Inferno by Dan Brown

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Another astonishing book by Dan Brown you shouldn’t miss reading is Inferno- Everything from history to future and science to religion, this book has taught me a lot of things.

Here are three things I learned from this book:
1. Over Population
The current world population has by far exceeded the capacity the earth is actually designed to host. So the impacts of overpopulation we are assuming that we might experience in future, are actually just on our doorstep. Overcrowding, poverty and shortage of resources are already prominent in some parts of the world and yet we are unsure of what measures to take.

While there are numerous methods like family planning, use of contraceptives and education to control overpopulation, it is still impossible to bring the number to the actual earth’s capacity. May be it’s late. As much as this truth is hard to face, mathematics is indisputable and it says that we might not survive another century with this exponential growth of population.

2. A little bit about Genetic Engineering
Some people see Genetic Engineering as a solution to overpopulation. In this book, Bertrand Zobrist, a genetic engineer and a Swiss Billionaire think that we can save the human species from extinction by thinning the human herd right now. He suggests that control and curing of diseases is pointless when we have a larger problem such as overpopulation.

Although his idea of thinning the human herd could suggest a mass murder, he thinks genetic engineering can generate better performing human species with improved intellectuals. Robert Langdon, the famous Harvard professor of Symbology and the protagonist helps a team to stop the creation of Zobrist, which they think is a plague. However in the end, it turns out that Zobrist has created a vector virus that modifies the human DNA to cause sterility, which is worse. This act is absolutely cruel in so many aspects but Zobrist believes that he is making a good contribution to humanity.

I think Zobrist’s idea is brave and cruel. Thinning the human herd is an actual mass murder but sterility could be a less painful act. Although from the standpoint of beauty of birth and raising a child, life wouldn’t be natural.

3. How bad is Treachery
This book revolves around Dante Alighieri, a fourteenth-century poet and a genius, who had written a 14,233 line poem called The Divine Comedy. This piece of literature is Dante’s imaginative demonstration of afterlife, which in gist is called the journey through hell. In this poem Dante depicts hell in nine concentric circles, where at the bottom and worst of all is Treachery.
According to Dante, treachery is the worst sin of all because it is the most deliberate and the most calculated act. Treachery is basically betrayal and in short, everyone’s methodical weapon these days.

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain neutrality during the time of moral crisis.” Dante Alighieri 

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