Pope Gregory I, in 590 C.E. released a list of the Seven Deadly Sins 1. lust, 2. gluttony, 3. greed, 4. sloth, 5. wrath, 6. envy, and 7. pride to keep Catholics from straying off the path toward God.

An Anglican priest, Frederick Lewis Donaldson, first uttered what he referred to as 7 Deadly Social Evils in a sermon delivered in Westminster Abbey on March 20, 1925.

1. Politics without Principles

2. Wealth without Work

3. Pleasure without Conscience

4. Knowledge without Character

5. Commerce without Morality

6. Science without Humanity

7. Worship without Sacrifice

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi renamed this as the 7 Social Sins and popularized the list for a modern audience in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925.

Gandhi published the 7 Social Sins without commentary except that it was given to him by a fair friend and this line:

Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.

Unlike the Catholic Churchs list, which was meant as a compact between Christians and their God, Gandhis intent in promoting the list focused on the conduct of the individual within society. Gandhi who preached and practiced non-violence and the interdependence of every individual warned that these 7 Social Sins give examples of selfishness, egoism, and greed winning over the common good.

Gandhi presented the list on a slip of paper to his fifth grandson, Arun Gandhi, in 1947 saying that it contained the seven blunders that human society commits, and that causes all the violence. That was the last day grandfather and grandson would ever meet. Three months later, an assassin murdered Mohandas Gandhi.

The theory of a Social Contract developed as far back as ancient Greece. Though iterated, reiterated, and reformed by numerous philosophers and public figures, the foundations of this social contract stand on the premise that people live together in community with the agreement that establishes moral, ethical, and overarching political rules of behavior between individuals, groups, and their government in the formation of a civil society.

A violation by any of the signatories individuals, groups, governments jeopardizes the very stability of that progress toward a fully civil society.

Within our current Trumpian age, with all the problems and inequities that abound, these 7 Social Sins in the Gandhian sense can help to assist us in the ways we descended to this level of social dystopia and how to rise from it.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, wrote his Politics (Greek: , Politik) whose title means literally the things concerning the polis. A polis (plural: poleis) was the typical organization of a community in the ancient Greek world.

Politics can be defined as the way people living in groups make decisions, and about coming to an agreement so people can live together.

Politics rests on issues of power regarding having control over ones life and influencing others. People and groups holding power in influencing others must follow the axiom that bioethicists and healthcare workers follow: Primum non-nocere (First, do no harm).

Mohandas Gandhi believed that politics without truths and values as the basis for actions generates chaos, which ultimately leads to violence. He defined principle as the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practice perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.

Gandhi wrote, An unjust law is itself a species of violence. However, he did not believe that violence against unjust laws or actions of the state justifies violence:

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

The concept of Draconian laws or rules that are terribly harsh or oppressive comes from Draco who created and enforced inordinately strict laws in ancient Athens.

There is nothing intrinsically sinful with inheriting great sums of wealth. Do we, though, as individuals within society have certain responsibilities that come with privilege, unearned as well as earned?

Several extraordinarily privileged individuals and families throughout the generations have signed the social contract by giving of themselves and their material wealth to improve the chances and conditions of people in the world community.

We must ask, however, how much wealth is enough? How much is not enough? In other words, how much is too much when so many have so little?

Wealth without Work describes many people and families in U.S.-Americas top economic 1%. And no, Gandhi would not have considered investments as work.

The effects in our age so-called neo-liberal age of standardization, corporatization, globalization, privatization, and deregulation of the business, banking, and corporate sectors can negatively affect teaching and learning in our schools and diminish workers control and power over their lives in business.

Our schools have become mere sorting machines geared to funneling or allocating potential workers into the corporate sector. Schools drive individuals to fill certain roles or positions, which are not always based on their individual talents or interests.

The tenets of neoliberalism, taken together, claim those who favor neoliberal ideas, will ensure the continual growth of the economy, that wealth will trickle down from the top, while protecting individual autonomy, liberty, and freedom. Neoliberalism rests on the foundation of meritocracy.

Though the neoliberal battle cry of liberty and freedom through personal responsibility sounds wonderful on the surface, what are the costs of this alleged liberty and freedom?

Pope Francis answered that question in his Evangelii Gaudium:

[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.

Researchers have charted cultures as falling along a continuum with several variables, including Individualism versus Collectivism: the degree of support for and emphasis on individual goals versus common or collective goals. Most of these same researchers place the U.S. and many other Western nations on the Individual side of the continuum

Ayn Rand, philosopher, novelist, and essayist, contradicts most if not all of Gandhis 7 warnings. She has become the intellectual center for the economic/political/social philosophy of Libertarianism. She constructs a bifurcated world of one-dimensional characters in her novels.

On one side, she presents the noble, rational, intelligent, creative, inventive, self-reliant heroes of industry, of music and the arts, of science, of commerce and banking who wage a noble battle for dignity, integrity, personal and economic freedom for the profits of their labors within an unregulated free market Capitalist system.

On the other side, she portrays the looters represented by the followers, the led, the irrational, the unintelligent, the misguided, the misinformed, the corrupt government bureaucrats who regulate and manipulate the economy to justify nationalizing the means of economic production, who confiscate personal property, who deliver welfare to the unentitled, the lazy, who thereby destroy personal incentive and motivation resulting in dependency.

Welfare Ayn Rand terms unearned rewards, while arguing for a system of laisse-faire Capitalism separating economics and state. In other words, Ayn Rand paints a world in which the evil and misguided takers wage war against the noble and moral makers.

Ayn Rand bristles against some long-held notions of collectivism, of shared sacrifice and shared rewards. Rather, she argues that individuals are not and should not be their brothers and sisters keepers; that one must only do unto oneself; that one must walk only in ones own shoes and not attempt to know the other by metaphorically walking in their shoes; that personal happiness is paramount; the greatest good for you rather than the greatest number of people; it takes the individual to raise a child, not a village.

She titled one of her non-fiction books, The Virtue of Selfishness.

Scientia potentia est (or scientia est potentia or also scientia potestas est), a Latin aphorism, meaning knowledge is power is commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, though no known occurrence has been found in his English or Latin writings.

How one uses this power of knowledge often depends on the character (the underlying values and beliefs) of individuals and groups.

The organization, Character Counts, enumerates its 6 Pillars of Character, as core ethical values that transcend cultural, religious and socioeconomic differences. These Pillars are: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship.

Breaking any of these essential pillars seriously jeopardizes the stability of the entire structure, whether that be the family, the group, the culture, the nation, or the world.

Think about the political leaders who contrived justifications to wage war to benefit their own pollical ends (the so-called wag the dog syndrome).

Think of the political leaders who failed to take actions, again for their own political ends, on intelligence reports that foreign or domestic actors posed security risks to their nation.

Think of the political leaders who failed to mount a reasonable and sustained defensive strategy to limit and ultimately defeat deadly pandemics, and the enablers and colluders (politicians and media outlets) who refused to speak up and speak out.

Morality includes the values and behaviors of right and wrong, good and bad, and the beliefs and actions on the continuum between the poles.

What has been the result of the innumerable damage fossil fuel companies have perpetrated on the worlds environment by knowing the irreversible harm their products cause? What has been the incalculable number of people the tobacco companies have killed even decades ago as they understood tobaccos destructive health effects?

In our information age, technology has improved the lives of many people in significant ways, while connecting the human family as never before on a global scale. Although the possibilities are only limited by our imagination, so too are the dangers for abuse of these technologies by individuals, companies, and nations.

Computer abuse is a form of cyberwarfare, which is the waging of war in cyberspace through the use of electronic means. Individuals, companies, and nations have and continue to sell their snake oil products to unsuspecting and vulnerable populations to embezzle what people have taken a lifetime to accumulate.

Let us look at an example of the notion of science without humanity in the case of race.

Looking back to the historical emergence of the concept of race, critical race theorists remind us that this concept arose concurrently with the advent of European exploration as a justification and rationale for conquest and domination of the globe beginning in the 15th century of the Common Era (CE) and reaching its apex in the early 20th century CE.

Meanwhile, geneticists tell us there is often more variability within a given so-called race of humans than between human races, and that there are no essential genetic markers linked specifically to race. They assert, therefore, that race is socially constructed a historical, scientific, and biological myth. Thus, any of these socially conceived physical racial markers are fictional and are not related to what is beyond or below the surface of the body.

Though biologists and social scientists have proven unequivocally that the concept of race is socially constructed, however, that has not negated the effects (the privileges of some and marginalization and violence against others) on the lives of people.

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), born Carl Linn (also known as the Father of Scientific Racism), a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, developed a system of scientific hierarchical classification.

Within this taxonomy under the label Homo sapiens, (Man), he enumerated five categories based initially on the place of origin and later on skin color: Europeanus, Asiaticus, Americanus, Monstrosus, and Africanus.

Linnaeus asserted that each category was ruled by a different bodily fluid (Humors: moistures), represented by Blood (optimistic), Phlegm (sluggish), Cholor (yellow bile: prone to anger), Melancholy (black bile: prone to sadness).

Linnaeus connected each human category to a respective Humor, thereby constructing the Linnaeus Taxonomy in descending order:

Europeanus: sanguine (blood), pale, muscular, swift, clever, inventive, governed by laws;

Asiaticus: melancholic, yellow, inflexible, severe, avaricious, dark-eyed, governed by opinions;

Americanus (indigenous peoples in the Americas): choleric, copper-colored, straightforward, eager, combative, governed by customs;

Monstrosus (dwarfs of the Alps, the Patagonian giant, the monorchid Hottentot): agile, fainthearted; Africanus: phlegmatic, black, slow, relaxed, negligent, governed by impulse.

In 1883, Sir Francis Galton of England, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term eugenics, from Greek meaning well born, of good origins and breeding. He established a new branch of science to improve qualities of a race by controlling human breeding.

Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880-1943), U.S. Eugenicist, became superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 until 1939. He advocated for mandatory sterilization of the unfit, and he crafted his model sterilization law for the uprooting of inborn defectiveness (Laughlin, 1914, p. 13).

His law included involuntary sterilization for the feeble minded, the insane, criminals, epileptics, alcoholics, blind personal, deaf persons, deformed persons, and indigent persons. Most U.S. states passed sterilization laws, and as late as 1992, 22 states still had these on their books.

Now let us briefly take the example of the social construction of sexual orientation.

The first Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) (the APA-sponsored and endorsed handbook of mental disorders) published in 1952 listed homosexuality, for example, as a form of sociopathology. The updated 1968 DSM-II described homosexuality as an Ego-Dystonic Disorder, a mental illness in a similar category with schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder.

By 1973, the American Psychiatric Association had finally changed its designation of homosexuality, now asserting that it does not constitute a disorder: [H]omosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities.

The American Psychiatric Association published DSM-III in 1980 listing a diagnosis of gender identity disorder, which the manual imposed upon transgender people. However, the diagnosis has been updated in its DSM-V, published in May 2013. The subcommittee considered its change to gender dysphoria as a more neutral designation, which it views as descriptive rather than diagnostic and pathologizing.

Basically, in the case of the APA, a group of people, primarily men, met together and voted on whether people attracted to their own sex and people who expressed gender diversity would be considered sick or well.

How many people attend their houses of worship on designated occasions without following its basic precepts? How many people talk the talk of their spiritual values, whether within or without an organized religious tradition, without walking the walk?

In worshipping a deity(ies) or humanity in general, one cannot remain active in word while staying inactive in deed. One cannot truly help to improve the world, to help solve inequitable social, political, and economic conditions without some form of sacrifice, whether that be time and energy, economic resources, and/or truly working to disassemble ones own issues of arrogance, pride, and prejudice.

Gandhi always viewed violence negatively. He identified two forms of violence: Passive and Physical.

Passive violence occurs daily and regularly consciously and unconsciously through inaction, collusion, ignorance, denial, fear, and by other means. Passive violence is the fuel sparking physical violence (from the Sanskrit root: himsa, meaning injury).

In the context of violence, to Gandhi, one is blessed with the capacity of nonviolence. During physical violence, Gandhi extolled the practice of nonviolence (ahimsa). With nonviolence amid violence (passive and physical) one needs to understand and practice the notion of tapasya (the willingness to self-sacrifice). This self-sacrifice, as Gandhi himself modeled, comes in many forms.

The 7 Social Sins serve as a warning for the causes of many of the problems, the inequities, and flaws in our communities, nations, and world. They also can be taken as a menu of sorts for transforming and liberating individuals and nations in getting onto a path of repair.

There is a concept in the Jewish tradition known as Tikkun Olam meaning the transformation, healing, and repairing of the world so that it becomes a more just, peaceful, nurturing, and perfect place.

Let us go out into our lives and practice Tikkun Olam and obliterate the 7 Social Sins. Let us transform and liberate our world.

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The '7 Social Sins' as a Warning and Way Onto a Path Toward Equality and Liberation - The Good Men Project