SEVEN DEADLY SINS IN TRAVEL:
Collect the Entire Set
Medieval European theorists and theologians devised a list of human moral weaknesses thought to elicit the most dire of divine consequences. That list evolved; other cultures construct other lists, longer or shorter; so nothing is absolute. Still, the contemporary traveler should be aware of just how they can really piss people off. These sins are a start.
All these practiced behaviours and characteristics can be displayed by individuals, or small or large groups, or even by nationalities and nations. Perhaps their over-expression leads to eventual extinction, but such a Darwinian process may be slow and uncertain. Whole religious-philosophical systems have evolved on the basis that such transgressors will "get theirs" in some hoped-for afterlife. Can you wait that long? Can anyone?
PRIDE
PRIDE is expressed in so many ways, especially arrogance and hubris, and manifests as noblesse noblige (a condescending, haughty, or smirking manipulation of others "for their own good") or as blatant disregard for the feelings and views and knowledge and experience of anyone but the self. The extreme of such egoism is a monomania (nobody is as important as me) or solipsism (nobody else even exists, not really).
This "sin" is most basically expressed as DISRESPECT. A display of disrespect in certain context can get your ass STOMPED or KILLED or just left in the lurch in some lonely place. How to avoid this? Find out what local think is important — besides themselves and their kin, such may include almost any and all cultural features: food, dress, religious and temporal leaders, music and art, sports teams, locales, you name it. Now, DON'T DISS ANY OF THESE!
To start, DON'T DISS THE DRIVER or the porter or guide or cook or anyone else you may depend on for existence. And don't diss (criticize or show disrespect for) anything they hold dear. If you're with people you don't depend on, don't diss them or their holies unless you have a clear escape route. And maybe you don't depend on them now, but you might in the future. (They all probably know something about the local terrain, so don't be a fucking know-it-all, like Yanks ignoring the French experience in IndoChina.) Oh yeah, you should even be careful about dissing their enemies, as such enemies may have agents around who are quite willing to denounce you.
If any of the locals diss YOU, you'll just have to grit your teeth and wait till they come to YOUR contry. THEN you can get'em good, eh?
COVETOUSNESS
COVETOUSNESS encompassess greed, theft, avarice (linked to GLUTTONY, overweening ambition (linked to PRIDE, territoriality, miserliness and lack of generosity, extreme conservatism (linked to ANGER and FEAR). We often want more than (or something other than) what we already have. How much is enough? How much more stuff and territory and experience and control do you need?
There's so much to want when you travel: more peaks and borders and babes and brews to bag, more souvenirs and bargains and power trips and records, more of almost anything. More lands and peoples to conquer, more resources to exploit, more whiskey to drink and bears to screw and Indian girls to kill. Or maybe I got those last couple backwards.
It's probably not too "sinful" to seek more experience and knowledge. It *is* rather bad form to block others from such experience and knowledge, by despoilation or ruination or annexation. But greed will go negative on you when A) you want to acquire more stuff than you can reasonably deal with, and B) you try to argue the price down to an absurdly low level. You can only be so much of a cheapskate. You're going to squabble with an old lady over fifteen cents for doing your laundry? Pig! Beyond a certain limit, you'll be ignored or abused or fed to crocodiles.
Show some sense. Show some generosity, too. Don't try to lowball all the beggers. After all, sometime in this life or the next (if any), that could be YOU out there with one hand, one foot, one eye, one tooth, holding a basket and begging for alms. If everyone was as cheap as you, you'd be in a real world of hurt, hey? And you'd deserve it.
LUST
LUST may extrude an arm of COVETOUSNESS, a leg of GLUTTONY, a tentacle touching PRIDE and ENVY. Yet LUST is the most natural of all the so-called "sins." Without carnal lust, none of us would be here, nor would any other living things. If your parents didn't have any children then you probably won't either. See, it's Darwinian.
But of course LUST is not merely the engine that drives procreation. We often lust over many persons and things that couldn't possibly enlarge our splash in the gene pool. Some societies illegitimate and outlaw such lusts: thou shalt not express sexual desire for harlots, children, animals, artificial devices, images. Some societies place other limits, proscribing your own kind or some other kind or others' partners or your immediate family. Some societies don't much care, allowing nearly everything that doesn't annoy the neighbors or frighten the livestock.
The most unnatural lust is the absense of same, or its expression as celibacy. Next is lust for non-human living things, then for non-living material things, then for non-material imaginary things. Sometimes these are all mixed up together, a witches' brew of theology and bestiality and toy envy.
Lust is reality. Reality is whatever bites your ass. How can lust bite your ass as you travel? Most likely, if you're involved with child prostitution or other sexual slavery; or if you're doing unprotected sex with live humans; or if you proposition someone who isn't interested and/or who has a large, protective, violent family or tribe; or if you're molesting livestock; of if you don't pay demanded fees; or if you acquire defective love toys.
Other than my comments in LOVE AND SEX FOR TRAVELERS (click here), I can't really offer any advice that you'd pay attention to. It's YOUR brain; they're YOUR genitalia and erogenous zones; have fun.
GLUTTONY
GLUTTONY is more than merely stuffing yourself with calories until you're a bloated blob, and stuffing yourself some more. GLUTTONY is all about a lack of perceived limits, of not knowing if and when to stop. One may be a glutton for food and drink, for punishment, for pleasure and sex (as LUST) and audio-video and other sensory-sensual stimulation, for wealth and power (as COVETOUSNESS). To covet is to want — to glut yourself is to attain, uncontrolled.
GLUTTONY may seem to be limited to the real, the material, the natural, but you can also glut yourself on the trappings of abstraction and fantasy and idealism. And instead of devouring everything, you can be devoured by your GLUTTONY, or devour an excess of nothing, expressed as bulimia or over-exercising (until you are a stick figure) or an addiction to nihilism and denial. Abstemption is one thing; self-starvation in body or mind is something else.
Traveling, you may find an urge to devour food and drink (but eventually you'll be unable to continue, unfit to travel), to devour sensations and experiences (is there any end?), to devour your companions (until they vanish), to devour yourself (and there you go!) In this context, I see GLUTTONY as self-regulating, although that may take some time (unless you're aboard a cruise ship, where gluttony is the state religion). Perhaps you are otherwise more likely to be a victim of gluttony, to observe in despair as others stuff themselves to bursting. A messy situation, eh? Stand at a safe distance and cover yourself with a plastic tarp.
ANGER
ANGER needs no great analysis. You get really pissed off. You get REALLY pissed off. YOU GET REALLY PISSED OFF!!! Maybe you keep that anger inside, control it like a head of steam, channel it into your own guts until you're boiling with rage. Maybe it burns you up from within. Maybe you explode. POP goes the person. May those around you react and pop you in response. And down you go.
Traveling with anger is all too easy. Note the mistreatment of others, or more likely their mistreatment of you. You've been CHEATED and MISLED and FARTED ON and SNICKERED AT. You've been IGNORED and boy, if there's anything you hate, it's IGNORANCE. Meditate on that mistreatment, let it steep and seethe, nurture your anger until it's at a fine pitch. It quickly displace all other thought and sensation,. Are you visiting Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon? NO! You are visiting YOUR ANGER!! Have a nice trip.
Much more so than PRIDE, which affects mainly others, you ANGER is primaily a sin against yourself, a real self-abuse. If you do express your ANGER to those around you, they're likely to return it in spades — a good way to find yourself pounded into a pulp, eh? You don't really want to get too angry in a sleazy bar or pulqueria where all the drunks carry machetes. Oops.
ANGER is also an expression of fear. It scares you, thus pisses you off. But that's basic psychology.
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ENVY
ENVY is another form of self-abuse, with a touch of COVETOUSNESS and a mutated LUST. Instead of wanting to possess somebody and/or what they possess, you want to possess what they ARE. Of course you are not good enough or smart enough or skilled enough or attractive enough. Maybe you should blame your parents or teachers or leaders for inadequately birthing and nurturing and preparing you. Maybe you can blame others for cheating, for taking unfair advantages, doing whatever to become better than you.
And maybe you have lived a pure and good life and achieved NOTHING, while others made their pacts with the Devil and now live much more satisfying (if more impure) lives than you. And maybe they need to be PUNISHED for being what you envy. Maybe you need to BLOW THEM UP and BRING THEM DOWN, to destroy their whole unholy way of life.
I don't know — that sounds like the George Dubya approach to terrorism — they hate us because they envy us. I think that's just rhetorical garbage. I don't think envy causes you to tear others down; I think envy causes you to tear YOURSELF down. A bad self-image, eh? Delusions of inadequacy, eh? Got more reasons to be pissed-off at yourself. Oh no, low self-esteem! So, how to raise your self-esteem? Sorry, I can't answer questions of this nature.
While traveling, you'll find many to envy. Get over it. They all probably envy someone else. Who all do you know, who do you run into, who really has a SATISFIED MIND?
SLOTH
A SLOTH is a great sluggish rodent of tropical America that moves very very slowly and doesn't travel very far. A lazy and sluggish person may not travel far either, except on cruise ships or when rolled on and off various conveyances (see TRAVELING WHILE ASLEEP). They don't really want to go. So let'em staty home. No loss.
But SLOTH also implies moral laziness and sluggishness, apathy, lack of concern, don't-give-a-shit. Someone is being stabbed, robbed, raped, pillaged — who cares? Someone is lying there in the street in front of you — who gives a shit? A person or family or community or society is broken and dysfunctional — so what? Let somebody else bother with them. I have my own matters to tend. Gonna keep my ducks in a row, yes I am.
The slothfulness of apathy is one extreme. LIBERAL ANXIETY is another. When traveling, you're likely to encounter all sorts of unpleasant stuff: lives that are painful to behold, pathetic human beings, great pain and suffering. How do you react? What can you do? Do you even THINK about doing something, or are you too lazy and self-absorbed? Yeah, SLOTH also encompasses the monomania of PRIDE. Maybe you'd just better stay home. Hang on to the remote. Grab some more guacamole and corn chips. Don't leave that chair.
Accomplishment? Who needs accomplishment? Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable person, let alone a lazy one. Go back to sleep. You won't be missed.
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How many times have you heard someone say
"If I had his money, I'd do things my way"
But little they know that it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind
Once I was winning in fortune and fame
I had all that I needed to get a start in life's game
Then one day it happened, I lost every dime
Now I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind
For money won't buy back your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely, or a heart that's grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind
When my life is ended, and my time's run out
My friends and my loved one, I'll miss them, no doubt
But one theing's for certain, when it comes my time
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind
For money won't buy back your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely, or a heart that's grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind
—Lee Hayes
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