When I was a senior at St. Bernard’s High School, in St. Paul, one of the required books we had to read for literature was the first part of Dante Alighieri’s great trilogy, The Divine Comedy. Mr. Kolbinger, my literature teacher, a critical thinker himself, had us read as well, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, some pretty heavy reading for this blue collar high school along Rice Street, St. Paul. Critical thinking always requires book reports and papers, and Mr. Kolbinger made sure there were plenty of those.
The Divine Comedy is divided into three books, namely, The Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven). In the Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy, we encounter Dante on Holy Thursday night, lost in a dark wood. Unbeknownst to him, it was the beginning of his descent into the maelstrom of Hell. To his rescue comes the Roman poet, Virgil, who will guide Dante safely through the 9 circles of Hell.
I was thinking about this in the wee hours of Wednesday morning as the election results were being counted. I thought and still do think that on Tuesday, November 8th, the United States began its own descent into the darkness. There have been many scapegoats suggested upon which to blame this disastrous turn in our nation’s history. In my own anger and depression following the election, I have been as guilty as the rest in this regard. Yet, I believe there is a greater evil that has laid quietly underneath the surface awaiting its chance to strike at the heart of the United States. I have known of this evil since 1985, when first I read the book, Habits of the Heart, a critical and scientific study on American individualism.
Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven Tipton conducted this study on the four types of American individualism. In their study, they noted a tremendous swing from the individualism that formed the United States, Biblical and Republican, to the individualism that has a strangle hold on our nation today, Utilitarian and Expressive.
What is the huge difference between these two groups? Biblical Individualism and Republican Individualism extoll the virtue of the good of all over the good of the individual. Biblical individualism, commonly known in Christian circles as St. Paul’s image of the Body of Christ, states that the needs of the entire body comes first, followed by the needs of the individual. Republican individualism, not to be confused with the political party, was a model created by Thomas Jefferson and best expressed in John F Kennedy’s words, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In both of these individuals exist to serve the needs of the many. In serving the needs of the many, the individual will find his/her own needs being met.
Both Utilitarian and Expressive Individualism hold that the needs of the individual, outweigh the good of the many. Utilitarian Individualism is in many ways is best expressed by Libertarianism. A Utilitarian individualist does not believe in helping any other people other than him or herself. Pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, making one’s way, and the hell with anyone else best describes this kind of individualism. Utilitarian Individualism is about acquiring power and destroying anyone who gets in the way of that acquisition. The vice of Greed exemplifies this Individualism. Expressive Individualism puts the needs, particularly the sensual and comfort needs of the individual primary over the needs of the many. This is best expressed in the feeding of oneself to the exclusion of those around one who may be starving. The hoarding of wealth and the acquiring of all creature comforts from housing to cars, to all the creature comforts that will satisfy all the senses is contained within this individualism. The vice of Gluttony best exemplifies this Individualism.
What the author of Habits of the Heart noted in 1985, was that the citizens of the United States were falling away from healthy individualism, namely, Biblical and Republican, and descending into the nightmare of unhealthy individualism, namely, Utilitarian and Expressive.
In The Inferno, when Dante and Virgil cross the river Achelon, they come to the entrance of Hell, over which is a sign with the words, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” (Abandon hope all ye who enter here!). Passing through this entrance Dante descends with Virgil through the levels of Hell, namely, Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. As Dante takes this terrifying journey he becomes self-aware of his own sin, of his own rupture in his relationship with God, who is love. With the exception of Limbo, the first circle of Hell, a Heaven without God, reserved for Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, and Greek and Roman philosophers and all those (including Muslims) who lived selfless lives, the sins of the following circles of Hell have one thing in common; those entrapped in eternal damnation were consumed in their own individualism without any regard for the plight of others. In other words, Dante’s Hell is filled with those who lived Utilitarian and Expressive individualism. They are damned by their own greed and gluttony. At the lowest level is treachery, where Satan and the worst of the worst are trapped in ice. Satan’s own pride has encased him in ice. He is depicted with three heads, the great bat shaped wings fan the lowest circle all the more frozen. From his six eyes flow pus, tears, and blood. In each of his three mouths are the worst of all traitors, their legs sticking out of each mouth, as Satan gnaws on their bodies. The worst of the worst is Judas Iscariot whose head is being gnawed upon for eternity.
In Dante’s Hell, the punishment that is inflicted upon the damned for eternity matches the harm they caused while they were alive. This is the stuff about which nightmares are made. From entrails of the living damned being devoured by animals, to heretics being burned alive in their own graves, Dante fills in with great detail what happens to those who do not love as God loves. No longer recognizable as human, the damned live in the horror of a sub-human state.
Long before Dante’s allegory of Hell, St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, described the humanity, after the fall of Adam and Eve, as sub-human. This sub-humankind was consumed by selfishness, self-centeredness, self-indulgence, a narcissism that had little to no regard for anyone else. St. Paul harangued the Christian Corinthian community to not fall prey to the sub-humans around them. The selfishness, self centeredness that was destroying the community around them was destroying the celebration of the Eucharist. St. Paul very pointedly told the community that the selfishness of the Corinthian community was robbing the Eucharist of its efficacy, so much so, that those perpetrators of this selfish behavior were guilty of murdering the Body of Christ to the same degree of the Romans who crucified Jesus. St. Paul went so far to say that when these perpetrators ate and drank the Body and Blood of Jesus, they ate and they drank their own damnation.
Beginning with the 1980’s, the United States started a long descent into the sub-human darkness that St. Paul saw in Corinth. The exultation of the self over the needs of the common good, the pursuit of possessions and money over relationships, the elevation of greed as a virtue, greed as an admired trait, began then and this creed of an unhealthy individualism has strangled all that has been good out of our nation. The human community in the United States has gotten so self-involved that the greater good of the totality of the human community is ignored if not condemned. It has altered the meaning of the “American Dream” from the possibility of all citizens to live lives that are fulfilled and free from the worry of hunger, poverty and homelessness, to mean acquire as much power, wealth, and goods for one self and to Hell with everyone else. The only thing that holds any importance is if it benefits the individual, screw all the rest.
The whole of this election cycle has been a choice between a healthy individualism in which the good of all is foremost, and a perverted individualism in which only the individual is primary to the exclusion of all others. Americans made their choice and elected the epitome of this perversion of individualism, perhaps electing the very image of the electorate themselves. The unimaginative, the greedy, and the gluttonous have been convinced, like the rubes of old time snake bite remedies, that the all the problems of the world are fixed in the person they have elected, and that each one of them will be far better off individually. It would be tragic if it were it not so horribly pathetic.
The circles of Hell to which Dante confined those guilty of the many sins of Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery still remain and are still destructive of human society and the Church. It should be noted, that the many condemned to Hell in Dante’s story included among them politicians of Florence, his home. However, Dante made equally sure that among the damned were a great number of clergy, including bishops, cardinals, and Popes. As St. Paul noted to the Corinthian community, the Church is as vulnerable to Utilitarian and Expressive individualism as the rest of human society.
St. Paul writes in his theology of the Body of Christ, that the needs of the totality of the Body of Christ, far outweigh the needs of the individual part of the Body of Christ. Unless, we, as Catholics, and as Americans begin to live this meaning of healthy individualism, in which the needs of the many outweigh the need of the one individual, we will pass through an entrance over which hangs a sign that say, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here!” Our society will be destroyed, and the allegorical vision of Dante Alighieri’s Hell will become a living reality.
