Excerpts from "Inferno" by Dan Brown

INFERNO

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Exalted as one of the preeminent works of world literature, the Inferno was the first of three books that made up Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy – a 14233 line epic poem describing Dante’s brutal descent into the underworld, journey through purgatory, and eventual arrival in paradise. Of the Comedy’s three sections – Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso – Inferno was by far the most widely read and memorable.

Composed by Dante in the early 1300s, Inferno had quite literally redefined medieval perception of damnation. The pit was constructed in 9 distinct levels, the Nine Rings of Hell, into which the sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin.

Seven deadly sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.

The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death.

"When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere… the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways (floods, plague and famine)." Nicolas Machiavelli – writer 1469 – 1527

When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point where of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown….. and pray for an exit.

cerca trova – seek and ye shall find. We sought an exit…. and found a dead end.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called denial. Denial is a critical part of human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle.

In ancient mythology a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride. No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world. Dante clearly agreed, denouncing pride as the worst of the seven deadly sins….. and punished the prideful in the deepest ring of the inferno.

Population growth is an exponential progression occurring within a system of finite space and limited resources. The end will arrive very abruptly.

It’s the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus – a famous dilemma in mythology. It’s the age old battle between mind and heart, which seldom want the same thing.

Agathusia means self sacrifice for common good; a benevolent suicide. A novel Logan’s Run depicted a future society in which everyone gladly agreed to commit suicide at age twenty one. The movie version had increased the termination age to thirty.

What do you think what soldiers do when they go to war? They kill innocent people and risk their own death. Anything is possible when people believe in a cause.

If you could throw a switch and randomly kill half the population on earth would you do it in order to save our species from extinction?

The grueling, nine-ringed ascent of mount purgatory is the only route from the depths of inferno to the glory of paradise. On this path you can see the repentant souls ascending….each paying an appropriate price for given sin.

P signifies peccatum – Latin word for sin. And the fact that it is written seven times is symbolic of seven deadly sins. With each new level you ascend an angel cleanses one of the Ps from your forehead until you reach the top, arriving with your brows cleansed of the seven Ps….and your soul purged of all sin.

Treachery is worst of the seven deadly sins punished in the ninth and final ring of hell. Treachery, as defined by Dante, was the act of betraying a loved one. History’s most notorious example of the sin had been Judas’s betrayal of his beloved Jesus.

I do not fear death…….for death transforms visionaries into martyrs…… converts noble ideas into powerful movements.

H+ is the symbol of Transhumanist movement. Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that essentially states that humans should use technology to transcend the weaknesses inherent in our human bodies. In other words, the next step in human evolution should be that we begin biologically engineering ourselves. These hypothetical ‘enhanced’ individuals are what Transhumanists refer to as posthumans, which some believe will be the future of our species.

It is physically impossible for the human mind to think of nothing. The soul craves emotion, and it will continue to seek fuel for that emotion – good or bad. Your problem is that you’re giving it the wrong fuel. You need to shift your intellectual focus.

All around her, she could see humanity overrun by its primal instinct for survival. When they face desperation………human beings become animals.

As with all great shrines, Hagia Sophia’s (in Istanbul) prodigious size served two purposes. First it was proof to God of the great lengths to which man would go to pay tribute to Him. And second, it served as a kind of shock treatment for worshippers – a physical space so imposing that those who entered felt dwarfed, their ego erased, their physical being and cosmic importance shrinking to the size of a mere speck in the face of God…..an atom in the hands of the Creator. Martin Luther King had said “Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.”

Only one form of contagion travels faster than virus and that’s fear.

The worst kind of loneliness in the world is isolation that comes from being misunderstood. It can make people lose their grasp on reality.

Remember tonight…………..for it’s the beginning of forever.

So long as they speak your name, you shall never die.

Dante’s poem was not so much about the misery of hell as it was about the power of the human spirit to endure any challenge, no matter how daunting.