Their are seven sins or seven deadly sins as some will say that have been discussed for centuries pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. How do they manifest in people, now bear in mind every single person has these traits in them but people choose whether to control them or to be controlled by them. Most of them begin quietly as ordinary human tendencies that are allowed to grow without restraint. Pride becomes the inability to admit that we are wrong, greed becomes wanting a little more than we need, envy becomes looking at someone else's life and feeling that their success somehow diminishes ours, wrath becomes anger that we stop knowing how to control, sloth becomes postponing what we know needs to be done and then gluttony and lust, which are often reduced to their obvious meanings, are really about excess and allowing desire to take control. That is probably why the seven sins remain relevant. They are less about monsters and more about ordinary people slowly allowing their worst instincts to become habits.
I relate this to my country Nigeria, I find myself wondering which of these sins have done the most damage to us. How does a country that had so much potential become so poverty ridden and backward and also at a state of failure. There are certainly arguments for several of them, but two keep coming back to me, greed and pride. For me they are the most destructive to any institution or society. Greed takes the public position that should serve millions and turns it into an opportunity for one person. Pride then makes admitting the problem almost impossible because nobody wants to accept that the system they benefit from is broken. I have watched enough of Nigeria, experienced enough of the country and listened to enough conversations of our everyday reality to realise that our biggest problems are often not a lack of intelligence, resources or capable people. Sometimes it is simply what we choose to do with what we have.
Greed.
I think greed is probably the easiest one to recognise in Nigeria because it appears in places both big and small, amongst both the poor and rich. I see it in the person who gets a position of authority and immediately starts thinking about what they can take from it. I see it in the contractor who inflates a project because nobody is watching closely enough or the officials have a cut in it. I see it in the official who sees public money as an opportunity rather than a responsibility but greed only belongs to politicians or powerful people. It can appear in the ordinary person who refuses to do a small job properly unless there is something extra for them, the person who sells something at an unfair price simply because they know the other person has no alternative. What makes this particularly painful to me is that Nigeria has so much potential that we should not need to be fighting over scraps in the first place.
Pride.
Then there is pride, and I think this one is more dangerous than we sometimes admit because it prevents correction. In my religion (Islam) God said “any person who has an atoms worth of pride will not taste paradise.” That is how destructive pride is, Nigeria has an incredible ability to defend itself from criticism. Someone points out a problem and rather than asking whether the criticism is valid, he is immediately asked where the person is from, what they have achieved, who they support or whether their own state is any better. We do this as individuals too, Nobody likes being told that they are wrong, but there is something particularly damaging about turning disagreement into an attack on our identity and this is where greed and pride become especially destructive when they work together. Greed says, "Take what you can." Pride says, "Don't let anyone question you." Together, they create a system where someone can benefit from something that is clearly failing and still convince themselves that they are entitled to their position