On the virtue of vices

Dr. Sarfaraz K Niazi (e-mail: niazi@niazi.com)

"I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue."

--Jean-Baptiste Moliere

Psychiatrist tell us that when people are obsessed with a virtue, they are in fact, veritable exemplar of the opposite. People obsessed with honesty, for example, often turn out to be pathological liars. "Pedagogues, pedants and preachers now noisily exhort us to new heights of virtue when, in fact, the problem with modern society is that it has too much virtue, not too little," declares Robert J Hutchinson, author or a new book, The Book of Vices (Riverhead Books, New York, 1995). Here in this short book we have the best collection of tales written about the most common vices. From the most erotic to most sublime, we read abstracts of the best. But this books also makes you wonder if the human vices are really that bad. Wouldn't we do better with some vices? The debate whether it is better to let virtues loose or vices is old but the tumultuous time we are going through requires that we examine it introspectively. Perhaps we can find some solace in good old fashion vices because virtues no longer seem to work in this part of the world.

The seven classic vices are: lust, avarice, sloth, gluttony, pride, envy and anger. Let us see how these can be good for us. Those afflicted with a bad case of self-discipline--who, for instance rise at five A.M. in order to jog for ten miles, never miss a bill payment, and organize their closets as though they were preparing for a military inspection--could use a good dose of sloth. Many married couples today, burdened by the demands of their work and home lives, should receive injections of lust to eliminate the virulent strains of chastity coursing through their veins or to make their married life more interesting. In the face of mindless imbeciles running our government, every citizen should receive a potion of rage. The problems of drug abuse, extra marital and teenage sex could be cured with injections of pride followed up with daily radiation treatment of envy. It is good to have friends with avarice so you can feed on their lavish parties, boats at the Marina Club and expensive libations. Gluttony can be exciting also. Those pencil-necked joggers are not the happiest people; those with full belly turn out to be more interesting creatures and for the couple of years they will lose because of their vast belly, they have much more to add to this world than the emaciated women who wouldn't know what licking an ice cream does to you.

There is no problem with vices; it is just that we never cultivate them properly, having gone haywire with virtues. The Aristotelian Mean Principle works better. We need a healthy mix of both virtues and vices to control the other running loose. Let us examine all of these vices in detail and see if can develop a lifestyle full of useful vices.

When Jimmy Carter said, "I have looked on a lot of women with lust," to Playboy magazine in November 1976, people thought he'd just about lost elections. He didn't because most people gave him recognition for courage to speak what's in the heart of every man and yes, woman. We've been kicking around and having sex for about a million year as humans. We couldn't have discovered sex without lust. Our preoccupation with sex is not only biological but a reminder of who we are. In our arrogance we aspire to be angels or gods; our lust reminds us that we are only creatures, destined for dust. The modern technology masks all of the most natural human experiences from facial wrinkles to disease, birth, death and sex. The erotic love is gone and replaced with puritanical values. It is abrupt, utilitarian and lacking passion. Our society's erotic temperature does not lie with watching nude bodies in Playboy magazine or just about as good on The Baywatch but on the degree of emotional energy people put into their love affairs. We are suffering from an epidemic of narcoleptic libidos. It isn't that we are not having marital sex, a problem rampant in the sex, the problem is that we are perhaps having too much of it as evident by the highest population growth rate in the world. Unfortunately, most of it is without lust or erotica; it is purely mechanical, just like we would do to a stale sandwich when we are hungry. We are missing on the aroma of fresh baking. I am not preaching sexual promiscuity; that's for the lovers of The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Fanny Hill by John Cleland or The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius. I am suggesting we put some energy behind man's greatest passion. And if that spills into other things we do in life, wouldn't that be wonderful?

Avarice or greed is the desire to own things far out of proportion to one's needs. Some collect money, other cars. But what is the proportional need? Is owning two cars today, avarice? Yes, to a village dweller riding a donkey cart but not to a feudal lord. When Rockefeller was asked about the value of money, he said, "I have been rich and I have been poor; let me tell you, being rich beats being poor." That just about sums up the difficulty in finding fault with avarice. Unfortunately, unlike sloth or gluttony, avarice affects the entire nation by affecting the distribution of wealth. But few care about it. We would always criticize someone 4 or 5 ladders above us in economic status of avarice but never show any self-criticism. Fact is that most wouldn't talk like Jimmy Carter did, but they would freely admit to owning a fleet of cars or hefty bank accounts. The problem lies not in hoarding money but in spending it on wrong things. Not on buying happiness (contrary to what Socrates would say) but on worthless items that assuage other vices like pride and envy (more on it later). (The money spent on building such stupidities as Taj Mahal could have gone to much better use.) Our society is a strange combination of people with too much avarice and other subscribing to puritanical values--none. And that causes problems. I highly recommend avarice, if you can manage it--without going to jail.

Sloth is my favourite vice and the only reason if my marriage would ever break up. This also the reason why was the Mogul empire was lost. If you only knew what Bahadur Shah Zafar did all day, you would stop wondering why did the British fooled us so easily. But that does not mean sloth is bad. Today's slothful person has to be extremely intelligent to survive. To be person of means and not let work interfere in leisure or lazing around takes more than planning. It requires a killer's instinct. Adam and Eve just wandered around all day naked doing nothing and had it not been for a little culinary indiscretion, they would still be having a ball. And for that indiscretion, they were thrown on the earth to work for living. So, work was actually a punishment not something that should be sought out and actively encouraged. Throughout the history, people worked only as much as they had to in order to stay warm and well-fed. In Canterbury Tales or Gargantua and Pantagruel, ordinary people spent the rest of their time seducing each other's spouses, feasting, going on vacations, jousting, and generally having a good time. Somehow the modern times have placed great emphasis on work and even invented the work ethic as if it were a religious activity. But then we walk into a government office and find how they depict the true pictures of On Lying in Bed or An Apology for Idlers. We have perfected the art of sloth. What we need is to bring sloth out of these dreary walls and hand them over to type A personality executives to whom being lazy is become sinful. I don't think we should let sloth be monopolized by civil serpents (OOPS!, civil servants.)

Angels envy human beings only their food. Gluttony brings happiness, ask King Henry VIII or King Farouk. Once eating and drinking were considered, next to perhaps making love, to be the greatest of human pleasures. Today, thanks to modern medical sciences, these activities are in danger of being outlawed. (The mad cows of Britain have a story to tell.) But if man only thought of health, he wouldn't have ventured across the Atlantic or shot himself across space towards the moon. But that's all changing now. The newest medical advice to those fighting the battle of the bulge is not to diet. It's all in your genes. Enjoy food but in moderation. Instead now they are talking about another non-human activity--exercise. Eat with your heart not mind is the current advise. How can any one give up the titillation of tongue. So, go ahead be a glutton. But don't forget to invite your friends. They will love you.

Pride is a borderline vice, depending on what do you after that. Can't say that about lust, envy or sloth. Aristotle thought pride to be an essential component of a truly human life but when we begin to love ourselves, it's almost always a lifelong romance, quoting Oscar Wilde. What we need is a strong dose of authentic pride, independent, freethinking, not giving hoot to what the world thinks we should be. And in Pakistan when we see around us how the politicians and feudal lords running amuck with our wealth, culture and survival, it's time we flex our muscle of pride. How many Pakistanis traveling abroad take pride in telling the world they are Pakistanis. Ask a Japanese or an American how do they feel when asked of their genealogy.

The next sin is envy, which is badly misunderstood. It is a desire for some advantage or quality which another person has. Envy is the spiritual foundation of our most important social enterprise, from economy to education. Without envy, no one would desire material possessions of any kind, or education or health. To keep us with the Jones' keeps the giant merry-go-round of economy going. The malicious kind of envy begins when you feel that others don't deserve what they have. And it peaks when we begin to feel that it is not important that we win, it is important that others lose, we begin to have problems--mostly psychological. The seething hatred of Salieri towards the youthful Mozart in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus exemplifies; and why go to literature. All politicians who are not in power in Pakistan have only one wish that the country would go to dogs. But the good envy is good, and we must promote it. If we are not envious, we become lazy, if we have too much of it, we become destructive. There is nothing wrong with being a "material girl" as Madonna would put it. In fact, I would rather be materialistic than see this nation go to rags. Riches are often better than rags. I want it all. Why wouldn't you?

Anger is wrongly considered a vice about which too many wrong things have been said. It is the emotion we experience in the face of an outrageous, intolerable situation. How would you feel if your spouse runs away with your best friend; or your 10-year old brings an F grade after you plucked down 10 Grands on tuition per month? Or how about when you find that the MNA you voted for just made his 20th million selling plots given to him as favours by the PM? The fire in your belly wants you to take action and not to be angry is a character defect. But then you find those Buddhists, Stoics and cardiologists that tell you it is better to let it go. I am amazed that a nation that hardly pays attention to good advise has been totally numbed by this advise of letting go. In a more civilized age, if the politicians of a given country told more lies than usual and stole more than was believed fitting, the citizens, filled with fury, simply beheaded them! Imagine what the world would be like when King George imposed his tea tax on the American colonists and they would have just shrugged their shoulders instead of dumping a few tons of tea into Boston Harbour. I think people who don't get angry just don't give a damn about things. God damn them.

"Sin boldly," said John Calvin. It is in the nature of man to be sinful. And going against the nature is something we should avoid. Science has proven that men are heterogamous by nature, women monogamous. Men remain loyal to their wives not because of their abiding passion for them but because they are too cowardly to risk an affair. Similarly, all other vices are suppressed to conform to societal norms regardless of how they go against the grain of nature. And that is hypocrisy at its best. And that could have been justified if hypocritical virtues were worth any thing. In reality, they end up causing more damage than good. I would rather have down to earth vices than pretentious, hypocritical virtues.