It's late but I want myself to write this series more or less in time and that won't be possible if I start slacking off on the first day (more about slacking off later on)!
Our first sin shall be lust. As a bit of background I'll tell you how Lust on Fullmetal Alchemist was.
The homunculus was female, a beautiful, well-shaped female. She was called the 'Ultimate spear' since she could extend her nails most likely as long as she saw necessary and the nails could pierce through basically anything. She was the most shown until her death, taking care of the... let's say publicity.
In my opinion it's hard to personificate lust but it was alright-ely done. A fleshy woman with long nails, how else could lust be pictured? Nails have always been some kind of women-like symbol and by taking it up a notch and making them practically infinite it captures the idea. The nails weren't red though, they were black, so that's the only thing that didn't really match up; red would be the color of lust even thought on the other hand it could be the color of love, which doesn't really compare to lust. Lust would also be really hard to be made into actions in such a series that FMA was yet it was possible to notice in small things as in her emotes and the way that she stood and presented herself.
The way I see it, lust would be the smallest and by smallest I mean the less dangerous of all the 7 sins. It might sound like an ultimate spear would be kind of dangerous but I'm talking about real feelings now. There might be some crimes, severe ones as in rapes and murders made by lust, but their amount could be seen as marginal compared with the other sins.
Lust is also easily controlled. You can most of the time think rationally and avoid awkward situations, just like that. Of course there are exceptions and mostly it is about the weakness of the person and not the power of the sin.
Lust can be seen in many ways: it can be straight-into-the-point thoughts of sex but it can be seen as loving too much or too many, as well.
In the latter case there might be more problems than in the former since it would be affecting directly your life. As stated before, thoughts can be controlled, but the sensation of 'love' is a bit more difficult to harness. There was this one episode of Supernatural that sums it up pretty well. There was a siren luring men into doing terrible things by just making them fall utterly and completely in love. Therefore, they would kill their wives even though happily married and their mothers even though they had the most wonderful relationship. Just because they were
so in love and the siren asked for it. In the end it was explained as poison that was transmitted through the siren's saliva but again, the point was clear. They were in
too in love. Was it more than lust what they felt? Can a person willing to do anything for someone really be in love? Actually, it could also be seen as greed but we'll focus on the lust part for now. Most of the time the victims were found in strip bars. Doing what? Fulfilling their lusty needs. Could there have been a more ironical way of screwing up their lives than by killing the ones they
loved the most for the ones they
lusted the most for? Really. Thank God that's not possible in real life.
Another side of lust. Business. Everything is sold with sex nowdays. Not a single commercial (mostly) has an ugly person on it. It's kinda stupidly said, but it's true. Of course they'll try to find the good-looking people (according to masses and the prerequisites set by the media) and strip them near naked. It works for perfume and clothing, it works for food and toothpaste (why do they have to was their teeth shirtless/in a bra? Cause that's how we wake up, right?). Some people even make a career out of lust. Reality 'stars' hang out naked and flash a tit or two and the ratings skyrocket. It's ridiculous what a grip it has on us. Great political careers go to waste just because the man (it's always the man, right? and who's to blame, let's go back to that in a bit) decided to get a whore to give him the pleasure he needed. It's not always that way either since it can be the married secretary who's banging the big CEO nextdoor. Like in everything, opportunity makes the thief. Let's not even mention (oh we're going to anyway) the porn industry, blooming out of people's lust. Stripclubs, clubs in general, even bars are all about lusting. No one thinks of finding their dream partner on the dance floor, I've talked with this about many friends and they all seem to think the same. It's not
impossible but it is highly unlikely. Everyone wants to just let it loose and relax with high volume music and sexy dance moves. We all realize and (most of us) understand it.
If we think about it the biological way it is
obvious for us to need lust. How else would we reproduce and make more of ourselves? I believe in the end it was just a matter of evolution to convert lust into something sophisticated, beautiful and unbelievably strong as love is. What other animal knows how to love, love selfishly? They are driven by the survival instinct and for them to survive and their species to keep living they need to make babies. The most lust they have the more little ones they'll have hence giving a better prediction. Love was made not to only make us feel even more empowered by lust than we already are but also to
bind us into just one another individual. Whether that was nature's way of trying to slow down the speed of us shagging or if it was just an unfortunate side-effect, that's for everyone to figure out themselves. I just see it as a way to control us. The whole love makes us way more intelligent than any other animal. It makes us capable of doing things by listening to our hearts and not just instincts. Before intelligence there was love, so we could say geniuses were born by love.
Now, why did the church declare one of our basic needs a sin? A
deadly sin? For the reasons up above. We are capable of something much better so it was logical to try to completely forbid, scare out, the leftovers of our savage selves. It was a way to perfect the human being from primitive scraps. It was most likely done in the renaissance age when people tried their best to be sophisticated, filled with culture and chastity.
If we look it the other way it was a way for the church to manipulate people. God wanted for a man and a woman to love each other forever. Till death them apart. How much easier it would have been for the church as well as the governments to have this nuclear family ideal? No more fights about parenthood since a child born would have been a child planned. The supervision of the families would also have been so much easier.
The third option is obvious. The church wanted to strip off people from it, forbid it, staking their passage to paradise. Why, you ask? Quiet people are less troublesome. I heard from someone that the whole church concept was generated to make people
wish for an ascetic lifestyle. Sooo much cheaper than the previous strategy: giving people whatever they wanted. Think about it. How convenient for them to prohibit everything that would cause trouble by making people think they wouldn't get into some better, perfect place after they die. Who wouldn't want to
live after dying?
With this I conclude this essay, I have to call it that since it became so in-depth I believe most of my readers won't probably even read it throughout-ly. If anyone did, I hope they at least enjoyed it and I hope it raised some kind of thoughts since that's what I always aim for. Like I like to say, quiet people dumb people (not to be taken [too] seriously).
It would be so cool to continue with greed, but next time you'll see this it'll be all about gluttony! Omnomnom I can't
wait to get there! I actually enjoyed pouring all my thoughts into this.
Byebye.
Dear lord that video just gave me so much more to talk about! Just listen to the lyrics while watching the video. So contradicting. She sings about justifying her love that means she isn't believing in love at all. She needs a reason for all that to be happening, for the sex to be meaningful, for it to be love. But what she doesn't realize in the whole song that love doesn't need justifying. Love is pure and abundant; if it's there it'll be there. You can't justify, force or in any other way
make it (unless you mean making love, which is different!).
"What are you gonna do? // Talk to me -- tell me your dreams // Am I in there?"
So much insecurity. She has all the lust she wants but she isn't sure if it's what she needs. On the end of the video she runs away from the whole situation, giggling. All that lust, touching, nudity and playfulness and she just runs away giggling. She couldn't have been serious.
"I wanna know you // Not like that // I don't wanna be your mother // I don't wanna be your sister either // I just wanna be your lover // I wanna have your baby"
And that is what
really summarizes everything. You can know someone as a mother or a sister but that's not what she wants. She wants to be a lover, to have a baby. What really differentiates a friend/familiar from a lover is the lack of lust from the former ones. True friendship are platonic: you want your friend so much that you wouldn't even dream of lusting. In other words, love is refined lust yet it's everything but. As stated above she goes away as if the whole thing had been a small game when just moments ago she was begging for reproducing. It all goes back to that basic instinct, doesn't it?
"Poor is the man // whose pleasures depend // On the permission of another"
Amen.