“The Magnificent Seven”

In Season 3 Episode 1, the Seven Deadly Sins invade a small town.

An entire family starves to death because they are too lazy to cook. (Not to sound approving, but I can definitely sympathize.) A woman is so overcome with greed that she bashes another woman’s head in over pair of shoes.

Of course, The Seven Deadlies don’t see themselves as sins at all. “We’re just natural human instinct!” Envy laughs.

There’s a scene in the movie “The African Queen” that comes to mind here. Charlie Alnutt (Humphrey Bogart, who won an Oscar for the role), the alcoholic skipper of the decrepit steamer “The African Queen,” gets drunk one night, to the great displeasure of his sole passenger, the spinster Miss Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn). He wakes up the next morning to find that Rose has poured all his whiskey overboard. “Have pity, Miss!” he wails. “A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s only human nature!”

“Nature, Mr. Alnutt,” Rose replies coolly as she pours another bottle into the river, is what we are put on this earth to rise above.”

Envy. Lust. Greed. Wrath.

Gluttony. Pride. Sloth.

Are they really just “human nature?” Or are they really the path of least resistance, the state people come to when they’re just too tired, too worn out, to keep fighting?

What do you think?

P.S. If you haven’t seen it, definitely make time to watch “The African Queen” ASAP!

And if you have seen it, make time to watch it again.