On hell

Hell yeah, here we go again, and we’re talking about… well, yes, Hell.

Hell is a fascinating philosophical concept. You can learn a lot about a culture by how exactly it imagines Hell. For example, those “cutting your feet on a thin wire until you fall into the abyss” guys? Scary.

Egyptians having you eaten if you’re bad goes from kinda gruesome to perfectly sexy, depending on your personal preferences.

You can also learn a lot about people by learning how they imagine Hell. I know people who imagine Hell with fire, darkness, heavy metal music, and everyone partying for eternity. Yeah, I’m also kinda sold, but they also think this is bad. Like, a bad afterlife.

I know a terrifying guy who thinks Hell is a land of darkness and eternal winter, where your shoulders shake in that uncomfortable manner forever, but you can’t ever get warm again.

My own personal ideas about Hell are out of the scope of this conversation, but if you really need to know, it’s endless meetings with my boss. Nothing concrete is agreed upon, nothing actionable happens, and then you get to have a meeting to plan a meeting. Yeah, I kinda live in my own personal Hell, but there are advantages. For example: I know I have to behave, or it’ll be this for all eternity. So, yeah, I’m kinda depressed now. Moving on.

Hell is also fascinating because you can know exactly how much trauma a person carries — and most trauma comes from other people, and I am willing to die on this hill — by how badly they need Hell to exist.

Happy people — and there are a few of those out there — just think the idea of Hell kinda sucks and don’t want that for anyone.

Traumatized people? Those could be hired to work the place and would probably get paid leave by the third hour for making the atmosphere too violent and, actually, kinda sad.

I also sometimes, when I imagine Hell, end up thinking about a… fractal Hell? Like, what if your idea of Hell, the worst possible outcome for you, is… I don’t know, sleeping in the same bed with a girl who likes to put her cold, bare feet against your back to warm them. Do they find a girl who wants a guy with a warm back and just zero the equation? She’s in Heaven, he’s in Hell? What’s the falling-in-love policy?

Is there a poor damned dom doomed to be a sub for all eternity? And maybe he was a switch or something, but being always a sub gets old, and there’s a limited number of times you can answer “I do, Daddy” when Satan asks who has a tiny manhood.

I can imagine metal musicians forced to listen to Bad Bunny for all eternity, and the idea of Hell becomes frighteningly terrestrial. Or that girl, Karol G. Talk about a reason to be good.

But that’s normal-people Hell.

What about truly evil people?

I used to know a guy. Passable sysadmin. Unusual personality. Cuban, he was. And he had some… habits.

He ate the same thing at the same hour every day: lentil soup.

And hey, I fucking love lentils. Esau has nothing on me. I would sell about anything for a good serving of lentil soup. This guy? This is not why he’s going to Hell.

Every day, at the same time, he poured a can of tomato-sauce-preserved sardines on top of his lentil soup.

I think we can all agree he has earned Hell. I think I need to puke.

Moving on. Hell.

It’s quite interesting how this idea came to us through a lot of cultural changes and religious evolution to haunt us, ineffectively, and keep us kinda honest and sorta good. Because the idea of Hell doesn’t stop people from doing bad things. Not even really bad things. Especially not the really bad things.

And speaking of that:

What’s Hitler’s Hell?

I tend to imagine him trapped in a time loop in which he is every one of his victims in turn, from birth until he murdered them. And when it ends? It starts again.

Yes, I’m aware this idea kinda makes our world Hell. Tell me this doesn’t make a little bit of sense right now.

Hell.

For example, another little manifestation of Hell I just imagined: me reading this piece to my parents. Yeah, great job, Dad. Great job, Mom. You raised an idiot. An irreverent idiot.

But hey, too much joking around. Let’s turn back to the most interesting idea about Hell I’ve heard:

“Hell is other people.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

And this quote is usually misunderstood, probably by some run-of-the-mill misanthrope like yours truly, as meaning that dealing with other people is Hell. But really, it’s more about us obsessing over how other people see us — they kinda don’t — what they think about us — they really, really kinda don’t — and exactly what we should change about ourselves to be more liked.

Nothing. I’m a machine that runs on the hate others feel for me.

Being serious — well, serious-ish — the idea of Hell is not very useful. If the place exists, we don’t and can’t know. And people focusing their hopes of justice on a place that’s inescapable, eternal, and from whence you can’t come back, well, kinda makes useless any argument about personal growth, right?

I think Hell is kinda like love, in that we should ignore it to the best of our ability and, if it happens, well, we’ll deal with it. Also, love: I’m quite sure I met a beautiful young lady as a punishment for — how do I say this courteously? — loving my neighbors too much. And hey, I paid my sentence and got a lot of emotional trauma. Huzzah for justice!

Anyone who has read Dante’s Hell knows that Purgatory goes soft on those kinds of damned, and that Heaven feels kinda blasphemous — because it is literally making an image of Heaven on Earth — and twice so because it is absolutely boring.

But Hell is fascinating. Dante took what I’ve been doing in this post to heights I would never imagine: putting two guys in Hell, one eating the skin off the other’s head? That’s a level of pettiness that I can’t even!

Popes upside down in holes filled with fire for simony. Imagine what that dude Simon did!

I wonder: how come Simon and Adolf are not dead names, just like Judas?

So, yeah. Hell. Hell yeah? Lost the trail for a second back there.

Hell shouldn’t be a part of morality. If you need the idea of eternal fire to keep you from eating one more chocolate or smiling at that pretty girl you find so absolutely attractive but have no intention of ever marrying, maybe you’re not a good person to begin with?

We’re falling on our faces on top of Nietzsche and, believe me, he hates that. We really, really should not go into morally superior humans who don’t need Hell to regulate themselves and inferior ones who do, because everyone thinks they’re the first when they’re clearly the second and, between the drinking and the fucking, people die.

Nobody is superior. We’re all fucking special. We deserve only the best. Let’s leave it at that. Please, no more murder. I’m allergic.

So, there you have it: an essay about Hell. We did it, people. Great work. Take it easy the rest of the week. Take a mental health day. Drink some water.

What? A conclusion? You people, always wanting coherence, conclusions. I am just a guy who wanted to joke about lentil-flavored sardines. Or is it sardine-flavored lentils?

It doesn’t matter.

If there’s to be a conclusion to this piece about Hell, this is it:

Leave the choices over Hell to God, and the running of it to the Devil.

It’s easy to decide that someone or other deserves Hell because of the way they think, dress, worship, or love. But it doesn’t matter what your religion is, or how good or bad you are. That’s not your prerogative, and it makes the world a worse place.

And do you really want to be the kind of person who would personally take someone to Hell and torture them? Is it really worth what it would do to them? Is it really worth what it would do to you?

That’s one of the ways murder happens.

My invitation? Don’t be a part of it.

Want to push away the idea of Hell for a while and instead live a good life? Learn something easy, free, and so productive:

Mind your own business. Keep your morals to yourself. Live and let live.

Even people who mix lentils with sardines.

I know.

It’s hard.

That’s it.