Says Ken Jennings, quoted in "Ken Jennings Has Some Questions About Death/The 'Jeopardy!' host on the meaning of trivia, the awkwardness of personal anecdotes, and his new book—a travel guide to the afterlife" (The New Yorker).
The interviewer prompts: "It’s sort of sweet how closely the visions of Heaven and Hell often reflect the worldly life of the people and traditions." Jennings:
Of the time they’re from. And you can even see it on a micro level. You watch an early-sixties “Twilight Zone,” where the angel is some fussy guy with a clipboard and a visor, and you’re thinking, Oh, this is an America that’s very into efficiency and bureaucracy. It’s like Eisenhower-era Heaven.
The book is called "100 Places to See After You Die."
As for the "Twilight Zone" that looked "like Eisenhower-era Heaven"... didn't that turn out to be Hell?
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I thought it was kind of understood that The Divine Comedy was a written in a transcendent snit, in which Dante's personal enemies appeared as characters suffering in various levels of hell. Well, the "circles of Hell" trope for people you don't like didn't exist at the time, so Dante had to invent it.
It's certainly true that people's visions generally mirror the time in which they live more then the idealized scenario they think they are imagining. The Book of Revelations is all about the Eastern Mediterranean in the early AD--nothing about cars and planes, no guns, no electricity, no American or Russia.
And speaking of planes, people didn't start seeing UFOs until air travel got them used to seeing things in the sky. People didn't speculate that our universe is a computer simulation until we developed computer simulations. And then, suddenly, it's all "Hey! Here's a neat new idea to play with!"
Which is fine so long as you realize that that is all you're doing--playing with a neat new idea. But they never seem to realize it.
What strikes me as odd about John's book of Revelation is how much gold there is in heaven.
Gold that useless metal that does nothing.
Its only value is that it is rare on the earth.
Gold has no value in heaven.
Money has no value in heaven, either.
If you get a revelation this week and you see Bitcoin in heaven; I would doubt that one as well.
It's hard to believe he really thinks Dante set out to describe the physical reality of hell, purgatory and heaven, and their inhabitants. But I'll take him at his word. What a moron!
I don’t watch Jeopardy, never have really, but I have to say, this Ken Jennings guy seems dickish. I took an instinctive dislike to him when he started popping up in my social meanderings. I’m asking you fellow conservatives who water at this hole, is he dickish? I need validation.
Yes I’d go so far as to declare him a dick. He’s trying to do too much with the celebrity he has…
@ Saint Croix said... What strikes me as odd about John's book of Revelation is how much gold there is in heaven
Keep in mind the New Jerusalem, the book of Revelation’s ultimate prize, is on earth, not in heaven. It descends from heaven where it was constructed, but its foundation is on this planet for eternity. It is one of the great failings of Christian theology that the common understanding is the destination of the saints is in heaven. It is not. The ultimate destination is earth.
Saint Croix, gold is also beautiful, never tarnishes or rusts, has high mass, and conducts electricity. Its value is not purely monetary.
Calling Ken Jennings a dick is hilariously apt; he thinks he’s bigger and better than he really is, especially in comparison to others.
- Rafe
Aw, ain't that sweet? Ken Jennings just had his first real thought!
Aw, ain't that sweet? Ken Jennings just had his first real thought!
I think he's being amusing, not seriously grousing that Dante lacked imagination!
He deserves credit for thinking of a great title and churning out a book that people will buy and read even though they could just go to <a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife">"Afterlife"</a> in Wikipedia and read that and click on the links to the extent you're interested. It's easy.
But he got the title and he used his name and he churned out a book. Good for him.
I think he's being amusing, not seriously grousing that Dante lacked imagination!
He deserves credit for thinking of a great title and churning out a book that people will buy and read even though they could just go to "Afterlife" in Wikipedia and read that and click on the links to the extent you're interested. It's easy.
But he got the title and he used his name and he churned out a book. Good for him.
Hmm, Ken Jennings is LDS. He might want to secure some of his criticisms of Dante considering how Eurocentric the Book of Mormon is in describing Biblical North America.
It's simplistic and shows you haven't read the Divine Comedy to say that Dante imagined a repository for everyone he didn't like. It's true that Dante found several of his enemies down in Hell and kicked one the face and shoved him under the mud. But he also found all the great classical poets, his exemplars, down there. Moreover, there were people Dante loved and admired in Hell as he depicted it. Brunetto Latini was one. Dante says to him that he remembers: “your dear, your kind paternal image when, in the world above, from time to time, you taught me how man makes himself eternal” [la cara e buona imagine paterna di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora m’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna]
And when Dante asked after the politicians with whom he had worked to reform Florentine politics, he is told that they were much further down in the deeper parts of Hell. There we find them later, way down because they took bribes. It's interesting to me that the nickname of Dante's party was the party of the wild [woods]" or "selvaggio." And when we first meet Dante he is lost in a "selva selvaggio." He is lost in a tangled, dark, pathless wooded maze which is an image of his situation in HIS OWN PARTY, a situation which any 21st century Republican can sympathize with.
If comments are moderated, why are the double-posts? And by the moderator no less. Very odd.
If you get a revelation this week and you see Bitcoin in heaven; I would doubt that one as well.
The idea that heaven is paved with ineffable tokens arising from ridiculously involved calculations of abstract truths in some arbitrary system of axioms is actually a lot more believable to me than the idea that heave is paved with gold.
I don’t watch Jeopardy, never have really, but I have to say, this Ken Jennings guy seems dickish.
He's a snarling, leftist shit. If you saw his Twitter feed before he scrubbed it, your suspicions would be confirmed.
Isaac Asimov was such a prolific author that there is a well-known joke (from Harlan Ellison, maybe?) that about a week after Isaac dies one should anticipate publication of "Asimov's Guide to the Afterlife".
Sadly, though Isaac died in 92 this book has not yet appeared.
wildswan,
It's true about Brunetto Latini (and Francesca da Rimini, for that matter). But I rather think he overdid it with Branca Doria. He was inconveniently still alive when Dante was writing, so Dante invented a "privilege" for Ptolomea (that part of the Ninth Circle where traitors to their kin are punished) that, there only, once you commit the sin you are immediately damned, and a demon takes over your body. So "Branca Doria" is still alive and kicking even while his actual soul is already in Hell.
I can't think that Dante thought this was theologically plausible or even possible.
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