The other day I was at Saint Petersburg Music Factory for guitar lessons and Gandhi's Seven Social Sins were displayed on the wall. I am 70 years old and this was the first time I had ever encountered or heard of them. It is an understatement to say they constitute seeds for thought. In case you have somehow gotten this far without encountering them, I list them below followed by a short quotation from Wikipedia.
The Seven Sins are:
- Wealth without work.
- Pleasure without conscience.
- Knowledge without character.
- Commerce without morality.
- Science without humanity.
- Worship without sacrifice.
- Politics without principle.
Following quoted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Social_Sins)
- The Seven Social Sins, sometimes called the Seven Blunders of the World, is a list that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi published in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. Later he gave this same list to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper on their final day together shortly before his assassination.
- Mahatma Gandhi published his list of Seven Social Sins in 1925....
The list was first published by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. Gandhi wrote that a correspondent who he called a "fair friend" had sent the list: "The... fair friend wants readers of Young India to know, if they do not already, the following seven social sins," (the list was then provided). After the list, Gandhi wrote that "Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them." This was the entirety of Gandhi's commentary on the list when he first published it.
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