Dantes inferno levels9/11/2023 Or, consider a politician who bends to the will of donors rather than doing what is best for their constituents. And yet, this video not only misleads the people who trust it, but also makes it harder for the people trying to report actual facts to be believed. The doctor may indeed receive a lot of shares and favorable comments. This is not good, we all recognize, but it doesn’t seem as acute or exceptional as someone mugging a stranger. Take, for example, a medical doctor who posts a video expressing an opinion at odds with scientific consensus without sufficient evidence. The road to hell, for Dante, is not paved with good intentions, so much as with little compromises that add up and ripple out into widespread suspicion, frustration, and deprivation. Little actions-judges showing favoritism, policemen over-patrolling minority neighborhoods, bishops promoting their nephews over more qualified people, politicians stretching the truth to get votes, moneylenders exploiting the poor-chip away at the pillars that keep society upright, making it harder for people to meet their basic needs, discern the truth, and rely on one another. We are not wrong to condemn these actions or to want to prevent them, but we should keep in mind that a lot of unnecessary suffering is caused not by acute instances of wrongdoing, but more unremarkable patterns of action. Our attention tends to gravitate toward acute instances of wrongdoing, discrete actions we can point to and say, “that action is clearly wrong,” like armed robbery. Evil thrives when people in positions of authority abuse their privileges and neglect their responsibilities in ways that may seem unremarkable. One lesson to take from Inferno is that many of the truly evil acts are not the kind that make headlines. This may seem counter-intuitive to modern ears, but it suggests an all-too-relevant assessment of the ways evil operates within a society. This helps us understand why Dante places fraudulent advisors, people who sell political offices for money, reporters who lie, and hypocritical priests all in the eighth circle of hell, punished more harshly than murderers and war criminals. Dante is not anticlerical it is precisely because people depend on the church that it is such a travesty when church officials are undependable. Because Dante placed such value on the institutional structures and social norms of his day, he leveled a witheringly critical gaze at those who abused their position, defamed the institutions they were supposed to represent, and exploited the trust and dependence of others. But a deeper reason is because of Dante’s belief in the importance of social institutions fulfilling their duties to God and to the people. This is in part because this poem is work of political satire, and in part because Dante wants to illustrate the different forms these sins take by using examples his contemporaries would be familiar with. Readers of Inferno are struck by how many kings, political leaders, and popes are in it. The lowest circle of hell is reserved for those who betray that which is most important, which includes community, family, and good leadership. Dante, like Uncle Ben, believed that with great power comes great responsibility or as the New Testament puts it, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”įor Dante, anyone who subverts, corrupts, or discredits the institutions that support society is doing something gravely wicked. This does not mean leaders can do whatever they like rather, they must fulfill their appointed duties with seriousness and selflessness. In Dante’s view, those in positions of authority have been given that authority by God. Dante’s poem even predicted murder hornets.īeyond the obvious, though, Inferno speaks to two features of American public life: the decline in trust in institutions and authorities, and the phenomenon of the “post-truth society.”ĭante believes in the value of institutions and in the intrinsic goodness of a properly ordered society. It’s easy to imagine how the dismal hellscape in Dante’s Inferno could be relevant in the year 2020.
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