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| Tomas de Torquemada |
Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” was the embodiment of the
anti-Christ. Tomas de
Torquemada was the model and he himself would have ultimately been
sentenced to the tortures that Dante envisioned in his infamous ninth circle of
hell, where Satan is trapped in ice. But everyone has a Grand Inquisitor lurking inside them, in the form of a negative doppleganger or alter ego, the
self-immolating spirit that casts doubt on every assertion of the life force.
You may recognize it in the cynicism about motives. You like someone for being
kind and responsive, but immediately begin to look at the compassion they’ve
demonstrated as a kind of barter. You think about extending your hand to
another suffering soul, but then shrink from it fearing that you’re only trying
to inflate your own ego or exonerate yourself from guilt. Every step forward in
time becomes a potential mistake and every act that’s transpired is filled with
regret. The negative might be looked at as a necessary part of the dialectic of
existence. Joseph Schumpeter termed one of the dynamics of capitalism, “creative destruction." Looked at on a micro or macro, on an ontogenic, or
phylogenic level destruction has its place. It doesn’t have to be the kind of
genocide that Pol Pot inflicted on the Cambodian people, but the negative can sometimes be the only way to countermand
entrenched, anachronistic and maladaptive world views. The question is, how does one distinguish between spring cleaning and murder?
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