Blog: Pool's getting Greedy
"The 7 Deadly Sins never go out of fashion. Lust, Greed, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth and Pride all have their pleasures. But they’re fleeting, and when regularly indulged they can take their toll, on you and on others.
I wanted to explore these Sins in robust discussions on The Spirit of Things, because they are so relevant but we hide from them. We like to blame the economic crash, for instance, on Greed. Someone’s else’s.
How much are we prepared to acknowledge our own Greed? How much do all the 7 Deadly Sins play a role in our lives that we are not prepared to acknowledge?
Have we turned some of them, like Gluttony and Anger, into ‘clinical syndromes’ and removed our own will from the equation? Do we medicate them instead of meditate on them?
I’ve chosen the two pieces on Lust, one by Cameron Semmens and the other by Kerry Ashwin, because they represent two entirely different takes on it. Semmens revels in it, while Ashwin is drawn into it, but then re-directs it. Ashwin’s 5 part story, Dancing on the Edge, is a perfect illustration of Bettina Arndt’s main argument in The Sex Diaries, which she expressed eloquently on The Spirit of Things program on Lust.
I hope The 7 Deadly Sins prompts a lot of creative ways of reflecting on the morality of our lives, our behaviour, our values, our sense of responsibility for ourselves and for others.
The virtue of the 7 Deadly Sins is that they are personal, and should provoke a more real and ‘here and now’ kind of reflection, rather than the usual screeds of blame we read in the papers, where it’s always someone else’s responsibility. Let’s get personal about it!"
So either tune in this Sunday at 6.05pm or listen online to hear what an economist, a Biblical scholar, a feminist theologian and the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund have to say about Greed, and share your creative contributions here in Pool.
Related blog post: When is enough Lust too much?
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Image above by Kaptain Kobold licensed CC-BY-NC-SA
