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Western and Israeli behaviour and the seven deadly sins
By Paul Balles*
12 November 2007
Paul J. Balles considers the pervasiveness of the biblical seven deadly sins in US and Israeli behaviour and in Western attitudes towards injustice.
In some distant past, it didn't matter much that we lived in different worlds. When Chinese and Americans didn't have to communicate, it wasn't a problem that they spoke languages incomprehensible to each other.
It mattered even less that Norwegians didn't have an inkling about what life in the Congo was like or the Congolese had no idea where Norway was or what summer or winter meant to Norwegians.
Somewhere between then and now, the world changed drastically. We built empires that decided other places in the world had things we wanted, and we sent history's explorers like Columbus, Magellan, de Gama, Drake, Raleigh, Cortes, Cabot and Marco Polo to locate and bring back the world's riches.
When that wasn't enough, we travelled in hordes and armies to satisfy our greed, gluttony and lust. How different is today’s corporate greed or the greed of countries for a resource like oil from the greed of Attila the Hun’s hordes riding across continents after the spoils of conquest?
What was once the sole provenance of the very wealthy has become the lifestyle of millions who have risen out of poverty. In the world of haves and have-nots, the profiteers diet in the aftermath of their gluttony while the impoverished starve because of food subsidies in India or famine in Somalia. Meanwhile, the poor live in places raped of their natural resources by the haves.
Lust has been the promotional fiend of the 20th and 21st centuries. If it's not adultery or pornography or homosexuality as daily fare in the media, the viewers have become hypnotized to believe such behaviour is the norm, if not healthy.
We let loose our wrath on those we envy. America remains in the Middle East because of its envy of countries with a natural resource that the American consumer doesn’t have enough of to satisfy their greed. Those consumers allow their elected government to kill, rape, torture and destroy to exercise control over oil.
Israelis, who should be guided by the biblical rejection of the seven deadly sins, have instead gloried in their commission. They kill Palestinians in their wrath, they steal land from the natives out of envy, they torture the resistance out of pride, and they abuse people and destroy humans and property out of anger.
Is Israel's and America's overwhelming desire to control the Middle East and the Zionists’ obsession with silencing critics of Israel lust or gluttony or avarice? The appetite is unquenchable, thoughtless in its excess and compulsive in the desire to possess.
The original and most serious of sins – pride is the sin which keeps America from ending its wars. As hubris fuels the desire of politicians and celebrities to be more attractive than others, tribes and nations are evilly moved by the same pride.
Uncontrolled feelings of wrath can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside the workings of the justice system, fanatical political beliefs, and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. Today that includes hatred and intolerance towards others for reasons of race or religion.
The rest of the world simply watches, basking in sloth. We can no longer wallow lazily. When we react as slowly as the animal after which the sin was named, the sin that has allowed the conquerors' envy to go unopposed becomes as deadly as every warmonger's weapons.
*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 38 years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
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