“Curb your desire—don't set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need.” — Marcus Aurelius
The 1995 movie Se7en, casting Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, inspired this series.
I’ll be covering the Seven Deadly Sins: greed, pride, lust, wrath, sloth, gluttony, and envy, which prevent us from living a happy, peaceful, and flourishing life. We’ve already covered wrath.
Your requirements?
We’ll only need the torch of awareness to notice those vices in the dark crevices of our minds.
I bid you not to be afraid of the faults, avoid them, hate yourself, or feel ashamed.
You’re only human.
“What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The animalistic and antisocial impulses you experience are a consequence of evolution.
To want to be rid of them is a fool’s errand.
You’re better off accepting and loving who you are.
You have the courage and strength, more than you know, to handle the truth about the less savory parts of yourself. Overcome the weakness. And use it to your advantage.
Every vice can become a feature instead of a bug.
I promise the demons will introduce you to your angels.
As Friedrich Nietzche said,
"The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell."
The Seven Deadly Sins Part I: Greed
The following story is known as the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs from Aesop's Fables.
“A man and his wife had the good fortune to possess a goose which laid a Golden Egg every day.
Image by Stable Diffusion Ultra
Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once.
But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose.
Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.”
Greed is good.
It’s what helped our ancestors survive the hostilities of nature.
It’s why we’re here.
The more one gathered in the summer, the easier winter or the cold season was — literally and figuratively.
In our modern world, the same neuronal networks motivate us to start businesses, rise early to work, and diversify our portfolio in various assets like Bitcoin.
Why?
So we may survive the onslaught of tough economic times, feed our families, enhance the quality of our lives by affording good food, travel to fun locations, afford conveniences, and get useful gadgets.
This is why we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn greed in others because what makes us less prone to it is how unlikely we can emancipate ourselves after we get caught.
For if we can always throw money to cover our tracks, insulate ourselves from corruption and fraud lawsuits, have a fall guy — and still swim in abundance, what’s to stop us from looting more wealth for ourselves?
Wisdom is knowing we could be the politician embezzling tax money in the name of new projects, a company CEO underpaying his workers to cut costs, a scammer, the doctor overcharging unimportant tests.
The log in our eyes would put Ikea out of business.
However, just because we have primal urges doesn’t mean they’re always right.
Greed becomes disastrous when it overpowers our nobler impulses: empathy, expansion, and fairness.
When people get hurt, miss out on opportunities they’ve earned.
When penny-pinching and frugality in the name of reducing costs prompts us to treat our subordinates as less than human.
When we destroy the economy and collapse our beautiful country — our golden goose, as a result.
The best approach to control our greedy impulses isn’t the castration of our wills as the religious would recommend, but to put this dark desire in the perspective of augmenting our ambition.
And without further ado, this is the most nuanced way to…
Overcome Mammon
Do Good Work, Forge Alliances & Punish Losers
1.1 Do Good Work
Pursuing opulence doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
Others winning doesn’t take away from your glory.
The cake is big enough for all of us.
Creating mutual opportunities to increase our wealth, instead of extorting others, hiding ideas, or planning self-interested schemes, is the first step to overcoming greed.
We’ll do great to know that the way to create immense wealth and abundance isn’t to have the burning desire for it or fuck others over.
It depends on what we do and how we see the world.
Paul Graham summarizes the formula in this beautiful passage:
