S2 EP8 - Sloth

This is Stephen Fry's "Seven Deadly Sills". Episode 8. Sloth. Oh, God, if I must. I mean, really? To be honest, I can't be asked to do this podcast and I'm sure a shooting you can't be asked to listen. I mean, everyone in the world can't be asked. Or should there be no one in the world can be asked? Oh, who cares? Of course, it's those that can be asked and are the ones to watch out for. The ones who stay awake at night clotting and hatching and scheming. How does Julius Caesar put it? Young Cassias have a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. Let me have men abad me that sleep at nights. I think that's it. I can't be asked to check the quote exactly. Yes, we've come to the 7th of the 7 Deadly Sills. Sloth. Is it sloth as in both or sloth as in moth? Those irritating and unreliable YouTube how to pronounce this word offerings don't really help. Wrath, roth, sloth, sloth. What else can we say instead of sloth? Well, we take the word to mean a kind of lazy apothea, torpid, listless disengagement. There's a splendid word, acidi, or acidia, that is close to the German word, Veltschmerz, world weariness. And even perhaps to shop on how as varn, that strange state of delusional disconnectedness that fogs the mind and inhibits decision and action. Well, we don't need gloomy German words or the assistance of doomy German philosophers to know that the slugged, sloth lives inside us all. It may usually be listed as the last of the deadly sins, but I can, weirdly, put my hand up and have the confession dragged from me that it is for me the first sin, the sin of all the sins with which I most identify, and whose bale for influence on me I most deeply despise and most bitterly regret. Which is not to say that I don't work hard, I do work hard. Too hard, perhaps, I'm used to being told that some people think of me as a workaholic. I can concentrate concertedly and focus ferociously for hour after hour on projects like writing books, scripts, screenplays, podcasts, or articles. I always turn up well on time to recording sessions and filming days. I read the many manuscript, advanced copies, scripts, proposals, and treatments that are sent to me every week. I even, these days, exercise regularly. I don't over sleep. Quite the reverse, in fact. I'm usually up by 5.30 or so in the morning, if not before. A morning walk of a minimum six miles a day, every single day, and the gym twice a week. I manage more or less to keep abreast of the ever rising tsunami of emails and text messages and letters that daily flood my inboxes. I shop, I cook, I wash up, dry, and I even put away. I tidy, I brush my teeth at least twice a day, and every other day I floss with vigor and attentive enthusiasm. I do not seem to possess the ability to relax and do nothing. I very, very rarely go on holidays. Watching sport on television is about the only time you'll find me not working in some manner for any length of time. And why am I saying that I rue my sloth? Can we still use phrases like I rue my sloth in the 21st century, just sense of silly, doesn't it? All right, why do I claim to bemoan my inactivity, lament my laziness, lethargy, lacity, and laxity, and lackluster, langa? Why, given that, for going boastful recitation of my industry and diligence, do I now affect to deplore my indolence? Surely I'm posturing. Surely it's just fake modesty, taken to greasy, yuraya heap levels to pretend to any such weakness. You may be guilty of the other six deadly sins, Stephen, and a whole slew of others too beastly to name, but sloth, they're kidding us. No. No, really I am not. But to prove how guilty I am of the seventh deadly sin, I have to exhibit bucketloads of the first deadly sin. Pride. You see, and you'll have to forgive them, the huts, the cheek, the arrogance, the nerve, the presumption, the hubris, and the sheer conceit of my argument here. You see, I think all in all, looking at my brain, mind, as objectively as possible, looking at the places and people that chance and choice have brought me into contact with, and all the opportunities that have come my way, looking at all of these. I am quite sure that I have wasted frittered, dribbled, splurged, spacked, and spunked my gifts up the wall. You see, the insufferable pride in me maintains that I am smart and talented enough to have achieved things of real value and purpose and point in my life. I could have contributed properly. I am convinced and forgive this pride, that I was apportioned by nature, DNA, and all that, a rather fine, capacious, quick, and capable brain. It remembers things, it reasons, it connects well. I was given to a facility with language and ideas, concepts and notions, paradigms and frameworks, causes and consequences. I was also, thanks to my parents, instilled with values that have imparted in me a high doctrine of the human spirit, a robust belief, despite so much apparent evidence to the country, a robust belief in the honour, goodness, and noble intention and potential of people. I have been given throughout my life every opportunity to learn and to dedicate myself to thought, knowledge, and the betterment of the world, and what did I do? I quickly turned my back on academia and the life of ideas or the possibility of public service or a useful profession and grabbed greedily at the fake-gilded glamour and false glittery glare of show-business, got myself into a high life of partying, pleasure and ease, overpraised, overpaid, over pampered, managed to write some books, did my best to share enthusiasm here and there, and after a while made a kind of name for myself. I'm not fishing for compliments, and I don't want to denigrate my life and efforts entirely, but think what it could have been, what I could have achieved. I could have learned at least five or six more languages. I could have immersed myself properly and with more depth in the history of ideas that the nature of numbers and the concepts of science. I could have plunged into the literature's and cultures of many, many more countries and civilizations, not for the sake of becoming a professor or a no-all-water, when prizes will be admired, but because these were goals I have always felt my brain is capable of, and therefore I should not have denied it. This brain is only here in the world for a fraction of a historical eye-blink. I might at least let it achieve its potential. Instead, I've been a more or less plausible, dilettante, dabbler, not entirely an idiot, nor has my soul, I hope, been entirely in hock to the meffistophalean lures of our time. I've tried to behave decently and honorably as much as I can, but I have, I know, far under-achieved, given the attributes of my birth. I warned you that my reason for claiming to be slothful was a conceited and proud reason. I couldn't make any claim to be disappointed with the sloth and idleness that has held me back unless I had so high an opinion of myself and my possibilities. But I should add that I don't think I'm a freak or even special in any important degree, for I have a very high opinion of most people's possibilities, and have achieved just enough learning to find out how very little I know or understand. Which, as my old friend Christopher Hitchens used to say, is the mark of an educated mind, one that discerns its own limits. The opposite of the now notorious Dunning Kruger effect. Do look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about, Dunning Kruger. It basically says that those with the least competence are the most prone to overestimate their competence. It explains much of the disorder of the world. It's very easy in life to satisfy oneself with the thought that one has just the right amount of competence, brains and intelligence, isn't it? People with more, one says comfortably to oneself, are nerds or geeks or swats or elitists or ivory tower academics and dreamers with no gumption, no mouse, no common sense, or—and this is the most aggravatingly British response—their pretentious wankers who read too much into things and talk crap and show off and overthink. On the other hand, those we conceive of as having less smarts than us are, dear brain morons, stupid ignorant and contemptible fools that we see through and at whom we shake our heads. As I discuss when we were thinking about envy, we have the Goldilocks brains. We say to ourselves that our brains are perfect, not too big, not too small, not too cold, not too hot, just right. What bollocks shit we do talk, convincing no one but ourselves and deep down not even really ourselves. I suppose I at least know enough then to see how dumb I am compared to some of this. of the writers I read and some of the people I meet or hear about who do remarkable deeds and think remarkable thoughts way beyond my scope. But I also know how my shallow greed, misplaced ambition, and above all fundamental moral and intellectual laziness have stopped me from developing myself such that I could at least be better than I am and on my way to being as good as I could be. As Clint Eastwood urges Hal Holbrook in Magnum Force, a man's got to know his limitations. But know them. Not guess at them. Not imagine them to be narrow. We've got to find out what they really are. And in this world, one's limitations are, for the most part, then the laughingly called free world, at least, one's limitations are wide indeed, wide enough to allow one to admit that it's only laziness that stops us being constrained by them. You're listening to Stephen Fry's Seven Deadly Sins. I'll be back after a short interval. Why haven't I spent three hours a day practising the piano, another three learning Russian? Why haven't I read Marx properly, or the analysts of Confucius? And painting? Why haven't I learnt to paint and sculpt? Train puppies, row or sail a boat, learn the names and understand the characteristics of more flowers, birds and trees, volunteer for soup kitchens, read more of the thousands of books on my shelves, go on anti-poaching patrols in Africa and Southeast Asia, learn to fill it fish, tie knots, knit, institute prizes, learn sign language, make chutney, juggle, fashion a dovetail joint, do a backflip, befriend a pig, cook a tartata and climb a mountain. I know it all sounds a bit silly and a bit worthy, doesn't it? And worse, a bit of a bastard mungrel mix of vanity, virtue, signaling and a tedious and obvious bucket list. I haven't put it very well at all. And you will perhaps say that it's all very high and fine for someone in my lucky position, even to dream that such flights of fancy are possible. The rest of us have to keep our heads down, work in ghastly open plan offices alongside insufferable team leaders, who make David Brent look like Nelson Mandela, pay for the kids clothes, keep on top of the mortgage, the student loan and the car bills, worry about grandpa's dementia, make sure our daughter isn't self-harming again, put up with the neighbours complaints about the state of the garden, finish that essay, fill in that spreadsheet, face up to that showdown with your neighbours, and you pampered privileged Stephen, dare to presume to lecture us about sloth, laziness and inactivity. Oh dear, I really seem to have upset you, that wasn't the point I promise. I'm sure you don't have time to become fluent in German or read more books, or to learn to distinguish a godwit from a sandaling, a primula from a peony or a sequoia from a Wellingtonia. I'm sure you have every reason not to berate yourself and laziness and inaction. I'm not getting at you, I promise. It's me. I know what opportunities I've had, and how lazily I've pissed them away. It's pride to think such a thing as I've confessed, but think it I do. And I should assure you, by the way, that it's not just the world's greatest achievers and go-getters and polymats and dynamos that I admire. Quiet, decent, simple lives lived away from the public eye are of as much value, perhaps more, probably more than any other kind. Maybe it's my age. As I hover around my early 60s, it's all too apparent that there is less time left to me than lies behind. Most of the road has been taken. If I had faith in the promises of certain types of religion, I might perhaps believe truly believe that this life on earth wasn't all there was. But without such faith and in the absence of a shred of evidence to the country, I can only act as if this life is eat. I'm not complaining quite the opposite. Lamb's sake, one life on this extraordinary earth is enough. It's more than enough a recycling or a resurrection to eternal life would be insufferably tedious and pointless, a contemptible insult to the world. But the conviction that this life is the only life I will ever get and that most of its course is now completed is all the more urgent and persuasive a reason to fill, as Kipling recommends, each unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run. It seems such a pity to let it all go by without having engaged more, without having tested oneself more, without running around in circles more like a bewildered puppy. It is, after all, bewildered running around in circles puppies who see the world right, not adult dogs yawning in baskets by the fire. The world is, wow, the world is, huh? The world is, hey, the world is, what the fuck? The world is to be excitedly stiff, snuffled, yapped at and run away from its speed and hurtle back towards with cocked ears and head to one side. I remember once when someone referring to incidents in my checkered past described me as having gone off the rails from time to time. Let's think about that well-worn phrase going off the rails. I mean, when you think about it, who the rubbery fuck wants to be on rails? What is a rail but an inverted rut? And being in a rut is understood and known to be undesirable. The question should not be a headshaking, ah, yes, you went off the rails and, didn't you? But surely a sympathetic idea, how sad, what happened to put you back on the rails? What a shame. Do hope you get off them soon. That's the thing. It's sloathe that lets one slide down onto the rails and allow them to carry one unprotestingly forward. They're safer, easier, established, known. Life off the rails is an adventure, yes, but uncertain, uncharted, potentially dangerous, too frightening. But maybe it isn't my age, maybe it's the age. I don't want to get all political on your ass, but perhaps we can agree that we live in alarming times, an age of entrenched prejudice, dislike, and distrust, an age of collective neurosis, anxiety, and dread. I have complete faith in most people, but I have no faith in the billionaire donors who are stuffing the electoral war chests of the populist politicians around the world, nor have I faith in the darker fringes of the bitter, bully boy brute squads controlling the liberal left in many arenas. Each flank despises literate, intellectual, thoughtful, doubtful, creative, knowledgeable, dissenting, ambiguous, latitude-dinarians, and questioners. They're always the first to be rounded up by both the hard left and the hard right. Burn the books, smash the presses, sneeringly characterize care and compassion as no more than pious virtue signaling and sensorious political correctness, trash the intelligentsia as a elitist, whip up some hatred of clever Jews, parasite gypsies, cockroach immigrants and enemy of the people intellectuals, and the world is yours. A plague on all their houses is all I can say, but I can't say much more than that, it seems. My righteous wrath and noble indignation are nowhere to be found, a sorrow, and a sadness, and an overmastering desire to pull the duvet over my head and pretend it isn't happening. Surely I should be devoting myself to articulating some sort of struggle, and to clashing the saucepins over the heads of the people of the world until they wake up, until they become the crowd in that square in Bucharest, who suddenly see that the Chauchescus are naked emperors and storm their palace, or like the Italian partisans who finally came to their senses, corn and Mussolini, and strung the brute up on a lamp post. Let's hope such extremes aren't necessary, of course, for we don't have Chauchescus or Mussolini's ruling us yet, but we shouldn't forget that they, at first, weren't the monsters they were allowed to turn into. Only when Sloath and Apathy gave them room to become so, with such inverted creatures of the dark, Sloath and Apathy are as oxygen and sunlight, and we haven't even started on the state of the natural world, the climate, the oceans, the atmosphere. Life today is a race between the death of the natural world, as we know it, and the death of the Enlightenment. In either case, Sloath and Apathy will allow the darkness to descend. I know all this, and I watch in despair, fully knowing that I should be there in the ranks, denouncing and standing up to the strong bullies who outmaneuver us, outsmart us, out flank us, outthink us, outspend us, with their greed, capacity, energy and savage ambition, manipulation and deception. But I just want to sit quietly writing books about things long ago and far away. Turn up to the odd film set or sound studio, travel, relax, enjoy my life and let the world go hang. So yes, I can own up to Sloath, hell yes, the Sloath that stopped me becoming what I could have become. and the slow-thomixed with cowardice that stops me from dedicating myself to any kind of fight against the wickedness that is prevailing in our world. "Wow, this isn't a very happy way to end my excursion round the seven deadly sins. I've learned a hell of a lot, just by stopping and thinking, reading and writing around this arena. Everything I have said in the course of the last eight episodes has been to my mind definitive or even necessarily convincing or true. Everything has been, as a kite, floated up to sea of lightning might strike it, but in truth you, dear listener, you are the lightning." Next week I will turn to the great mailbag of responses that has come to me by way of the hashtag #7figure77deadlysins directed to @StevenFry on Twitter and @StevenFry actually. On Instagram, you may want to take issue with me on matters of fact and matters of interpretation. You may have suggestions for new deadly sins that are more suited to our age. Cowardists, for example, bullying, perhaps abuse. Who knows what you might come up with? Do let me know. I have enjoyed this saunter around sin, this wander, around weakness, this voyage, around vice. Will you stop with the eliterations already Stephen? And I hope you have too. Catch you next time for a listen to all the letters and messages, questions and comments that have come in. Until then, farewell and thank you. You can get out of bed now. You've been listening to Stephen Fry's #7deadlysins. Grateful thanks to our composer, Guy Farley. The show is produced by Andrew Sampson and Norman Goodman. Additional episode information can be found at stevenfry.com/bananaskines. This has been a Sam Fry limited production.