Exploring love through the lens of the seven deadly sins has compelled me to justify them. Each sin is, after all, overwhelming love for something. The sins are meant to be avoided because they are manifestations of people loving things more than they love god.
I’m happy to argue for them; I actively promote loving anything and everything above that of an imaginary, narcissistic, cruel dictator.
Each quatrain explores a different form of envy: wealth, skill, power. The consistent suggestion is that there is no valid reason for accepting disproportionate ownership of any of these qualities.
The capping couplet concludes the argument: “others” don’t want the masses to be envious… because that threatens their stranglehold.
Envy Why should I love not what the rich have got? To possess they have comrades dispossessed, Or hoarded common goods to brim their pot While empty stomachs howl like wolves possessed. If it is skills why can’t I emulate? The untrained is the victim in a duel, The greatest epithet is to be Great, Heroes ambrosia gulp, losers sip gruel. Why should the poor not envy power held In taloned fists of megalomaniacs? The cruel master’s watchtower must be felled; The natural successor wields the axe. It’s those with vaults who spread the septic lie That envy weighs down those to wish to fly.