Writing for Fun
January 2020
Seven Deadly Sins - Bob Wendelkin
All his life he always tried to do what was the right thing in his eyes and he took pride in all that he had achieved. Then when he had time he expanded his studies into the philosophical world of thought. It was here that he found out that Pride was considered one of the Deadly Sins. Instinctively he felt that Pride was not really a Deadly Sin, Gluttony, Sloth, Greed, Lust, Wroth may have bad consequences but he felt Pride was progressive where many of the other deadly sins tended to produce negative effects.
When he was a young man he tried hard to become a useful engineer. He did this because although most people don’t appreciate it the world around them it is the result of Engineers be they civil, mechanical or electrical. Our world is dominated by the product of the Engineering mind. He wanted to be a proud member among those who changed the world.
The change started in the beginning probably with the primitive man taking a piece of flint and hitting it and noticing that it flaked off to produce a sharp cutting edge. With this cutting edge he was able to produce tools that improved his and his families life, even though it was probably at the expense of the world around him. From those early days he has changed the would at first by living in caves and living off the wild animals, then as he progressed to become a farmer. Then some of the people began to specialise in actually making things for others to use. Probably among the first things to be made were Cloths closely followed by weapons.
As in most things there comes an individual who from a feeling of superiority and pride force their way to the top of their group. They and their descendants may control their world for a number of centuries, but eventually some driven individual moves to remove them and then takes pride to replace them. Napoleon in France is a classic example of this. First after the French Revolution where the French Royal Family perished under the blade of the Guillotine. Where individuals of the proletariat took over the government of France to a number of years. The Council of France was then replaced by Napoleon who led his country in to war over large parts of Europe.
It is difficult to actually say he was driven by Pride or was he driven by Greed, whatever he was driven by one of the Seven Deadly Sins and numerous people of that age were adversely affected by his actions.
Whatever criticism we may have of their action they have changed the world we live in but we don’t really know if it was for better or worse.
In our own time if Germany had won the war, what we believe. I suspect those of us that survived the War would so conditioned to believe that Hitler was one of the Great Individuals of the world. On par with Julius Caesar and other great individuals. He and Julius were cut down before they could really alter the world but with Hitler not before he lead the German people into committing shameful acts that even now after Seventy Years are dying out with that generation and fading into the History Books.