deadly sins

I refer today to an old favourite of mine, PJ O’Rourke, and a little piece he wrote recently: Seven New Deadly Sins.

I spent an awfully large proportion of my early 20s with my nose buried in one or more of his books, mostly when I couldn’t stomach more Hunter S Thompson. PJ, if you don’t know his work, is usually classified as a “humourist” on the grounds that he clearly can’t be taken seriously but doesn’t actually make you laugh.

An occasional smirk does not a full-blown comic make.

Anyway, his article is a humorous (there’s that word again) riposte to the Vatican’s recent addition of 7 new deadly sins. The Vatican’s version goes like this:

1. Drug abuse
2. Morally debatable experimentation
3. Environmental pollution
4. Causing poverty
5. Social inequality and injustice
6. Genetic manipulation
7. Accumulating excessive wealth

Now, I agree, they’re pretty iffy. As an aside, if there are any catholic dog breeders out there: watch out! According to rule 6 those labradoodles will send you to hell.

PJ O’rourke’s version goes like this:

1.  Celebrity. This is far and away the besetting sin of the 21st century. Note that the root of the word is “celebrate.” What evil, pentagram-enclosed, goat-heinie-kissing ceremony are we celebrating with Kevin Federline?

2.  Communication. In former days just Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and only one time at that. Now everybody’s a know-it-all 24/7 thanks to Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, email, cell phones, text messages, and so on. A cherubim with a flaming sword is expelling us from the office cubicle of Eden, or would be if he could tear us away from the Internet. (And you, young man in the reading audience, take those ear buds out when your elders are addressing you!)

3.  Youth. Talk about worshiping false gods; why would anyone pray–or pay!–for youthfulness? The young are spotty, sweaty, chowder-headed, and woefully lacking in wisdom, experience, or control over anything, especially themselves. Yet we bear witness to the eternally babyish baby boom. Men in their sixties are on Harleys and snowboards and basketball courts, from which they will proceed to damnation by way of the emergency room. The women go to and fro in the earth, mutton dressed as lamb, with liposuction well-applied to tummy, butt, and brain. And they all come to Mass, when at all, in shorts, T-shirts, and shower flip-flops.

4.  Authenticity. Please do your best to be someone better than who you truly are. Deep down inside we’re ravening beasts. This is the meaning of original sin. Everyone’s authentic self is horrid. God’s message to man has always been, “You can’t really be good, but you can fake it. Really.”

5.  Caring. This takes so much time and effort that it necessarily results in the opposite of doing something. And notice that when someone says, “I care about the war in Iraq,” he almost always means, “I want to lose it.” Also there’s a bullying logic among those who care. I care more about diddledydum than you do. Therefore I’m a better person than you are. Because I’m a better person than you are, I have the right to order you around. And vote for Hillary on November 4th.

6.  Opinion. It’s the reverse of fact. Listen to NPR or AM Talk Radio if you don’t believe me, or, better yet, read the opinion page of the New York Times. Some people have facts, these can be proven. Some people have theories, these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it. The 11th Commandment is, “Thou shalt not blog.”

7.  To Spend More Time With the Family. Alas, I couldn’t get this into a single descriptive term, but it might as well be all one word. And when people say it we know that they’ve been doing something at least as bad as the former governor of New Jersey, his wife, their chauffeur, and Eliot Spitzer in a hot tub together. “We need to move on,” is a similar phrase but with the implication of, “And I won’t quit doing it until I’m actually behind bars.”

I’d add just one more:

8. Neo-conservatism: Thinking that because you have sloughed off whatever ideals you may have had as a youngster in favour of blind faith in the market that you somehow understand the world better than anyone else. It inevitably leads to feeble satire, war and economic meltdown.

Running
No running today. One of those horrid days when the emails come in faster than you can answer them, mostly with increasingly shrill demands to “action” something. I usually refuse to do anything until they can rephrase their requests in grammatical English.

For you information: one does not “action something”. One may, if one sees fit, “take action” on something.

Also, while I’m at it, you may wish to share a lesson you’ve learnt, but you can’t share a “learning”. Anyone who uses the word “learning” or, god forbid, “learnings” in my presence or in print I immediately file under “sloping forehead”, “ingrate” or “Mount Gambier”.

It’s nice to be able to make in-breeding jokes without reference to Tasmania!