Circles Of Hell In First World Problems

When the unknowns are overwhelming, we create knowns. Religion, politics, Gwyneth Paltrow all jump into the void of ignorance with full assuredness of fact. Absent truth, facts are what we believe.

700 years ago, Dante Alighieri compiled a full world from the poet Virgil – who had jumped into known-making 1,300 years earlier. The epic poem The Divine Comedy, Dante gave a crushing effort to define our humanity. Part of that is the section “Inferno.” Dante writes that he is given a tour of Hell by Virgil, and now we can all know what the Hell is going on.

If we do not know why we are victims, victors or just ignored, we can at least retroactively divine what we are, did, or is done to us to fit our hopes, fears, and gird our expectations.

Death is the end we all know. The insane perception of this and every moment of living is real, but the reason for us and our perceptions to exist, or cease existing, or their meaning are virtually inscrutable.

Almost.

In 2024 we will experience what Dante and Virgil did. I am experiencing the vicissitudes of First World Living right now. Being lauded, sued, loved and not, there must be reasons for my victimhood and triumph. There must be. There must be consequences of what I do and what is done to me.

There are. But not of my, or any one of our, understanding, let alone making. But make we must, and Voila: Dante’s full animation of Virgil’s insight into Ultimate Truth: Hell.

Hell, to them, and in our hopes was a place that we understand, define, even create. It is true because it makes sense. It is justice. It is fairness. It is us judging us. Creating 9 Levels Of Bad, with near infinite permutations, elaborations, interpretations of Evil and Truth.

The Circles of Hell.

Every one of us are here. Right here. There is no mystery. We just need to see it.

I see hate and love and care and carelessness every moment of every day in every one of us. If we made ourselves, our world, we would be delighted in our Eden. Instead we are building Towers in Babel as high and as fast as this moment’s technology allows, full ascending Circles Of Hell that we can judge, inveigh, feel entitled to, victimized by, and somehow, somehow, control.

Yeah, no.

We control none of this. We can press ahead with what we know, and what we know can feel the insane, inexplicable love of our creation that has no reason, and thus has no reason for our death that we can apprehend, let alone define. Because God is not us. We all want to be Jesus, the son and wingman of Truth, if not it’s pilot – but no. We are just us, with all the gifts and flaws and hopes and fears they impose on us.

Because we were given them. But some us can hear Faith in the fear, Grace in the hope, even happiness in moments when our full incompetence does not matter. Perhaps at death, surely at birth.

This is the conspired Advent, where more light replaces less in the completely out-of-control reality of orbits and axis inclines that unceasingly reveals what we do not know with every zillion factoids we collect every second.

We continually define the Circles Of Hell in our First World of leisure beyond survival. I hated the airport I was in last night. Our food has been disgusting. It’s raining in a place that promised sunshine. I did not get what I expected to get (I expected getting, because I wanted.) Because these inflictions have nothing to do with any of what I have been given, or my circumstances in receiving God.

The transactions of doing and getting are the Circles Of Hell. Our doing is what we can control, and nothing else. But if all we can do is do, then why can’t I do the making of truth? Why can’t the food be good, the sun be shining, my life live forever?

Because almost nothing is up to us, no matter how hard you, or Dante, or I try.

Sorry. Not Sorry.