Tuesday July 19 Sloth and diligence. First cut

1) I was tempted not to get around to writing up anything for this unit. it's hilarious that Marty, on of the hardest working scholars ever at the U. of Chicago, wrote this unit.
Capps breaks sloth down into older elements of melancholy and indifference. In later adulthood the crisis is generativity v. stagnation. its virtue is care and vice is indifference. In old age, integrity v. despair is the crisis with wisdom as it virtue and melancholy being the vice. I would be willing to argue that sloth fits well the late childhood state of industry v. inferiority where competence is the virtue and envy seen as the vice.
2) In paragraph 2, he links sloth to acedia and then tristitia-'sadness in the face of spiritual good." Sound like depression to me. I like his addition of indifference to its synonyms.
3) He then makes sloth actively oppositional. later he speaks of turning one's back on others.
4) At page two take some time to consider the outgrowth of sloth by Gregory.
5) If acedia is not caring, or perhaps better being careless, caring would oppose it. to what extent does doing the opposite help fight a habit?
6) When can sloth be a social sin?
7)Marty knows well of sadness as refusal of joy when his wife died and we can read its struggle in Winter of the Heart.
8) Is his being stirred toward empathy a response to sloth, do you think?
9) What do you think of friendship dealing with the vice of isolation and loneliness here?
10) His art therapy idea is brilliant. Are there songs, pictures, movies that stir you?