Uncontrollable temptation? - Seven Deadly Sins (I): Origins

The book "Why We Can't Control Ourselves: The Science of Temptation" by Jack Lewis of england, aiming at the temptation of human nature, from the survival and genetic instincts of human ancestors to the constraints of religious doctrines, combined with the latest research results of brain neuroscience, find the corresponding areas of various emotions targeted by the brain, make an in-depth and meticulous investigation of the root causes of the "seven deadly sins" caused by temptation, and analyze the impact of various evils on society and their avoidance methods, and regulate people's words and deeds. Better adapting to society and seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages provides extremely useful help.

Here are a few fragments to try to interpret the book.

The Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the Seven Original Sins, belong to the Catholic doctrine's classification of human sins, namely arrogance, jealousy, rage, laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust. Religion focuses on what humans forbid, calling it "sin," while philosophers establish absolute truth: good deeds are called virtues, and what leads to bad results is evil deeds. Saint Gregory the Great (Pope 590-604 AD) explained the "Seven Deadly Sins", which the author used as a reference to expound scientific thinking on these issues, trying to find the neural causes behind the various actions that boiled down to "evil deeds".

The author believes that the seven deadly sins depend on the individual, have good and bad attributes, and if they are all listed as evil deeds and eliminated, human beings will be afraid that they will perish long ago.

Human beings have understood that they are not created by God, but genetic inheritance and development, evolution, in the process of evolution, developed a unique brain building ability, the frontal cortex in the human brain is far better than other animals, it supports a variety of new cognitive abilities, so that humans can carry out more creative thinking, promote more complex communication and cooperation between people, more accurate judgment, and finally decide how to combine their own will with the environment.

With the development of society and productive forces and the abundance of materials, the human brain began to think about issues such as resource allocation, which promoted the emergence and development of urban civilization. The brain also has an incredible ability to adapt, and environmental changes can prompt the brain to make cognitive errors, and then transform the environment in more complex ways, which in turn will allow the brain to acquire new skills and the brain capacity will become larger and larger.

Human brain capacity is large, so it is necessary to be born from the mother early, after which the brain will increase rapidly, which also leads to human babies being far more fragile than other animal cubs, and innately need to cooperate to survive, which is the disadvantage of large brain volume. The advantage of large brain capacity is the development of language, so that knowledge accumulation and exchange, inheritance, and better cooperation can be carried out. But this is not enough, and the brain has developed a large-scale social trait, in which humans can understand others, perceive their emotions, intentions, and additional motivations, and better adjust their behavior, balance with cooperative groups, and sometimes counter possible attacks from other groups. Usually the number of cooperative groups that the human brain can support is within 150 people, and it is difficult to balance after that.

Human beings can dominate the earth because of their unique ability to cooperate with a large number of their kind, different from small groups of other animals, and human behavior that leads to depravity is very common, and such cooperative relations are destroyed at all times, and the seven deadly sins are only the manifestations of the 7 extremes. If everyone can avoid friction, they can certainly cooperate better, but human nature likes to change the rules according to preferences, there will always be people who try to challenge the deceitful social system, and only when people believe that breaking the rules will not be worth the loss, there will be severe consequences, and such behavior will become less and less. Under this need, the concept of God emerged. The reason is that society or the controller cannot carry out all-round supervision, approval, and punishment of everything and everyone, and needs to have a universal person to deter.

Religion, or God, stemmed from the ancestors' fear of the unknown. For example, the fear of thunder and lightning (now people are actually the same fear, just know the cause and consequences, not so serious), when someone tells them that this is god's anger against human evil deeds, first of all, this can make human beings naturally accept because they know the reason, no longer so afraid, and secondly, if they adjust their behavior to avoid angering the gods, in a way, they can be regarded as reaching a controllable state of behavior of the gods, and the heart will naturally be relatively comforting.

Think about it, if everyone thinks that there is an omnipresent and omnipotent God who is supervising themselves at all times, they must adjust their words and deeds accordingly, and try to follow the rules as much as possible.

The evil deeds represented by the seven deadly sins can lead to social isolation, and this book mainly focuses on brain science research to better understand the brain, explore what causes the seven deadly sins to become a force to destroy society, identify the social and physiological reasons behind each sin, and what kind of harm it brings to society. When temptation occurs, perhaps a better way can be found to control human antisocial impulses.

The next chapter, Deciphering the Mother of the Seven Deadly Sins: Arrogance.