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The Right Road Lost: A Contemporary Inferno

Jennifer L. Jackson - 6/5/2008

While the rise of globalization has led to the merging of markets and cultures, it has also magnified the issues that threaten the sustainability of the globe's inhabitants. 21st Century problems cannot be contained within political boundaries or geographic regions, and cannot be solved without the will of humanity overcoming the flaws of human beings. The seven deadly sins, as identified by the Christians and immortalized by Dante, suggest an unfortunate demise for the international community.

Lust. Lust is a "strong desire" and usually carries a sexual connotation (i.e. sins of the flesh); however, lust also refers to a strong desire for power. The antithesis of lust is typically considered to be self-control, restraint, and temperance. Therefore, the greatest global sin committed in lust is not sex trafficking nor the sex industry, it is nuclear proliferation. Eight nations are admitted "nuclear powers," with several others known or suspected of nuclear capability. The unparalleled threat of mass murder of innocent civilians, using the fear of annihilation as a political tool, represents the ultimate show of power on the global stage. The United States has satisfied this hungry lust for power at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and has continued to harbor the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons since. In our present day Inferno, the eternal punishment for this sin will be a perpetual existence in the initial stages of nuclear holocaust; our skin will melt, we will be blinded, and our lungs will be incinerated.

Gluttony. Gluttony is overeating, a sin of excessiveness and voraciousness in consumption. The impending energy crisis, which is a supremely global problem, is the direct result of crude oil gluttony. Instead of stuffing our stomachs with meats and vegetables, we are filling our behemoth vehicles with gasoline and fueling an endless stream of airline flights around the world. We continue to suck the last drops of this natural resource from the crust of the Earth, knowing that we will need another meal, that our appetites will not cease, but doing nothing to forage for the source of this next meal. In this circle of hell we will float like birds caught in the excrement of an oceanic oil spill, as droplets of gasoline rain on us from above.

Greed. Greed, or avarice, is the excessive desire for wealth; but the sin is actually related to what is or is not done with the money itself. Pure unrestrained capitalism is fueled by the global sin of greed. The most basic principle of capitalism is to spend less and make more. The ills of this unbridled greed include child labor, forced labor, sweatshops, outsourcing, unsafe and inferior product quality, the unequal distribution of wealth, inequality, exploitation, and oppression, to name a few. Beyond how it is obtained, there is the further sin of how it has been used. What has not been done with the money of the avaricious entails a failure to correct (or even attempt to correct) the aforementioned market failures. For this sin we will be sentenced to an infinite future of making silk thread. The compact room will be filled with acrid smoke and fumes. Hands and fingers will be cut open, burned and blistered from repeatedly dipping them in boiling water, oozing with infection from holding dead worms. We will all be the four-year-old version of ourselves in this eternity, alone and helpless, abandoned and hopeless.

Sloth. Sloth is laziness, an absence of action, a failure to act. As a global community one of our greatest threats is apathy; no problem can be solved, no issue addressed, unless we care enough to do so, unless we are interested enough to try. Hunger, poverty, the spread of AIDS, malaria, and environmental degradation are all examples of global problems that could be remedied if we cared, if we tried, if we weren't so lazy. All children could be educated, clothed, fed, and safe; no children would have to carry guns, bury siblings, or die of dehydration – if it mattered to us. For our failure to act when we were able, we will be damned to eternal paralysis, our minds forever unable to stir action in our limp bodies. Flies will land on our faces, insects will crawl over our bodies, but we will be incapable of swatting them off. We will have to watch as our family and friends are tortured with other punishments, not able to move to intervene or even close our eyes, bound by lives of apathy.

Wrath. Wrath is extreme anger, collectively manifested in war and human rights abuses. Wrath is almost never directed properly, and represents a basic failure to deal with anger cognitively. War follows a nation (or its leader) feeling anger over having been wronged, or perceiving a transgression, and reacting to that anger with a disproportionate, devastating, and violent response. Waging war implies an anger great enough to sacrifice the lives of a nation's soldiers and take the lives of the innocent abroad. Modern warfare can be conducted from a distance in many cases; however human rights abuses are up close and personal. Some one, a person, is holding the machete, some one is raping the woman, and some one is shooting the children. The commission of these crimes requires wrath, even if the source of the anger is artificial, misplaced, or contrived; it must exist, deeply, in order for a human to be capable of committing such harrowing atrocities against another (innocent) human. For these crimes against humanity, we shall be sentenced to suffer in mass graves under bodies that have been shot, bombed, and butchered. We will be serenaded with the never-ending sounds of screaming, crying, and mothers pleading for the right of their children to live. The feel of death will be palpable to all of our senses, forever.

Envy. Envy is a sin of comparison; it is discontent or ill will over another's advantages. Envy is embodied by a global mentality of more, bigger, better, faster, stronger, smarter, now. Envy illustrates a failure to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate that which is good. Global examples of this tendency are the Space Race, the Arms Race, and long before those, the race to discover (and conquer) the new world. In this ring of hell we will be bound to a running track and will have to run, faster and faster, without ever stopping. Our track will be surrounded by beautiful scenes of nature; fields of soft grass and bright flowers, streams flowing with cold gurgling water, birds will be singing and bees will be humming. But, we will be moving too quickly to see these things; we will be relegated to a constant state of motion, striving to be the first to finish a race which will never end.

Pride. There are many ways to define or describe pride, with both positive and negative connotations. Pride could be used to support and uplift humans, or could fuel the demise of humanity. The difference, the sin, is in the degree. In its moderate form, we could take pride in our Earth and our environment, we could be proud of living with honor and dignity, and be proud of treating all others with honor and dignity. We could be proud of our collective international ability to overcome divisions and differences. We could take pride in being citizens of a global community. We could be proud that as humans we all share the values of education and life. However, we are not moderate, we are pride extremists. Pride is the source of nationalism and extremism, ethnocentrism and jingoism, it is evident in sexism and in racism. Dante defined pride as the "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor." Pride is the original sin; it is the source from which all of the other deadly sins flow, it is at the center of the Inferno. Our pride, however, will be humbled. Each of us will have only one of four limbs and one of five senses; we will be dependent upon others entirely, our eternity will be spent reliving our lives over and over, as the humbled.

"My guide and I entered that hidden road
To reach the bright world once more,
And with no thought of rest we strode
Ahead, he first, I following, as so often before
Until, through a round hole, I looked up toward Mars,
Venus, and all the beautiful things in Heaven's store,
And we came out again to see the stars." ~Dante