Dante and civilisational decline. Another dispatch on disillusionment in politics

Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life. For a while, he lost everything. But then, through the trauma, he regained a ground and rediscovered the fullness of life.
The Divine Comedy is the product of that transformation. The journeys through hell, purgatory and paradise hold nothing back, be that terrible tortures of extraordinary delights. He wrote for himself, for his readers including us, but also as a warning to his time and future times, such as our ours.
So what has Dante got to say to now? What does his analysis illuminate? Much, I think, as I explore in this thought.
For more on Dante and my own book see - www.markvernon.com/books/dant...

[@lucytokheim4009]

Your teaching and conversations have become solidly brilliant over the last few years. This one is an excellent way to view our time in history with Dante’s, both in need of radical change of heart, not just correcting institutions. Maybe include Augustine’s time too.

[@MacMacPherson]

i've been using your book Dante's Divine Comedy, along with your extensive video series on each canto, to both widen and deepen my understanding of Dante's work... I want to thank you sincerely for the substantial time and effort you put into creating these, it has helped me enormously and i am grateful to you... it is of no surprise to me that Iain McGilchrist wrote that he too had learned a great deal from your work... more power to you

[@PlatosPodcasts]

Thanks for saying so. Appreciated

[@natalieanderson308]

I am doing this as well, along with your Audiobook. Verrrry slowly 🙃I’m grateful for all that you do and share with us.

[@leader95949]

Thank you

[@raymond7427]

"Civilisations are the noise of summer insects between two winters." ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila (1913-1994)

[@cocoaswann2095]

Another fascinating and profound analysis. Not to be flippant, but for some reason, I always think of The Police song "Spirits in the Material World" when I (joyfully and sincerely) listen to (and analyze) your commentaries. Thank you for being Our Virgil - patiently guiding us through this....landscape. 🙏🏼

[@tonywozere909]

Thanks Mark for inspiring me. The problems with which humanity is confronted today admittedly require a possibly unprecedented amount of imagination, such that solutions become clear. The danger of war, financial crisis, world hunger, refugee crises, fascism, drugs, youth violence one could extend the list of existential crises much further. The simultaneity of all these conditions can only be called a civilizational crisis of mankind. What is clear, is that things can not continue as they have for much longer, which means we are at the end of an era. If humanity is not to exterminate itself, a new paradigm is needed. We must succeed in making the shift, with which we can catapult ourselves out of the current seemingly hopeless geometry, and which brings us to a higher point of view, from which all things are redefined. It means that we must lift ourselves out of the level of seemingly unresolvable contradictions, to a vision of the common aims of mankind through culture, science, economics, and history.

[@sofvandor6116]

Thank you, Mark. I'm a big fan of yours 🙏 💫💞

[@mariekuijkenhistoricallyaw2598]

There is a candidate who's talking about the fundamentals. Kennedy

[@maggen_me7790]

The poetic and symbolic is truly a way to understand the world,- thanks a lot.

[@samrowbotham8914]

After having dealings with the Electoral Commission back in 2015 I understand that the election system is fixed, no one in Parliament runs or controls the UK Government. Parliament is currently shut the UK Government is not so who is telling it what it can and cannot do its the uneleceted Bankers in the City of London. The elections are a sham and I refuse to pay council tax or obey any government fiat that is injurious to me.

[@williamrees6662]

I'm afraid I'm more with Marx and the materialists on this one. The problem lies with the totally unequal and iniquitous sharing of resources in our society, especially since 2010, when the global capitalist system collapsed and has been propped up by the state since. Almost all of the disgruntlement (and the rise of fascism with it) that we see can be linked directly to this and to the longer term conditions behind it. I don't think transcendentals come into it a great deal, not when you can't afford to heat your house (if you have one) or feed your children.

[@raymond_sycamore]

Dissolutioned? Nah, just vote TRUMP