John H. Frenster, M.D.
The Seven Deadly Sins have always seemed somewhat amusing and even attractive. After all, pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth comprise the majority of attitudes found on American prime-time television today, and probably account for the background attitudes in nearly all of our ads, movies and novels. These seven motivating character traits were featured by Dr. Karl Menninger in his 1973 psychiatric analysis of the American national character, and have even given their collective name to a subtle perfume.
It is of course difficult to combine all seven of these character traits in one individual at one time, and it may be that the overuse of even one of these traits is sufficient to effect its result. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines Deadly Sin: "One of seven sins held to be fatal to spiritual progress", but that definition merely begs the question of the meaning of spiritual progress in America today.
Furthermore, these seven character traits are peculiarly effective in motivating an individual toward a life of social isolation, a condition that still represents the American Ideal. The frontier may be gone, but cocooning, fences, and the flight into cyberspace offer new opportunities for anyone to pursue a largely private existence, with minimal interaction with neighbors and community, and with an excessive preoccupation with self.
Faced with this ancient problem of character traits that are reinforced and rewarded by a hostile or an exploiting culture, does the counter- culture of science offer any alternatives to the status quo? Are there research techniques in mathematical psychology, for example, that could open new doors for our exploration and cultural evolution? Can the newly- developed techniques of matrix cognition and parallel thinking suggest character traits that we might find both more interesting and more rewarding than the confines of the seven deadly sins? Can matrix cognition and parallel thinking clarify our choices?
Implicit in these questions is the concept that we are free to choose our destiny. None of us is above the battle, and so we all are to some degree imprisoned by our past. But we must not allow our imagination, our quest, our evolution to be cut short. We need to explore, singly and together, our common future.
One of the techniques of matrix cognition and parallel thinking is to array parallel categories of related subjects within a two-dimensional matrix, with each axis of the matrix representing an important dimension of the topic under discussion. If we apply this technique to our problem, we might decide, for example, that private interests should be balanced by family interests and planetary interests. Our old seven deadly sins certainly could fill the column of private interests, but what would we find under the columns of family interests and planetary interests?
In the following table is found a filled-in matrix of such character
traits that would satisfy our need to enjoy our family and planetary aspirations
as well as our private desires. Obviously, our matrix needs to be explored,
tested and modified. But the emphasis can be on joy and awareness as the
hallmark of our evolution, and the centrality of freedom of choice as the
method of our progress.
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If we evolve in our concerns from ourselves to our families and finally to our planet, it should not surprise us that our character traits may evolve in a similar fashion. We all begin as infants, and we must experience our infantile narcissism to later appreciate our family's sharing and our planet's nurturing of our lives. We may hesitate to call our planetary concerns holy, but there is no doubt that the character traits found in the planetary column are those often expressed in our relations to a larger entity.
And so, we see the outlines of the human, the humane, and the holy in a simple matrix. The details, of course, are infinite in number and in variety, and are particular to each person and to each moment of time, but inductive logic suggests that each person can compose their own matrix anew each day.
Our future is open to new beginnings. Our lives do need balance, but the freedom is ours to choose, how to improve our humanity, our family, our planet. Our future.
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