“Even if you consider yourself an atheist, or agnostic, or opposed to organized religion, the moral codes directed by the Seven Deadly Sins have influenced you. They are not solely the provenance of the church... They’re all over our fairy tales, and they are embedded in the language and “wisdom” of our culture, such as the common sayings many of us heard as the chorus of childhood: You can sleep when you’re dead (sloth). Jealousy is the green-eyed monster (envy). Pride goeth before a fall (pride). Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels (gluttony). Money is the root of all evil (greed). Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere (lust). Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (anger). There is a lot of stigma attached to each of these ideas, which are ingrained, specifically, in the minds of women.
… In the New Testament, Luke (8:2) and Mark (16:9) describe Mary Magdalene as the one from whom Jesus exorcised seven “demons.” Pope Gregory I later cast these seven “demons” as the Seven Deadly Sins and simultaneously called Mary a prostitute. … Reclaiming her legacy, her teachings, and what she represents can help point the way back to ourselves. … And the sins, or, as Christ describes them in Mary’s gospel, “powers,” are necessary points of resistance on the path—they confront us, not so we can skirt or master them, but so we can come into balance with them. They are powerful teaching tools, whetstones for our souls, prodding us to understand who we are. … We must give ourselves and each other space to voice our desires, birth our purpose, express the fullness of our passion.”
— Elise Loehnen, On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good (2023)
"[U]niversity graduates are routinely told to “follow their passions,” and people who live to excess are criticized only when it harms their physical health. Moderation implies and requires self-restraint, the deliberate effort not to seek the greatest emotion or the fullest accomplishment. Moderation is seen as an artificial constraint on the inner self, whose full expression is said to be the source of human happiness and achievement.
But the Greeks may have been on to something, both with regard to individual life, and in politics. Moderation is not a bad political principle in general, and especially for a liberal order that was meant to calm political passions from the start. If the economic freedom to buy, sell, and invest is a good thing, that does not mean that removing all constraints from economic activity will be even better. If personal autonomy is the source of an individual’s fulfillment, that does not mean that unlimited freedom and the constant disrupting of constraints will make a person more fulfilled. Sometimes fulfillment comes from the acceptance of limits."
— Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents (2022)
"Saturn is the symbol for limitations and hardships; yet Saturn also shows where patience and hard work may pay rewards later in life. It makes individuals aware of the restrictions under which they must live."
— astro.com, Saturn wiki
"Christianity works least when sex is constantly stimulated from other directions, as it is now. No transcendental religion can compete with the spectacular pagan nearness and concreteness of the carnal-red media. Our eyes and ears are drowned in a sensual torrent.
… Like Wilde himself, Henry [from The Picture of Dorian Gray] cites and misinterprets [Walter] Pater [1839-1894], twisting Pater’s monastic contemplativeness toward praxis: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. … A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants.” Pater snobbishly complained, “I wish they would not call me a hedonist. It gives such a wrong impression to those who do not know Greek.” Pater espoused perceptual refinement, not sexual action. Wilde’s ruin was to come from his materialization of his master’s doctrine."
— Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
"Christianity splits woman into divided halves: Mary, the Holy Mother, and Mary Magdalene, the whore. ... In the Madonna-whore complex, which particularly affects Latin Catholics (e.g., Frank Sinatra), a man loses sexual interest in his wife when she becomes pregnant, activating memories of his sainted mother. The home becomes a shrine, and the man seeks sexual satisfaction elsewhere with whores, “bimbos,” defensively minimized to evade woman’s hegemony."
— Camille Paglia, No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality (1994) in Vamps & Tramps
"Moreover, for man as well as for woman, the fundamental anxiety or primary anxiety concerns the threatening first Other who becomes incarnated in woman and her enigma. Its fundamental character is such that it can be constantly found, transculturally as well as transhistorically, in either its positive aspect (reverence for the woman) or its negative expression (misogyny). This fundamental anxiety is experienced as life threatening, and it is only in retrospect that it is linked to sexuality and anxiety in sexual matters. … In the case of men, this manifestation is rather easy to understand, as it takes the form of a mere defence. … In the case of women, things are a lot more complicated as every woman potentially incarnates what she is afraid of as a subject."
— Paul Verhaeghe, 'The Riddle of Castration Anxiety. Lacan beyond Freud (1986)' in Beyond Gender: From Subject to Drive (2001)
"There is no universal standard of “normal” sexual activity, and cross-cultural variations of what constitutes appropriate sexual conduct are truly astonishing."
— Solomon/Greenberg/Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015)
"Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience."
— Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
"It's not that they're not being sexual. They just do not interact with real-life other people. … We are embodied creatures. What will make us become different people is that all these experiences are disembodied experiences.
… I spend a lot of time helping people reach out to people. Have real conversations. ... Basic skills around being sexual and physical and sensual with each other."
— Esther Perel in interview with Christiane Amanpour (2023)
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