The Neuroscience Of The 7 Deadly Sins | Dr Jack Lewis | Modern Wisdom Podcast 182

Be careful who you envy because quite often the people that people typically envy project success and that everything's great, but actually behind the scenes, are they really great? Is life really as gravy when they're back home? Quite often it's not the case, but we don't look into the backstory behind these people. There's loads and loads of people in the public eye who, when they roll out on stage, when they roll out in the studio in front of the lights and the TV cameras, they put, they put on a face that just exudes success. But actually behind the scenes, they've got a crushing, horrible existence, um, that they carefully hide from everyone. (airplane flying)

We're talking about sin today, all the, all the sins. How are you? Are you sinful today? Are you feeling sinful?

No, I've been, I've been pretty virtuous, to be honest. I mean, lockdown sort of, uh, stops people going out and doing things that might get them in trouble, so I've been boringly virtuous.

How sinful can you be during a pandemic, you know?

(laughs) Yeah, I mean that, uh, if you, if you take the drop-in A&E, um, visits, uh, it's just, you, you let, you can't even hurt yourself if you stay indoors.

(laughs)

(laughs)

You put those little foam cups on all the sharp edges in your house.

Exactly.

And you make sure that you take the steps carefully. That's it.

And particularly during the period where the DIY shops were closed, it's like, I mean, how's anyone gonna chop their finger off on a bank holiday if they can't go and buy a scalpel?

Limes.

Not a scalpel, a standing- a standing lime.

Cutting limes for mojitos, that's how.

(laughs)

That's how you do it. Um, so talking about sin-

Yeah.

...The Science of Sin, your new book.

Yeah.

Science of Sin: Why We Do the Things We Know We Shouldn't.

Mm-hmm.

So why, why do we do the things that we know that we shouldn't?

Because we're human.

Okay. I-

Too short an answer? (laughs)

No, I mean, it's just, it's just a, it's a longer book than that.

(laughs)

It's, it's, there's loads of words, loads of pages in this.

No, it's, um, it's, you know what? I'm usually very wordy, so I've, I've, my New Year's resolution is to be more concise. That was perhaps too concise. No, so h- the thing is humans are driven by instincts, um, amongst other things, and those instincts, if you take the ones that are covered by the seven deadly sins, the important thing to remember is if you were to abolish any of those seven things, it, it would be curtains for humanity. We need a modicum of all of the seven deadly sins, um, in, in order to function properly as individuals, as communities. It's just when th- any of those seven categories of behavior go to excess that they are, uh, at its core, antisocial. Now, I'm, I'm not a religious person. Um, I spent a lot of time sort of singing hymns at school because both my primary and secondary school were Church of England, but I, I didn't really believe a word of it. I just thought, you know, I, I was always more inclined to sort of the scientific approach. Let's look at the evidence. If there's evidence to support it, you know, more evidence to support it than to refute a hypothesis, then you, you, you know, you believe accordingly. But with, I don't know, there was so much stuff in the Bible that was sort of clearly outdated that I thought, "How can people still buy into this?" Like, I realize it gives people a lot of, um, hope and it gives them a sense of community, but, but the, the concept of believing like a literal interpretation of the Bible in a post-enlightenment time, it just seemed bonkers.