Stephen Fry’s Seven Deadly Sins (2020)
Who would have imagined that a virus we vaguely heard about in the beginning of last year would bring the whole world to its knees?! Who would have thought that the sequence of events that resulted from one person catching it, supposedly from a bat, had the potential to change all our lives? This pandemic has no doubt been disastrous for a lot of people. People losing loved ones, losing their jobs, children discontinuing their education. Life will never be the same again.
But there are those that have been getting by relatively unscathed. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people. Are your family members safe and healthy? Do you still have your job? Are you getting a steady income? Is there food on your table? If your answer to these questions is yes, then you my friend, are very, very lucky and have a hell of a lot to be grateful for. Sure, there are certain things that you couldn’t do during this time that you promised yourself that you would. But hey, at least you’re doing far better than a lot of people right now.
And yet, everyone is irrevocably changed in some way from how they were before the pandemic. Being at home away from people, away from the competition, away from the rat race, away from all the “noise”, both literal and figurative, has certainly put a whole lot into perspective for me. Maybe it has for you as well. We all need some perspective right now. And if that is what you’re looking for during this time, or you just want to kill the time, I would suggest that you listen to this podcast called ‘Stephen Fry’s Seven Deadly Sins’.
In each episode of the podcast, Stephen Fry dissects one of the seven deadly sins. But he does not talk about them as deeds that will earn the doers a one way ticket to hell. He talks about them more as stumbling blocks that cause harm to self and society. Because the way we view these sins has changed over the last few decades, and we characterize these ‘sins’ as simple human flaws or disorders that we can alleviate in some way. He delves into why certain emotions and deeds were characterized as sins in the first place. There are several linguistic references to why a certain word is used to broadly describe a set of similar, but slightly different emotions.
For example, pride, which is at the top of the list of seven deadly sins, is bad if it is a narcissistic, disdainful, conceited sort of pride. But there is another kind of pride, which is self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-confidence and narcissism are two very, very different things. But they have a common synonym, which is “pride”, which is strange, because then you would feel that feeling even an ounce of self-worth is not okay.
There are several historical anecdotes as well to outline how the ‘sins’ were perceived through time. In the episode where Stephen Fry is talking about greed, he talks about how Ayn Rand perceived greed, and her case for why she thought it was a good thing. Some sins are even described as survival tools in excess. Like envy and greed, which ensures our survival by pushing us to do more for ourselves. There are philosophical and political ideas that are brought in while dissecting each sin, and it makes for a very, very interesting listen. It’s a very well researched, and very well done podcast that will very likely make you perceive some aspect of yourself differently.
Essentially this podcast is to make you take a good, long look at yourself. The narrator is talking to you. He is making you just a little bit uncomfortable by talking about all the nasty things that you know you are guilty of having done, but just enough. This podcast is not intended to make you feel like the worst person in the world. It is simply intended to make you assess yourself just the slightest bit, and attempt to change.
Something that I realized about myself during this time at home is that by constant exposure to certain elements on social media, I had completely lost perspective of a lot of things. As you might very well know, there are wars of politics and opinion being waged on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and every other platform you can think of. There is an extremity and “violence” of opinion, as Stephen Fry puts it. There’s the extreme left and the extreme right. There is name calling and abusing. There’s this epidemic of cancel culture, which I think we can all do without. And there’s this need to feel righteous, to exert your moral and intellectual superiority over someone else. I have been guilty of this too.
There’s also this rat race for exposure, likes and popularity. There is this need to portray this perfect, “insta-winning” life.
I decided to limit the amount of hours I spend on social media, to quell the growing feeling of FOMO that was engulfing me, while I was at home last year, and it seemed like everyone else was chasing their dreams and socializing. And not only did that change my perspective on life, but also the things that I believed in. I realized that I completely lost the ability to take a balanced view of things. I was guilty of pride, envy and anger. We all know about social media algorithms that repeatedly show you the same kinds of posts. Ultimately you are privy to only a limited amount of information, and only a certain side of things. Your perspective is ultimately narrowed, and that is not doing you any favours.
People on either side of political spectrum are equally to blame, because both sides are making the same mistake of trying to bully the other side into silence and to prove their point at all costs. Now I am not saying that everyone is like that, but there is a big enough number. There are fewer and fewer people willing to listen to sane arguments. We are quick to brand someone something, without considering where they are coming from, and we rarely ever take a look at our own selves. Because the truth is that the world is made up of so many shades of grey, and without carefully considering, talking about and exchanging ideas in a gentle manner, we aren’t getting anywhere. There is power in grace. And it is always a good idea to introspect now and then, and evolve.
You can check out this podcast on Spotify, or wherever else you listen.
(Images from various sources on Google.)
