History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Mark Twain
Anything that lasts a long time through multiple civilizations has some fundamental truth in it. One such thing is the Christian Bible. A compilation of books that is used by the Christian faith as a guiding source of wisdom. There’s a reason for that. Now, I am not advocating for or against Christianity as a religion, but I shall be referencing it to explain the 7 deadly sins. Incidentally, the sins are covered in Christian teachings but do not appear in the Bible. They are also known as cardinal sins or sins of the flesh in Christianity. In Christianity, these are the sins that cannot and will not be forgiven by God. In modern Catholic theology, they are considered vices and not sins. The difference between a vice and a sin is that a vice is a human trait that may lead to sin, which can also be defined as wrong-doing.
What Christian teachings refer to as deadly sins, I see as core human traits and vices that are either suppressed or accentuated throughout our lives. Good and bad are human constructs. Regardless, these traits explain the majority of human behavior and why people consume the products they consume and do what they do. By understanding the “deadly sins” and how they understand human behavior, you can build products that people want and invest in things that have a higher probability of succeeding. The reason they would have a higher chance of succeeding is that you are betting on human behavior (which according to the 7 deadly sins has not changed much in the past couple of millennia) rather than betting on speculation. So, let’s take a look at just how these deadly sins affect our lives as well as how we can benefit from embracing them and betting on them.
The 7 deadly sins
Since each of them can have quite a bit to be said about them, they have been split into different articles.
