Published 3/25/26
The Unholy City
Part II
VII. The Ruined Tenth
The undertow of desire drives us along to the Envy Clinic, the most visible of the City’s institutions. Shiny bright, isn’t it? So it should be, because all the advertising gimmicks, nudges, and algorithmic suggestions are ultimately of no use if the subject doesn’t click, doesn’t select “Learn more” and then “Add to cart’. Producers of goods and services will not keep buying ads that do not increase sales. The Envy Clinic is where desire is diagnosed and intensified, and all those problems are solved.
The City does not care whether the subject is motivated by envy or acquisitiveness or need in a purchase decision. The City is only concerned with engagement. But the fact that presentations that excite envy are more likely to produce engagement and sales means that such strategies are highly incentivized, because envy awakens comparison, comparison awakens lack, lack awakens desire, and desire awakens coveting. The solution is therefore some form of visual stimulus that connects with desires either latent or active already present in the subject. Envy is the perfect steppingstone, aroused through the presentation of an appeal to the flesh (appetite, gratification, comfort), the eyes (beauty, desire for possession), or life station (status, achievement, recognition, power, significance). The subject sees what is desirable and not in his possession and therefore envies the picture of one who does possess it.
Many desires are perfectly upright, such as, the desire to care for one’s family, to behave with integrity, to enjoy rest at the end of the day, to obtain one’s daily bread, etc., so long as they do not interfere with higher duties and affections. St. Augustine devised the ordo amoris, the order of loves, that is, the succession of those things which we should love above other desirable things. At the top of the order is God, followed by family, friends and neighbors, community, and so on, in ever widening circles. Following are the great things of God’s creation, beginning with beauty, truth, love itself, and then the host of good things that God has showered on us in this world.
Disordered love gets the order of priority wrong. We live in a time of dis-ordo amoris. Many would rather virtue signal on social media than perform quiet acts of mercy. Many love “humanity” in the abstract while ignoring the actual neighbor next door. The City constantly rewards this inversion. In this disordered landscape, the tenth commandment stands as a specific diagnosis: the problem is not merely wrong love in general, but desire for what belongs to another.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.—Exodus 20:17
In this respect, advertising and social media are coveting machines. They frequently depict people in positions of worldly success (often quite unrealistically, though that doesn’t matter; the message is not for one’s rational mind but for the sleeping beast within that thinks of nothing but its desires). Worldly success, in terms of food, fashion, fun, status, sex, and satisfaction, becomes associated quite irrationally with possessing a certain product or service. Sometimes this is mixed with further envy stimuli, such as resentment that the depicted people have great advantages, or the fear of missing out. The volume of advertising turns the trickle of these tiny improvements into a torrent.
As an example of measured advertising efficacy, it is typical that CTR (Click-Through Rate) for ads on search engines is more than 6%, and the resulting CVR (ConVersion Rate) is around 7.5%. This means that the &LDquo;sponsored” replies to a search query result in a click-through in about 6 out of every hundred opportunities or exposures. Of those that click through, a conversion or sale happens about 75 of every thousand click-throughs. This means that a sale results from the ad exposure about 45 out of every ten thousand exposures. This may not sound like much, but consider that the ad can be shown to millions or more every day. Put plainly, that would result in 4500 sales for every million exposures. Such is the amplification provided by the Internet: a vanishingly small response, repeated at industrial scale, has become the engine of an entire economy.
It would be tiresome to describe the multitude of ways that the elements of appeal are mixed together and presented in exquisitely beautiful photographs (“If it’s beautiful, it must be good”) and dialogue dripping with authority and appeal. The supply of these is endless, from direct advertisers to influencers to reports on the rich and famous, and so on, all set up to scroll endlessly on the subject’s feed, all curated to appeal to just exactly the personality type and interest profile indicated in the subject’s electronic twin. The pursuit and perfection of these presentations, even at great expense, is justified by the enormous incentives built into the City’s architecture.
The tenth commandment is unique among the ten in that it forbids not an outward act but an inward state—desire to covet itself. The evil is not desire alone but the disordering and industrialization of desire that leads to coveting. Coveting can be completely private, entirely internal, with no one else suspecting the covetous desire, thus, a suitable candidate for the deepest hypocrisy. St. Paul held that coveting in this sense is deadly, the equivalent of idolatry (Colossians 3:5), the most corrosive of sins. Of course, marketing has always exploited its subjects’ acquisitive impulses, amplified by envy and coveting. The difference is that in the City, this mechanism is the fuel for the City’s engine, constantly being fed with the prompts to covet in overwhelming volume and persuasive art.
And while one is coveting, there is no room for attention to God, concern for neighbor, or even the ordinary concerns of life. It is a constantly dissatisfied, ungrateful, competitive, and idolatrous spiritual posture. Coveting is literally a replacement for worship of God. To survive, the City requires continual violation of the tenth commandment.
The City prospers. The tenth commandment has been rendered in vanishing ink.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.—1 John 2:16
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