The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth

There is hustle and bustle in modern culture, or at least the more red-pilled side of culture. A culture of rise and grind. A constant push for all of your time to be in pursuit of some vision or goal. There is constant contention in the realm of the fantastical. Enlightenment is placed upon a calendar. A reliance on the theoretical, but what is put forth for the practical? There are many that I have heard and spoken to that have this attitude but have no insight into rest. So I must ask, at what point does rest come in? If all I do is toil, how can I not speak of my toil as the vanity of vanities? If all I am told to do is pour out and pour out some more into intoxicating employment, then how can I not feel as if the only way I can escape my guilt is through more work? These are respectable questions to the crowd of people in a power-hungry fantasia seeking the euphoria of gullied work. Is this sentiment wrong? By no means. But it can quickly become misguided. Now, where is sloth in all of this? Let's begin.

What is a sloth? Sloth is a sluggish beast. The type that reaches out slowly before opportunity can be grasped and is swept away. Sloth is a faculty of energy conservation that slowly works against a forceful effort to remain. When the sloth comes to work, they are busy but do not work. Sloth is the reluctance to move. It is the mark of a person without passion. This vice is brutal to recognize because there is no effect to detect since there is no cause. The deceit of business makes a person lethargic. Most people work for the outcome of returning to a place of retirement. Most of our economic system is built towards saving for the future escape to some outer space for the purpose of rest. But what is the purpose of this rest? Rest dedicated to finding relief in the quiet "now" is proper rest. A rest that is present in the present moment. The type of rest that is busy for advancing work is not rest. This is a restless business. But how is this sloth?

We live in an age that has no passion. Modern rest has no power for the sake of rest. Work has no love for the sake of work. We have become a society of sloth. Where the sails are holstered for the sake of not weathering the storms on the sea. The sloth is a person without passion, without guidance, without emotion. Without this passion, where do we go? The ship was made for the storms and, likewise, the sail for the wind. The cannons are locked and loaded for a time and place, but there will be no heat of battle, no fight to the death. When going to sea, the sloth does not brave the waters for the risk of a potential sinking. Nor for life do we march forward for the sake of dying. The point of living on the edge with passion is like that of setting sail. We do not set sail to discover an inevitable pit of water where we come to rest at the bottom of the sea. We set sail to see if we are a vessel of adventure. Likewise, we live in passion to discover if we are truly alive. To sit in the harbor is the equivalent of laying in your room, so my question for you, my dear reader, is this: how long will you sit in your room and rot?

The spirit of death in sloth is the type that comes with a crawl. Life continues to move as we sit in reluctance. We gasped at the horror approaching and sought to escape whatever we feared. This flight away typically expedites the process of our arrival to that very fear. So sloths, in the attempt to escape service, will become laborers of leisure and never be given that which they so seek. Inaction has become the action of this vice. And we cannot live in virtue without effort. Silence is an answer, and inaction is a choice. So we must put to death sloth, or this slow creeping creature will come to choke us with frozen blood from our beatless hearts.

The nature of sloth is unthankfulness. Its essence is a convoluted ingratitude. Typically, those most thankful at heart are the quickest to offer a hand. The nature of this quickness is bewildering. Since gratitude is swift, we must think of it as the opposite of sloth. Is it because the heart seeks nothing? No, it is because the cup is full, so whatever else is added pours over. That is how I would typically think of this subject of a cup overflowing, but the position of the cup matters. It seems the cup must actively move to the location of the place being filled. It acts to be filled. The action of overflowing or giving is directly tied to the filling. How can one give without first having received something? So those who are with a grateful heart constantly reflect on what makes the heart full, thus orienting themselves under the fountain. The grateful heart enjoys working for the goodwill of others. So to the Lord, the trustworthy Giver, working for his kingdom brings joy. Why is it joyful? Because it arises from the source, a pure pleasure. Deep calls to deep, but as it relates to slothful minds, they will remain in shallow water. How can they swim in deeper water if they have never learned what it means to tread water? We act as if escaping to shallow water is an escape to rest. Here's the proposition I will put forward: You can't run to rest. That is a horrible verb to use in relation to rest. Escape from what? Suffering? Rest is on the other side of suffering, not at the beginning. Turning tail to run will prolong the process of finding repose. This may be why when you push anxieties and problems from your head during the day, they come to haunt you like phantoms in the night.

Sloth, you can also imagine it as a zombie infection. It moves slowly, but it will infect everything you hold dear. The infection becomes a mob at a certain point, and everything will make you lazy. I find this to be most relevant as it relates to the status of our connection systems. Whenever a break is announced in class, I dare you to count how many people have their phones out scrolling, not for the sort that simply checks messaging but for those who use social media as a break. It is pretty fascinating! Even in myself, it has become muscle memory, but is this a break? No! It is the opposite. To begin with, it will leave you feeling more drained. Taking a few deep breaths and meditating on the current time will provide relaxation. The brain is wired for this endeavor. The slothful infection can be straightforward in its imaginings, but soon, it will melt your brain and look for some tantalizing flesh to sink your teeth into. And the closest item to eat is yourself.

"Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls, he may find you preoccupied." - St. Jerome.

Most of what I write can be related to the idea of boredom by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. By his definition, boredom is what I consider Sloth in action or, rather, inaction. He even arises to the point of saying, "Boredom is the root of all evil." It is the point of action that lacks any real meaning. It can be described as an exercise that has no meaning or purpose. It is the shadow that lingers with every movement. It speaks loudly but only through a whisper. It crashes, but only with a single tap. And we are so hard-pressed when we live in the shadows because we are creatures created to crave the light of life. We practice deeds that do not lift our souls to heaven because we do not first put our weight on the soles of our feet. In slumbering, we become acquainted with sleep, but only in reflection do we become acquainted with rest. The mind that wanders to and through against the mind that wonders to and fro. Without the proper presence of the present, we have no place in time to be. Thus, all we can recognize is that time is passing, but without a way to fill that time to take our minds off the fact that time is moving forward.

As I reflect upon my own boredom and subsequent laziness, I feel as if this noon-day demon is not of neutrality but sorrow. The sorrow of reaching forth to find the hand of great work has fallen just out of reach, so I mourn the time it was once in my grasp. In stone, I set my will. I do not wish to move. Instead, I wish not to feel the weight of my being. Whether that is being present or being a part of reality. The only thing that would motivate me is a sort of carnality.

The beast of the forest moves about with a singularity of desire. Swiftly creeping about in pursuit of whatever the body craves. I do not know what the psyche of animals is, but I do know that it seems they act following a law of singularity. If focused upon filling the appetite of the belly, the lion will seek until it is within its claws; the prince of the northern woods travels many miles to find another cow to mate; after seeking safety, the birds of the air recline in their nests for rest. The beauty in all these is the drive towards one accomplishment each time. And I believe the curse of sloth is the introduction of all of these desires either all at once or not at all. The pendulum of the slug swings back and forth between the diversity of the will and the absence thereof. Either a crowded space where thoughts can not come to fruition or the totality of emptiness in which only the echo of thought exists, this is the place where boredom creeps and sloth devours.

What can be done to overcome the chains of sloth? I find the solution in one of three methods: first, putting to death the idea of doing everything presently possible; second, finding some catalyst that allows you to get over the activation curve; and lastly, remembering why you wish to keep going in the subject.

Let us begin with a grave. Commonly, an idea slips into my mind that is more of an assumption I utilize for the plentitude of tasks in front of me. It is that I can and will accomplish all I load upon myself. This is a form of idolatry. The idol is my potential. It locks me into this perpetual state of needing to do another task, another show, another workout, another book, another 5 minutes, while I feel as Atlas holding the weight of the earth upon my shoulders. It is quite a preposterous idea.

Despite my knowledge that I am, in fact, not a titan, I still treat myself as one! Imagine you speak to another the way you load up burdens on others. You must do more! Once you have beaten yourself to the dust, you repeat the classic fear: Could I have done more? Would we not at once seeing the whip lashes and marks of branding inform the authorities that slavery is being practiced? And the worst part is that the flesh has enslaved the spirit. No wonder we wish to stay in the mud like the dirt from which we came. Soon, we will be fertilizing the soil for the grass to grow.

In theory, it is quite simple to overcome this task of self-slavery. Reverse the roles. Begin by working to improve the body with stretch marks and not scars. This means you will immediately let go of some of the items you wish to have. Overcoming this will bring comfort in everything at present but allow comfort to flow from what is done. God has made everything beautiful in its own time. And the beauty of Christ is shown in the action of love. Sloth confuses self-love for inaction. The carnate is mistaken for the incarnate. Become "in the flesh," not simply "embodied in the flesh." The love of God in all things beautiful is not accomplished through a dead sprint but a steady walk. As one theologian poignantly added to the speed of the love of God, "He moves at 3 miles per hour. That is the speed in which humans walk, so that is the speed in which God also walks." I wonder if much of the love that humans are made for is not seen because we hurry past it.

My second compensation for all the time that I've wasted is movement. The current of time waits for no man, so why not let the sails loose? What have I got to lose? If a man lives by the giving of life, should I not give up these fleeting moments of 5 minutes longer and set my compass onto the horizon? Hoist the anchor that is drudging up the bottom of the sheets of sheets. Arise from the chair that constricts your veins. The heart was made to beat, not to be beaten by a harsh, frozen posture. Each heart has a catalyst to overcome the problem of passiveness. Enlighten your soul and find that which causes the muscles to twitch. It could be the tearing of muscle. It could be the scribblings of the pencil. It could be the click of a mouse. All of this to say, move.

All that we do has a purpose. For better or worse, we seek what feels appropriate for the moment. But we rarely ask how we got to that point when in the middle of doing something. A certain indignation enflames my reflection when I realize that I placed value on something that is, for lack of better terms, not worth a dime over an indispensable task. But it is not simply foregoing the one and hating the true action. It is finding some good that can come from both. For example, social media is a fantastic innovation. It is the world's town square at the palms of your hands. However, the same ills as being in a group can be seen with social media. People think much more along the lines of what everyone else deems commendable. Classic groupthink permeates even without others being present. Like smoke from a fire, the smell lingers. Emotional exhaustion stings the air from our burnout, though we haven't even risen from our chairs. That is the pain of sloth. Without being able to call it out and reflect on how you are slothful, your passionate self will sit on the altar to be sacrificed before your idols of being idle.