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Seven O-sins

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Lucio

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I was reading somewhere about the "Seven deadly sins":

"Pride - Mother of all sins."

"Vanity is an excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise."

Oh God!...:)... Almost a reason to call for the existence of "The Virtue of Pride"...

I was wandering... what will be the seven deadly Objectivist sins? (The "Seven O-Sins")

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I was wondering... what will be the seven deadly Objectivist sins? (The "Seven O-Sins")

If 'sins' are the opposite of virtues, we can identify the 'Objectivist sins' by reading them off from the virtues. The standard litany of Objectivist virtues is rationality, independence, justice, honesty, integrity, productiveness and pride. From that, the 'sins' would be irrationality, second-handedness, injustice, dishonesty, hypocrisy, parasitism and humility.

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If pride is the mother of all sins in religion, I'd say evasion is the mother of all sins in Oism.

Wouldn't irrationality be the more primal sin? You can be irrational without evading, after all. The opposite is not true, as you are always irrational if you do evade knowledge. I'd agree that evasion is a very important enabler of irrationality in practice, but it only covers a subset of life-destroying actions and as such I think is a derivative sin (even if very important).

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Wouldn't irrationality be the more primal sin? You can be irrational without evading, after all. The opposite is not true, as you are always irrational if you do evade knowledge. I'd agree that evasion is a very important enabler of irrationality in practice, but it only covers a subset of life-destroying actions and as such I think is a derivative sin (even if very important).

Not really, no. In the absence of evasion, irrationality is always a temporary and fleeting state. Evasion prevents the correction of irrationality.

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Not really, no. In the absence of evasion, irrationality is always a temporary and fleeting state. Evasion prevents the correction of irrationality.

But people can knowingly perform immoral acts and not evade that knowledge. At least, in principle. That may not be the case for most people, but certainly some individuals knowingly take actions that are evil, and do not try to make it seem better than it is. i.e. people who are truly just motivated to destroy certain things, and don't try and cover it up with rationalizations. It's not that common, again, but I think it does imply that the irrationality is more fundamental than evasion is.

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I was thinking of 'evasion' and 'irrationality' as basically synonymous in the context of specifying 'sins'. The cardinal Objectivist virtue is rationality, which we understand as the consistent volitional exercise of the mind to identify the facts of reality, and action consistent with the facts so identified. The corresponding sin would be the volitional refusal to use one's mind to identify facts and act accordingly. Put in those terms, "evasion" might actually be a better term than "irrationality" for getting across the point, which is what one should not do if one wishes to have a happy, successful life.

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