The poor, maligned, three-toed sloth, Bradypus tridactylus — such a pretty Latin tag — is a creature that moves with subdued procedural contemplation above the heads of mere mortals, rather like a hippie high-court judge. Its singular means of defence is, uniquely, to get even slower, thus confusing, and perhaps shaming, its pursuers.

The sloth is home to a multiethnic diaspora of fleas, ticks, lice and mites, all of whom can move faster than it. The slothful life is blameless, if a little itchy. It peregrinates around the limbs of trees, looking for laid-back sex. Premature ejaculation for a sloth can take three or four days. Interestingly, they come down to earth once a week to have a pee and take a crap. They must be pretty desperate by Friday night. But it shows immense good manners — no risk of getting sloth poo on your head. There is, by the way, a two-toed sloth, but the sloth community considers them exhibitionist adrenaline junkies.

Now, if you think I’m putting off having to write about sloth, the sin, by telling you interesting and irrelevant things about its three-toed namesake, you’d be wrong. This isn’t sloth, it’s procrastination, which is not the same thing. Procrastination was on the list to become the eighth deadly sin, but they couldn’t make up their minds. Neither is it laziness, which is something else again. I could explain the difference to you, but frankly, I can’t be arsed.

So what is it about sloth that got it in the sin bin? It isn’t a crime or a vice. It doesn’t hurt anyone or afflict the morals of the individual. Any sin is only a sin against a specific named god — and if you don’t believe in the god, the sin doesn’t apply to you and doesn’t exist. Different gods are picky about different sins — so piggy sausages are a sin to Muslims and Jews, and blood transfusions to Jehovah’s Witnesses. The magnificent seven are Christian sins, although they’re not in the Bible. They come from God’s civil service, a committee of beardy prelates who wanted to do some under-the-altar social engineering. They’re a recipe for a compliant industrial workforce.

And sloth is the clocking-on sin, the work-harder injunction of capitalism, not so much directed against God as against the modern world. It’s a rebellion against the pistons of commerce, Post-its, the ringing of phones, the running for taxis, the appointments, the Botox injections and the insatiable maw of progress. All the other sins are about milking every drop out of mortality, about having more power, more sex, more food, more everything. Life is just one big vain, greedy, acquisitive, covetous, furious orgy — and then you die.

But sloth is the sin of behaving as if you were immortal. It’s living slowly, it’s lying in, it’s putting things off till tomorrow because you’re going to be doing much the same thing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

In fact, sloth isn’t actually a sin at all — it’s a virtue. You probably know at least half the sins by heart, mouth and groin. But I bet you have no idea what the seven Christian virtues are: faith, hope, charity, justice, fortitude, prudence and temperance. And it’s the virtues that will do you in, the deadly combination of fortitude, prudence and temperance. The sins aren’t actually deadly at all, just a bit bruising, a little embarrassing. They’re nothing an Alka-Seltzer and some dark glasses won’t sort out.

Anyway, back to the sloth. A natural sloth-span is about 12 years, but if they’re kept safe in suburban comfort, with no interruptions, nasty shocks or acts of God, they’ll happily live until they’re 30. We live in suburban comfort. Maybe we should downsize, slow up, hang upside down, smell the flowers, get fleas, eat slow food, have more foreplay, do less, stick three fingers up at sin, virtue and progress. We might just live three times as long.

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