleted uranium shells) to our
country so we can be reminded what they look like -- since your inspectors
have been unable to find traces of those you sold to our Leader or enabled
him to make
- sales: for the weapons you sold to our Leader in the past that
enabled him to attack and slaughter our neighbours -- and allowed us to
be slaughtered in return
- manufacture: for the chemical and other factories you built for
our Leader -- to enable him to manufacture weapons to attack and slaughter
the minorities in our country
- Disarmament: repeated appeals for other peoples to disarm as
the only basis for appropriate Christian dialogue -- whilst holding the
right to bear arms as fundamental to constitutional democracy
- Non-proliferation of WMD: every effort to prevent the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction that may be a threat to God's country --
whilst making careful efforts to acquire, develop and maintain such weaponry
Reframing, promotion, exploitation and incarceration
Reframing
- Stereotyping: stigmatizing and threatening dissidents, even those
of one's own culture, to the point of labelling them as the instruments
of Satan
- dissidents, to the point of condemning as traitors and demonizing them
- tolerating, if not ensuring, the assassinaton of opponents
- Reinforcing democratic processes: for demonstrating to us and
the world, through the UN Security Council, that the democracy you seek
to bring to our country really only works through tying votes to collateral
aid and trade -- those of us who survive will endeavour to apply these
lessons more assiduously, although the approach is long familiar to our
people
- Reinventing democracy: defining democracy as availing citizens
of weapons (2nd Amendment)
- requiring an investment of some $300 per voter (cost of democracy: $1.8)
- Censorship: for the strict censorship that you will ensure on
media coverage of your method of killing us in order not to offend your
audience worldwide and spoil their appreciation of the skills of the
precision bombing of your heroic pilots -- who are all family men
-
- Evidence: for your conviction that after our deaths you will
find additional evidence to justify the acts you undertake against us
-- we sincerely hope that you will not subsequently be discredited if
you are obliged to secretly fabricate and plant such evidence of our Leader's
misdeeds in order to fully justify our deaths to the world
- misrepresenting the validity of information, and using it deceptively,
even to the point of lying
Promotion
- of inequality: exacerbating the inequality between the richer
and the poorer, and ensuring that a significant proportion of the population
lives below the poverty line
- Polarization: polarizing opinion in society, and dividing families,
by promotoing "with us or against us"
- Fear-mongering: promoting fear rather than hope
- scaremongering to promote and sustain a climate of fear
- Xenophobia: promoting suspicion of foreigners and xenoophobia
- engendering the dislike and hatred of other cultures
- promoting fear of foreign terrorist threat -- over and above that of
domestic armed criminals and irresponsbile gun users
- Cultivation of double standards: condemning vigorously corruption
in others whilst being complicit in covert arrangements of equivalent
dubiousness
- condemning vigorously the acts of moral turpitude of others whilst being
complicit in $$$$$
Exploitation:
- Reversing development: regressing the development of a significant
proportion of its population consistent with policies enforced upon other
cultures and peoples
- Resource appropriation: tolerating, if not justifying, corporate
kleptocracy
- promotion of companies under the protection of God's manadate (Haliburton,
Carlyle group, etc)
- exploilting exclusively, to the degree possible, scarce planetary resources
to which the access of others is thereby severely constrained
- participating complicitly in acquisition and use of funds in the interests
of the very few and against the interests of the many
- Indebtedness: accumulating a unique trillion dollar debt
Incarceration: incarcerating a significant proportion of the population
following failure to address the conditions giving rise to their crime
xxxxx
-
Denial
- Avoidance of responsibility: Denial of responavoiding responsibility
for the health care of many, except where it is to the advantage of the
few
- Indifference to the future: acting towards the environment with
indifference to the condition of future generations
- Marginalizing alternatives: acting vigorously against emergence
of any strategic alternatives, notably by labelling themas a mark of weakness
-
- Sacrifice: for the sacrifice of your own soldiers abroad in ensuring
our salvation -- especially given the probability that most will die from
friendly fire or suffer for years from radiation-related illnesses associated
with the use of the depleted uranium missiles you intend to use
- Reframing values:
- Disdain for other worldviews: for your principled rejection of any
need to understand our culture, our communities and our language, and your
conviction that you can export your democratic values to displace ours --
and that we desire this wholeheartedly to affirm our cultural identity
- Demonisation:
- Recoognition of evil: for your uncanny ability to recognize our
country and our Leader as embodying the greatest evil in our region --
when our paltry weapons and skills are acknowledged to be insignificant
in comparison with some of our neighbours, whose ability to systematically
abuse their minorities, flaunting the will of the international community,
exceeds ours by far
- Diplomacy: for your diplomatic ability to assemble a "Coalition
of the Willing" -- we trust that they will be paid off as promised, now
that they can no longer confidently appeal any contractual breach within the
framework of the international law that you have undermined in order to kill
us
- Historical sensitivity: r for your respectful observance of historical
pattern in engaging once again in the heroic endeavour in which your forefathers
engaged over several centuries long ago -- recognizing that neither of our peoples
seem to have learned much of consequence since then
- for your method of honouring history through seeking to bomb the region which
gave birth to your civilization and culture thousands of years ago -- we wonder
whether you will ensure that any remnants of that glorious past period of our
culture have been carefully added to your target list to demean us further
-
- Modernization of others: for your undeclared efforts as Christians
to reform and modernize our Muslim societies and culture -- although we wonder
at the relevance of these efforts given the increasing difficulties you have
in sustaining the qualities of life and authenticity in your modern cultures.
- Mobilizing capacity: for mobilizing an honourable core group of former
Christian crusading nations to lead a new crusade to liberate and occupy our
Muslim region as did your forefathers -- the Franks -- in the time of the earlier
crusades
-
Expertise: for the wisdom of your advisors, in their networks of excellence
and think tanks, in choosing such a simple method to resolve a complex problem
of humanity -- having learned so well from their past failures in effectively
addressing the issues of poverty, injustice, unemployment, arms proliferation,
shelter, disease, and pollution around the world
-
Envy (invidia) consisted of two main categories: sadness at another's
good fortune, or glee at another's misfortune. Its contrary virtue is charity
(charitas), which is sometimes translated as love, since it desires that your
neighbor prosper, rather than wishing him ill luck.
-
Covetousness: or valuing our arid land and its resources above those
of our neighbours -- condemning them to continuing abuse by their leaders,
in the absence of your humanitarian intervention, in order to privilege the
salvation of our people
-
Stealth: for your consideration in killing us stealthily and from
so far away, so that we can never fully recognize how honourable an antagonist
you are -- and then discretely to relieve any personal discomfort arising
from your stressful slaughter with pool-side relaxation and video war games.
** shame
- Concealment: for the manner in which you clean and cover up the messy
effects of your deliverance of death, with unmarked mass graves of unnamed people,
filled by bulldozers with industrial efficiency -- in such curious contrast
to the sorrowful memorialized religious celebration of any deaths amongst your
own soldiers
- Reliance on technology: for your unquestioning confidence in the technology
that will enable you to kill us with such great precision -- and your fatalistic
acceptance that if your weapons unfortunately go astray, any level of collateral
damage will be as Allah willed it
- Destabilization: for the considerable resources discretely allocated
by you over recent years in developing a more suitable governance structure
for our peoples -- although we wonder at your preference for associates who
have been indicted or convicted for a variety of offences
- Nation-building: for your efforts to engage in nation-building to provide
structures to receive your gift of democracy to our culture -- despite the modesty
of your success on previous occasions
- Promises: for making such wonderful promises to us through your propaganda
tracts and broadcasts -- even though you have had to suffer embarrassment in
keeping such promises on other occasions
- Sanctions: for the sanctions that you have applied to our country for
so many years to teach us the basic humanity we have been so slow in learning
-- depriving us of essential medical and food supplies, clearly a necessary
punishment even though it has unfortunately resulted in the death of so many
- Leadership: for the inspired European leadership, notably in the person
of Winston Churchill, regarding the use of gas on Kurds and Iraqis in the 1920s
as a "scientific expedient" not to be prevented "by the prejudices
of those who do not think clearly": "I do not understand this
squeamishness... I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised
tribes" -- leaving us perplexed by the righteous insistence of your Leader
(known to model himself on Churchill) to remove our Leader who so assiduously
followed this prescription in years past.
- Strength: for the amazing power you demonstrate so simply and dramatically
through your instruments of war -- a power that contrasts so significantly with
your total impotence in response to the more complex problems of the billions
around the world whose condition you neglect, exemplified by your continuing
need to increase the numbers that you incarcerate.
- lack of strength
- Conviction: for your conviction that the level of guilt of our brutal
Leader justifies the disruption that you plan to cause to our region -- in the
absence of evidence (now that you seem to have mislaid the receipts) other than
your secret and highly sensitive knowledge of what you and your agents have
supplied to our Leader
-
Personalization: for honouring our people by elevating our Leader
to be the most wanted man in the history of mankind, as measured by the unprecedented
resources the Coalition of the Willing is devoting to his removal -- we trust
that you will in future continue to devote a significant proportion of such
resources to the conditions of people in need around the world
-
-
Risk-taking: for the risks you take in relying increasingly on methods
developed in totalitarian societies you formerly claimed to deplore, although
emulated by our Leader -- in dying we wonder at the possibility that unknowingly
your society may become essentially indistinguishable from theirs
-
- Appreciation of death: celebration through every cinematic device the
processes of causing excruciating pain and death -- whilst pretending that such
entertainment has as little to do with the maintenance of modern civilization
as the "games"
- Death: conscientious application of the highest moral and ethical
values as a justification for the need to kill others -- claiming to sincerely
believe that such deaths will be for the highest cause and that the price will
be worth paying, despite a specific Christian commandment against such acts
- Demonisation: presentation of the prime enemy of civilization in the
garb of the Christian redeemer (as displayed in every place of worship) -- as
a prime tool for rendering ambiguous the values of Christian civilization
- who do not welcome ensure his for your courage in seeking to ensure that we
disarm before unleashing your long intended attack on us -- history has few
examples of great armies requiring that their opponents lay down their weapons
before a battle
-
Any who previously questioned the mandate given to George
Bush should now realize that "they no longer have an alibi"
With such Christian-inspired leadership, who needs Satan?
for the conviction of your expert advisors in the efficacy of direct action
in killing us -- and avoiding any wasteful investment in the futile hope that
those holding radically opposed views could ever dialogue fruitfully, other
than on your terms
-
collective attunement
oil
right is right and left is left behind
real problems
homosexuality
abortion
Middle East
Falujah
complicity
using freely available arms
spitting
anti-Muslim
Declaration of Human Rights
Ten Commandments
Seven vices alternate with seven virtues: FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH,
PRUDENCE/PRIDE, JUSTICE/AVARICE, TEMPERANCE/GLUTTONY, and FORTITUDE/ANGER
The Seven Vices Pride Covetousness Lust Anger Gluttony Envy Sloth
The Seven Virtues Humility Liberality Chastity Meekness Temperance
Brotherly Love Diligence
Prudence vs Foolishness Fortitude vs Inconstancy Temperence vs Ire Justice
vs Injustice Faith vs Faithlessness Hope vs Desperation Charity vs Envy
- Pride (superbia). As we have seen earlier, pride was often viewed as
the root of all of the vices. Pride, simply put, is placing oneself above God,
so its contrary virtue is Faith (fides). Subcategories included disobedience,
bragging or ostentation, hypocrisy, contempt, arrogance, impudence, and taking
pride in one's bad deeds.
- righteousness
- xoenophobia
- Sloth (accidia) includes pettiness, cowardice, negligence, being remiss
in one's duties, mistrustfulness, indolence, and sluggishness. Its contrary
virtue is fortitude (fortitudo), whose active forms include magnanimity and
constancy and passive include security and good faith.
- Avarice (Avaritia) includes simony (the sale of clerical offices),
sacrilege (or usurping the place of God), usury, fraud, theft, blind ambition,
and desiring the goods of others. Its contrary virtue is justice (justitia),
because justice gives to each their due, rather than stealing and retaining
the things of another.
- oil, resources
- kleptocracy
- Gluttony (Gula) includes drunkenness, gluttonous eating, and soft living.
Its opposite is Temperance (temperantia) which suppresses extremes, and includes
abstinence, continence, and modesty.
- Lust (Luxuria) includes fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, sex
with those in orders or under vows, masturbation, and "abuse" (any sex outside
the "marital debt). It also includes love of worldly luxuries. Its opposite
virtue is Prudence (prudentia), which keeps the incorrupt from corruption and
includes providence, circumspection, caution, and docility.
Kristena West. The seven vices are considered to be the veils of illusion that
occlude us from Sophia, holy wisdom, the Beloved of every human heart. These
seven vices today are considered to be behavioral patterns adopted by us as
coping mechanisms. Eventually, these behaviors can become addictions which cause
us pain, limit our growth, and are considered obstacles to the spiritual path.
[more]
Wikipedia: One way of organising the vices is as the corruption of the virtues.
A virtue can be corrupted by nonuse, misuse, or overuse. Thus the cardinal vices
would be lust (nonuse of temperance), cowardice (nonuse of courage), folly (misuse
of an virtue, opposite of wisdom), and venality (nonuse of justice). See: The
four virtues.
The Christian vices would be blasphemy (faith betrayed), unforgiveness (hope
betrayed), apostasy (nonuse of piety), and indifference (scripturally, a "hardened
heart"), the betrayal of perfect love: charity.
Transforming Your
Dragons: Turning Personality Fear Patterns into Personal Power by
José Stevens, Ph.D. Bear and Co. 1994
What then are these seven dragons but the most familiar of all human limitations.
Throughout the ages they have been called many names: The seven deadly sins;
the seven vices; bad blood; original sin; base human nature; plagues; the
fall of man; Satan, evil spirits, and so on. These notions of the dragons
suggest that evil is visited upon human beings by the devil, demons, or
by humankind's own innate wickedness and sinfulness. According to this view,
people are helpless in the face of these dragons and it is only in crying
out to the gods through prayer and ritual, or by offering sacrifice that
these demons can be avoided. The limitation of this perspective is that
while creating temporary relief, in the long run it is disempowering and
offers little in the way of effective solution to the problem.
In modern times we sometimes call the seven dragons by more scientific
names: Dysfunction, psychopathology, abnormal psychology, defense mechanisms,
addiction, aberrant behavior, neurosis, and anti-social behavior. We attribute
these modern demons to familial conditioning, poor social conditions, chemical
imbalances, and genetic makeup. However, with all the modern science in
the world we have not arrived one step closer to slaying the age old dragons
that continue to plague us. Why? Because we do not understand the fundamental
nature of the dragons we seek to slay. The dragons are swift and sly and
have led us on merry goose chases that lead to a false sense of security.
They continue to reign supreme on the world scene. In fact, more commonly
we call the dragons by the name, ordinary everyday behavior. We regard destructive,
callous, insensitive, self defeating behavior as not only ordinary, but
we reward it socially with fame, fortune, and social status.
Truly, the seven dragons lie at the heart of every major dysfunction and
addiction known to human kind. These are the addictions underlying every
addiction. These are the dragons behind every obstacle to human potential.
These are the dragons that masquerade as power, brilliance, modesty, strength,
colorfulness, sacrifice, and fortitude.
For the purposes of this book these dragons will be called by simple, blunt
names: Arrogance; Self-Deprecation; Impatience; Martyrdom; Self- Destruction;
Greed; and Stubbornness. These are seven familiar words to describe the
cause of all human suffering. Judging by human history, there would seem
to be no hope of erasing these scourges that erode the best intentions of
even the most developed of our races. And yet, it is possible to defeat
the seven dragons if you are armed with accurate information, an intense
desire, perseverance, and the courage to admit difficulty and the humility
to ask for help. This book is dedicated to arming you with the tools to
eradicate the seven obstacles.
Is God a terrorist
Satan
Willy
Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) described Seven Deadly Sins in his Moralia
in Job. 1. Superbia Pride 2. Invidia Envy 3. Ira Anger 4. Avaritia Avarice 5.
Tristia Sadness 6. Gula Gluttony 7. Luxuria Lust (Moralia in Job, XXXI cap.
xlv).
FRANK B. CROSS. Cited: .THE SUBTLE VICES BEHIND ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES . 8 Duke
Envtl. L. and Pol'y F. 151 [text]
RENEE LAPOINTE-DAOUD. The Seven Deadly Sins? are there seven? are they deadly?
are they even sins? 2001 [text]
Virtues and Vices, Aristotle, trans. H. Rackman, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard
University Press, l992.
WILLIAM P. MARSHALL. Conservatives and the Seven Sins of Judicial Activism.
University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 73, 2002 [abstract]
Michael Lewis. Poisoning the Ivy: The Seven Deadly Sins and Other Vices of
Higher Education in America, 1997 [contents]
Jean Bannon The Seven Deadly Sins Managers Commit. New Mexico Labor Letter,
Fall 1999 [text]
- Failing to Address Problems
- Promoting Employees Without Management Training
- Assigning New Management to “Clean House”
- Improper Documentation
- Ignoring Informal Complaints
- Mishandling Medical Information
- Retaliation
Karen Horst Cobb. No Longer a Christian. Published on Monday, October 25,
2004 by CommonDreams.org by [text]
D.A. Blyler. The Seven Vices of Highly Creative People. 2001 [text]
Steven D. Strauss. The Seven Deadly Sins of Advertising. Online Digest of
the Small Business Association of Michigan, 11 August 2003 [text]
Thomas P.M. Barnett. The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare. Proceedings
(U.S. Naval Institute, 1999) [text]
- Lust: NCW Longs for an Enemy Worthy of Its Technological Prowess
- Sloth: NCW Slows the U.S. Military's Adaptation to a MOOTW World
- Avarice: NCW Favors the Many and Cheap; the U.S. Military Prefers the Few
and Costly
- Pride: NCW's Lock-Out Strategies Resurrect Old Myths about Strategic Bombing
- Anger: NCW's Speed-of-Command Philosophy Can Push Us into Shooting First
and Asking Questions Later
- Envy: NCW Covets the Business World's Self-Synchronization
- Gluttony: NCW's Common Operating Picture Could Lead to Information Overload
Ron Robinson. Seven Sins of Strategic Planning. CharityVillage.com 4
March 2002 [text]
- Believing the strategic plan is a panacea
- Viewing the plan as the end product
- Developing the plan in isolation
- Failing to gather the necessary information
- Developing paralysis by analysis
- Failing to communicate
- Failing to implement
Bob Post. Seven Deadly Sins of Seven Deadly Sins of Contingency Planning. Booz
Allen Hamilton, 2002 [text]
- Not having a plan(s)
- Not maintaining plans
- Not exercising or testing plans
- Not raising awareness of plans
- Not identifying essential functions
- Not identifying key roles and responsibilities
- Not coordinating plans with partners
Bob Lewis. The seven deadly sins of information systems. InfoWorld,
1998 [text]
- Arrogance
- Grandiosity
- Project-itis
- Jargon
- Methodologism
- Control
- Supplier mentality
Steven S. Ross. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics": the seven deadly sins.
21stC, Fall 1998 [text]
- Non-response bias, or the non-representative sample.
- Mistaking statistical association for causality
- Poisoned control
- Data enhancement.
- Absoluteness.
- Partiality
- A bad measuring stick
The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Seven Capital Sins. 1959 [contents]
Justice Michael Kirby. Freedom of Information: The Seven Deadly Sins. Paper
delivered to British section of International Commission of Jurists, 17 December
1997 [abstract]
Drue Miller. Seven Deadly Sins of Information Design. 1999 [text]
Eric Matson. The Seven Sins of Deadly Meetings. FastCompany, Issue 02, April/May
1996 [text]
Chris Buckingham. The seven deadly sins of the information professional. Scip.online,
1, 11, 17 November 2004 [text]
Niccolo Machiavelli. The Seven Books on the Art of War. 1520 [text]
[review]
Ian Demack. The Modern Machiavelli: the seven principles of power in business.
Allen and Unwin, 2004
- Trust People to Serve Their Own Interests
- Everyone is Delusional
- Power Must Be Contested
- Your Allies Are Not Your Friends
- Congruence is Power
- Fortune Favours the Wise
- Power Demands Submission
Seven Deadly Sins. NYPL and Oxford University Press, 7 vols, 2004
- Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins Joseph Epstein
- Greed (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities Series): The Seven
Deadly Sins Phyllis A. Tickle
- Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins Simon Blackburn
- Anger: The Seven Deadly Sins Robert A. F. Thurman
- Gluttony: The Seven Deadly Sins Francine Prose
Kenneth Rexroth's Classics Revisited. New Directions, 1968
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde are dynamic
structures of evolving interpersonal relations. On each type of character,
like sculpture on an armature, a unique individual is erected with a minimum
of rhetoric and a maximum of effective characterization. At the end of the
“Prologue” a crowd of people have come to life. The tensions and affections
that exist between them have been defined. From then on the Canterbury Pilgrims
jostle, argue, push and pull, and twist in the fields of force set up by their
manifold personalities, each one a center of power. However interesting in
themselves, the Tales are each a metaphor of the personality of the teller;
each Tale affects the listeners. In the “links” between Tales the narrators
are represented and redefined in special relationships, much as the characters
in a play are intensified in each new scene. Chaucer's pilgrims can be sorted
into categories -- the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, sloth, anger, lust, avarice,
gluttony, envy; the Seven Cardinal Virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence,
temperance, justice, fortitude; the four humours: blood, bile, black bile,
phlegm; the influence of the known planets and the Houses of the Zodiac --
but this is far from reducing his psychology or philosophy of the personality
to schematization. These thirty-five factors, their commutations and permutations,
can be figured out arithmetically and are a tidy sum. Besides, each traveler
is defined in the first instance by occupation and most of them by native
province; each person is strongly characterized by individually developed
sexuality; each is a special, complex aspect of maleness or femaleness. This
is a larger apparatus for a theory of character than that employed by modern
novelists raised on the simple Old Testament schemata of psychoanalysis. [more]
The Seven Deadly Sins board game can best be described as a New Age Snakes
and Ladders with attitude. The board is made up of a long, winding and overlapping
path of 234 consecutive squares divided into seven different incarnations (first
killer, then thief, liar, servant, lover, healer, and prophet). On squares where
the paths cross over, called Time Warp squares, players must change path if
required. [more]
The seven deadly memes?, 1996. I was thinking about evolutionary psychology
and about the "seven deadly sins" and I began to notice an interesting correspondence
between the deadly sins and the basic instincts we get from evolution:
- pride = us-vs.-them instinct, also maintain status in hierarchy
- idleness = conserving energy
- gluttony = drive to eat, gone wild in this time of abundance
- lechery = maximize mating opportunities
- avarice = drive to grow in power so as to have more reproductive options
- envy = look for opportunities to rise in the hierarchy so as to have more
reproductive options
- wrath = "tit for tat" strategy, most effective simple prisoner's dilemma
strategy [more]
Stephen R. Covey. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Commerce (business) without morality (ethics)
- Science without humanity
- Religion without sacrifice
- Politics without principle
Walter Lippman. Public Opinion. Free Press, 1997
Chapter XXVIII. The Appeal To Reason: There is, however, a noble counterfeit
in that charity which comes from self-knowledge and an unarguable belief that
no one of our gregarious species is alone in his longing for a friendlier
world. So many of the grimaces men make at each other go with a flutter of
their pulse, that they are not all of them important. And where so much is
uncertain, where so many actions have to be carried out on guesses, the demand
upon the reserves of mere decency is enormous, and it is necessary to live
as if good will would work. We cannot prove in every instance that it will,
nor why hatred, intolerance, suspicion, bigotry, secrecy, fear, and lying
are the seven deadly sins against public opinion. We can only insist that
they have no place in the appeal to reason, that in the longer run they are
a poison; and taking our stand upon a view of the world which outlasts our
own predicaments, and our own lives, we can cherish a hearty prejudice against
them.
2004: Denery is one of only 11 scholars selected to participate in a National
Endowment for the Humanities seminar, "The Seven Deadly Sins as Cultural Constructions
in the Middle Ages," at Cambridge University this summer.
Lousie Cowan. The Terrain of Comedy. The Dallas Institute of Humanities, 1984
[text]
These three quite different "places" objectifying the three states of the
soul can consequently be seen to represent the three possible regions of the
comic terrain. The first, infernal comedy, is a state in which grace is utterly
absent and where selfishness and malice prevail. The community has accepted
its fallen condition and cynically attributes its corruption to "the way of
the world." .... Deception and disguise, characterizing marks of comedy, are
used in infernal society for the purpose or gaining advantage, usually to
the harm of others. Even the guardians, those figures of disinterested benevolence
who manifest themselves from time to time within the comic tradition, realize
their helplessness to change the general situation and either withdraw as
does Alceste or concentrate their efforts on the rescue of the feminine victim,
as do Ligurio, Paulina, Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly and Julia, and Gavin Stevens
and Ratliff. The wicked are in control of the city, though frequently in the
end they are outwitted by someone even more tricky than they. Face is outfaced;
Shylock is outlegalized; Flem Snopes is destroyed by something within Snopesism
itself. The bitter bit, the gull gulled--- these eventualities are often the
outcome of infernal comedy, since wickedness multiplies incrementally and
gives the appearance of infinite resource. Yet there is usually a reckoning,
in which the community is reaffirmed, even if in the sternest possible way;
justice is meted out to offenders, and the innocent are vindicated. This is
the realm of dirty jokes, of harmful trickery, of cruel deceit. The Greeks
were only imperfectly aware of it as a human possibility, the Old Testament
portrays it but seldom, for it is less the world of sin than of abomination---
Sodom and Gomorrah, the false prophets in Pharaoh's court, Jezebel, the Tower
of Babel. But the medieval world, fully aware of its implications, found it
in daily experience: Chaucer's pardoner and his friar inhabit this world,
as do the characters in the miller's and the merchant's tales. Piers Plowman's
vision of the seven deadly sins is in this infernal mold. Machiavelli continues
it into the Renaissance in his Mandragola, Ben Jonson in his Volpone and The
Alchemist, Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida, and the characters of Shylock,
Lucio, Cloten, and Iachimo. Moliere and Restoration comedy are in this mode
also, a fact that explains the frequent charge of "immortality" leveled against
them. Blake's "London," Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Gogal's Dead Souls, Swift's
Gulliver's Travels, Dostoevsky's The Possessed, Eliot's The Waste Land, Katherine
Anne Porter's Ship of Fools, O'Connor's Wise Blood exhibit its dark and malevolent
lineage. William Faulkner, as one can judge from his early drafts of the Snopes
sage, gradually turned from tragedy to comedy in conceiving his trilogy over
the years, coming to see the evil engulfing the human enterprise as contemptible
and ultimately defeatable.
Deirdre McCloskey. The Secret Sins of Economics. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2002
[text]
Daniel L. Schacter. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers.
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001) [summary]
- transience affects weakening memory over time
- absent-mindedness, when failures of attention sabotage memory
- blocking, when a well-known nalme cannot be retrieved
- misattribution: assigning a memory to the wrong source
- suggestibility: implanting false memories
- bias: rewriting the past based on present beliefs
- persistence: intrusiver recollections that cannot be forgotten
The Seven Deadly Sins, 2004 [text]
Vice
|
Virtue against which it sins
|
Brief description
|
| Pride (1) |
Humility |
Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing
ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone
else's pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride. |
| Avarice/Greed (5) |
Generosity |
This is about more than money. Generosity means
letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations
of the other person. Greed wants to get its "fair share" or a
bit more. |
| Envy (2) |
Love |
"Love is patient, love is kind…"
Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the
good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable
from pride at times. |
| Wrath/Anger (3) |
Kindness |
Kindness means taking the tender approach, with
patience and compassion. Anger is often our first reaction to the problems
of others. Impatience with the faults of others is related to this. |
| Lust (7) |
Self control |
Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure
from killing the soul by suffocation. Legitimate pleasures are controlled
in the same way an athlete's muscles are: for maximum efficiency without
damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion
to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go
out of control. |
| Gluttony (6) |
Faith and Temperance |
Temperance accepts the natural limits of pleasures
and preserves this natural balance. This does not pertain only to food,
but to entertainment and other legitimate goods, and even the company of
others. |
| Sloth (4) |
Zeal |
Zeal is the energetic response of the heart to
God's commands. The other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses
so we first become slow to respond to God and then drift completely into
the sleep of complacency. |
Seven deadly forums:
- Vanity The forum from which all other forums arise. solidsharkey.com / #finalfight
/ pyoko.org discussion 215 10157 Nov 16 2004, 01:00 AM In: Last PostThe Bragging
Thread By: Glames No New Posts
- Envy The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation. miscellaneous
people / site / organization discussion 78 6689 Nov 16 2004, 06:07 AM In:
Last PostAvatar By: Fried_Octopus No New Posts
- Gluttony The inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
food / drink / snack discussion 94 3227 Nov 17 2004, 02:42 AM In: Last PostThanksgiving
By: R^2 No New Posts
- Wrath "Wrath is the most seductive of the sins. Welcome to the dark side."
228 10682 Nov 16 2004, 10:21 PM In: Last PostSpyware By: Thad No New Posts
- Avarice The desire for material wealth or gain. bargain / entrepreneurial
/ ripoff discussion 111 3452 Nov 17 2004, 01:01 AM In: Last PostVoice Actors
By: Thad No New Posts
- Sloth The avoidance of physical or spiritual work. game / movie / music
/ book discussion [more]
|
