The Seven Deadly Sins Today by Fairlie Henry;

The Seven Deadly Sins Today by Fairlie Henry;

Author:Fairlie, Henry; [Fairlie, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Essays
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2014-01-23T16:28:18+00:00


If we are to understand this fear of ignorance, as a source of our Wrath, we must look at it in another of its forms, one that torments us perhaps more than any other. We fear our ignorance of ourselves, because we have been taught that we may acquire a full self-knowledge, not by the effort of a lifetime, an effort that anyhow is doomed to failure even though we are bound to make it, but by the perusal of a few manuals, now and then with the guidance of a psychiatrist, and by gazing fondly on ourselves with an idle but flattering curiosity. We are incited to rake over our feelings, examine our motives and desires (where they are most easily accessible to us on the surface) to make sure that they are true, and then to explain to others how true they are. We go on and on at each other, with our self-inquiries and revelations, which, if they were really deep, we could not confess so freely, until we come up with the cunning reassurance, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” People today spend interminable hours telling each other “where they’re coming from,” and “where they’re at,” when all that they are doing is inventing implausible little fictions about themselves and their lives. Every new relationship is begun with the dubious exchange of these quirkly little maps.

Reduced to this condition of mutual self-deception, our relationships become a kind of mutual therapy. An intimate relationship is satisfactory only if it satisfies “who I am”—which means only “who I think or feel I am”—at any moment at which one chooses to raise the banner of one’s self. Not only can one know oneself and so be sure what one wants, but the other should know the same things about one and be constantly alert to one’s pleas for a reassuring massage. Thus the fires of Wrath are stoked. The relationship is reduced to an almost political battle over each other’s claimed rights to be gratified as a “person.” There is no mutuality to be cared for, only two individualities, each with its demands for itself in the moment. The fallacies are those which we are examining. We assume that there is a kind of knowledge, in this case of ourselves, that we may easily attain, and by which we can define ourselves, and so acquire a complete mastery over our own lives, including the ability to command happiness at will. When this proves to be false, fear and frustration enter to do their work, and again the groundwork for Anger is laid. From this assumed knowledge of ourselves, we argue that any felt need or desire or longing represents a right that must be granted, and when satisfaction is not forthcoming, our resentments work in as deadly a manner in our private as in our public lives. We know what we want, and it must be granted; it is a right, even in love.

In all the examples that have been given, one incitement is common.



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