Word: lustfully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Darwinian lights, the classic sins, such as gluttony, lust, greed and envy, are the unchecked expression of impulses that arose by natural selection. During evolution, individuals with strong innate yearnings for food, sex and material goods did a better job of surviving and reproducing than individuals less drawn to these things. So we inherited genes conducive to such yearnings. In the same manner, anger (another of the deadly sins) became a naturally engrained tool of survival, aimed, for example, at those who would take our food or our mates...
...essentially pre-technological context of human evolution, impulses such as gluttony, greed, even lust, were often blunted by scarcity. Only amid the material abundance that came with agriculture and grew thereafter could self-indulgence regularly reach grotesque levels. (Sodom and Gomorrah lay in the fertile plains. Their residents sinned amid plenty while Abraham herded his flock in rustic innocence on dryer terrain.) Similarly, anger acquired a new layer of evil with the invention of knives and spears, to say nothing of guns...
Even at the level of pettier sins--lust, greed--we are naturally good at making our actions seem just. How many spouses are lured into infidelity, even desertion, by the conviction that they married the "wrong" person the first time around or that this person has "changed"? These often delusional rationales are (to put it a bit metaphorically) our genes "trying" to get us to do the kinds of things--infidelity, betrayal--that during evolution helped propel them into the next generation. Hence the human dimension of our animal behavior: it feels so rational and right. Lots of animals...
...Call me William Jefferson. I originated in a place called Hope, but which might as well have been called Lust or All-Consuming Ambition, and I came roaring forth filled with a soaring zest to converse, to consume, to bunk down with my fellow countrymen and especially countrywomen on the warm, level mattress of Democracy. But somewhere along the way, I discerned a cold, repellent glint in America's eye. Maybe it was my stepfather's rages, or the way my wife's face hardened when the subject turned to cattle futures or real estate or banking. So I learned...
...calls her old friend Porter, who helped her in drug rehab last year, to help Zivia. Ian comes prancing in and, after much pomp and circumstance, agrees to rewrite Ed's play and put on a private VIP performance in their home. Meanwhile, Zivia and Porter fall in lust and run off together...