For those who do not sympathize with associating “concupiscence” with “wanton shopping, economic oppression, environmental degradation, or totalitarian power”, well, what about sex?

When it came to sex, St. Augustine – if you will excuse the pun – rose above all.  Augustine pinned the tail of lust, I mean, the “tale” of lust, onto the donkey of “concupiscence”.

Horniness can make a jackass of anyone.  I mean this in terms of ontology.  What if the creative act in which God forms the soul is somehow linked to this heaving and hoeing that is the concupiscent fruit of horniness?  Talk about sullied.  A woman may just as well give birth to a donkey.

Or maybe we can turn the table around, and see the donkey – the jackass – giving birth to the babe.  Now, that bumping and grinding, that unencumbered exhibition of “concupiscence”, is redeemed by a mystical moment – the moment of conception – where one of tens of billions of sperm – and one alone – penetrates the membrane of the egg.  It could just as well have taken place in heaven.  To be alive is like winning the lottery.

Now, put a thin, pliable, yet impenetrable barrier between the egg and those sperm.  Now, there is only “concupiscence”.  The mystical moment has been removed.

Now, we will hum the notes of a Progressive interlude.

Is Capitalism Exhibit A for socially structured concupiscence?  Does Marx’s “surplus value” equate to “a craving for capital”?  Are developing nations, like Peru and China, co-dependents of the social “concupiscence” of the United States of America?  Does social “concupiscence” destroy the environment?  Does it steal life from the future?

Peters stated, in most Progressive terms, that denial lies at the heart of concupiscence.

What do we deny?  We reject our own limits and that rejection is expressed through the consumption of someone else’s life giving power.

To make a long story short: Capitalism sucks.

Ironically, Peters’ critique projects the arrogance of Progressivism onto the straw man of Capitalism.  Progressives deny limits for the central government.  The central government grows by consuming someone else’s life giving powers.

When that long story is made short, we won’t be so smug about it: Progressivism sucks capital.

So what does “capital” mean?

Traditionally, “concupiscence” (“con” = “with”; “cupere”=”to desire”; “scence”=”a state of being”) was associated with impulsive acts that relieved anxiety.

There is a little “Cupid” in “concupiscence”.   And, it makes “scence” that, if your “state of being” is “with Cupid”, then your may find your heart pierced with “an arrow of desire”.

What do you crave?  Certainly, you do not crave to overcome your craving.  Or maybe you do.  All you need to do is get rid of that nasty body and become a disembodied mind.  What could a disembodied being possibly crave?  Hmmm.  Do I detect a problem here?

Cupid’s arrows can pierce both embodied and disembodied hearts.

Faith^{Progressivism} is belief in the model that the “self” is the principle by which the mind is bound to the body.

Experts define “self-esteem” (see “pride” above) and provide ideas for the social construction of their model.

Faith^{Progressivism} speaks the “language” of Progressivism.  In this language, Progressivism is by definition not a “religion”.

Faith^{Progressivism} adores the social constructions of the Central State, the Multiversities, and the Conformist Media and Entertainment Complex and is blind or dissembling in regards to the unintended consequences of those constructions.

Progressives cannot recognize the sins inherent in the social constructions of those sister religions: Fascism and Communism.  That is because the sins of its sister religions are the ones that they unconsciously intend to commit.

Why?  Because these sins make them feel good about themselves.

See Thomas Sowell’s book: Intellectuals.

Because of the narrow focus of Peters’ book, I extended his formalism from the private occluding magic of Satan (which Peters contrasts with the clarifying magic of the New Age Movements) to the current (2012) religion (that contrasts with the private cults of dark and light magic): the Public Cult of Progressivism.

Pride(Anxiety(Faith^{Progressivism})) is the nested form underlying this Cult.

As before, pride is the feeling that one can define reality.  Pride defines what is to be esteemed by the “self”.  Pride defines “groups” that progressive individuals can belong to – to the point – of “not knowing any different”.

Anxiety is the fear of loss of one’s xiety (what one has, could have had, or pretends to have).

Progressive xiety is “self-esteem”.

The Progressive will aggressively resist loss of “self-esteem” and attack others who appear to challenge their  pursuit of “self-esteem”.

At the same time, the imposition of their “constructions of esteem” on others, through law (the central state), indoctrination (state education), and propaganda (the conformist media), always shifts the boundary of what constitutes an insult.

Original Sin is a condition of disorientation that is the consequence of the loss of sanctifying grace that accompanied the Fall (as told in the mythic stories of Eve and Adam).  Faith^UnChristian in “my own xiety” manifests this disorientation.

Baptism – the restoration of sanctifying grace – is the gateway to finding the xiety that God has given me.  The xiety that God has given me reflects the principle that binds my soul to my body and thereby orients me.  That principle is “God’s creative activity in binding my soul to my body”.  It has the structure of a “gift”.

My anxiety, as a Christian, is the fear of the loss of that gift.  I fear the loss of the creative act that binds my soul to my body.  I fear becoming a soulless automaton, like a psychopath, a person filled with rage, a member of a totalitarian cult, and any of the characters that Peters described in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of his book on Sin.

Peters first three steps to radical evil fit a single nested form:

Pride(anxiety(faith^UnChristian))

This nested form stands on the threshold of the commission of sin.

Pride is the feeling that one can define ‘reality’.  This includes defining the xiety (whatever one has, could have had, or pretends to have) that one believes^UnChristian in.

Pride puts anxiety into a normal context.

Anxiety is the fear of the loss of one’s xiety.

No doubt, Peters could have used other descriptors for how we situate faith.  But anxiety is palpable and drives people to action, whether it is turning outward in aggression or inward in psychosomatic illness.  Anxiety motivates sinful action.

Faith^UnChristian makes sin-inducing anxiety possible.  Faith^UnChristian is belief in the possibility of a particular xeity:  my xiety.

Pride is the feeling that “I can define reality” and that includes the feeling that “I can belong to what others have defined as reality”.

There is great comfort in belonging to a group – a tribe – so completely that one “does not know any different”.

At the same time, in Civilization, no group is the whole, not even the Church or the Sovereign.

But, what is to stop a group – a Church or a Sovereign or Whatever – from defining itself as the whole?

Pride goes before the fall.

The tribe can commit sins that no individual in the tribe would imagine possible.

Pride includes the feeling that “we” can create a “tribe” by “definition”.

Classic American historical cases of pride-filled “belonging to a tribe by definition” revolve around defining what the member is not.  For example, I am not a black man.  I am not a woman.  I am not a homosexual.  These definitions put Negroes, women and homosexuals outside “the tribe” and subject to emotions reserved for “people who do not belong to our tribe”.

Today, such cases would be called “racism”, “sexism” and “homophobia” by other “tribes by definition”.

Ironically, these latter-day “tribes by definition” fear the one “tribe that just wants to be left alone”: southern Baptists.

All branches of Progressivism feel that southern Baptists are “people who do not belong to our tribe”.  But at the same time, it is not enough to say: “I am not a southern Baptist”.  But it almost is.

This brings me back to the old timey pride of “not being one of those unfortunate creatures”.  That old timey pride is gone.  Why were the racist and homophobic patriarchs able to change?  They were able to change because they had dual identities.  They were oppressors.  But they were also Christians.  As Christians, they could repudiate the sins of their old timey pride.  They repented. They asked God for forgiveness.  They were made whole.

At the same time, the newly constituted “tribes by definition” have to insist that these folk never changed.  They must claim that these folk are unrepentant.  These tribes preserve “the sins of old timey pride” in their Museums of Perpetual Grievances.  They are constantly on the lookout for fluke instances that they can display (see Ann Coulter in this regard).

Thus, pride leads to escalation, not repentance.  The Progressives do not suffer the vulnerability of a dual identity.  They are not Christian.

So one wonders, can they repent of the sins of their own group excesses?

Besides the pride that goes with putting the spotlight on yourself, there is the pride of standing in the spotlight of others.

Peters first mentions tribalism.  Tribes often appear to have different “moralities” than individuals.  So when an individual stands in the spotlight of her tribe, she takes on moral views that could contradict her own personal moral views.   The pride of belonging to her “tribe” may take her to places where she would have never gone on her own.

In terms of An Archaeology of the Fall, “belonging to a tribe” is the closest that an individual typically gets to the impossible stance of “not knowing any different” (that characterizes the Lebenswelt prior to the emergence of Civilization).   Every individual in our fallen world feels the lure of group identity; the lust for truly belonging; and the attraction of “not knowing any different”.  And, each group tries to deliver the goods by pretending that “the illusion that constitutes our identity” is so real that it will transport each member back to that time before “time”.

Pride makes the illusion seem true.