Greed Revisited
Sin: I think we can all benefit from thinking about sin, even if we don't believe in a supreme being, even if we don't accept notions of divine punishment, of heaven and hell. The concept of sin is usually thought to be a religious concept, the deliberate violation of the will of God. I want to think of sin without religious references, with regard to a broader definition. I want to examine sin in the sense of personal failure, of the harm we can do to ourselves. In this sense, sin will still include violation of rules but not necessarily rules imposed by religion. I want to examine sin as violation of rules of good conduct, violation of rules which are designed to make our lives better. Of course sin will often include harm to others but I urge that the harm we do to others by our conduct is usually exceeded by the harm we do to ourselves.
We all know the seven deadly sins: If not religious, we know the popular songs or pop groups referring to the deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are pride, avarice, luxury, envy, appetite, anger and sloth. The list of seven deadly sins is a good list of things to avoid if we want to be happier and lead better lives. We don't need to be religious to see the value in not hurting ourselves and others. So I've decided occasionally to write about these sins and also, in contrast, about the classic virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, faith, hope and love.
I've been reading about greed, or avarice, again. Phyllis A. Tickle has written Greed, another in the series of volumes stemming from a New York Public Library lecture series. Pickle provides the best summary I've seen of the relation of the secular and the religious to our consideration of sin. I also found a 1962 book on The Seven Deadly Sins, edited by Ian Fleming, wherein various well-known authors discuss the sins. These books provided a lot of food for thought. Greed is the insatiable demand for possessions for the sake of possessing and, in its worst forms, it excludes all virtue. The love of possessing displaces all possibility of love for one's fellow human beings, all possibility of sharing, even all possibility of rewarding others justly.
Following the classic view of the sins, I'd always thought that the primary sin was pride. Pickle teaches that greed is the primary sin because it leads to so many other sins. Anger, lust and other sins and vices follow from greed. She also notes that St. Paul considered avarice the root of all evil. We all know the old saw "you can't take it with you", meaning that your possessions can't follow you into death. The greedy seem to assume that this is incorrect, that possessing will solve all problems, even unto death. The Fleming volume illustrates the sin of greed with a story of a man who eventually dies because of his greed, because he refused to pay for the simplest of protections for himself and his family.
Revisiting greed has made me think of my hobby of collecting. Am I fooling myself when I think that collecting, the joy of accumulating and organizing various things, is different from greed? I comfort myself with the thought that collecting at least has its virtuous elements, education of myself and others, development of a sense of order, encouraging a love of beauty among them. But it's pretty clearly a close question.
In any event, we know that generosity is the best cure for the sin of greed. As I always argue, if we try to help others, if we're willing to share our possessions with others, if we think of others, we'll be behaving virtuously. Even if we fail to help others, we'll feel better about ourselves for making the effort.
12-6-04
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