Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Seven Forgotten Virtues

Our civilization has almost completely disregarded all virtues that were once held holy. How far have we really wavered from our moral paths?

Chastity: A practice long commended by celebrities right up until they turn 18 and enter a new sexy phase. When popular movies are treating chastity like a curse we know that sins and virtues have been flipped and we are living in an upside down world.

Liberality: The phrase "donate to charity" has not been uttered without mentioning "tax write-off" in years. Trying to change the world has already been done. Go back to the 60's you hippie.

Temperance: If God did not want me to eat so much that I threw up, then why did he allow all-you-can-eat buffets to exist. The seven virtues were created previous to the invention of the buffalo wing.

Kindness: When abandoned puppy commercials are more sad than starving African children, we know we are digging our way to a new moral low.

Diligence: Replaced with a wonderland of procrastination known as the internet. We try to make time for work in between reading news stories and watching funny videos.

Humility: The last music video where the performer wore less than 2 million dollars in accessories was in 1992. Our heroes wear diamond shoelaces and drive million dollar cars. I wonder how much the Batmobile or an actual lunar rover would cost to buy.

Patience: Have you ever stood in the returns line at Wal-Mart? Forget it, I'll just keep the broken iPhone.

Our morals have been flipped around. Here's where I wrote about the sins a few months ago:
The Seven Essential Sins

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Thanks for the wake-up call. No wonder people have been treating me funny! :/

JQ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JQ said...

"Diligence: Replaced with a wonderland of procrastination known as the internet. We try to make time for work in between reading news stories and watching funny videos."

Not to mention the insightful blogs that steal time from my employer...

I think you hit the nail on the head with your first line: "Our civilization has almost completely disregarded all virtues that were once held holy." Whereas the majority of our society used to recognize the existence of an Almighty God, we've now become an "enlightened" collection of exalted apes (quite literally).

When morals are considered to be the random result of chemical reactions which have evolved over millenia, they kind of lose their punch. Everything becomes relative, because every perspective has to be considered just as valid as the next; after all, it's all just based on chaos anyway, right? Why not just do whatever feels right? "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" (Isaiah 22:13, paraphrase)

To acknowledge a moral code is to acknowledge a difference between right and wrong; even further, it's to acknowledge the existence of right and wrong. That creates way too many questions for a humanistic world...