Gluttony is number 7 (or the last) of the Seven Deadly Sins. My previous entries: 1. Envy, 2. Greed, 3. Sloth, 4. Pride, 5. Lust , 6. Wrath.
Gluttony is NOT the most dangerous of the 7, except, perhaps, for the gluttonous person. Gluttony, unlike WRATH (the most dangerous), is not about self- or other-destruction for vengeance.
Gluttony is about excess. By this I mean excess in desire, in indulgence (gluttonous excess feeds on humans’ obsessive nature in the guise of what we want for personal pleasure - we errantly believe pleasure, desired and/or received, has no upper limit). Our desires include, but are not limited to, appetites, food and drink, indulgences of all types, goods, services, things and delicacies of all types, to excess. These are frequently acquired, in gluttony, at the expense of others (or without considering) others.
Gluttony may seem like Greed (Gluttony for Money or Wealth), but GREED is ABOUT POWER AND DOMINANCE AND CONTROL AND GAIN.
Gluttony is never getting enough to be over-pleasurably un-satisfied or over-satiation. An insatiable attitude. Example: “holding onto food, things, objects, other’s, etc. for one’s pleasure, want, and inability to let go of the un-ending want to acquire, compulsive/obsessive motivation.
Images portray the negative power of gluttony, some familiar, over-abundance in disarray. HOARDING is a form of gluttony.
Unlike LUST, a sin that can be committed without a physical manifestation,
Gluttony involves OVERT “behavior”
A special kind of motivation with visible consequences. We shape our surroundings in the act of gluttony.
Why is gluttony one of the Seven Deadly Sins?
Instead of labeling gluttony a sin, perhaps it’s just a big public-health problem. This would miss the deeper motivation of gluttony.
Why label GLUTTONY a SIN?
Is GLUTTONY just attached to food and quantity of food intake?
Is there a philosophical/religious/spiritual underpinning to the Sin of Gluttony?
There is more to GLUTTONY than meets the eye (so-to-speak).
I agree GLUTTONY is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
I outline my reasons below:
(Merriam-Webster) Gluttony (noun) defined: : 1. excess in eating or drinking and 2. greedy or excessive indulgence (example: accuse the nation of energy gluttony).
I prefer the Merriam-Webster Definition of Gluttony because it has two perspectives versus the Cambridge Dictionary which seems content to narrowly define Gluttony as only: 1. Excess in eating or drinking.
NOTE: The Cambridge dictionary does have a proviso: *The quality of eating too much. A focus on quality, not quantity. It’s “How” you eat NOT “How Much” you eat.
The American Psychological Association Dictionary is “silent” on Gluttony. No surprise. Although NO explicit “reason” is given, the APA Dictionary is “a-religious,” focusing instead on their own religion OR “ATHEISTIC/MECHANISTIC SCIENCE”. Words like “Gluttony, Greed, WRATH…” are subsumed under different, OR more scientific terms. Perhaps, “Indulgence”? No, indulgences not in APA dictionary either. The reader is referred, instead, to: “obesity”.
“Too bad” because “obesity” is a limited consequence of - and may not always be present - in gluttonous behavior. Obesity (by itself) does not infer motivation, desire, fantasy per se. that underscores an attitude of gluttony.
OBESITY is a descriptive TERM (NOUN) that could or could NOT be due to “gluttony”. In the view of science, as preached by the American Psychological Association, a positivist, reductionistic focus overshadows how life and the psyche actually function. That’s why only trusting APA’s version of science will leave you impoverished in understanding and appreciating the world as it is, reality as you experience it, and values as your guide.
ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD “GLUTTONY”
The origin of Gluttony is less ambiguous than, say, Pride. “Pride” is a complex word that has both positive and negative meaning origins.
Gluttony evolved from “gula” a latin word “to gulp down or swallow”. Gluttony as a noun comes from the word (c. 1300) gullet, originally defined as: "[the] passage from the mouth of an animal to the stomach." Ancient French language derived gluttony from the word “golet” (old French) “the neck of a bottle.” Old English ceole "throat;" Old Church Slavonic glutu "gullet," Russian glot "draught or gulp;" Old Irish gelim "I devour."
Glutton was first used to describe extreme insatiability (c. 1200), that is, “extravagant indulgence of appetite…"
A Socrates quote "Eat to live, not live to eat".
Biblical (Old Testament): One of the sins of Sodom was "fullness of bread.” (Ezekial 16:49)
Aquinas added dimensionality to gluttony describing 5 ways to commit it:
Laute – eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly
Studiose – eating food that is excessive in quality (too daintily or elaborately prepared)
Nimis – eating food that is excessive in quantity (too much)
Praepropere – eating hastily (too soon or at an inappropriate time)
Ardenter – eating greedily (too eagerly)
The idea of QUALITY and QUANTIY of gluttony comes from Aquinas. It’s not just too much, it’s what you eat and how you eat.
T. Aquinas labeled and popularized gluttony as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. St. Thomas Aquinas. "The Summa Theologica II-II.Q148.A4" (1920, Second and Revised ed.).
Most scholars agree that the Quran is the only holy book of the Abrahamic religions that refers directly to food waste (re: Gluttony) as in the quote below:
It is He Who has brought into being gardens, the cultivated and the wild, and date-palms, and fields with produce of all kinds, and olives and pomegranates, similar (in kind) and variegated. Eat of their fruit in season, but give (the poor) their due on harvest day. And do not waste, for God does not love the wasteful. [Quran 6:141]
Imam’s throughout history have disclaimed gluttony, a sin (or an excess):
Amirul-Mu'minin (Supreme leader of Islamic community) said: “He who wants to survive, yet no one will survive forever, should ease his back from the burdens of debts-, have the food as early as possible, and reduce copulation with women.”
Once, Amirul-Mu'minin: ate some dates, drank water, and then beat on his stomach with his hand and said: “Away with him who lets his stomach cause him to be in Hell…”
Imam as-Sadiq is reported to have used the word “gluttony” definitionally: “Gluttony is the source of every malady except fever, which appears to the body.”
Is GLUTTONY more than excessive food consumption?
YES, Gluttony is a POV of over-satiating one’s appetites, it extends to other aspects of living, behaving, and acting. Gluttony involves: Indulgence for the sake and opportunity to do it. This is appetites and pleasures: Food, Sex, TV, Social Media Scrolling, Shopping, Alcohol or recreation drug taking via ingestion or otherwise, gossiping, procrastinating and so on. All grist for gluttony.
EXCESS?
Excess defined (noun): 1. The state of exceeding what is normal or sufficient. 2. An amount or quantity beyond what is normal or sufficient; a surplus. 3. The amount or degree by which one quantity exceeds another.
If you haven’t read, C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, I suggest you put it on your reading list. In it, through a clever use of indirect correspondence (between demons working for the Devil), Lewis makes a number of observations on how and why people engage in what C. S. Lewis calls “sinful” behavior. The Seven Deadly Sins are prominent. An excerpt:
Background: This is correspondence between two demons working to spiritually destroy a human to whom they’ve been assigned. Correspondence is in “letters” that Screwtape (head demon) writes to Wormwood (working underling) around various individuals with whom Wormwood (or his underling) are tempting or leading astray from “Christian” views. This is “Letter #17.”
Passage: The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled by it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of DELICACY, not gluttony of EXCESS.
Your patient’s [client’s] mother [this is the person the underling demon is trying to lead astray], as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose (a leading demon), is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please … all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast’. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it’. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.”
C.S. Lewis’ expands gluttony beyond what is superficially viewed as “gluttony of excess.”
In this passage, Lewis notes: “gluttony of delicacy” to implicate gluttony NOT in the quantity of food per se., but in the over-abundance of different foods and cuisines we indulge in, linking in this way our access to “un-ending” inane television channels purely dedicated to “food porn,” the piles and piles of cookbooks and recipes we acquire (and probably never use) but because we want them around we buy/acquire/get them, and keep them, perhaps even some segments of the organic food movement? Hoarding is a psychological disorder that would fit under the label of “gluttony”.
This is, C.S. Lewis’s POV, is a subtle, but powerful way “Gluttony” manifests.
GLUTTONY IS AN ATTITUDE
Gluttony, is an attitude towards one’s self, and others for “having” or over-indulgence in pleasure, safety/security, convenience, pampering, etc. Gluttony is ALWAYS self-focused, getting what one wants by whatever means and for pleasure, one can never get enough.
Are there things you really want that you simply can’t get enough of?
You try “hard” to acquire these, you always want/get/seek this thing, search the internet, finds ways to seek it out (think “porn” for gluttony).
NOTE: I looked for a telegraphic image of “insatiability of porn” or even worse “porn gluttony”. I had to remove the “safe internet option” which I didn’t need to do for any of the other seven deadly sins, or for other words or phrases like “Wrath and Violence”. When I did, I found it impossible to find one that I was willing to display here. The “non-image” is more telling than a picture of “porn gluttony.”
IS GLUTTONY BIOLOGICAL OR INNATE IN HUMAN BEINGS
I would strongly argue: NO
We are not born “wanting” or “desiring”. We were born “needing” or “needy”.
What is the difference between want and need?
Want defined - Cambridge Dictionary (verb): A1: to wish for a particular thing or plan of action. "Want" is not used in polite requests.
Need defined - Cambridge Dictionary (verb): A1: to have to have something, or to want something very much
Want & Need almost seem a tautology (the saying of the same thing twice in different words), but is this really the case?
The American Psychological Association Dictionary, predictably, defines “need”, but does not define “want”. Why? Because “need” is a biological feature of the human functioning, “want” is something generated entirely by the psyche (extra-biological), and not amenable to reductionistic/positivistic/scientific explanation. Therefore, for APA, “want” really doesn’t exist, or it is simply a synonym of “need”. If you “want” you “need”.
Need (noun) defined by the American Psychological Association Dictionary:
a condition of tension in an organism resulting from deprivation of something required for survival, well-being, or personal fulfillment.
a substance, state, or any other thing (e.g., food, water, security) whose absence generates this condition
Note another difference, the lay dictionaries construe need & want as (verbs) versus the APA dictionary construes need as a (noun).
Why? Because most people view needs and wants as actions we engage due to a psychic underpinning (our humanity) or desire, we think or feel something then we act, needing and/or wanting. If need is a (noun) it is a state or a condition (e g., easier to study or examine), not an ephemeral action.
APA’s POV is as follows: We act based on states and conditions (need), as in a mechanistic engine acts (due to things like gasoline, parts in motion, combustion, etc), all processes that can be explained. You can’t break-down and explain the psyche (unless, of course, you change your POV, which will not happen for APA - recall APA has it’s own religion - and psych doesn’t really count. FYI: This is any fundamentalist religious philosophy operates.
Can need versus want be distinguished. YES, of course!
Below is a breakdown:
This schematic oversimplifies the nuanced distinction, rich in intrapsychic depth. I could create an entry (perhaps even write an entire book) on differences between need and want.
Several important points:
Needs are objective, discoverable as facts, what needs a person “needs”, yet the fact has bearing on what one ought to do. Need is primary factual, secondary evaluative.
Needs are matters of priority; what we need usually overrides other reasons for action.
Needs are unimpeachable values. We cannot say a person ought to have different needs, because needs are fundamental (water is a need).
Needs are sometimes described as ‘morally demanding’, and therefore as directly generating moral obligations on the part of those who can fulfil them. (Give the Palestinians Water!) This is a secondary feature of need.
Wants are based on the psychological notion of “desire”. “Desiring” is “secondary”, a state of mind: A person with a desire tends to act, feel and think in certain ways.
If Nora desires tea, then Nora will make herself a cup of tea; if she does not get herself some tea right away, she will typically feel the urge to do so; she will find the thought of tea pleasant and will find her current lack of tea unpleasant; her thoughts will repeatedly turn to the idea of tea; she will judge that tea seems like a good idea. BUT, she will not stop functioning if she does not get tea. Now, if tea were Nora’s only source of “water” we introduce “need”.
Wants are subjective, based on preferences, and are more idiosyncratic and within the judgement of the individual. The motivational power of want is underpinned by urge. (Again, urge is also in need, but urge in the form of “MUST HAVE TO LIVE”.) Ultimately, urge turns to demand in need.
Urge defined: 1. try earnestly or persistently to persuade (someone) to do something:
What I’m presenting here is a clear distinction between: need versus want.
Gluttony is “want”. Need may be present (Food to live), but, in Gluttony:
Primary and Secondary are REVERSED.