Status Updates From The Divine Comedy: Dante In...

Canto 22: the system breaks. A sinner surfaces from the pitch, and the demons turn punishment into a competition. But he plays them—promises another soul, distracts them—and escapes. A damned soul just outsmarted Hell. Demons start fighting and crash into the pitch themselves. Corruption breaks enforcement. No trust, no control. When the system can be gamed, it’s not a system. It’s a performance.

Canto 21. The barrators—corrupt officials—are submerged in boiling pitch, hidden beneath the surface. If they try to rise, demons rip them apart. For the first time, Virgil has to negotiate instead of command. Corruption isn’t just the crime anymore—it’s the system. Even the enforcers are unreliable. When the people in charge of keeping order can’t be trusted, there is no order.

Canto 20. The diviners walk with their heads twisted backward, tears running down their backs. They wanted to look ahead. Now they can’t. Dante actually pities them here and Virgil shuts it down. Trying to control what isn’t yours to know isn’t wisdom, it’s arrogance. We try the same with data, predictions, and systems that promise certainty. The future isn’t the problem. The need to control it is.

Canto 19. Dante is pissed. The simoniacs—corrupt church officials—are buried upside down with their feet on fire, inverting baptism. Pope Nicholas III is already there, mistaking Dante for Boniface VIII—just waiting for the next corrupt pope to arrive. Dante calls it out. Faith has been turned into a transaction that isn’t theirs to sell. Virgil approves of the outburst.

Canto 18 is where fraud becomes a system. It’s organized, repeated, and almost routine. From exploiting people to manipulating through language, it starts to feel less like isolated wrongdoing and more like something built into how people operate. What types of deceptions do we partake in because they seem normal and ok?