Freaking Out with the Left Hemisphere
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The seven cardinal sins have shaken and shimmied ever since Evagrius—or maybe Origen, who knows—first jotted them down in some dusty desert hole. By the time Gregory the Great slapped his official stamp on the list, they’d already mutated like a bad batch of bathtub gin compared to the Hellenistic epoch's great catalogues of vice. Even now, the Catholics and the Orthodox don’t entirely agree on the lineup—same game, different rosters.
Me, I figure the Cardinal Sin League is overdue for an expansion, like when the NHL doubled down in ’67 to chase the sprawl of North America’s puck-hungry rubes. Time’s ripe for a postmodern update, a fresh draft of depravity to match our jittery, overclocked age.
My nominees? Noise—that relentless sonic sewage clogging our ears and minds. Rationalism—the cold, smug cult of the slide-rule brain. Hurriedness—the twitchy compulsion to outrun our own shadows. All of ‘em capital sins, in the old Latin sense: caput, the head, the fountainhead spewing tributaries of lesser mischief.
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Eric Scheske
