deduction of sin ; pride, greed, & envy
there is something equally beautiful as averse about the structure of discerning evil from good; of knowing where you must avoid human error. as an agnostic, this is the beauty of the concept of sin. yet always, the messy how will follow; just how can you avoid what is essentially nature’s design? there is something to take away from an assessment of a handful of ancient religious sins from a modern agnostic lens. there are many ‘sins’ considered so throughout all religious history, but this article will be solely focusing on the catholic and orthodox christian idea of the seven deadly sins, more specifically the three of them listed in the title: pride, greed, and envy. it’s these three that were chosen from the seven as they seem to hold a much more intimate and applicable relevance to our current society.
image by François-Marie Balanant (1862-1930)
formally originating from the roman catholic church, the latin language gave the earliest written definition to the conception of the ‘seven deadly sins’, and what we now typically think of them as: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. earliest ideas of the then eight ‘capital vices’ were developed in early christian monasticism teachings by various monks and the more notable ‘desert fathers’ during 4th century Egypt. after the original, unrefined ideas had been brought into the roman empire sometime during the 6th century, the cardinal sins were then formally articulated and established in the church by ‘saint gregory the great’, the sixty-forth bishop in rome. he is also the man responsible for the ‘Gregorian mission’, in which he seeked to convert the majority of pagan Anglo-Saxons into christianity. his ideas of the more discerning and enlightened cardinal sins spread around europe with his successful ‘reign’ in the church, becoming crucial to the foundation of Christianity. he revised what was then eight (and had been originally nine) deadly sins to the seven we are familiar with now, with of course a few more specifications in latin translation; the official language of the roman catholic church continues to be latin, more specifically Ecclesiastical Latin.
to read a more detailed and skillful account on the historical context of the seven deadly sins, i highly recommend this article by new world encyclopedia:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Seven_Deadly_Sins.
are you prideful? are you greedy? are you envious?
of course!
but how do you help it?
do these traits really own you, even if you are not religious?
pride: pride can be seen as a direct act against humility. pride, in regards to the pride in or of oneself, refers more specifically to self-regard, which instills a sense of self-inflation; a prideful person may believe they have the complete, unfiltered right to prioritize their desires and opinions over others’ because of their self-importance and unique beliefs. to be too proud of oneself is to create a field between reality and all else from oneself. in this way, pride leads to vanity and selfishness, and this is why it is considered one of the worst sins — it is a sin which indirectly leads you to more sin. arguably so, pride is the most prevalent of all ‘sins’ in the modern world. it manifests in our individualistic tendencies, and threatens to isolate us from community, with social media as a primary example. most of us are driven by self-pleasure and self-pursuit online — here we are anonymous, unchained to groups and physical societal labelling. there is an incredible divided animosity in any and all online controversy, which smart posts set out to dictate. we see each individual at their own self-defense, and it is almost a modern-day gladiator, though even more horrifyingly, we are growing completely desensitized to this bizarre behavior. we create our own labels online, and we feel pressure to prove our uniqueness in society. i believe it is precisely this drive to prove our novelty to humanity which makes us all selfish and vain in a grander sense; it counts to look different, to sound different, to deviate from all normality. for many on social media, it is also their livelihood. humanity may float through a sea of faces each day, and each of us wants to be the one who stands out, and has what it takes to hold the attention of an audience. it is this inflated sense of self, and individualist endeavor which has raptured our society today, and which i believe is comparable to what christianity tells us of pride.
long-term, this will lead us into indifference, or sloth. we will become unaware of rawness and true singularity. how do we avoid this? social media is inevitable. this is the new map of our reality, and it’s unshakable, but i believe that if we give into pride, we will only find ourselves more isolated and lost in the wave of “finding ourselves”. much of this is good; individuality, experimentation, healthy division. but our extremist tendencies are also in full-swing, rather constantly. do not appease the thought that you must prove your superiority and capability outwardly. at the end of the day, you then become part of the countless others who also believe and perform for this same thought; it is mindless. at some point, i do believe there will be a turn-around to reframing communities. in the mean-time, don’t lose your head. my preferred recommendation to someone who is struggling with feeling too self-absorbed and vain is: desensitize yourself to yourself. become familiar with yourself in all ways. be vulnerable, not just in front of an audience; be gross, be naked, be overindulgent. act as if you don’t know what you like, and allow yourself to try everything. remove yourself from the pedestal of greatness you have subconsciously created. remember you are just like everyone else, and that you owe it to yourself to feel connection to your body and your mind, not just the version that you want people to see. this peace with yourself will allow you to be with others again in a more authentic way. in short, seek to attain neutrality; this will greatly appease the affliction of trying to relate everything to your own biased opinions.
greed: greed is an interesting one, for i would re-phrase it now as ‘desire’ in it’s broadest context, for to be greedy is to have excessive want; to have uncontrolled desire. desire, at a philosophical stand-point, is my all-time favourite word in the english language, for it’s many inexplicable categorical definitions. greed is tied closely to gluttony, though indirectly. gluttony more explicitly has to do with overindulgence, and not necessarily the metaphorical kind. greed is hunger that cannot be satiated. in a world with everything, how is it we all still must deal with unfulfillment? we continue to want despite our best interests, and the pursuit for more overshadows any sense of appreciation for what you possess in the moment. we are always unsatisfied, even when we notice this. we are always trying, becoming frustrated, searching again, and sometimes we have it for a moment, find fullness, but then we are released back into desire’s void before we can realize it. depending on how you look at it, greed is the human condition. it’s a Sisyphean prison. and so how must one defeat their greed? by doing just what albert camus said, “imagine sisyphus happy”. greed is an imbalance; it is an endless process. when you have reached the top of maslow’s hierarchy, where do you go? i believe the answer has to lie somewhere in self-authorization. you must believe in directing your ambitions and requirements, with ever-changing adjustment. perhaps everyone in the world has felt the gut-wrenching awareness that they are discontent, despite themselves; despite the life they have forged, the changes they’ve made, the challenges they have faced, their achievements which have let them taste everything they thought they wanted—you are suddenly left in a silence which absolutely eats away at you, and that is greed.
at the end of the day, we are in-stilled with insatiability, each of us with the desire for more dopamine, more experiences, more money, more love, more time. but the question still begs an answer; how do you stop giving in to greed? because the problem is giving in. it is believing that because you want more, you should have more. that because there feels like there’s something missing, you must go out searching for it, leaving behind what you have now in the path of greed. use greed as a signal to assess your life, yourself, your surroundings, and your core sources of fulfillment, not as the signal to start the search again. greed is almost like boredom. you cannot constantly be entertained, or else you will not allow yourself to experience the sheer wealth and teachings of boredom. the wealth of greed is that you have everything; seeking more is not fundamentally bad, but to be constantly unnecessarily filling the void, you are engaging in an act of futility.
envy: envy is the viscous discontentment one experiences after having been made aware of others’ lusted-after possessions, their characters, and achievements, and comparing such to our own. those who are in possession of what you desire become the subject of much resentment and obsession. envy undermines values such as gratitude and love for others, and can lead you into frustration and internal anger, trapping you in the cycle of thinking only of what you don’t have rather than what you do already. it’s envy that inversely causes greed; the more envious and conspiring you become of seeking other foreign possessions, and the more you succeed in your envy by obtaining these possessions (if ever you do), the more inspired you will feel to continue wanting for the brief moment of satisfaction, searching and chasing forever after momentary completion before finding something new which you lack. comparison is universal in all of humanity, but the process of acting on envious feelings is what allows for theft, major conflict and war, and self-disdain. envy spurs a kind of extreme inferiority-superiority complex, where because of the intensity of constant comparison, you are subconsciously undermining yourself, but in order to stop yourself from believing you are truly worse-off and falling into self-pitying behaviors, you protect yourself with a superiority complex; feeding your ego by lying to yourself.
envy and comparison exists just as manifestly in the real world as it always has, but the real danger is envious behaviors online. the way in which you can manifestly live a less envious life is in your rejection of superiority, and beginning a journey toward neutralizing your opinion of material possessions and particular people; maintain a sense of regularity in how you view humanity, resisting the urge to place a person on a pedestal because of their inherent “greater” differences to you. accept that envy can be a useful tool in pin-pointing areas in your life which you feel are lacking or that you aspire to, but do not feed into the feeling of disappointment which is created due to your lack-there-of, despite self-pity being an easy option. take these feelings of inspired-ness and compile the ideas for safe-keeping, not attributing them necessarily to a person, but into a far more pragmatic and systematic approach to goals and future ownings. this will help you reframe your ideas around materialistic superiority and allow you to separate person from achievements. stay realistic and present in your life, and take interest in your own life if comparison looms. by taking interest in your life, your priorities are sure to shift from feelings of disappointment and longing to feelings of curiosity and desire; go after what you aspire for because you seek it with self-pursuit in mind, not because you actively are choosing another person’s life over your own.
