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Pride Replacement Theory & Debunking The Mythology of Greed
A lot of city kids whose parents wanted them to get a “good” education back in the day sent them to Catholic school. In cities like New York, Detroit, Boston and Chicago especially, Catholic school was a common scholastic breeding ground for urban youth with upwardly mobile parents. Or at least they were upwardly mobile enough to write the Archdiocese a modest tuition check to have priests and nuns teach their kids about the 7 Deadly Sins in between basketball practice and public corporal punishment.
It was at Detroit’s preeminent Catholic school, Presentation Our Lady Of Victory, that nine-year old Dave decided to probe a little deeper on the matter of the 7 Deadlies. It seemed to me that at least three of them were really just one:
“Father Mike: Why did we have to have both envy AND pride when it seems like my own pride would make me think I should have whatever the other person I am envying has?
Father Gabriel: why did we have to have both greed AND pride when it seems like my own pride makes me think I deserve to have more than I need, or more than another person?”
Those are not particularly nuanced arguments or high-minded concepts, but what do you want from me? I was nine, even if I was on the precocious side. Unlike many of my peers, I was never paddled for my insolence, as my old dude was up at the school frequently and he looked like a cross between Carl Weathers and Billy D. Williams. Regardless of what you’ve heard, a lot of Catholic priests and nuns may be crazy, but they ain’t THAT goddamned crazy. But parochial violence aside, I was scolded for questioning truths that were ancient and divine. It was like a paddling of my mind rather than of my ass. Who out there is shocked that I grew into a man who could never get into organized religion?
Anyway, I had a brief flashback to those days this week and it made me think about the hole we’re in politically. I saw the polls with Trump leading Biden in every single “swing state” even though Trump routinely spells polls as “poles.” I asked aloud without another soul in the room: What the fuck could make any sentient adult person vote for this clown?!
Then it hit me: 9 year old Dave was on to something. The little dude had a point, and decades…
