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The choices we make
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” - Frederick Buechner. We as human beings are born into the world only as we know it today. The world is a beautiful place, home to a natural landscape created for mankind by God, to thrive and prosper. As human beings it is up to us to use Mother Earth’s resources and build an environment for future generations. Unfortunately, this is the best case scenario that has already been tainted, due to greed and sin. Overall, the nature of the world is good, but there is certainly evil among us. The nature of the world can be good and bad, but the world is ours to preserve and keep well. We can account for evil through faith land law, but in the end it all comes down to each individual’s choices to spread goodwill or evil through their daily endeavors as they strive, work and play in this world.
The world was created for us to live long and prosper, we are born into the world and have the choice to do as we please whether that is in good faith or evil. One can simply not blame the world for being evil, it is not the world’s fault that we make choices that hurt the world and others. One way we account for evil is through laws. Without some kind of order individuals greed would overpower everything that is good, and chaos would be among us. In Dante’s Inferno, almost all the people he encounters in hell are people who did not abide by the laws of society. For example, the tragic love affair of Paolo and Francesca. Francesca was married to Paolo's brother Gianciotto, yet her sexual desire was an attraction to be with Paolo. Gianciotto found out this sinful situation and murdered both of them. Dante finds this to be a circle of...
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...ood or evil are up to each person, knowing the end result of freedom or confinement, heaven or hell. The world it’s self is a place of beauty, happiness and prosperity. It is humans who decide the nature of the world though the choices we make. As we see in in the story of Adam and Eve, before Satan tricked Eve, the world originally was created for humans to thrive and prosper. Also, as we see in Dante’s Inferno, many people do not abide by Gods rules and made the choice to sin when living on earth, adding wickedness into the world and now suffer the consequences. Every sin committed slowly builds up and makes the nature of the earth a bad place to be. However, every act of love and kindness spreads joy into the world making it a good place to be. Overall the nature of the world is good but it is up to us as humans to make the right choices to keep joy in the world.
In most ancient literature some sort of divine justice is used to punish people's acts in life. This is that case with Dante's Inferno, where the Author categorizes hell in 9 circles. Circle 9 being the lowest sins and punishments as the circles decrease. From the time this was written to now in days many things have changed, and things are not seen the same no more. Back then sins like greed and gluttony were ranked as high sins but now people would probably rank those very low with other things like murder way on top. Yet the basic structure set by Dante remains.
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
Peter Kreeft says that there is a moral jungle in the world. The perversion and sin is enticing us every day, and if we lack of will and perseverance, we may fall in an immoral life. Nowadays, subjects like abortion, AIDS, rape, drugs and violence are torturing us. Our soul may be destroyed by the greed for money and riches. The twentieth century was supposed to be peaceful and prosperous, but the man invented The World War; therefore, genocides and starvation appeared. However, there is a being who encourages us to be moral people, and he is God. Bad times are no excuses for bad choices and bad lives. Moral rules and ideals are not designed for good times but for bad times. For example, the laws of a country are most needed when there is corruption and negligence. Bad times are for good people and good people are for bad times; only in a bad world can we become good. Therefore, times of crisis serve us to rise up and fight against them.
In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong purity of morality is unwavering; for the purposes of this discussion, Dante’s Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dante’s dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell; each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that
Good and evil make the world we are living in today. However evil stands out more than good and people tend to focus on the evil behavior of humans more often. Human nature tends to decide that if someone looks evil they will be evil. The good and the bad make up the goodness in life. It is impossible to always be good or evil but there are things that can make us better or worse as a person. For one to be free, one must live in a world of evil and good.
The relationship between justice and punishment has been an essential fabric of society for centuries. It’s important to note the significance of justice in this equation. Justice to Dante is whatever you do in this life will haunt you in the next one. Whatever sins you commit will be your punishment. The circles of hell Dante creates is a just punishment for sinners. Those who commit incontinent crimes, violent crimes, fraudulent crimes, and worse crime against the perfect city deserve to be in the inferno. This punishment is just and supports the claim that Dante presents an image of a just God.
Being born a human, one has the potential to be inherently evil and has the intent of doing violent things. This is because throughout the world’s history, there has been an abundance of violence from hunter-gatherers Additionally, in the current world today, there are constant wars fought with mass deaths and much hatred, and bullies that inflict pain and cruelty because of their own innate evil.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradiso. Dante presents these principles in Inferno where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell the degrees of sin get progressively worse as do the severity of punishment. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” (Eleanor Roosevelt). This is just one of the infinite examples of how human nature has been explored by so many different people. Each and every human is born with the capability of making their own choices. The decisions that they will make in the future will determine how evil they are viewed by others. Although one’s nature and nurture do affect their life, it is their own free will that determines whether or not they are evil.
When anyone thinks of the word “evil” they do not think it is within themselves. In reality, without a structured and well-followed society, people are apt to follow their own corrupt desires and neglect the thought of consequence. In the allegory, Lord of the Flies, William Golding reveals that man’s selfishness and sinful nature will be unmasked when the structure of a society deteriorates.
When a person finds joy in something, they call it good. On the other hand, if it brings them agony, they call it evil. Good and evil can mean whatever people want you to think they mean. What is good to one person can be evil to another person. For instance, a soldier that goes to war for his country will be viewed as a hero. But the wives and children of the men that the soldier killed will view him as an evil person. No one really knows the true meaning of good and evil. All everyone really knows are just the world’s opinion on what good and evil really are.
“Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell,”
In our world today, we come across all sorts of people. Some you see do evil actions and some you see do good actions. The person doing a good action might be a psychotic killer-- you never know. The other person doing the evil action, could be a priest. Not everything you see people do shows what type of person they really are inside. These people may look one way on the outside, but the world can change the way they see the world and their ultimate actions. Regardless of how someone seems, they are consistently changing because of the evil energies of the world. Humans are all born good and pure, although as we grow up we are corrupted by the evil world around us.