Ask me a question: Hell
Mar. 24th, 2014 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanSo back when I suggested people give me more topics to write about, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sushispook asked me "How would you run hell?"
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My first reaction was, "What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I don't even believe in Hell!"
Anyway. Harumping aside. I've never been a big fan of the entire concept of Hell as a place where you go to be punished for being bad. When I think about it it's probably because most of the people who believe in it seem to think of it as a place that will exact their revenge for them. I'm not a big fan of revenge personally - not that I can't see the appeal, I'm just lazy. I don't want to have to expend that kind of mental energy on somebody. If somebody has done me wrong I want them to go away - preferably so utterly and completely that I never have to be troubled with occasionally remembering that they exist.
Which makes me think of the concept of hell (Something in my mental filing system vaguely suggests that it's a Jewish perspective but that might be my memory burping up nonsense.) that defines hell as the absence of God. Which makes a lot of sense to me; if there is a force in the world that gives life a point, that is the source of all good things, then knowing that force is out there but that you have lost access to it through your own fuckups is a pretty good definition of Hell.
But I can't offer that up as my only answer. It would feel too much like cheating.
What I would definitely not do is set up Hell as some sort of eternal torture chamber. For one thing, torture gives me the worst case of the howling Nopes you have ever seen. Seriously. Forget Hostel, I can't even sit through an episode of Happy Tree Friends. I am also very much of the personality type that wants things to serve a purpose, and just fucking with somebody's day every day with no end in sight seems... pointless. Not to mention boring.
So my version of Hell would have a job.
If you have ever read Memnoch the Devil by Ann Rice (Which I don't recommend doing, by the way. It's a terrible book.) the Devil says that his role is to prepare souls for Heaven by torturing people until they recognize God's grace. I can sorta see some value in the first half of that principle, so I would mix in a dollop of that.
The other thing is that it's not true that I entirely disbelieve in Hell or Heaven - I just happen to think that humans came up with those concepts to reflect what we already experience right here, right now. Putting aside for the moment all the stuff that is completely random and uncontrollable, humans are capable of influencing the amount of net suffering in the world when we make choices rooted in empathy or when we are assholes who treat other people as obstacles or objects to be used. Not in the Western hippy misunderstanding of Karma where if you do bad things it comes back to bite you in the ass, but in the way we choose to act collectively. To paraphrase the post I made about taxes; if we prioritize voting for people because they will reduce our tax burden, we are actively choosing to live in a place where children go to school hungry because the city can't afford breakfast programs any more. We create a darker world when we decide to be selfish pricks.
Of course the downside of the current system is that while occasionally a person buying what he knows is stolen merchandise goes home afterwards to find his house burglarized, repercussions rarely works out to be that tidy. And of course a lot of the truly truly shitty people in the world who have made things worse for the greatest number are themselves insulated by their power, money and influence. In the present world all actions influence the world around them. In my version of Hell, that influence would be as inescapable for the actor as it is for the acted upon. The people who have done shitty things in the past would be perfectly free to continue, but in Hell they would have their face rubbed into what they were doing until they finally developed a spark of empathy and compassion for the people they have screwed over. Then and only then can they move on and go swanning about in Paradise, or reincarnate or go merge with the cosmic goo or whatever it is people do when they are finished with the meat-suit.
It was when I got to this point that I realized. My model for Hell is basically Groundhog Day.
So there you have it.
But ALSO! I would open a real live Hell-mouth and make lots of creepy-ass shit to roam around at night and scare the shit out of people and maybe eat the occasional rapist. BECAUSE I COULD.
sushispook asked me "How would you run hell?" !!!
!!!
!!!
My first reaction was, "What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I don't even believe in Hell!"
Anyway. Harumping aside. I've never been a big fan of the entire concept of Hell as a place where you go to be punished for being bad. When I think about it it's probably because most of the people who believe in it seem to think of it as a place that will exact their revenge for them. I'm not a big fan of revenge personally - not that I can't see the appeal, I'm just lazy. I don't want to have to expend that kind of mental energy on somebody. If somebody has done me wrong I want them to go away - preferably so utterly and completely that I never have to be troubled with occasionally remembering that they exist.
Which makes me think of the concept of hell (Something in my mental filing system vaguely suggests that it's a Jewish perspective but that might be my memory burping up nonsense.) that defines hell as the absence of God. Which makes a lot of sense to me; if there is a force in the world that gives life a point, that is the source of all good things, then knowing that force is out there but that you have lost access to it through your own fuckups is a pretty good definition of Hell.
But I can't offer that up as my only answer. It would feel too much like cheating.
What I would definitely not do is set up Hell as some sort of eternal torture chamber. For one thing, torture gives me the worst case of the howling Nopes you have ever seen. Seriously. Forget Hostel, I can't even sit through an episode of Happy Tree Friends. I am also very much of the personality type that wants things to serve a purpose, and just fucking with somebody's day every day with no end in sight seems... pointless. Not to mention boring.
So my version of Hell would have a job.
If you have ever read Memnoch the Devil by Ann Rice (Which I don't recommend doing, by the way. It's a terrible book.) the Devil says that his role is to prepare souls for Heaven by torturing people until they recognize God's grace. I can sorta see some value in the first half of that principle, so I would mix in a dollop of that.
The other thing is that it's not true that I entirely disbelieve in Hell or Heaven - I just happen to think that humans came up with those concepts to reflect what we already experience right here, right now. Putting aside for the moment all the stuff that is completely random and uncontrollable, humans are capable of influencing the amount of net suffering in the world when we make choices rooted in empathy or when we are assholes who treat other people as obstacles or objects to be used. Not in the Western hippy misunderstanding of Karma where if you do bad things it comes back to bite you in the ass, but in the way we choose to act collectively. To paraphrase the post I made about taxes; if we prioritize voting for people because they will reduce our tax burden, we are actively choosing to live in a place where children go to school hungry because the city can't afford breakfast programs any more. We create a darker world when we decide to be selfish pricks.
Of course the downside of the current system is that while occasionally a person buying what he knows is stolen merchandise goes home afterwards to find his house burglarized, repercussions rarely works out to be that tidy. And of course a lot of the truly truly shitty people in the world who have made things worse for the greatest number are themselves insulated by their power, money and influence. In the present world all actions influence the world around them. In my version of Hell, that influence would be as inescapable for the actor as it is for the acted upon. The people who have done shitty things in the past would be perfectly free to continue, but in Hell they would have their face rubbed into what they were doing until they finally developed a spark of empathy and compassion for the people they have screwed over. Then and only then can they move on and go swanning about in Paradise, or reincarnate or go merge with the cosmic goo or whatever it is people do when they are finished with the meat-suit.
It was when I got to this point that I realized. My model for Hell is basically Groundhog Day.
So there you have it.
But ALSO! I would open a real live Hell-mouth and make lots of creepy-ass shit to roam around at night and scare the shit out of people and maybe eat the occasional rapist. BECAUSE I COULD.