How does this square with research suggesting that people may have situational integrity? That is, they might cheat at golf but never on their taxes?
I have only vague recollections of a couple of pop science articles on this topic, so this is a genuine question and not an argument.
We could do a journal club. I'll cheat by never volunteering to review an article while reading others' summaries of their articles.
President Vice's summary seems misleading (based on my reading of the abstract). The only reward offered was monetary, so we don't know if it's the particular reward--money--or being rewarded in general that tempted people.
But it's an interesting study: do you cheat because temptation is strong, or because the will is weak?
Anyway, let me be the first to say, Oscar Wilde got there first with "I can resist everything but temptation."
3: No, that's correct. This only tests whether people who find monetary stimuli rewarding were then more likely to cheat at a task that had money as a reward. But you could imagine a world where there were a subset of people who found money very rewarding but who nonetheless found the idea of cheating aversive. But that does not particularly seem to be the case (if you look at Figure 2 in the paper, there are outliers, particularly when looking at right Nucleus Accumbens activity, but not huge outliers, and not that many of them).
One quite strong criticism of this paper, I think, is that it relied on subjects who were paid to come in and do studies; people who are willing to trek down to a university campus and sit in an MRI for three hours in the middle of the day seem more likely than the general population to be people who have no job and really could use extra money or people who have no job but are parent-supported college students and thus don't exactly need the money.
There's probably some of them who are sexually aroused by large magnets.
It's not "cheating"; it's "creative winning."
I don't think greed is the most destructive of the vices. Of the seven deadly sins, I think anger comes out ahead for external destruction and jealousy for internal destruction. Actually I'd say jealousy might have the edge all round.
Jealousy is just narrowly focused greed.
7: Sloth always seems to get slighted when the 7 deadly sins are ranked.
Since that's the one I'm most guilty of, I suppose it's a good thing that it's generally near the bottom of the list.
7: Anger seems the most destructive to oneself and those around one. But it didn't cause the Great Recession.
7: There is righteous anger (I think it's appropriate for the situation described in the next post, f'rex). Righteous greed is not a thing.
Of the seven deadly sins I think I'd go with greed as the most likely to produce human suffering. Lust is certainly capable of expression in wholesome ways. Sloth is pretty harmless, all things considered. Gluttony likewise. Wrath is pretty bad, as is envy, but I think greed is still more likely to lead to treating people as means rather than ends. Pride is the most annoying of the sins, but again, pretty harmless in the big picture.
Pride isn't on the list of the seven deadlies.
12: Sure it is, unless my Catholic education has failed me again.
Pride, Lust, Envy, Anger, Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, and Doc.
13: Aye. I consider pride the worst (which is pretty canonical, no?) and I think it's easiest to justify the others as instantiations of pride.
I learned it as WASPLEG. Wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy, greed.
You can remember them with a mnemonic. "Prissy Little Evil Assholes Gonna Shoot God"
15: Although there are circumstances in which one can be justly proud (of some achievement for example). Being "justly greedy" seems trickier.
I barely understand what people mean by "pride is a sin". I mean, someone can be obnoxiously full of themselves, but, eh.
G = gluttony, maybe? Otherwise avarice/greed is redundant.
Pride is...not valuing other people fully? I'm failing to understand what makes it destructive.
I don't know that that helps me.
Hubris is always the fatal flaw, Heebie. It blinds the protagonist to the realities of the situation and angers the gods. Plus it cometh before a fall so you know it is bad for you.
Hey! What's wrong with greed?
21. Dick Cheney or The Grand Inquisitor could explain.
Gonerill's is certainly the list I was taught, with pride in pride of place. The Seven Cardinal Virtues, on the other hand, I have totally forgotten if I ever knew them.
The confusing thing about the usual list is that either two or three of them are just basic human passions, and the others are specific words that we have for inappropriate or excessive versions of basic human passions. So, e.g., there's nothing necessarily wrong about anger or lust, just about inappropriate anger or lust. Pride is the ambiguous one since hubris is probably what's meant there, but the general Christian tradition has a pretty low bar for what counts as a bad or excessive amount of pride.
That's why, I think, Pride is traditionally considered the worst, because the others all involve some sense of self worth (especially when it comes to taking one's own pleasure to be of excessive importance), and doing that is a sort of pride. Even without the particularly Christian feel to it, though, I'd believe that pride is the worst of them because it involves taking one's self to be more important than other people, which leads directly to treating them as means to one's own ends in a way that the others don't. (They involve doing it as well, but in a less direct or open way.)
Why did I think pride wasn't? Is there an alternative list? I have no idea. "Saying things confidently without checking" isn't on the list, is it?
Dick Cheney or The Grand Inquisitor could explain.
If I had to describe what makes them terrible people, I'd go with "gleeful aggression" or "lack of regard for other human beings". I guess that we can call that pride, but it's not much like how it gets used in daily life.
Cosigning 30. Thanks for being more wording than me today. (Need more coffee.)
Pride is forgetting that you're a puny mortal, forgetting that God is boss, thinking that it's all about you, thinking that your earthly success means you're special, forgetting that you're here to serve, etc.
29: Faith, hope, and charity, and then justice, temperance, chastity? and prudence? I'm guessing on the last two. Now to check wikipedia to see how far off I am.
That's why, I think, Pride is traditionally considered the worst, because the others all involve some sense of self worth (especially when it comes to taking one's own pleasure to be of excessive importance), and doing that is a sort of pride.
Sometimes I'm so glad that I was ignorant of all this shit until the cement was basically dry.
The Seven Cardinal Virtues, on the other hand, I have totally forgotten if I ever knew them.
Chastity
Temperance
Charity
Diligence
Patience
Kindness
Humility
A bit dull. It seems like some mix of items from the sins list and the virtues list would be ideal.
If they weren't versions of universal human passions, there'd be no need to get so exercised about them!
In order of most damaging to least damaging, I have them ranked as Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Pride.
heebs, think of sinful pride as the attitude that caused the Iraq War. I mean, that was also greed, but a big component was the arrogance of thinking that if there's a problem U.S. military intervention is the tool to fix it. Pride, in excess, is being too confident in your own judgments and in the wisdom of your actions, and not being receptive to feedback from others.
Chastity should have been courage. Faith, hope, and charity are the theological virtues, and justice, temperance, courage, and prudence are the cardinal virtues. If you can trust Wikipedia.
38, 41: That's the list in the Seven Deadly Sins article, and it seems to be just opposites. If you look up Cardinal Virtues, you get what I'm familiar with.
Chastity should have been courage.
Said the actress to the archbishop.
Genrill, if you're still here, is Ernest Gellner worth reading? What's a good starting point if he is?
I want them to be opposites of the sins. Does that work out?
Pride v humility
sloth v diligence
greed v charity
lust v chastity
gluttony v temperance
wrath v patience?
envy v kindness?
Name misspelling is not a virtue. I intended Gonerill in 45
So Clay-Shirky-approved behavior leads to eternal damnation.
One thing to keep in mind is that when somebody says "Pride is the worst of the deadly sins," it isn't that they are thinking something like, "I may have murdered all those hobos but at least I'm not proud of my SAT scores." They mean that pride is the worst of the deadly sins because of the other sins it could lead to.
There are only four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage). The other three are Christian virtues - so the standard list the seven virtues, not just the cardinal ones.
Sloth is actually kind of a tricky/fascinating one, because an awful lot of the early descriptions of it are both very recognizable to modern readers, and also not something we'd necessarily consider a sin at all.*
*Apathy, restlessness, boredom, despair, etc. Aquinas just goes straight for it with "an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing".
43: Ah...checking again I see that the wikipedia page I landed on was actually for the 7 heavenly virtues. The 4 cardinal virtues appear to be Justice Temperance Fortitude and Prudence. Then there are 3 "theological" virtues which are Faith Hope and Charity.
46: If you trust me (and why should you) the traditional Catholic lists of sins and virtues aren't clear opposites for each other. Chastity doesn't make it as a theological or cardinal virtue at all, and the rest don't pair up nicely either (I mean, fortitude/courage, prudence, and hope are all sort of opposed to sloth, love/charity is kind of opposite to wrath, but none of it is neat except gluttony/temperance.)
49 - Part of the trickiness of the seven deadly sins is that we tend to think of sins as actions rather than vices, and the seven deadly sins are clearly vices and not the actions that they result in.
I've never seen the 'heavenly virtues' as a list of seven before, and suspect them of being a modern back-formation from the sins.
And checking Wikipedia, I'm completely right if you count fifth century AD as modern. I'm going to be quiet now.
Temperance and Charity seem to be the only ones that show up on all the lists. Clearly they must be the best.
Charity is at least biblically attested as "the greatest of these".
the seven deadly sins are clearly vices and not the actions that they result in
Not entirely sure what you mean by vices, but the real trouble we have is in thinking of "sin" as a bad thing you do or think, when the sense is closer to a frailty or tendency inherent in being human.
I think 'vices' in that sentence means something like 'character traits' or 'motivations' rather than actions taken on the basis of those traits or motivations. So, if you murder someone, the sin isn't the killing, it's the wrath motivating the killing.
I find the accompanying physical reaction - pulse quickening, anxiety mounting - much more unpleasant than the payoff.
Propranolol. Take some and go for the gold ring.
My ranking of the list with regard to Unfogged:
1) Pride (and it is the worst sin and will be the ultimate doom of humanity)
2) Sloth
The rest barelyregister.
59: I think the killing is still a sin, even if you are calm about it.
Heebie, if, with the aid of the commentariat, you decide to become a master thief or catburglar, please liveblog (presidentially if you must).
58 - I'm pretty sure that "the opposite of a virtue" is a common understanding of the word "vice"...
Charity is at least biblically attested as "the greatest of these".
Unless you're a Seventh Day Advent Hoppists.
62: Not if your motivation for it is virtuous, no? Might still be criminal, depending, of course.
55. Alternately, consider doubling down. Theology has only gotten worse since Origen and Boethius.
||
This is a weird return address:
The seller has requested that you return the goods to the following address: Return Address:Unit 152B, No.1355, Jinji Lake Avenue Suzhou Industrial Park Suzhou 215021 China, People's Republic(Note: Please send the item(s) back to mainland China as above address, instead of Hong Kong.Please send it back via Post Office.), Hong Kong
This is in the course of returning the heinous bridesmaid's dress. I'm not going to write "Hong Kong" but they confused me.
|>
11, 18, 27: s/just greed/enlightened self-interest/?
Clearly our whole society is premised on individual greed, (hopefully) short of psychopathy, leading to good(ish) outcomes in the aggregate.
Which of the 7 deadly sins covers the act of making bridesmaids wear heinous dresses?
Sometimes I'm so glad that I was ignorant of all this shit until the cement was basically dry
Me too. I was raised as a pius Protestant, where I observed grownups reading the Bible and did it myself from an early age, also years of Sunday School and eventually catechism.
And I never encountered these schemes, these classifications in any context of religious instruction or thought. I suppose I encountered them as expressions, and would have tended to class them as folklore, on a level with depictions of the Devil with horns, trident and cloven hooves.
Perhaps in HS, certainly in college I began to encounter teachers, evidently not believers themselves, emphatically insisting that this was what "Christians" believed.
I think a bunch of people reading the bible and realizing that very little of this stuff was in there was how we got protestants in the first place.
73: Surely Protestants are very, very big on pride as a sin?
When I was in 10th grade, I left early from a soccer tournament a few hours away, and caught a ride with the assistant soccer coach. On the drive home, we had a memorable conversation - I am absolutely sure I was being a total asshole, but I'm not positive on the degree to which she was also being an asshole. She revealed that she was an evangelical Christian. I revealed that I was totally ignorant on the New Testament.
What I remember most vividly is arguing with her on how little sense "died for your sins" made, as a transaction. I'd never heard the story of Jesus as told by a biblical literalist, and had a chance to ask questions, and I went all out. I knew I was being rude because I was taught that other people's religions required absolute pussy-footing around. I remember forcing her to admit that she thought that I, and everyone in my family, was going to hell, which she did fairly matter-of-factly.
She never seemed particularly upset or worked up, just kept testifying. But now that I understand what it means to be two decades older than someone else, I wonder if she wasn't also being a bit of an asshole in ways that I couldn't quite put my finger on, at age 14.
Also, IIRC, she was a science teacher.
You can't put your finger on other peoples' assholes until 16 or 18, depending on the state.
37: The seven deadly sins are a specifically Catholic doctrine. I don't think I knew what they were until college. Later generations have it easier thanks to Se7en.
In college, I played Pride in a silly ritual dorm trial thing. (The judges were the seven deadly sins.) I was really good at it.
Pride is the worst because it would lead you to thinking that you aren't irredeemably bad without God's help, which would in turn lead you to rejecting grace, which would in turn lead to damnation, right? Everything else you could do and feel bad about and repent and still be saved.
This is not actually my religious tradition so I'm probably fuzzy on the details.
but at least I'm not proud of my SAT scores.
Not with those numbers, you shouldn't be.
Isn't Pride considered the worst sin because it was Satan's pride that led him to rebel against God?
I forget what Adam's sin was. Maybe Pride, too? Lust?
(All this stuff comes about because the Bible just doesn't provide enough material for 2000 years of fanfic.)
||I was somewhat shocked to just find out that there's no visa-waiver for Israelis for short visits to the US. That's weird. Some googling suggests it's some sort of punishment for Pollard, but I don't understand why the pro-Israel lobby fails at this point of all points. |>
83: indeed. Sin through excess and you sin as a beast. Sin through deceit and you sin as a man. Sin through pride and you sin as the angels.
or:
In pride, in reasoning pride our error lies;
All quit their spheres and rush into the skies!
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes;
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods the angels fell.
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.
the others are specific words that we have for inappropriate or excessive versions of basic human passions.
Well, they're all excessive versions of basic and even laudable human traits. There's nothing wrong with liking good food in moderation, but if you do it to excess - to the point where it takes over your life - it's gluttony.
84: no! Bad Israeli! Back in your box!
I think you have to take into account the "critical apocalyptic mass" theory of evangelical Christianity, which includes the belief that gathering the Jews in Israel is an essential precondition for the end of the world and the return of Gozer Kingdom Come and the return of Christ. Key to making this happen is ensuring that once you've got a Jew into Israel, he stays there while you try to get some more in. If you make it easy for them to leave for the US, the whole "summoning of Gozer hastening the Day of Judgement" process takes on a sort of herding-cats quality.
Yeah, I thought of that explanation, and surely there's some truth to that. If these were long-term visas surely that'd be the explantion, but we're just talking about 90-day tourist visa waivers! Do all the Jews actually have to be in Israel simultaneously for Gozer to be summoned?
84: My guess -- and it was ONLY a guess -- would have been that the Israeli government doesn't want there to be one. If you deal with a country with visa waivers, you have to deal with overstay problems. (E.g., every time the Irish economy gets worse, we have more Irish overstays.)
I wouldn't have been surprised if it were less about the US worrying about undocumented Israelis, and more the Israeli government concerned about its citizens' ability to slip too easily into a new society and avoid their military obligations or whatever.
But apparently I'm wrong. See this Washington Post article.
45: I like Gellner. Versatile, prickly, unfair, interesting. If you want enjoyable polemic, "Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion" is short and fun, and "The Psychoanalytic Movement" is an excellent bit of shit-kicking. "Plough, Sword, and Book" is good, too, as is "Muslim Society". "Words and Things", his first book, is terrific fun all round.
Oh, I see that was covered in the second sentence.
Hi Gonerill! Do you have any opinions on Alice Goffman's book? The NPR/academic-ish people I know seem to love it, and the activist people I know (including me) are pretty much reacting in line with Christina Sharpe's critique.
"Muslim Society" is very good, as is his "Saints of the Atlas." Gellner doesn't get nearly the attention he deserves from Islamicists/historians of religion.
Stream of consciousness: I have not read the book carefully, though I have seen the article-length version presented and read that. I see where the critique is coming from, but feel much of the reaction has been opportunistic. Angry criticism tends to vacillate between "This is a totally distorted picture of the people she studied" and "LOL it took this white girl six years to find out what everyone living it knows". I didn't much like Sharpe's critique. The whole situation is extremely messy. As an outsider, I often think the whole subfield of urban ethnography is a disastrous minefield of competitive authenticity, boundary policing, and shitty backbiting.
96: Thanks, that's very interesting. For me the major triggers were around consent and power. I enforce a very, very strict firewall with researchers I work with that they may not also be volunteering (as Goffman did when she was tutoring), for what I think are crucial reasons.
I also have a really careful policy on quoting or sharing minors' stories, especially when their parents may not fully grasp the implications of consent (ie it's not really "informed"). Both of those seemed like giant red flags to me in what I have read of Goffman's work, but I have not read the book in full either.
Christina Sharpe's critique.
I haven't read the book but it was interesting to read the review because it makes no effort to be fair. That doesn't mean that it's either unfair or inaccurate but I was just struck by the way in which it seems to consciously avoid any gestures towards, "despite the flaws in her work we can still respect . . ." or other rhetoric which would signal that both of them are in the same community of discourse (and, of course, the point of the review is that they aren't).
Oh, wow, I'd read the article before the book came out but hadn't read anything about it since. I know I think of some of the stuff I do as ethnography, but that's sort of as a joke, because I'm the one who's learning and not who's actually coming out with insights for anyone else since I'm the only one there who doesn't already know. I was somewhat rubbed the wrong way by the pre-publication article I read, while at the same time being interested in the stories she tells enough that I'll definitely grab the book if the library gets a copy. (But for what is that NOT true?)
Thanks for posting the review, Witt--I think it will be helpful for some of my advisees who are thinking about these issues in relation to their own research.
Has anyone read the book? The NYT review I just read says she dressed like the men she hung out with, which would raise really interesting sexual identity questions from what I'd expect and I'm curious whether she covers that. I'm guessing not.