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I don’t care what you think unless it is about me.

Kurt Cobain

Here we are, at the end of our long journey together. It’s been… fun? Educational? Hopefully at least thought provoking? Either way, I want to thank those of you who have stuck it out along the way. The goal of this process was to bring a bit of introspection into each of our lives an help understand how we can best tailor ourselves to become the change that the world needs.

But, of course, there are dangers there as well. Kind of a running theme, no?

In the second bit of prime irony from these articles, this seventh and final entry will be focused on Pride and just so happens to fall on the last weekend of our newly vaunted monthly celebration. I didn’t plan it out that way, but I’ll take the assist where I can.

I’ve alluded to Pride in practically every post before this. There’s a simple reason for that. Pride, dubbed the Queen of all sin by St. Gregory the Great, is the progenitor of sin. In order to recognize that, we first have to understand what is meant by Pride.

People often argue that it can’t be all that bad – after all, they take pride in their children when they succeed, or take pride in their community when it pulls together to support a cause. And, yes, those things are a form of pride. Pride, the progenitor, is better understood as narcissism. An inordinate focus on self and elevating oneself above all else. How, then, do these examples fall under that blanket?

Because the pride we take in the growth of our children or the banding together of the community or even something as detached as our city’s national teams winning championships due to some connection we feel to those things. We cast ourselves into them, feel we are reflected in them in some way. We look at our children succeed and think, “I did that,” or our community outreach and think, “I’m a part of that,” or even the team’s lifting of the trophy and thing, “I supported that.”

Now, don’t take this to mean those things are innately bad. Pride is a perfect example of “All things in moderation.” Appreciating our efforts is valid, so long as we don’t allow it to consume us. Where Pride begins its insidious nature is when it starts to take that appreciation away from others.

I can be proud of my children, but I must also recognize their accomplishments aren’t my doing. I played a part, of course, but so did their mother, their grandparents, their school, their friends and teachers and church. And, importantly, themselves. Each of those things deserves its own credit. I’m just a part of their story.

That last line, there. That’s the big one. Pride exposes its true nature when you start to treat the world as a part of your story, instead of the other way around. When everyone else must fit into your casting. How does this trickle down so as to make it the Queen of all sin? Well, let’s look.

The siblings Gluttony, Lust, and Avarice come about when one believes their own comfort and desires trump those of others. Sloth falls into that same bracket. Wrath appears when people do not fit into the parts of our story where we wish them to fill. Envy, from the idea that what another has would be better served as yours instead. When I am the focus of my world, the humanity of everyone else begins to fade. Everything becomes about me. Again I find myself thinking back to my article on the Marquis de Sade, something I’ve both referenced and considered a lot since creating it. He really was the personification of this ideal, the embodiment of Pride, and his ideals have slowly begun to permeate society.

It’s been a part of this process to look inward and expose parts of myself that are damaged by these sins. With Pride, I find that difficult. Not because I don’t have it – if only I was so clean – but because it’s everywhere. It’s in how I spend my time. It’s in my writing of these articles, hoping that I’ve found a way to influence someone to become a better version of themselves. For them, sure, but I can’t deny the ego boost that would likely come from it. That shouldn’t be what it’s about, and I like to think it isn’t, but I can still feel that pull. Worshipping oneself is just so damn easy. It’s the only viewpoint we have, after all. Talk about an unreliable narrator problem.

The only way to combat Pride is with Humility. I’ve already covered this above, but just to drive home the point, if we offer up credit to others for things in which we play a part, it becomes that much more difficult to believe the world revolves around us. And it doesn’t. I like to think that we all know this, even if we’ve buried that idea somewhere deep in our psyche. If we approach everything in our lives with an eye on Humility, well, that would essentially build the Christian utopia. You might recall my thoughts on utopias, so you’ll know I don’t expect anything like this to happen, ever, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work towards it.

I can’t help but feel I’m falling short in this particular article. There’s so much driven by Pride, and its pull is so pernicious, I could harp on its influence forever. But I think, perhaps, this post has gone on long enough. So instead, I’ll thank you all again. I hope any of this has been a help, and I hope the next time you feel the draw to any of the Seven, you’ll take a moment to step away, take a breath, and consider that the world is filled with stories. Each one is as important as the next, and only one of them is yours. My hope is that yours is a tale that brightens each page in every story in which it appears.

Be good to one another, friends. These days, we sure need it.

Some people talk about other people’s failures with so much pleasure that you would swear they are talking about their own successes.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Five down, two to go. And the two we have left are doozies (Huh, that’s actually a word and that’s how you spell it, how about that?).

I considered the first five of the Deadly Sins – Gluttony, Avarice, Lust, Acedia, and Wrath – something I call “effect sins.” This isn’t from any particular philosophy I’ve read, just my own, possibly misguided ideas surrounding the seven, but it helped me understand what I was dealing with. Those five sins concern outcomes. Things that we do or feel or want. They have motivations, but those motivations are more surface level and take a back seat to the fundamental action of the sin itself. Why we over consume is less relevant to Gluttony than the fact that we do, for instance.

The final two sins are what I consider “cause sins.” These are the big ones. Yes, our lives would improve dramatically if we did all that we could to rid ourselves of the actions and mindsets that make up the first five, but in a certain sense it’s a bit like going to the doctor and focusing on combatting the symptoms. If I’m in crippling pain, of course I want that pain dealt with, but I also need to find the source of that pain and deal with it, or all the medication in the world won’t matter.

So, let’s talk about Envy.

Right off the bat, I want to make it clear what we’re dealing with. There’s a lot of conflation between Envy and jealousy. It’s understandable why, but these are two distinct things, even if we’ve come to use them interchangeably over time. Jealousy is concerned with losing something one has to someone else – it wants back what belonged to it. Envy begins with no ownership. It sees what others have and wants to strip it from them. Sometimes to gain it, yes, but often simply so the other person will no longer have it.

Clear enough? I hope so. I’ve had talks with religious and irreligious alike who bring up the verses on God being a “Jealous God” as an argument against a great deal of Christian belief, but those arguments rely on the same sort of mis-defining. Understanding that these verses simply say God sees us being taken by other things and wants us back hopefully add a new understanding to those. That said, let me not fall down that rabbit hole. I’m not here to get into the religious side, even if this whole series is named from a Bible verse and is about the Sins. I can’t emphasize enough how much I believe that, even if one does not believe, their lives and society as a whole would benefit from treating each of these seven as aspects of personal and societal degradation.

Well, that was a long preamble. What of Envy, then? As a causal sin, we can see it lurking in the background of much that came before it. We can hear it used as a prime motivator across the political spectrum. Listen to discourse these days, how much of it is dictated by the idea that “these people have X, and they shouldn’t?” There’s that word again, that pernicious word – should. A weapon in and of itself, and one used to bludgeon others when it should be focused inward. The only person who knows what he or she should be doing is that person. Elon Musk shouldn’t have that much money, he should do [insert thing I want here]. Bernie Sanders shouldn’t own three houses, he should have used that money for [insert thing here]. There are certainly altruistic ideas that come along with statements like these. We think this wealth to be a waste, and perhaps it is, but we have to realize one thing. It was never ours. We need to recognize that the outcome we’re after can be distilled simply to “You shouldn’t have that.”

Envy is powerful. The political angle is easy enough to see, but it has spawned its own media complex as well. How much of reality TV is based around the concept of showing you people who live incredibly lavish lifestyles and painting them as the absolute worst? What do you think that’s designed to get out of you? There’s a particular kind of loathing that comes with long-term exposure to Envy, and that loathing is all too easy to capitalize on. It’s a loathing that manages to make itself seem righteous. After all, we know what they “should” be doing. Seeing them not makes our own failings that much more acceptable. But that’s a point for next week. Hopefully I, uh, remember to get to it.

So, how do we combat this natural drive within ourselves? The corresponding Virtue for Envy is Kindness, and I have to admit on initial pass that seemed to be… let’s say a little lackluster. Why was being nice any sort of meaningful action to prevent something as powerful as Envy? Well, like much of this process, it takes a bit of digging and introspection. What is required for one to be truly kind? Being kind implies you are taking the best course for your subject, doing what he or she needs. We can’t know what that course is without first understanding that person, and to understand them requires a great deal of empathy. We need to understand the situations that brought the person to that place. We need to understand their drive, their wants. I’d say it’s pretty difficult to find we want to take things away from someone once we get to know them on that level.

On top of that, and on a more basic level, Kindness necessitates we have a positive outlook on things. We must believe that any situation can improve if we try, or there would be no point to being kind. And maintaining a positive outlook just makes it harder to want to take things from people. Joyful people don’t tend to wish ill on others, as a rule of thumb.

To circle back to an earlier point, I am a highly political, deeply religious person. I know well how easy it is to give in to our darker natures and the difficulty in rising above them. If we want, we can fund lifetimes-worth of content to spur our Envy of others, or our Wrath toward them, or any and every other negative thing that can pull us down. It’s an active fight to stay above the filth, and at times it can be disheartening to watch us go for each other’s throats over and over again. The world is a brutal place, driven in large part by what we have already discussed through these past six weeks. But driven even more by what we’ll cover next.

Next week, let’s talk Pride.

Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love.

Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Wrath. Unlike some of our previous expositions, everyone understands this one from the onset. We all have an image of Wrath, an anecdote or association that we can conjure at hearing the word. And, also unlike some of the earlier sins, this one is likely correct. There’s no deeper meaning at the core, no subtleties or clarifications to make in its definition. Which, frankly, is appropriate. Of any of the Deadly Sins, Wrath is the most direct. The most violent. It also happens to be one of the few not focused on the self.

The defining characteristic of Wrath is its lack of control. Anger, while not an emotion we should strive for, is perfectly human and natural. Unavoidable, really. We get angry over all sorts of ridiculous things, from getting cut off in traffic to enduring bad TV. It’s how we respond to these events that changes things. That moves that anger from an emotion to an action.

I’ll admit, again, that I’m struggling a bit on this article. Not because I’m a generally chill guy and don’t relate to this one, but because the problems of Wrath are so self-evident. It’s a bit like trying to explain why it’s bad to steal – that thing isn’t yours, so you can’t take it. Well… lashing out at people is bad, don’t do it, mmkay?

Still, I suppose this hasn’t stopped the world from wallowing in Wrath. Generational warfare still permeates the Middle East. Gang wars continue more or less everywhere around the globe. And here in our little perceived empire of Western moralism, we’ve taken our Wrath to the digital space.

Sure, there are plenty of places we can look to see Wrath in action in the physical world in the West. Riots, shootings, domestic violence – you name it, people will do it. But, again, we see the Wrath in these. We understand their repugnance. No need to beat a dead horse there.

Have you been on Twitter lately? And by lately I mean in the past, what, five year? More? Has there ever been a cesspit of more self-righteous indignation and outright hatred? Pure anonymity, exemption from real consequence, and expose to all facets of human expression and experience has proved a prime cocktail for diving headlong into Wrath. There must be something cathartic about it, something that gives the impression we’re doing the “right thing” in spewing vitriol at one another to proved points and “own” the other side of whatever excuse of an argument we think we’re in.

But arguments are gone. Debate is gone. In good part because we lack a particular virtue – Patience. Patience is the perfect foil for Wrath and gives us an interesting insight into the problems of our discourse. Enduring a slight, forgiving it, showing mercy; these are all components of the virtue of Patience. How often do we see these things on social media? Or on media in general, these days? There a lot of forgiving going around lately? Do we see a lot of mercy over mistakes or people brushing off perceived slights?

Hell, no. We can barely talk to each other without stepping on broken glass to try and avoid one word that the other person will latch onto to fuel their indignation. We’re always on edge, looking for a slight that we can feed our Wrath. Because, in the end, it’s easier not to listen, not to give our opponents the benefit of humanity. After all, if they’re monsters it’s easy to direct our Wrath at them. No, not easy – it’s just. We get to turn our vice into a virtue and trick ourselves into believing we’re in the right.

Patience, then. Take a breath. Listen to one another. Try to understand instead of casting intent. Don’t assume. Forgive. With true Patience, we can build stable communities. Give people a place to go, to feel heard and loved. I promise, it will work wonders. There will always be evil out there, but we don’t have to assume it of others. We can endure those things, come together, and mourn them.

Be kind to one another out there, my friends. Pay it forward. I know it can be difficult and it’s easy to become jaded, but we can’t expect things to change for the better around us. We have to do our part, and as always, the only thing we can truly change is us.