While in college I had the opportunity to take a class on famous works of literature which greatly impacted Western civilization. Among these were Moore’s Utopia, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Homer’s Iliad, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy stood out in my mind as perhaps the most compelling and disturbing of these works.
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante about his guided tour of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. This poem reveals Dante’s religious and political sympathies. According to Dante, the lowest circle of Hell - the ninth circle - is a place reserved for the vilest of sinners. It is here that the Devil himself, a great beast, is encased in ice. This beast has three mouths, wherein he perpetually devours the worst sinners to ever live: Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Brutus, and in the center mouth, Judas Iscariot. Cassius and Brutus are made famous by Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, and were the two chief conspirators in Caesar’s assassination. Judas Iscariot needs no introduction.
What is the common thread which binds these three, and according to Dante, condemns them to the greatest tortures of the Inferno? Betrayal. For Dante, this is the worst trespass any human being can commit against another. When I first read the Divine Comedy I was a little under-whelmed by this assertion; after all, can one really claim betrayal to be worse than murder or unprovoked violence? Nevertheless, as time has passed I think I’ve begun to grasp Dante’s intent, and I find myself becoming more sympathetic toward his argument.
To understand the potency of betrayal, I think we first have to understand a thing or two about the nature of human intelligence and human relationships. As I have often said, human beings are unique to all other creatures on Earth in our capacity to analyze our actions, and place them within a greater context (I refer to this as the “strange legacy” of our species). Our intelligence endows our species with a tremendous capacity for survival, but also burdens us with enormous responsibility. Our consciousness gives rise to empathy, and allows us to understand how our actions affect those around us.
To say that betrayal is the greatest human sin does not mean that remorseless killers or the brutally violent are somehow off the hook. Indeed, the worst forms of betrayal may involve such horrifying deeds. Nevertheless, there is a marked difference between those crimes which are perpetrated by a total stranger, and those inflicted by a trusted acquaintance. Betrayal occurs when the malevolent personality seeks first to secure the confidence of an unwitting victim before inflicting harm. Those who perform random acts of violence descend below their human heritage and become little more than animals - but those who betray the trust of others are the very embodiment of evil itself.
Perhaps the reason a breach of trust is so contemptible is because trust itself is so essential to the survival of our species. Trust is the agent which binds human beings together. Without trust, we cannot form cooperative relationships and labor for the common good. Without trust, life is (as Hobbes once put it) nasty, brutal, and short. All human beings who enjoy the perks of civilization reap substantial benefit from the trust of others.
Among the devout, the belief that God blesses us through the actions of our fellow human beings is common. Thus, the trust that the religious place in others is synonymous with the trust they give to God himself. Even for the irreligious, the faith granted another is no less meaningful or potent. Trust is at once the most powerful, and yet the most fragile and tender of human expressions. To trust is to make oneself vulnerable. It is in such moments of vulnerability that we see man’s nobility, and it is in their abuse that his treachery is laid bare.
Not all betrayal is equal. Certainly those who purposely set out to abuse the confidence of others for personal gain are guilty of the greatest malevolence. Nevertheless, for most of us the act of betrayal is far more subtle. It comes through tiny words or actions - listening to our own “little devils” - to secure advantage over those with whom we claim kinship. Regardless of whether the full impact of a negative suggestion or act was premeditated, little things can deliver startling results. Those who seek to live honorable lives would do well to constantly analyze their motives, and reconcile them with the principles to which they subscribe.
Any who have experienced the sting of betrayal can attest to its devastating consequences. More than the measurable damage which can be quantifiable assessed, it is often the emotional toll which is most severe. Such betrayal can handicap an individual’s capacity for trust; to lose all trust in one’s fellow human beings is to lose any hope for peace and happiness. Perhaps this is the reason that those who inflict such loss are greeted with the sad refrain, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” upon entering Dante’s prescribed eternal habitation.
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