Seven new deadly sins

What are the deadly sins of the 21st century: Lack of money, bad credit, collectivity before individualism, lack of ambition, partypooping, cockblocking, and moving too slow on the property ladder?

I posed the question on Facebook the other day, and I'd like to elaborate here on how I was thinking.

LACK OF MONEY & BAD CREDIT

These can be treated as one. Whether you can trust someone today is measured in their ability to pay debts. Paying debts makes reliable people. You say: Well, that's how banks think, sure. But I'd like to pose the question: Don't people tend to think exactly the same way? Since money is such a cornerstone in being able to do anything in our culture, a huge amount of reputation is vested in how people spend (or don't) money. Someone who borrows money from you and are not paying it back? You're likely to see him/her as less trustworthy in other areas as well.

COLLECTIVITY BEFORE INDIVIDUALISM

The individual. Autonomy. It's such a pretty myth. Really we're drawn into more sticky messy interdependencies than we can even imagine. But for simplicity's sake; let's pretend that we're autonomous individuals. Society today is composed in a way where we're not supposed to really need each other. Again this falls back on the principle of having money, which is "sovereignty dispersed" (se Philip Goodchild's Theology of Money). Money creates the illusion that we are independent. Collectivity on the other hand is admitting that the individual is insufficient, frail and small. An admission that we desperately need other people. And lots of them, in fact.

LACK OF AMBITION

Do we have a job, or a career? Where does this lead us? I often get the question: what are you going to do with your degree in religious studies? My answer is: I plan on using it to move up the pinhole to a doctor's position at the university, but essentially doing the same thing as now: reading books, undertaking scientific projects, producing text.

With music it's the same. Music is essentially good if a lot of people buy it. There seem to be a standard within every subgenre that dictates exactly how much is much, but you need a good chunk of people and (again) monetary success, that "proves" you a success.

I like the jobs in the past. People were butchers, cheese mongers, and farmers. For life. And they were totally contempt with that. Today contempt is a curse word: Oh no, he said the c-word. I also like the fact that this relation to work, at the very least within the food sector, is growing again. The whole slow food business is a typical example of this. Let things take their time, and as long as you can live off it, that's all the success you need.

PARTYPOOPING

There's is very little room for the quiet, downtime, being alone, feeling small, maybe even broken, when you and all your friends are constantly expected to give updates about what's on your mind (what's your identity) and where are you (where are you partying), and feed pictures of your happy self into the machinery.

COCKBLOCKING

Pleasure. Everything now. No restraint. Those phrases sum up our extremely hedonistic culture today. How dare you deny me pleasure? Why on earth would anyone object to anything that gives me please? Not allowing or helping people in their pursuit of pleasure - disregarding whether their specific goal is actually meaningful - is a big no no today. It gets even worse when someone is actually objecting to some innocent fun and fornication. Dude, don't cockblock me.

MOVING TOO SLOW ON THE PROPERTY LADDER

A house is not a home. It's an investment. And even for the people who primarily want to see their house as a home, most still admit to it also being an investment. So when you refurbish your kitchen or bathroom: do you do it for you or for the person who you imagine will live in this house after you? Do you choose to make your home truly yours, or are you just safeguarding your investment with future revenue in mind? I think these thoughts impede the very essence of what a home should be about: a place to feel safe, relaxed, tranquil, that keeps you warm and your groceries chilled. For those who really commit to making their home their home, they are guilty of jeopardizing the pace of which they climb up the property ladder.

For those of you who are guilty of any of these sins, I say: Good for you. These things doesn't lead to hell. Instead they make life, here and now, hell.