Dante’s Guide and Our Changing World

Dante and his guide, Virgil, look out after the ascendancy from the inferno of Hell. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

‘The Guide and I into that hidden road

Now entered, to return to the bright world;

And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second,

Till I beheld through a round aperture

Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear.’

Dante and his guide, Virgil, stand looking out upon the hellish depths they have just ascended from, to behold a bright world.

It got me wondering what the future plight of western civilisation will be as we watch on as so much of it burns - in both a real and metaphorical sense.

Will we in the West one day stand with our own Guides to watch the rebirth of our own fallen civilisation?

Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Like a human being, civilisations cycle from their once great wonder to their inevitable fall - a process known as Anacyclosis.

It refers to the evolution of political communities and behaves in this way:

Beginning at kingship, a political society will move into tyranny as a result of corruption of the realm.

Rule by aristocrats then takes shape with the promise to the subject peoples of fairness and concern.

When this type of rule descends into corruption, it becomes an oligarchy, with rule by dictates and oppression of the people.

If a strong enough middle class exists, democracies emerge, led by the people themselves, advocating for liberty and equality.

But then derives competition and factional groupings, leading to the formation of a plutocracy, where we see a real distinction between wealthy individuals and dependants. It is at this point where jockeying for power among those individuals, together with their supporters, transforms democracy into mob rule.

The modern West is at this last point right now. The growing divide is real and distinct, and is hastening with rapid speed. We cannot ignore the chaos, anarchy and moral destruction of our societies occurring before our eyes.

According to the Greek concept of Anacylosis, a move back to kingship occurs where rule under one-man is the default position in an attempt to reclaim stability from the chaos and anarchy.

Will this same pattern repeat? Who really knows? My view is that it probably will, but I do wonder if modern technology and AI have changed the patterning.

Perhaps we will skip the one-man rule step altogether, moving straight into a world led by machines - a horrifying thought!

At any rate, we were born in this time for whatever reason we may or may never discover. So, we must live with what we have and do the best we can to make it a good place, despite the challenges of technology and quickened moral decay.