a bit of background on the sins

So, I've just started reading a book called Wicked Pleasures: Meditations on the Seven "Deadly" Sins by Robert C. Solomon. Robert writes the introduction, in which he basically finds our beloved sins to be "the very stuff of life, the hot, puffy, humiliating, pathetic, but essential ingredients in that human comedy..." as opposed to "humorless, self-righteous" virtues. Here are a few ideas I found interesting:

Aristotle's "Doctrine of the Mean" claims that vices are both excesses and deficiencies of a certain quality, so for every virtue there are two vices.

The difference between vice and sin is that vice is only vice to the extent that it manifests itself publicly, but with sins its the thought that counts - sin is of the soul first and foremost, and only secondarily of behavior.

Robert Solomon thinks that Nietzsche's "God is Dead" proclamation is in part to declare the banality of an all seeing god who is actually interested in all our silly sins. So I guess it's a good question to ask, living in a society that hovers between absolute godlessness and religious fanaticism - who cares about sins? and what do I really care about when looking at the sins? I think Catherine's direction of "survivalism" and poverty and suffering in the face of extravagance is an interesting one.

Here's something Solomon sites H.L. Mencken as saying: "What motivates our interest in sin is 'the worry that someone, somewhere might be having a good time.'"

And here's a bit about control and letting go of it, a tid bit to muse about when considering our lives as artists, Cath: "'Control yourself.' How much of the language of sin and vice reflects the need to control, the need to take control, a kind of hysteria, 'the control freak'? But where is the willingness to take a chance, to let ourselves go? Indeed the very phrase 'to let oneself go' is an accusation of vice, a suggestion of sloth and the implication of gluttony, greed, and however many other unnamed sins of omission and excess. Even our risks are tightly controlled, but 'letting ourselves go' is also the way to creativity, adventure and self-discovery."