You can listen to npr’s TED Radio Hour on the Seven Deadly Sins here.

Sadly, the vices of which the ‘talkers’ speak, are no more than peccadilloes if they are in fact, correctly understood in this piece. This shallow understanding is especially clear in Nick Hanauer’s talk on Greed or Avarice. The vice of avarice is not merely hoarding or unjust keeping (which it is), it is the excessive love for one’s own welfare. Hanauer’s rationale for the rich to repent of their greed is because if they don’t “the pitchforks will come for us”. This repentance has nothing to do with mercy or justice or the victims. It does however, have everything to do with what is best for me and my own welfare which is, ironically,..greed.