Black Friday in the Inferno

The Imaginative Conservative ^ | November 28, 2014 | Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

[don-o]

Our growing compulsion to “shop” is a tragedy that causes too little alarm. As our gaze lowers to materialism, there is a corresponding forgetfulness that Hell is real. Pope John Paul II regarded consumerism a threat to human freedom by causing a person to give into the inferior demands of material desires, rather than the higher demands of properly ordered love. Our mad rush to embrace a frenzied consumerism moves us further away from the vision of our Founding Fathers and hastens us towards a vision we would likely want to forget; that of the ante-chamber of hell so chillingly described by Dante Alighieri in Canto III of the Inferno. The shopping scene on Black Friday is beginning to bear a resemblance to that unforgiving landscape.

As Dante descends into the valley of shadows on a daunting trek down the deep and savage road to the underworld with his guide Virgil, he comes to the horrid threshold with the terrifying words “cut into stone” above the very gates of Hell:

[Parmy]

I have heard this love stuff for years from both Protestants as well as Catholics and everyone in-between. No one can describe what it is, so it really doesn't exist in reality.

I would suggest a better word to use would be 'respect'. The Ferguson riots and mayhem is a classic example of 'disrespect'. No one has the right to destroy another's property just because one believes they have been wronged.

[don-o]

I have heard this love stuff for years from both Protestants as well as Catholics and everyone in-between. No one can describe what it is, so it really doesn't exist in reality.

That may be the saddest thing I have ever read on FR.

[moovova]

While we’re still good to our (adult) children present-wise, other extended family members receive a copy of various receipts for donations we make...usually to military related charities.

When I’m asked what I want for Christmas, I ask that a donation to be made in my name to a military charity.

I am so done with “stuff”.

[Doctor 2Brains]

You send as “gifts” to people records of your good deeds?

[The_Reader_David]

A much briefer way of making the same point was posted on the Byzantine, Texas blog:

[don-o]

Nice. But you must agree that Dante had a way with words.

[yldstrk]

You may have no clue what love is, and I have no clue what this respect crapola is, I can say, many people fight each other due to “not being respected”, in others words the respector has to act like the doofus stuff the respectee says and does is acceptable even if it is depraved.

[moovova]

“You send as “gifts” to people records of your good deeds?”

Does sound kind of strange, doesn’t it? Many of us decided, years ago, to do it this way rather than giving each other a new toaster oven. The donations are made in each other’s names. Last year, brother/sister-in-law volunteered to help a group build a house for a disabled vet.

I’ve actually been known to donate Christmas gifts to Goodwill.

[firebrand]

If you don’t feel love in your heart for someone, as these black protesters don’t for white people. then respect can eventually allow love. That’s what I have found anyway. Give people the respect they deserve as human beings and love can sometimes follow.

[don-o]

The article has nothing to do with black protestors. It is asking us to examine the wide assumption that the acquisition of things is a worthy goal of human endeavor.

An interesting aspect is that the question has been asked for a long time.

[StonyBurk]

must have been all the turkey what y’all call Black Friday has turned into brown Friday with every flush.I do not shop Black Friday Nor do I shop on Thanksgiving.