Sunday, May 1, 2011

7 Deadly Sins for the Modern Age

1. Ignorance: This is the Age of Information.  In the modern day there is simply no excuse for being ignorant, for not trying to gain at least a basic level of understanding of the world around you.  We ought to be ashamed.

2. Indifference: Back in the time before the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, it might have been, if not okay, then at least understandable that people didn't realize that we are, as the song goes "In this Together".  Not today.  When America tries to pretend that poverty in the middle east and latin america doesn't effect us, we get drug wars and gang wars and terrorists.  When the rich try to pretend that poverty and hatred in the inner cities doesn't effect them, we get home invasions, rape, murder, and drive by shootings.  When multinationals force areas of the world to over-specialize we get shortages, famines, and a 10 year global financial crisis that shows no signs of ending soon.  We ought to be ashamed.

3. Conspicuous Consumption: It's not greed that's the problem, it's spending that largess on crap that you don't need when so many don't have enough, when so many are struggling to get by.  When you spend a thousand dollars on glass speakers for your computer when 100 dollar ones would do just fine.  When you take a taxi three blocks instead of walking.  When that six thousand dollar tin of caviar just isn't good enough.  We ought to be ashamed.

4. Blame: few things in life are as useless as the assigning of blame... which is why we spend so much of our time doing it.  It distracts from the fact that we, ourselves, individually and as a group, might have to shoulder some or all of the blame.  Heaven's forfend that we say "That's my fault.  I'll do better next time and I'll try to fix this mess." We ought to be ashamed.

5. Lack of Foresight: We're not children.  We understand the concept of consequences.  Yet disaster after disaster, mess after mess, time after time, we have proved that we are more than willing to say "Consequences are for tomorrow".  Well it has to stop.  We can't go on living only for today, assuming that tomorrow will somehow sort itself out. We ought to be ashamed.

6. Wastefulness: See above.  I've wasted enough words. We ought to be ashamed.

7. Worship of Celebrity: The Jewish and Christian Bibles decry the worship of false Idols for nebulous reasons.  What's wrong with saying your prayers to statues or paintings or what have you?  One theologian, C.S. Lewis in fact, said that it's because prayers should be said through the cross, not to it.  His argument was that the symbol blinds us to the reality.  Our modern obsession with the minute by minute lives of people famous for whatever reason is a sickness.  We, as a people, focus on these things as if they actually mattered, blinding ourselves to both our own spiritual growth and our cultural decay.  It is like a housewife who spends all her time watching her neighbors out the window, worry about their marriages and lawns and children, while her own house fills with trash and her children starve.  We ought to be ashamed.

(c) 2010, Jesse Grant

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