The Recitation of Sin

gluttony and submission

Do Not Devour the Earth. Do Not Wear Chains

collaboration and intolerance

Do Not Shake Hands with the Locust. Do Not Burn your neighbor’s Council Hall

hubris and iconoclasm

Do not Burn Tomorrow’s Fields. Do not Burn Yesterday’s Books

What does this Mean?

The Cardinal Sins may look strange to your eyes if you were raised with the Seven Deadly Sins baked into your cultural understanding of the world. The purpose of the Cardinal Sins is not personal purity, but the sustainability of the world and the independence of the individual. The Cardinal Sins are intended to help the adherent retain the ability to walk away from any economic arrangement, preserve and expand the ability to provide for survival, preserve and expand the ability to think critically, and preserve and expand the ability to defend the self. Further, The Cardinal Sins are designed to preserve sustainable social groups, and maintain and nurture a diversity of cultural groups. Lastly the Cardinal Sins are designed to encourage actions which protect the local ecosystems and help the individuals regenerate any damage done to the local biosphere by previous cultural groups. 

The Cardinal Sins

Honor the Land and Break the Chains

Action or Inaction that leads to or allows…  

• Gluttony: Landbase Depletion 
  • Do Not Devour the Earth
  • Represented by the Wendigo 
• Submission: Inability to Walk Away 
  • Do Not Wear Chains
  • Represented by the Sleepers

Gluttony. What is landbase depletion? Landbase occurs when nutrients are being removed from the ecosystem and then not returned. The dustbowl droughts in the southern US during the 1930s occurred because agricultural practices were removing nutrients from the ecosystem in the form of farming practices that over taxed the soil and destroyed indigenous plants and animals. When you grow food and export it elsewhere, the nutrients used to grow that food is lost to the ecosystem. If this goes on two long, ecosystems collapse. This is why the middle east, which was once call the Fertile crescent, is now a desert. The nutrients must be returned to the ecosystem, if you wish to keep living in that ecosystem.

Submission. What does it mean to retain the ability to walk away? Walk away from what? Maintain your ability to walk away from any situation that no longer serves you well. You have no obligation to remain in an unsatisfying or even abusive situation. Distrust anyone who tries to sell you on lifelong obligations of loyalty, from national pride, from familial piety, from religious duty, and so on. If you cannot walk away, then you are a prisoner, a child, or a slave. If you are a prisoner or a slave (but I repeat myself), then you are being used by another for exploitation.

Honor the Free and Fight the King

Action or Inaction that leads to or allows…   

• Collaboration: Following or tolerating the Path of the False King 
  • Do Not Shake Hands with the Locust
  • Represented by the Men of Black and White 
• Intolerance: Dishonoring or abusing the Paths of Other Free Tribes 
  • Do Not Burn your neighbor’s Council Hall
  • Represented by the Wild Ones

Collaboration. What is the Path of the Locust? Well that is a central question that the Song of Seven seeks to answer. Short answer? It is living so as to maximize these six cardinal sins. The path of the Locust revels in landbase depletion through slavery and conquest. You are a prisoner of the Hungry Empire right now, and thus also of the Path of the Locust. Do not cooperate. Be subversion. Resist. Escape. The Path of the Locust ends in death. Do not speed us down that road.

Intolerance. The Hungry Empire seeks to dominate and destroy other peoples. The Hungry Empire seeks to make all other tribes into the Hungry Empire. This creates a human monoculture. Monocultures are brittle, they are subject to collapse when the environment changes. By seeking to create a human monoculture, the Hungry Empire puts humanity at risk of self inflicted extinction. Celebrate the ways that are not your way, for they create diversity that protects all tribes.

Honor the Past and Protect the Future

Action or Inaction that leads to or allows…   

• Hubris: Damaging the livelihood of the Seven Future Generations 
  • Do not Burn Tomorrow’s Fields 
  • Represented by the Knights of Purity 
• Iconoclasm: Forgetting the works of the Honored Ancestors 
  • Do no Burn Yesterday’s Books
  • Represented by the Knights of Unity

Hubris. The False King offers a choice. Feast with me and starve tomorrow. Or fight against me and die today. One cannot grow without limit forever. If one follows the Path of the Locust, they inevitably end up with the fate of the locust, the swarm does not survive when it has eaten everything. And this is the essence of hubris, to live as though yours in the only generation. You must leave food for tomorrow. You must leave life for the next generation.

Iconoclasm. The False King dismisses the knowledge of the other tribes as worthless. The False King drives into the future with the single minded determination of a madman. This is driven by the False King’s fear of death. He tries to outrun death. He tries to grow forever. And in doing so, he devours the other tribes and devours the wisdom accumulated over tens of the thousands of generations. We must learn from the practices of the past. We must learn from the practices of other tribes. They are not all ideal. They are not all even correct. But the longer a practice has survived, the more likely it is to be useful. And we are using these practices as kindling on our own funeral pyre.

Who are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Now I understand that there is some dispute as to the identity of the four horseman as they are described in the bible. But that’s not what I want to look at here. Here, I’m going to stick with Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine; the horseman that we are culturally familiar with.

So who are they? It may seem like a non-question. After all, I just gave you their names, but really those are just labels. Do these labels describe individual supernatural beings, or do they describe something else? Perhaps rephrasing the question will help.

What are the four horsemen? And to answer that, I would argue that they are consequences. What happens when a species over-populates and overcrowds its cities? Pestilence. What happens when a species overpopulates and strips the land bare leaving it unable to produce enough food to feed the growing populace? Famine. What happens when a species overpopulates and has nowhere left geographically to expand to, or runs out of resources to extract in order to meet its technological needs? War.

And what happens if all of this continues without that species correcting course?

Death.

The four horseman are our collective credit card bill. They are our debt to the rest of the ecosystem. And the more we raise that debt, the nasty the consequences when they finally arrive like bill collectors from hell.

So there you are. The four horsemen are not beings, they are the consequences of our actions. They are the consequences of overpopulation. Now look around. Look at Yemen and Mali and the Central African Republic and Somalia. Look at Egypt and Syria and Iraq. Look at Greece and Iceland. Look at Afghanistan. Look at the water conflicts between Pakistan and India and China. Look at the territorial disputes between Israel and Palestine. Look at territorial disputes between China and Japan. And now, tell me that the first three horsemen haven’t arrived already.