Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Ancient Wisdom versus Modern Nonsense

I will say one more thing about Elliot Rodger: you're not going to find out what was wrong with him, and what the cure is, through nonsense about "Alpha" and "Gamma" and "Omega" and other nonsense such as the "socio-sexual hierarchy."

I'll bet that the vast majority of the nitwits who babble about "Game" and "shit tests" and the rest of that silliness couldn't name the Seven Deadly Sins if their souls depended on it. Now how pathetic is that?

Clearly men in the past weren't eager to stuff life into silly little boxes. You might want to look at what the more thoughtful and intelligent discovered.

From Wikipedia:


"The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a classification of vices (part of Christian ethics) that has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin. In the currently recognized version, the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the objective.

"The Catholic Church divides sin into two categories: venial sins, in which guilt is relatively minor, and the more severe mortal sins. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a mortal or deadly sin is believed to destroy the life of grace and charity within a person and thus creates the threat of eternal damnation. 'Mortal sin' by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation.'

"According to Catholic moral thought, the seven deadly sins are not discrete from other sins, but are instead the origin ('capital' comes from the Latin caput, head) of the others. Vices can be either venial or mortal, depending on the situation, but 'are called 'capital' because they engender other sins, other vices'.

"Beginning in the early 14th century, the popularity of the seven deadly sins as a theme among European artists of the time eventually helped to ingrain them in many areas of Catholic culture and Catholic consciousness in general throughout the world. One means of such ingraining was the creation of the mnemonic acronym 'SALIGIA' based on the first letters in Latin of the seven deadly sins: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, acedia.

"In the Book of Proverbs 6:16-19, among the verses traditionally associated with King Solomon, it states that the Lord specifically regards 'six things the Lord hateth, and seven that are an abomination unto Him', namely:


A proud look
A lying tongue
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that devises wicked plots
Feet that are swift to run into mischief
A deceitful witness that uttereth lies
Him that soweth discord among brethren

"Another list, given this time by the Epistle to the Galatians (Galatians 5:19-21), includes more of the traditional seven sins, although the list is substantially longer: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 'and such like'. Since Saint Paul goes on to say that the persons who practice these sins 'shall not inherit the Kingdom of God', they are usually listed as (possible) mortal sins rather than capital vices.

"The modern Catholic Catechism lists the sins in Latin as "superbia, avaritia, invidia, ira, luxuria, gula, pigritia seu acedia", with an English translation of 'pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth/acedia'. Each of the seven deadly sins now also has an opposite among corresponding seven holy virtues (sometimes also referred to as the contrary virtues). In parallel order to the sins they oppose, the seven holy virtues are humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence.

"Lust, or lechery (carnal 'luxuria') is an intense desire. It is a general term for desire. Therefore lust could involve the intense desire of money, food, fame, power or sex.

"Gluttony/Excess

"Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony (Latin, gula) is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste.

"In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy.

"Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own interests above the well-being or interests of others.

"Greed

"Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, 'Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.' In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.

"Sloth

"Sloth (Latin, acedia) can entail different vices. While sloth is sometimes defined as physical laziness, spiritual laziness is emphasized. Failing to develop spiritually is key to becoming guilty of sloth. In the Christian faith, sloth rejects grace and God.

"Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do. By this definition, evil exists when good men fail to act.

"Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote in Present Discontents (II. 78) 'No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.'

"Over time, the 'acedia' in Pope Gregory's order has come to be closer in meaning to sloth. The focus came to be on the consequences of acedia rather than the cause, and so, by the 17th century, the exact deadly sin referred to was believed to be the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts. Even in Dante's time there were signs of this change; in his Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.

"Wrath

"Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as 'rage', may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. Wrath, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of anger can manifest in different ways, including impatience, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.

"Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest, although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy (closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as 'love of justice perverted to revenge and spite'. In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally as well as externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of hatred directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.

"Envy

"Like greed and lust, Envy (Latin, invidia) is characterized by an insatiable desire. Envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. The difference is the envious also desire the entity and covet it.

"Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, 'Neither shall you desire... anything that belongs to your neighbour.' Dante defined this as 'a desire to deprive other men of theirs'. In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as 'sorrow for another's good'.

"Pride

"In almost every list, pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris (Greek), is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as believing that one is essentially better than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was 'love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour'. In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their necks which force them to keep their heads bowed.

"Acedia

"Acedia (Latin, acedia) (from Greek ἀκηδία) is the neglect to take care of something that one should do. It is translated to apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is related to melancholy: acedia describes the behaviour and melancholy suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a willful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created; by contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in time of need.

"When Thomas Aquinas described acedia in his interpretation of the list, he described it as an uneasiness of the mind, being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. Some scholars have said that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.

"Vainglory

"Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his listing of sins.

"The Latin term gloria roughly means boasting, although its English cognate - glory - has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, vain roughly meant futile, but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, of irrelevant accuracy, that it retains today. As a result of these semantic changes, vainglory has become a rarely used word in itself, and is now commonly interpreted as referring to vanity (in its modern narcissistic sense).

4 comments:

Robert What? said...

There is little doubt in my mind that a little tutoring into the female psyche by an experienced, moral and empathetic man could have made a difference. As it was, he had no knowledge to counteract all the dreadful lies he was told - that all modern young men are told.

On a separate note, the MSM are flailing about trying to figure out how to spin this the way they want to. They would have been squealing with joy if he was a Tea Party or NRA member. But basically he was one of their own: narcissistic, entitled, andvfrom a family with impeccable Hollywood liberal bonafides.

Unknown said...

His father failed, his mother failed, his stepmother failed.

I lived in that area when I was 18 and even worked in Isla Vista. The area is a bit too hedonistic.

And you're right: everyone is failing around trying to blame it on guns, whatever. But the culture he was in?

In high school we had a kid who was half-white and half-Korean (and one Korean and one Chinese) and no one thought a thing about it and everyone accepted them as friends.

This kid didn't have that luxury of being middle-class.

Robert What? said...

I know people of the sort that live in those areas: more self-absorbed, entitled, pitiless people you will not meet. Regrettably, these are also the sorts that are currently running our country.

This is neither here nor there, but the hypothesis that some are putting forward that he was a closeted homosexual does make some sense considering his looks mannerisms and penchant for drama.

TroperA said...

I love how people declare the Bible (and other ancient writings perceived of as sexist or racist) as "Iron Age Fairy Tales Written By Shepherds" or something like that. The truth is, it's OUR world that's the Fairy Tale. We're the ones who fly through the air in magical iron birds, and have everything we'd ever want to eat or drink delivered to us by magical wheeled carts, and can see entertainment on demand or have our bodies cooled/warmed by magically powered machines. How close to Nature and Reality is such a lifestyle? Not very. Our technology has mitigated the results of our terrible decisions and let us get away with things our ancestors never could have gotten away with. When ancient people spoke and wrote down things, they knew Reality would hold them to account for their actions,--an unplanned pregnancy, an STD, a harshly spoken word to a violent man, a miserable, shrewish spouse, a barren womb,--all of these things had real world consequences and could easily result in death, starvation, ruin, or a lonely and solitary old age.

But life is good now and people are happier than ever----as long as the technology holds up and the fiat currency keeps flowing. But if something interferes with the economy and the food and entitlements are cut off.....