{"id":5026,"date":"2026-06-22T14:59:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/?p=5026"},"modified":"2026-06-22T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:01:07","slug":"a-rationality-in-starvation-in-malfunction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/2026\/06\/22\/a-rationality-in-starvation-in-malfunction\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rationality in Starvation, in Malfunction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dante suggests how a matured Reason actually works.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After the first receiving and connection of sensing Heaven’s outreach with “Gabriel<\/a>” as the “Archangel” (literally: source message) in Purg X:40-45, the temptation internally is to make this a new focus and a new fixture.<\/p>\n

And this is where something dramatic happens. Reason itself pulls the pilgrim away from this inclination:<\/p>\n

\u00abNon tener pur ad un loco la mente\u00bb, <\/em>
\ndisse \u2018l dolce maestro, che m\u2019avea <\/em>
\nda quella parte onde \u2018l cuore ha la gente<\/em><\/p>\n

Roughly: “‘Do not hold your mind on only one place’, said the sweet master, that had me from that part where the heart has people'”<\/em><\/p>\n

So this shows a big shift: reason does not<\/em> actually always want to move the mind and attention towards control, a model, analysis or narrow focus. At this point reason reminds the pilgrim to keep moving, and receiving “from the side”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The message is potentially massive: much of today’s brain science tends to portray the left brain hemisphere as “by nature” seeking dominance, total mastery, removal of all ambiguity and blocking the right hemisphere. And this to some extent could resemble more of the initial “dark forest” in the Comedy itself.<\/p>\n

But maybe the truth is more this: the dominance-seeking and all power seeking rationality is actually a malfunctioning <\/em>rationality. It is a Reason (and left hemisphere) in starvation<\/em> of real inputs and influx of experience, unfiltered. It has choked off, or been choked off, from what is its natural function: getting fresh reality to process, analyze, and potentially learn from and update constructs and models of reality.<\/p>\n

And if this is correct, the current challenge with constricted modernism, scientism, and rationalism posing as complete cosmologies, is not actually a fight against a constant force that wants hegemony in one’s own consciousness, but to feed it with unfiltered perception and experience of reality, and of spiritual reality, to enter in “from the side”, naturally seeping in, and not loop the attention back towards that which it “controls” for extracting more knowledge.<\/p>\n

In short: Dante seems to suggest that the natural Reason is a matured one, that by nature wants to prevent itself from this starvation. Which is why then Virgil is the one to push consciousness further, to keep receiving as they move along.<\/p>\n

And thus; Superbia itself has started to heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dante suggests how a matured Reason actually works. After the first receiving and connection of sensing Heaven’s outreach with “Gabriel” as the “Archangel” (literally: source message) in Purg X:40-45, the temptation internally is to make this a new focus and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-purgatory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5026"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5062,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026\/revisions\/5062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}