I think despite the religious allegories, etc., depicting a lake of fire, etc... and despite my own agnostic athiesm... hell is real. Hell is as real as how a broken arm feels to the person whose arm is broken. It's a state of mind. It's a state of chaotic dissassiociation. It's a pit of despair. It's the mind, lacking the capacity to forgive itself for what it percieves to be its shortcomings. IMO, there's one way out of hell. I might call it "love". I think of it as "forgiveness->joy". Hmm. Something like that. I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment to find the words. I think when a religious person asks of their savior to forgive them, they are asking a projection of themselves. I think YOU (which includes a projection of you as a savior, or whatever) are ultimately the only one who can forgive you. I think generally speaking, accepting one's humanity is paramount to this capacity. I think I've visited hell, long ago. I think what got me, personally out of it was acceptance that what would seem to be imperfect, can be none other than perfect. The perfection of imperfection lead me to acceptance, which in turn allowed me joy. Meh. Just a free thought. Can you dig it?
you know what this thread should be about? what your personal hell would be like as you imagine it. i actually had this discussion the other day with two girls on a beach while drinking a rum and coke and we decided that hell would be having head lice, a genital herpes outbreak, and diarrhea while you had your hands and feet handcuffed to each other, lying on your stomach. i don't see a way out of that hell.
*waits for gendanken to talk about Sartre's No Exit* but seriously speaking, I agree with wes but from a different point of view...for me hell exists because heaven exists, and if there's things we like then there's also things we hate and at some point we might find ourselves surrounded by the things we hate, which (I feel) isolate us from the things we are attached to, and that's where hell comes to exist now, again for me, being free from hell implies being free from heaven too which is to say, the moment you come to see beyond your attachments and those things you are averse to, then all that really matters is what you have in your hands now and from there you're free to act just a thought too, I could be wrong
People still believe in this crap? Sorry to break it to you, but there is no such thing as agnostic atheism. How is it that people that do not believe in religion use fairy tale terminology as if it was real life?
There tends to be much stoicism and cry babies around. Hell according to wes is a state of mind. He seems to start off by saying that you can only achieve this state of mind if you are in excruciating pain such as if you were to break a limb. Then he goes on to explain hell as sort of a depressive pit. These 2 are very different depictions. This is a bit confusing, but I would chance it, and assume that the pit of depression is the hell we are discussing. Wes goes on to say that way out of hell is somewhat of a state of felicity(love/joy). Such a state is achieved through rationalizing that reality is perfect in its imperfections.
I can't get past the fact that Homo sapiens is a highly social species. And that in the past few thousand years we've rather compulsively constructed this unbelievably large community called civilization, which goes against our animal instinct to consider members of other packs/tribes/communities as enemies. I think that what we think of ourselves is influenced too much by what others think about us for Hell to be inside us. Look at the whole concept of "honor." You can basically do just about anything you want, so long as when it's over you've put the right spin on it and everybody thinks you did the "honorable" thing. And people buy into it.
What's to get past? Of course we are. First, I think that really kind of contradicts the first sentence, but moving past that... I really that that's a very limited perspective on the matter. Perhaps if you could explain to me how you reconcile "highly social species" with "animal instict to consider members of other packs/tries communities as enemies" I can understand your objection more clearly. My resolution your potential contradiction is that economic advantage (controlling more resources more efficiently) eventually rules cultural interaction, be it by imperialism or whatever. Tribe A bigger than tribe B so Tribe A kicks the snot out of B, and indoctinates, kills, enslaves or otherwise controls them IF they have resources (women, workers, good hunting spots, whatever) that tribe A's leader(s) decides they want. Eventually they are assimilated. I'm sure you understand all that so I must be missing your point. That just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understnad how being influenced by what others think about us has to do with hell or its location. And, if it doesn't exist "inside us", where the hell else could it be? The battlefield? Is that it? In that case, I'd say the battlefield cannot be hell, but it can open the gates to hell in one's mind. Hmm. So where are you going with this? You just mean there's no such thing as hell? You mean we are forced to think of hell in what other people tell us to think of it? It's just a fiction, a manipulators tool? Hmm. Well regardless of who concieved of the term or the intent, be it a manipulator or observant philosopher, I think the term is actually relevant to describe a certain aspect of the human condition. Ultimately I think heaven and hell are reasonable descriptors of the resultant of an invidual's mental state, or more the way they see their environment. I think that when people see themselves as "living in hell", they are either whiney pussies, or their mental state skews their perspective wholly negative, which is indeed, living in hell IMO. Like cool skill.
A rhetorical statement. The point I intend to make is that I believe that the model of an internal hell conflicts with our instinctive integration into an external community and the influence their opinion of us has on our feelings about ourselves. Up until a mere eight or ten thousand years ago--the Agricultural Revolution--we lived in tribes of a couple of hundred. Everyone knew everyone else personally and was related by blood to most of them. Only a modest extension from the packs in which the other apes live. Other tribes were seen as competitors for the resources in the area we staked out for ourselves, either the hunting grounds or the gathering fields and forests or both. Mesolithic technology without permanent settlements did not provide surplus resources to encourage sharing. So we had the instincts to be social but only within our own small community--just like many species of primates and other social mammals. There's no conflict here, in fact this is the basis of the definition of "community": a group of individuals who live together more or less in peace and consider everyone else outsiders to be driven off in hard times and warily tolerated at a distance in good times. The size of the tribe was limited by the hunting and gathering area that humans could cover and maintain their temporary settlements as bases. Too large a tribe required such a huge hunting range that the hunters couldn't find, track, kill, render, and carry back their kill before their families began starving. This is certainly true when one tribe is more advanced technologically than the other. People in villages don't see much benefit in making nomads equal trading partners and the city dwellers regard them the same way. This is more likely to happen if Tribe B is less advanced than A. And being further ahead on the technology curve gives Tribe A all the advantages it needs to grow larger than B, whether it's computers, industry, steel, bronze, cities, farms, or fishing villages. Since the building of the first permanent settlements created economies of scale, division of labor, and surplus resources, it's been statistically likely that when a large tribe encounters a small tribe the reason that the large tribe is larger is because they have a technological advantage. For one thing, it can't possibly be very much larger without that advantage and it can't possibly have the technology without the population to support it. (I guess that's two things.) A tribe of ten people can't build a viable farming economy and a tribe of a thousand people can't support themselves without at least a year-round fishing economy. So the reason for conflict, as technology improved and larger communities became viable, was, as you say, economic. But the economic advantage of crushing the opposition is only there if the opposition has nothing to offer. If two prosperous communities meet and neither has a developmental advantage, they have more to gain by cooperation, even the economic cooperation we call "competition," than by violence. Destroying the other community's infrastructure and then assimilating them doesn't do you any good, you end up poorer than you started. You're much better off to create a larger mega-community and take the principles of economy of scale, surplus, and division of labor to newer heights. I realize that most of our ancestors didn't understand that. One of the technologies that we developed in the latter part of the Industrial Era was widespread education. Our people on the average are much wiser and better informed than their predecessors. (I know, what a frightening thought.) We can and do use that technology to improve civilization qualitatively. We really are capable of avoiding their mistakes simply because we are capable of understanging why they were mistakes. Realizing that making war on Germany instead of trading with Germany (just to pick on our long-time arch enemy) is not in our own selfish best interest is no more remarkable or impossible than realizing that dumping sewage in the river or cutting down all the forests is not in our own best interest either. My fault, I wasn't making myself clear. Also my fault if I'm wrong. We're speaking metaphorically here so Hell can be anywhere. People who have been in battle would be quick to say that they indeed saw Hell there. If Hell is something we feel the source of that feeling can be as external as the source of any other feeling such as love. Sure, if you're into decomposition there are internal and external components to everything but that's a different model that the one I thought I saw in this discussion. Metaphors are neither fact nor fiction. They're tools. But the metaphor of Hell has certainly been used to manipulate people. And I'm not just limiting that to religious communities who use the word Hell and insist that it's real. (In which case I guess it's not a metaphor any more.) If we are taught to feel shame, dishonor, guilt, and all those negative emotions when we disappoint the community, then that Hell in which we wind up living temporarily or permanently, and the threat of it, "manipulates" us into behaving in socially accepted ways. This could also be regarded simply as socialization, teaching the young to balance their own needs and desires against those of others in order for the community to function. Sure. And at this point the words "inside" and "outside" are metaphors as well. The way we experience and react to our living conditions encompasses both internal and external factors. Many people around the world live (and die) in conditions that we Americans would call Hell. Many of us would reverse your comment and say that if they don't describe it that way, they are saints.
Thanks for your detailed clarification. Very insightful. I suppose you must be right and I was just focusing on a particular aspect of what it can be. I rendered it into what I thought "it must be in reality if it can be at all". Your point about metaphors is well taken. I'll reflect and comment again if I can find anything worth asking or adding. Thanks again. Oh and I particularly liked your comments about socialization as well. Well put.
I can understand your post wes. I used to be a perfectionist and still tend to be that way but it's not fun. It's only good when you think you have something perfect or very close to it and holding yourself to a standard that makes you a slave to it all your life. I was only free when I felt I didn't have to be perfect. And I also came to expect the same of others which of course, made me rather loathed by some for expecting too much and seemingly never happy. Therefore, I'm more content with myself and others when I know everyone makes mistakes and it's not in how perfect we are, but knowing that we're not but try to strive for better for ourselves and others. So summarily, it's the journey to get there rather than the destination.
