"pEwslag:" With the Emphasis on "E" for Envy

A MNEMONIC FOR REMBERING THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS IS PEWSLAG (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice, gluttony) and we all can supply examples from our own behavior to illustrate each and every one. Some people, lacking a full compliment of the seven, hook up with, join a political party, or even marry those that can complete them. Still, the seven seem to get a bad rap these days -- they seem so... out of date... or rather it can seem archaic to even class these behaviors as "sins." More and more, what were once seen as sins are now seen merely as "lifestyle enhancements." That's why it is good to see them worked in more detail, one by one, as a means of reminding us that the laws of God and/or karma, like the laws of gravity and entropy, have not been repealed.

Godwin gets deeply into one of my favorites, "that most sinister and destructive of mind parasites, envy", with One Cosmos: United 93: No Heroic Deed Goes Unspoiled by the Left

Premise: " If you have an "ear" for envy, you will detect it everywhere in the liberal world. In psychoanalytic parlance, it is also called "spoiling," or devaluing."

"What is critical--and so perverse--about envy, is that it is not an attack on "the bad" or frustrating, but a hateful attack on what is good."

"In primitive groups, envy is so pervasive that no one is allowed to have more than anyone else--they are trapped in a "zero sum" theory of economics, just as are many liberals today."

Method: Let's take a hard look at comments on Flight 93 by the usual suspects at a dependably left blog.

Exposition: "Even the liberal movie reviewer cannot help himself from getting envious little digs into almost all of his reviews, including today's for United 93. Although he liked the movie, in seeing it, "It's impossible not to think of the image of George W. Bush reading the pet goat story in Michael Moore's 'Farenheit 9/11." This same idiot would never review Farenheit 9/11 and write, "it's impossible to look at this shrill leftist propaganda without thinking of the image of a stewardess having her throat slashed with a box cutter by a Muslim barbarian that Moore would call a freedom fighter."

Evidence: A mercifully short series of quotes from the comment stream at Huffington Post.

Conclusion: "So strong and pervasive is envy, that you cannot have a political system that doesn't accommodate or find some way to manage envy. You might say that one party will generally represent the envied, the other the envious. Guess which ones."

Posted by Vanderleun at January 28, 2006 9:59 AM