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, on the weekend, the previous 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 possibly be entertaining. “The phrase ‘boring as hell’ is way more accurate than we ever realise. Yet we do take a specific amount of satisfaction within the diagnosis, the evaluation,” 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 — actually, Succession does this — should make you’re thinking that it could be hell to live like that. That’s a vital distinction: it’s not that sin is a bit fun and virtue is available in to make all of it dull.”
Jesus also knew sin’s toxicity, he said. “Jesus is someone who is totally human, and the passions are in Jesus as they’re 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 reference to others, he said. “The instincts on which all this stuff are based should not in themselves [bad] . . . it’s once they begin to de-realise the world around you, if you end up swallowing the truth of the world into your personal 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 began to seem to be there was a way of doing a good more true version, where the individuals were created individuals quite than real characters. The show is about those forms of moguls, and their familial relationships, the things which are common to all of them.”
Admitting to a tension between not wishing to make Succession aspirational and the fun of eating caviar and seeing helicopters take off, Mr Armstrong said: “We consciously tried to not 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 an issue for kings and princes and wealthy people through time. You get this tremendous power, after which it feels natural, that all the things is about you, an exhilarating and protecting feeling, and also you stop being on this planet and begin bringing the world into you.”
For Lord Williams, Succession exemplified the aridity of a non-contemplative life: “In that form of environment, nothing can surprise you, which suggests nothing looks like a present. So joy goes out of the window. Trying to show inside out the clichés and assumptions, it’s not as if this sort of destructive behaviour is any more exciting or gratifying than the rest. It is, tiresomely, virtue that invites joy — not as a reward, but as openness to the true, which brings you alive.”
The Seven Deadly Sins became seven because seven was number, but that they had their roots within 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 exit into the desert in community, not only as individuals, to see in the event you can construct a lifestyle together which isn’t completely paralysed by toxic habits. So, there’s an amazing emphasis in your relationship with each other.” Lord Williams emphasised that they were unlike the favored 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 in the intervening time 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 isn’t being idle — idle is inviting something in, it’s a receptivity.” His own best struggles were with pride and self-esteem: “Pride is the basic thing: self-sufficiency: setting standards you will have to satisfy. If you will have positions of public responsibility — and I’ve had a couple of — it goes with the territory.”
