A Modern Version of the Deadly Sins
How the old 7 sins are actually 4, and 2 very new ones.
We treat often treat the 7 sins as a medieval curiosity. They are not, yet could do with a modern update, because of new understandings. Many of these sins are being normalized, because, hey, that improves sales or wins voters. Revenge is good. Shopping is fun. Gluttony promoted by fast food. Taking care of me, numero uno essential. All these sins lead to destructive behavior towards the soul, others and the planet as a whole. So let’s take a look at this new list, of sins we should seek to avoid:
1. ANGER
All destructive inner fire from envy, jealousy, to aggressive hate. It is the burning ambition too, the obsession to beat the competition in love and work. The anger that leads to revenge, hate crimes, and sabotage. It’s all those aiming harmful anger at others or self to get what they want or hurt others because they couldn’t.
2. APATHY
The not doing anything, not seeing possibilities and therefore giving up and sinking into a state of bleak emptiness. The Zombies among us. The “only 7 years until pension” people. The Youtubers from dust till dawn. Those who willfully close their eyes and ears to calls for help. Those who have given up believing their lives and actions matter. It’s sloth, laziness and worse.
3. SELF-OBSESSION.
They all are parts of Ego-centrism, the ‘Me-Me-Me’ attitude. Big and bloated on the outside, very empty on the inside. An emptiness that one attempts to fill by stuffing yourself with all kinds of things. This is vanity, this is the serving of Self, from sex obsession, gluttony, shopping sprees, greed, to blind ambition, all at the cost of others, and often self too.
4. VICTIMHOOD.
Self-loathing, whining, self deprivation oblivious for all possibilities around. It’s the waiting for a mother to come and help, even when over 25. It’s the conviction the whole world revolves around you and where, you believe, the world has betrayed that sentiment. It’s crying to the moon at night, “Why meeee?” Often becoming manipulative towards others, because they should help or because you deserve to get some without changes for another ‘no’.
I feel the next two should be modern ages ones. When I realized these, they were a shocker to me.:
5. BLIND EMPLOYEESHIP
This is why Bill Hicks called upon marketers to kill themselves. “Befehl ist befehl” (Nazi jargon: Order is order). turned into “We don’t want to know, what we’re impacting.”-men. It means following orders that harm others from customers to natural life on our planet, because, hey, it’s your job. It’s lobbying for all the wrong causes, consciously lying to the public, producing, screwing and scamming people into buying crap, bad mortgages, poisonous medicines and or locking up those that seek to stop such awful practices.
If this is present, than unions should also fight this trait and or expectation of employees by management. Employees should have way more rights to refuse unethical assignments and targets. Because it hurts society and planet.
6. RATIONAL STRATEGISTS.
This is protecting interests and treating the world as a chess board. It may start out as ‘normal’ cleverness, but then turning soulless. This is calculating next moves being very cold and dead on the inside. It’s the disconnected decision making that will kill, maim, put people out of houses and jobs, because there is a logic or profit to it, or you just don’t care about others at all anymore. These are those that place facts and figures over humanity and wisdom. And to keep on doing this, they commit emotional suicide by totally replacing their body with a computer rationale.
This ‘sin’ is, sadly enough, actually trained in academic studies. ‘Keep a professional distance’. We can even become strategists and see the world as a chess board or dashboard. As if such frames do everyone justice. While I wouldn’t like my surgeon to freak out at the sight of blood, I think many, many other positions at the head of organizations and in politics should care way more for other people. Feel their connection to them. Understand that they do decide about lives, before profits and power.
NOTE: All of these archetypes in hell share disconnectedness from what is alive in the world. They all harm themselves and all life around them as a kind of wrong survival strategy that has eaten up their whole being. In a world where more and more people distrust companies, feel betrayed by them, these last two are what creates a lot of poison on our planet, from the banking crisis to oceans full of plastic and wars in the Middle East.
The first four can all be seen as self obsession. They all share a blindness towards others, for the interests or convictions of the self. They all are driven by emotion, even in the case of seemingly lack thereof. The last two fit heavily self justification. “Let’s role out a strategy that creates civil war in the that country, because that serves our interests best.” or “I know it’s wrong, but everybody is doing it, no?”
What’s the way out? Become alive! Be with others in this world. Question how you are impacting them. Stay curious. Wonder. Feel. Love. Help others. Develop compassion and empathy. Stay healthy, treat yourself and others with dignity and respect. And don’t think you’re the center of the universe. Place the well being of the whole in the middle. Help it to flourish. That will make you fly.
This is a shortened and re-edited version of this blog http://wayofthefool.blogspot.nl/2013/12/trip-into-hell-with-new-six-archetypes.html where the vision of these six came to me through a trance dance experience.
PS: Manish Jain, a great name in educational innovation offers a similar approach, with a different outcome here. http://shikshantar.org/articles/seven-deadly-sins-schooling?fbclid=IwAR1b4lHMpoF5xYzH7b9TQa7cBRulJMSjjjfYsBnXfwxitj-sHDxco54I1wM
