The Human Animal (Animals)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 10:49 (5274 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: dhw lists the Seven Deadly Sins as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony, and Wikipedia seems to agree, so the list must be right! But isn't gluttony the same as greed? What about lying? Isn't that a sin?-dhw asks us for a list of Seven Saving Graces. By simply looking in a thesaurus that gives antonyms as well as synonyms I have come up with the following opposites of my modified list of the sins (though the dictionary wasn't very helpful with lust and envy): happiness, temperance, industriousness, humility, quietude, sharing, and honesty. All rather longer words. I wonder if that is significant?-Maybe. Certainly harder to pronounce, spell and practise. This is a fun post! Thank you, George. According to Wikipedia, the Magnificent Seven have been translated from the Latin, the first letters of which form the acronym SALIGIA. I thought you'd like to know. Greed = avarice or covetousness in other versions ... not the same as gluttony. Lust is also translated as lechery, and wrath as anger.-My purpose in listing these and asking for Seven Saving Graces was to draw distinctions between ourselves and other animals. Hence my own list: the arts, science, philosophy, history, charity, complex language, writing. However, this could be an entertaining exercise, and it might yield a few interesting insights if we pursue it. Anyway, I'm game if anyone else is!-Antonyms: I looked up another site, and found seven contrary "virtues" which are slightly different from George's, though following the same principle: patience, kindness, diligence, humility, chastity, liberality, abstinence. I also found a second list under cardinal virtues ... prudence, temperance, courage and justice, coupled with theological virtues ... love, hope, faith. Personally, I object to "love" counting as theological and not cardinal, and in the first list, I think chastity and abstinence are going a bit too far. Let's not make a virtue out of discontinuing the human race and not having even the occasional slice of chocolate fudge cake! George's temperance is much better as a counter to gluttony, but lust is tricky. Sexual self-control? I agree that lying (perhaps dishonesty, in order to cover a wider field?) versus honesty seems a glaring omission from the official lists. And how about callousness versus compassion, tying in with the source-of-evil discussion on this thread?