182. Sloth as the origin of lust
182. SLOTH AS THE ORIGIN OF LUST
Whether for good or evil, people seemed more passionate in the past, in more primitive times and cultures, e.g., in Christendom in the past and in Islamic cultures today. We moderns are the masters of sloth. Yet our culture specializes in lust more than any culture in history. Can lust come from sloth instead of from passion?
Since, according to the Philosopher, no man can be a long time in company with what is painful and unpleasant, it follows that something arises from sorrow in two ways: first, that man shuns whatever causes sorrow; secondly, that he passes to other things that give him pleasure: thus those who find no joy in spiritual pleasures have recourse to pleasures of the body (II-II,3 5,4).
Fr. Thomas Gilby translates this passage, loosely but correctly, “Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures.”
Lust is the favorite sin of our culture. Indeed, the culture has deemed it not a sin at all, but almost a virtue. But the epidemic of lust is destroying society, through destroying families. And it destroys souls, just as any addiction does. Here is its source—sloth—and its cure—true passion and joy, spiritual passion and joy. Saints are not addicted to lust because they know something even more passionate, more exciting. They know God.
In #180 above, St. Thomas defined sloth as sorrow in the presence of spiritual good. “Sorrow” here does not necessarily mean sorrow about some specific object, like the death of a loved one, but simply lack of joy even when a great spiritual good is present. Now St. Thomas adds the psychological principle that we escape sorrow in two ways, which correspond to what the Scholastics called the “irascible” (averting) and “concupiscible” (attracting) emotions. When our sorrow arises from the positive presence of pain, like a wound, it arouses our “irascible” anger and hatred of the pain. But when our sorrow arises from sloth and boredom, we seek some “concupiscible” diversion from our joylessness. And this is the hidden source of lust.
It also explains something all perceptive observers of modern culture have noticed (e.g., Kierkegaard, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis): that our lusts are far less “lusty” than those of our ancestors. Kierkegaard says “even their lusts are sleepy”, and Lewis says that “they simply hop out of and into beds in obedience to sexy advertisements.” We are J. Alfred Prufrock, not Henry VIII. (That’s why we find Henry VIII so fascinating.)
The deeper reason for this is that, as St. Augustine famously said, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and [therefore] our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Augustine’s restlessness, unlike ours, was more passionate than slothful, more sharp than dull. But the principle holds true universally: God made us with a God—shaped vacuum in our hearts (“man cannot live without joy”) and that is why if we don’t have God we have to stuff that hole full of idols. But it’s like stuffing your mouth full of cardboard when you’re starving.
Freud thought God was a substitute for sex. He thought just about everything was a substitute for sex. It was a brilliant insight, because it was exactly the truth upside down (like Sartre’s “Hell is other people”). In fact, sex is very often a substitute for God. Everything is a substitute for God if pursued as our summum bonum, our greatest good. That’s why all sins are sins against the First Commandment.