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avevale_intelligencerFrom Dorothy L Sayers' commentary on Dante's Inferno:
"What he is saying is that there are only two sources of real wealth: Nature and Art--or, as we should put it, Natural Resources and the Labour of Man*. The buying and selling of Money as though it were a commodity creates only a spurious wealth, and results in injury to the earth (Nature) and the exploitation of labour (Art). The attitude to men and things which this implies is a kind of blasphemy; since Art derives from Nature, as Nature derives from God, so that contempt of them is contempt of him."
We knew it in 1949, when Sayers wrote. We knew it in the fourteenth century, when Dante wrote. We know it now. And yet our society right now is so steeped and soaked and marinated in usury that even to contemplate it from this perspective is like getting one's head above water, or getting out into the fresh air from a room full of smoke and sweat. And neither Dante nor Sayers could have foreseen the pitch of diabolic perfection to which computers would help us to bring this particular sin. Spurious wealth indeed.
*I think we have to assume that Sayers is including Woman here.
"What he is saying is that there are only two sources of real wealth: Nature and Art--or, as we should put it, Natural Resources and the Labour of Man*. The buying and selling of Money as though it were a commodity creates only a spurious wealth, and results in injury to the earth (Nature) and the exploitation of labour (Art). The attitude to men and things which this implies is a kind of blasphemy; since Art derives from Nature, as Nature derives from God, so that contempt of them is contempt of him."
We knew it in 1949, when Sayers wrote. We knew it in the fourteenth century, when Dante wrote. We know it now. And yet our society right now is so steeped and soaked and marinated in usury that even to contemplate it from this perspective is like getting one's head above water, or getting out into the fresh air from a room full of smoke and sweat. And neither Dante nor Sayers could have foreseen the pitch of diabolic perfection to which computers would help us to bring this particular sin. Spurious wealth indeed.
*I think we have to assume that Sayers is including Woman here.