FASCINATION with the human propensity to sin gripped fifth-century Eastern monastic communities and the acclaimed TV series Succession alike, a festival audience heard last weekend.
At the Idler Festival, in Fenton House, Hampstead, in north London, at the weekend, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, and the creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, agreed that, while sin was boring to live, examining the impulses to sin could be entertaining. “The phrase ‘boring as hell’ is much more accurate than we ever realise. Yet we do take a certain amount of satisfaction in the diagnosis, the analysis,” Lord Williams said.
The fictional media-mogul Roy family depicted in Succession, for all their mansions and yachts, were living in hell, Lord Williams said. “What interests me is that it’s fascinating to depict sin, evil, destructive lives. But also the depiction — certainly, Succession does this — ought to make you think it would be hell to live like that. That’s an important distinction: it’s not that sin is a bit fun and virtue comes in to make it all dull.”
Jesus also knew sin’s toxicity, he said. “Jesus is someone who is completely human, and the passions are in Jesus as they are in all of us. Theologically, Jesus is without sin. So he had the urges, but knows what to do with it.”
Giving in to temptation, the unsettlement of the mind which Lord Williams examined in his book Passions of the Soul (Books, 26 January), cut people off from reality and connection with others, he said. “The instincts on which all these things are based are not in themselves [bad] . . . it is when they begin to de-realise the world around you, when you are swallowing the reality of the world into your own prospects.”
Although fictional, the narrative and characters of Succession were “heavily researched”, inspired by Mr Armstrong’s delving into the stories of Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, and the battle over Disney’s board. “It started to seem like there was a way of doing an even more true version, where the individuals were created individuals rather than real characters. The show is about those types of moguls, and their familial relationships, the things that are common to them all.”
Admitting to a tension between not wishing to make Succession aspirational and the thrill of eating caviar and seeing helicopters take off, Mr Armstrong said: “We consciously tried not to make the depictions of wealth pornographic or aspirational. It’s not meant to be an aspirational show about this wealthy family.”
Echoing the language of Passions of the Soul, he said: “It’s a problem for kings and princes and wealthy people through time. You get this tremendous power, and then it feels natural, that everything is about you, a thrilling and protecting feeling, and you stop being in the world and start bringing the world into you.”
For Lord Williams, Succession exemplified the aridity of a non-contemplative life: “In that kind of environment, nothing can surprise you, which means nothing feels like a gift. So joy goes out of the window. Trying to turn inside out the clichés and assumptions, it’s not as though this kind of destructive behaviour is any more exciting or gratifying than anything else. It is, tiresomely, virtue that invites joy — not as a reward, but as openness to the real, which brings you alive.”
The Seven Deadly Sins became seven because seven was a good number, but they had their roots in the typology of the eight passions examined by the early Eastern monastic communities, namely: pride, listlessness, anger, gluttony, avarice, lust, envy, and despair. “The idea was you go out into the desert in community, not just as individuals, to see if you can construct a way of life together which is not completely paralysed by toxic habits. So, there’s a great emphasis on your relationship with one another.” Lord Williams emphasised that they were unlike the popular image of St Anthony the Great, an “elderly gent with beard surrounded by nubile young ladies”.
Explaining that the Desert Fathers, at times, explored folly with wit and sprezzatura, Lord Williams continued: “The most pressing sin at the moment is listlessness: we don’t know what to be attached to.” With a nod to the festival audience, he distinguished listlessness from being idle. “This is not being idle — idle is inviting something in, it’s a receptivity.” His own greatest struggles were with pride and self-esteem: “Pride is the fundamental thing: self-sufficiency: setting standards you have to meet. If you have positions of public responsibility — and I’ve had a few — it goes with the territory.”