critical theory with slavoj zizek: a desperate “sickness unto death” [is] the attitude of knowing one’s eternal duty but avoiding it; acedia is thus the tristitia mortifera, not simple laziness but desperate resignation—I want the object, but not the way to reach it, I accept the gap between desire and its object. In this precise sense, acedia is the opposite of zeal. One is even tempted to historicize this last sin: before modernity, it was melancholy (resisting pursuit of the Good); with capitalism, it was reinterpreted as simple laziness (resisting the work ethic); today, in our “post-”society, it is depression (resisting the enjoyment of life, or happiness in consumption).