Seven Deadly Sins Meditations: Part VI: Sloth

[kimberlysteele]

Modern people in the so-called First World are absolutely beset with Sloth.  We are physically, emotionally, and mentally lazy.  Take me, for instance.  Here I am, drinking my cup of tea.  I didn't flap my arms and fly to India to grow it and pick it.  I certainly didn't gather the water from the nearby river (frozen at the moment) and I didn't build the filter that made the water potable.  I didn't build the stove that boiled the water.  I didn't mold or fire the pottery that brewed it.  I did almost nothing to make my beautiful cup of English Breakfast.  When I deposit what's left of my tea back into the ecosystem, I won't be doing it into a cold, self-constructed outhouse.  No, I'll be doing that business in the toilet in my petroleum-heated home, full of rooms I did not build.

The Lazy Man's Load

The above example is meant to illustrate just how much most of us take for granted.  It's a rare soul who can deal with how much privilege we have nowadays by the simple virtue being born into this era.  For those who call themselves Social Justice Warriors, any attention brought to the mundane luxuries of middle class life tends to trigger violent and extraordinary dissonance.  "Not me!" They cry, grasping desperately at their victim card, eager to play another round of Who Is The Most Oppressed?  Ridden by anxiety, the Social Justice crowd would rather spend their lives mired in depression and prolonged mental breakdown than go deep and potentially skewer their precious egos in the process.  For as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  

Back when I was a kid and I didn't want to practice the piano, I would distract myself with every form of demoralizing nonsense.  I would run into many brick walls: not being able to sightread with proficiency, difficulty concentrating, boredom with repeating a passage I needed to learn, and that would stop me from practicing because it was pointless.  I was never going to be smart enough, coordinated enough, or graceful enough, and since I couldn't win I got distracted with doing other things I had a chance of being better at.  Because I remember my own state well, I make a special point of combatting this form of demoralization with my music students.  I tell them they just have to practice and that they must learn to ignore those feelings of not being good enough or talented enough. 

I say, "You must stop weaponizing your own insecurities and aiming them back in your own direction." 

Once those insecurities have been set aside, no matter how compelling they seem, you have to sit down and get to work.  Yes, there is a twelve year old who can play the piano better than you can.  To top that, there is a six year old who plays better than the twelve year old, and that has not stopped the twelve year old.

In short, don't work so hard at creatively sabotaging yourself or making excuses why you cannot practice.  Practice, even if it isn't the best quality practice or you can't manage the sonata the six year old mastered in a week.   

Enablers

The saddest thing I have ever seen was an adult child getting out of the car with his mom after a trip to the grocery store.  The grocery bag spilled.  The twenty-something son, who suffered a mental disorder (or several of them) but was physically healthy and robust, stepped over the upturned bag and went into the house.  His mother was left to pick up the groceries and schlep the rest of the cargo into the house on her own.  

There's a woman I know, now elderly, who has come home for forty years to a husband who has never had a full time job and lives on the couch, drinking beer.  She runs a business that puts a roof over his head and pays for their family to exist.  She says of her slovenly mate, "I love him, so what can you do?"

I know a man whose wife inherited a small fortune: approximately a hundred thousand dollars in money and possessions.  She has not worked since her marriage and subsequent inheritance in the early 2000s.  Though he is the breadwinner and works sixty plus hour weeks, she does not pick up the slack by cooking, cleaning, gardening, or running a business out of the house.  She has already spent her inheritance several times over and has a raging shopping addiction.  To this day, she still doesn't lift a finger around their overlarge, McMansion-size house. 

Lazy people don't think of themselves as lazy.  The lazy person will often complain about how rough they have it and often they are tortured by mental illness and depression.  Look closely at the ones who seem content and in stark relief you will witness how they numb themselves with endless hours in front of the television and with compulsive spending.  Examine them and you will find their hoard, their inability to let go of mental and physical junk, and their insecurity.  Underneath their laziness, they are terrified.  

Zombie Like Me

Zombies represent a couple of phenomena in our culture.  The first is the Shadow.  Zombies are classic shadow projection for us humans as a species.  For one, zombies are dumb.  They are ruled by instinct and base urges.  They are incapable of working together on purpose: look at any zombie horde in a film and you will see they have no organizational skills.  Zombies are also cannibals who ruin every place they occupy and destroy every living thing in their path.  Propagandists can Ted Talk all they want about the glorious potentials of the human mind: we all know people are zombies at heart.  There is no Star Trek future because we couldn't get along for enough time to settle another planet even if we could survive the radiation or the relentless cold of outer space.  

That's what makes the I Believe In Science group such a farce.  The proud scientist with a cushy job (the kind that has health insurance and paid vacations) who obediently wears a mask to lower the transmission possibilities of a flu with 99 percent survival rate is not smart.  Instead, she is superstitious.  How many comfortably numb scientists, those without the backbone to stand up to a soft mandate, would act nobly under harsher circumstances?  The Siberian gulags reduced normal people to their worst in a few weeks.   In a few short, brutal strokes, the comfortable scientist is easily transformed into a slavering zombie.

In the Jordan Peele film Us, zombies are portrayed as doppelgangers: dumb, menacing mirror image stalkers who menace their living counterparts shortly before death.  Though the zombies of Us were mostly non-verbal, the one who did feature a voice explained enough to reveal a healthy dash of privileged guilt.  I believe the zombies in the film Us represent the families in the euphemistically termed "developing nations" who make the stuff that keeps the affluent Western salary class up and running.  For all of the bellowing we hear from the fortunate about equality, there are always those telltale Made In China tags that speak of hideous alternate realities where Uyghur slaves are worked quite literally to death.  If they cared as much as they claim to care, how could they let such a thing happen?  Aren't these the same people who claim that if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention?  If we judge them by their actions and not their words, it would follow they must not be paying attention...

Martyrdom: The Opposite of Sloth

There is an old Iranian tale about a sculptor who saw a beautiful woman passing by in a caravan.  He fell in love with her at first sight.  Utilizing all his skill and resources, he bankrupted himself and built a palace for her in the desert with every luxury.  He built the place thinking that she would see it and fall in love with him an live happily ever after.  When they met again, the girl rejected his efforts.  Despondent, he threw himself from the highest tower in his desert palace.  

Martyrs don't always die for good causes and the Iranian sculptor in the myth above is one of those martyrs.  The Bible wisely describes this form of pathology "pearls before swine" and cautions any talented, motivated people who would waste themselves on lost causes.  The three enablers of my previous paragraphs would do well to ask themselves hard questions, such as what caused them to get involved with a Sloth in a co-dependent relationship and how much it would cost them to get out.

Martyrdom doesn't always help the people it is ostensibly for: a classic example is battle-prone parents who stay together "for the children".  

Diligence

Diligence is the recognition and observation of limits. "Diligence" is far too simple a term for the balancing point between Sloth and Martyrdom, so if you can suggest a more subtle word or phrase, I'm all in. 

Gratitude, as per usual, comes to the rescue as the condition of Sloth as well as Martyrdom are marked by a lack of gratitude.  For the Sloth, their ungratefulness creates a petulant expectation that the world owes them a living.  Correcting slothfulness involves lucid assessment of one's own limits: for instance, admitting I am gifted but lazy was the first step to developing better practice habits as a musician.  If you cannot calmly walk through your own negative behavior because you're either too afraid to look at it or in complete denial it exists, you won't be able to correct it.

For the Martyr, there is a single-minded compulsion to overwork for work's sake, and there is an absence of appreciation for the here and now because the future they are working for is always more important than the present.  I once watched a documentary about awful working conditions for Chinese factory workers.  In one factory, these workers -- entirely women -- sewed cheap clothing all day in fourteen hour shifts.  Conditions were horrible.  During her interview, one of the young women spoke about how she put up with the relentless abuse and horrors. She survived by thinking of her brother, to whom her pittance was going to in order for him to continue his studies.  She spoke of him as if she was the lowly disciple and he was the Savior.  It was obscene.  She unquestionably accepted her suffering in an act of Sartrean bad faith, immolating herself on the pyre of Chinese filial piety.  

Diligence is the acknowledgement of privilege as well as the acknowledgement of one's own shortcomings and the resolution to do the thing.  Diligence rejects "should" and it rejects demoralization.  Diligence does not play mind games of avoidance.  Diligence does not greedily presume exact results.  Diligence can act as a retreat from limits in the case of correcting martyrdom or a pushing of limits in the case of correcting sloth.  Both paths wrangle thoughtstoppers and prevent a slide into futile directions, dredging the muck from the subconsciousness and watching it wriggle and squirm in the light of day.  Now, off to practice the piano...

 

 

 

 

Comments

[causticus]

Oh lordy...as a person afflicted with lifelong chronic laziness when it comes to the material world, this blog hit about 50 nerves. (I don't say this as a bad thing btw). I have three natal planets in Cancer and Mars parked in Libra. Much of my life has felt like an attempt to swim through molasses.

The realization that I'm supremely-privileged on the material end of thing, coupled with the fact I feel completely helpless in understanding much of the material environment, especially regarding the inner workings of the countless gizmos and massive/intractable techno-infrastructure I'm so dependent on for my daily existence, is quite a scary reality for me to contend with each and every day.

Shifting gears a bit...

That's what makes the I Believe In Science group such a farce. The proud scientist with a cushy job (the kind that has health insurance and paid vacations) who obediently wears a mask to lower the transmission possibilities of a flu with 99 percent survival rate is not smart. Instead, she is superstitious. How many comfortably numb scientists, those without the backbone to stand up to a soft mandate, would act nobly under harsher circumstances? The Siberian gulags reduced normal people to their worst in a few weeks. In a few short, brutal strokes, the comfortable scientist is easily transformed into a slavering zombie.

They're very diligent and hard-working when it comes to their everyday mundane job tasks, but I do believe they are selected for intellectual laziness; I'll attempt to explain. I would actually classify most "scientists" in this current era as glorified technicians and engineers; using the vocabulary of traditional civilizations they would be high-level Artisans, as far as their skills and inclinations go. Today, as opposed to being creative and enterprising minds, the vast majority of Science Professionals simply spend several year of advanced-credential university education learning by rote a set of complex technical theories, instructions, and procedures that people way smarter and more interesting than them devised decades or centuries ago. Then they apply that knowledge to what is in reality a repetitive and non-creative technical job. The higher status 'Science Professionals' are also PMC functionaries; essentially Artisan-Scribe hybrids. We can say something similar about Medical Doctors, many of whom I find (there are notable exceptions) to be some of the most pompous and self-entitled members of the PMC gaggle. By this, many science and medical professionals are indeed superstitious; I think largely because their professions are rigged in a way to keep them from understanding their respective disciplines in any sort of big-picture or holistic way, and thus these high-paid, high-status lemmings make the perfect order-followers and minions of those higher up the PMC food chain. So yeah, I'd say that the laziness here is the sort of intellectual laziness that these professions do a good job at selecting for in prospective candidates.

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks for your great comment, laughingsage! My natal Mercury is similarly conflicted. In my case, I always take the difficult road even when the easy one shouts "COME ON DOWN!"

Today, as opposed to being creative and enterprising minds, the vast majority of Science Professionals simply spend several year of advanced-credential university education learning by rote a set of complex technical theories, instructions, and procedures that people way smarter and more interesting than them devised decades or centuries ago.

My husband and I label that sort of PMC Artisan-Scribe approach as Mouse Find Cheese. They are the backbone of suburban existence where I am from. They make excellent, compliant Nazis.

I am thinking about writing an essay about the disgusting shambles modern medicine has become. I didn't think much of it before the Nothingburger Flu. Nowadays, it is an order of magnitude worse.

[causticus]

The utter evil and stupidity of modern medicine today has been the #1 topic on my mind as of late.

The Artisan-Scribe quislings do make the perfect good little doobies in the diabolical machine, don't they? They're the kind of people who will do anything for social status and material goodies, no matter what the broader societal consequences are. Ignoring the big picture and things in general outside their vapid little social circles is nothing but beneficial for their own sense of well-being.

[kimberlysteele]

I forgot what documentary stated "We're not living longer, we're dying longer." I'm quite surprised most doctors these days don't spontaneously combust as they read the Hippocratic Oath, because the very last thing they are concerned about is doing no harm.

Have you noticed that when people are wearing masks, they look like they are doing nurse/doctor cosplay? Wearing a mask is more symbolic than practical, and the mask is like wearing the colors of Team Big Medicine/Pharma. Those who wear them assume honorary medical degrees that give them the perceived right to accuse random maskless strangers of "literally killing grandma". The vaccines they laud as panaceas are RNA hijackers that permanently alter immune response, meaning once you take it, there is no going back. People are dying, and those who don't are getting Bell's palsy, miscarrying, breaking out in severe rash, fever, etc. all for a Deep State psyop that's designed to bring a Great Luxury Communist Reset, which like communism in general works in theory, not in practice.

[causticus]

Indeed it's all so grotesque and I imagine so many of us who know what's up can't believe we're watching this unfold right before our eyes. The plandemic psy-op would have been the basis of a dystopian sci-fi plot not long ago, but now it's reality.

Right now I'm stuck in a heavily s--lib, PMC area, and everyone I see in the stores I have go to dutifully wears the stupid masks without question. Yes I imagine that worship Tony Fauxi and other corrupt merchant-doctor grifters like him (the idiot boomers in my family worship him, lolol). One time in the supermarket, maybe a month ago, some obese PMC boomer guy walks past me in one of the aisles and very faintly mutters under his breath in a very weaselly tone, "you're not wearing your mask tight enough"....I instantly picked up on it and was ready to step up and unload on him and maybe put the fear of the gods into him, but he was already down another aisle and I had no intention of chasing him down just for the self-satisfaction of taunting the fat coward. (Yes, I think most of these PMC types are total cowards and do everything possible to avoid direct confrontation).

The Mask Cult is the ultimate holiness-signaling enterprise for those who are in no danger of missing next month's mortgage or rent payment. "I f--ing love science!" is now one of the main mantras of the comfortable classes, though of course these unthinking drones never actually contemplate what the word science means; instead, by default it means whatever 'sciency TV personality' say is the 'correct' science of the day. And of course what is 'correct science' is always subject to change at any day, any time, in any place, for whatever reason the deep state science priests (errrmm...'experts') say (often they give no reason at all).

I think JMG has pointed this out a few times: that to understand the modern medical establishment all we have to do is look at the symbols they use. The Big Med cartel uses the staff of Hermes (the one with two snakes coiled around the staff), and of course we know Hermes is the god of merchants, among his many other functions. A medical practice truly devoted to healing might employ the single-snaked road of Asclepius, the god of healing. We'll never know if this unfortunate choice of symbolism was originally done as an ignorant mistake, or something deliberate an sinister in nature; who knows, though I'd say the former is more likely, as modern westerners tend to be illiterate on all-things-esoteric. Anyway this is why I call the vast majority of medical doctors today, 'Merchant Doctors'.

So yeah, the world had gone mad. And has gone mad even more. And more. If we thought 2020 was total Clown World, 2021 is now like, "hold my beer!"

Rigged

[(Anonymous)]

How are scientists and doctors profession “rigged in a way way to keep them from understanding their respective disciplines in any sort of big-picture or holistic way”

Thanks

Re: Rigged

[kimberlysteele]

Scientists are laughed at if they don't toe the line and dismiss any and all occult phenomena, for instance ghosts. 75% of people say they've either seen or felt a ghost but since ghosts can't be scientifically proven via current methods, it all gets thrown in the trash. So that's not seeing the whole at all.

Doctors are persecuted if they give any medical advice that is "woo", like recommending dietary change, aromatherapy, and reiki instead of surgery and chemo for a cancerous tumor. Should a doctor have their pants sued off if they recommend alternative "woo" treatments? I don't think so -- personally, I think it should depend on what is right for a specific patient.

Re: Rigged

[causticus]

By keeping these professions ruled by dogmatic materialist assumptions of reality, there's no holistic understanding of how natural systems and living beings actually function. I'd be curious to know of a single PharmaMedCartel-certified MD who openly acknowledges the existence of the vital body (i.e. etheric body, qi/ki body, ect.), much less other psycho-spiritual phenomena which animates the human meat puppet body. Instead, everything is reduced to a strictly mechanistic material understanding.

Re: Rigged

[methylethyl]

Even in the purely-material realm, doctors' education includes *maybe* one week, total, of instruction in diet and nutrition.

This makes no sense at all in the US, where probably more than half of our expensive chronic diseases are either caused by poor diet, or greatly worsened by it.

Re: Rigged

[causticus]

Proper dietary instruction just might end up cutting into Big-Agriculture's profit margins. (Can't have that!) And of course, it will mean less sick people and thus much less of a need for merchant-medical services and supplies. (Can't have that either). Even if we toss aside these conspiratorial explanations, there's still the stark reality that in America almost everything of consequence is done for shot-term gains; not so different than how a drug addict constantly sacrifices the future in service of the present-moment High.

Seven deadlies

[(Anonymous)]

Imma focus on attemtpting and failing to give up Envy for Lent this year.

I’m about to discover what an envious angry girl I’ve been my whole life.

Thank Goodness it’s only forty days!!!!

Annette

Re: Seven deadlies

[kimberlysteele]

LOL good luck!! I wonder what would happen if I tried to give up procrastination... My head might explode...

Re: Seven deadlies

[(Anonymous)]

The point for me is to understand how that particular “deadly sin” is woven into my personality. I started this exercise about twenty years ago. I told my dad I was going to give up anger for Lent and he laughed at me!

Well, of course I failed, but I learned a lot about how anger is my default emotion. So I now give up a deadly sin every lent as an exercise to help make myself aware of my Shadow self. It’s been useful, to say the least.

Re: Seven deadlies

[kimberlysteele]

I have written many novels trying to understand my own anger. It used to be my default emotion too.

Re: Seven deadlies

[methylethyl]

A lot of us in that boat. As JMG likes to point out: anger is downstream from other emotions you don't want to deal with. It's a whole lot easier than grief, confusion, embarrassment, failure, shame, regret...

[methylethyl]

Augh! Struck through the heart!

I am, of course, terrifically lazy. I weigh about 20 pounds more than I'd like to, mostly because snacking is a great way to avoid tackling chores and other work that I don't want to do. I'm like, I should put away the laundry... oh, peanut butter [robotic detour to kitchen]. Sigh. Sometimes I can get a handle on it for a while, keep things running smoothly. And then I fall off the wagon and have to start over again. Blech.

I've noticed a couple of patterns though:

1) I don't know why, but for me, food is linked into it very intimately. On occasion I manage to do alternate-day fasting (like, two days a week), and on fasting days, I get *so much* done. Maybe it's just that I've cut off my favorite distraction.

2) Being alone is a huge part of it. Maybe that's just accountability? But I think there's an element of sociability to it that is very primal. I'm not a very sociable person, generally. But I really enjoy working alongside others. It's almost the only kind of socializing I really enjoy, that's not mentally exhausting. I look forward each year to church-bake-sale season, where I can spend a few hours every week cleaning the kitchen and making pastries with the church ladies. I have to wonder how much we lost as a culture, when we mechanized everything: we gave up backbreaking labor, but also gave up shucking bees, quilting circles, haying time, laundry day on the riverbank, and all the community solidarity those things supported. This goes hand in hand with the rise of mass home entertainment and disappearance of "visiting" as a leisure activity. If my immediate family are the only ones who see my house, I have very little motivation to keep it neat. But if neighbors and church-ladies were likely to drop in any time? That'd be powerfully motivating! And I'd bet money that on average, homes were neater in my grandparents' day. They grew up in a "visiting" culture (We used to drop in on our great-aunts all the time! They often had cake...).

[kimberlysteele]

I'm extremely fortunate to lose the desire to eat beyond when I am full. If I do eat beyond fullness, I get nauseous and I can't stand being nauseous. I also cannot fast because I get low blood sugar. Food has never felt illicit, and that I believe is the secret to avoiding overindulgence. That said, I'm at least 15 pounds heavier than I "should" be, and on my tiny frame it is more than you think. I just CANNOT. BE. BOTHERED. BY. THAT. CRAP. Especially not now, when I'm almost 50. I think wanting to be slim is tied into libido. I have a very low sex drive, and the lower it gets, the less I care about my stomach not being flat.

Yes, when I know some person is coming over, I clean like crazy! If the quilting club was meeting at my little house, I'd die of embarrassment if it wasn't tidy. I agree with you, something has been palpably lost now that we're all on our own, locked up in our houses. Even before COVID, the lack of community in modern life sucked. Now it is far worse. Maybe we can make visiting a thing again...

[methylethyl]

I hear you. I was on the low-blood-sugar roller-coaster when I was younger. It goes the opposite way now, and I have to watch my carb intake. Which is honestly a blessing, because I'm one of those people who can (and will) eat candy and chips until long past when I feel ill from them. Now: I just don't buy them, and don't ever have them around the house. Can't say it feels illicit. I just don't seem to have an "off" switch. Occasional fasting is easier than trying to moderate all the time (which is like having to stand guard 24/7), and it lowers my appetite and levels out my blood sugar numbers for a couple days afterward. I'm sure there's something hormonal going on there, but I don't really understand it.

I suppose the first step to normalizing visiting, is to invite people over ;)