Abishai100
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- Sep 22, 2013
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Imagine if a psychopath named Adam engages in copycat crimes modelled after the American horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, going so far as to dress up as the main ghoul from the film, Leatherface, a chainsaw-wielding cannibal.
Adam purchases a chainsaw from a Home Depot store and begins to brutally murder people with it on Halloween Eve in Texas. After 7 murders, Adam is 'bored,' and decides he would rather purchase a silencer-pistol and shoot people in the forehead on Christmas, and he does so, committing 7 more murders, this time not modelled after any film.
This *turn* (or change) in Adam is shocking and bizarre. Why would he be 'unsatisfied' or 'bored' with his Leatherface copycat crimes? In fact, this sort of 'turn-for-the-worse' is precisely what Dante described in his seminal Christian mythos derived purgatory book The Inferno.
Dante describes souls in anguish turning over and over and brooding about the endless meanderings of Sin and Death. He alludes to a terrible bottomless spiritual pit (or hell-hole).
How we dream about purgatory or redemption shapes how we discuss ethics and heaven.
Maybe this can be compared to the parable of the struggling 'itsy-bitsy spider' who tried over and over to climb up the water spout (or well) but kept being knocked back down by rain, forcing him to try and try again. The anguish of the spider represents the quest of the human spirit, and the human spirit is never 'satisfied' but its yearnings can create images of heaven or hell, which is what Dante wrote.
If we can imagine yearning, then we can imagine torture or unrequited hopes. Such imagination helps us create more productive ideas about empathy and trust and charity.
Perhaps the secret of hell is restlessness, which is perhaps why we make shocking films about pure spiritual turbulence.
The Serpent and the Rainbow (Film)
Adam purchases a chainsaw from a Home Depot store and begins to brutally murder people with it on Halloween Eve in Texas. After 7 murders, Adam is 'bored,' and decides he would rather purchase a silencer-pistol and shoot people in the forehead on Christmas, and he does so, committing 7 more murders, this time not modelled after any film.
This *turn* (or change) in Adam is shocking and bizarre. Why would he be 'unsatisfied' or 'bored' with his Leatherface copycat crimes? In fact, this sort of 'turn-for-the-worse' is precisely what Dante described in his seminal Christian mythos derived purgatory book The Inferno.
Dante describes souls in anguish turning over and over and brooding about the endless meanderings of Sin and Death. He alludes to a terrible bottomless spiritual pit (or hell-hole).
How we dream about purgatory or redemption shapes how we discuss ethics and heaven.
Maybe this can be compared to the parable of the struggling 'itsy-bitsy spider' who tried over and over to climb up the water spout (or well) but kept being knocked back down by rain, forcing him to try and try again. The anguish of the spider represents the quest of the human spirit, and the human spirit is never 'satisfied' but its yearnings can create images of heaven or hell, which is what Dante wrote.
If we can imagine yearning, then we can imagine torture or unrequited hopes. Such imagination helps us create more productive ideas about empathy and trust and charity.
Perhaps the secret of hell is restlessness, which is perhaps why we make shocking films about pure spiritual turbulence.
The Serpent and the Rainbow (Film)
