Hell: Silly Myth or Nightmare Made Manifest?
Hell. A place of eternal punishment for the evils you have committed on earth in this life. A construct of a Creator God or a concept instituted by mankind to control his brothers and sisters? Everyone’s opinion is different; some don’t believe there is a “hell.”
One thing that can be agreed upon is that there is a great sadness and evil in this world. There is darkness in every human heart, and we each contribute to another person’s pain either directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally at some point in our lifetimes. We don’t always know the depth of our contribution or involvement with the destruction of ourselves or others, but we can (if we are honest with ourselves) accept that we have not been completely innocent this whole time. The only true innocents are those who do not know how to be evil, who do not have the mental capacity for that concept. And even then, a small child could accidentally burn down a house and kill the people in it because the child played with matches. So even the most innocent sometimes still commit acts that lead to pain and destruction. Is any one person truly exempt from this?
So what is hell? Cole of Hopeful Melancholy blogged about a report she saw on the subject wherein people were interviewed about their personal idea of Hell:
While many of the interviewees disagreed on many of the more daunting aspects of hell, they all shared one common quality: all of their arguments were based around themselves and what they “felt” about the existence of heaven or hell. I could be wrong, but last time I checked, I’m pretty sure that HELL existed independent of human reasoning or preference.
What people always try to have is power and control. Most people will give you an idea of hell that either is “fun” or which could never apply to them in their own eyes. People joke about wanting to go to hell because Heaven is “boring” or how all their friends will be partying in Hell, so they want to be there. When they talk of Hell in terms of righteous punishment, it never applies to them or what they’ve done. They’re “good people” in general, they don’t deserve to be punished for anything. They haven’t sinned, they did nothing wrong, they’re completely innocent and whitewashed.
How ignorant we are of our own selves. For all the introspection and self obsession in the world, we seem to happily and easily overlook the idea of consequence. Many people think there just shouldn’t BE any negative consequences for their own actions. If they are careless with sex and get pregnant and don’t want a kid, they can abort it. Problem solved. If they speed they should be let off with a warning. How many websites are out there that show you how to “get out of a ticket”? If you break the law, what makes you think you should get out of the ticket, anyway? Just because you’re cute or rich or in general “a good person”? Why can’t people look their own wrongdoing in the face and accept the consequences?
Paris Hilton freaked out because she had to spend time in jail for drunk driving. Yesterday I saw a report on TV where an elderly woman was going to jail for selling cigarettes to minors. She was complaining that the punishment was too harsh and felt she should have been given just a warning because it was only her first offense. The punishment, by the way, was 24 hours in jail. She made sure to hold up her ziploc bag of prescription bottles to show us how anyone taking medication shouldn’t be expected to spend a day in jail. God forbid she take responsibility for her crime (and yes, it is a crime to sell tobacco to minors) and humbly keep her mouth shut and do her day in jail and actually learn something.
Jokes are made about hell, and people like to make it more “friendly.” When Marilyn Manson says that heaven just “isn’t for him” and he wants to go to hell, he must be thinking hell is a cool place where he will feel acceptance and comfort and the things that he hated about this world will have fallen away. All those fluffy white bunnies and church-going Christians trying to put a damper on his brand of fun will be off in Heaven somewhere, while he, having shunned all of that conventional white-bread boring stuff will be rocking out with the cutting edge rebels in an endless self indulgent stage show where he is the main attraction.
How about this scenario: Marilyn Manson’s actual hell would be him surrounded by fluffy bunnies and white-bread attitudes and lots and lots of preaching Christians telling him to stop being such a whiner and start wearing matching contacts. What if Manson’s hell actually consisted of Manson all alone with no one to listen to his “singing”, no fans to admire him and give him attention, no one to give a rat’s ass what he thought or felt about anything? What is Manson’s hell is everything on this earth that brought him pain? After all, hell is supposed to be a place of torment. Why does Marilyn Manson impose his own feelings on it and arrogantly insist that Hell conform to HIS standards or reflect what HE thinks or feels? This is a person who resents being told what to do or how to live, yet he feels very sanctimonious in dictating what Hell should be like for him. He says he wants to go there because he has already put himself in a Godlike position of power — being able to create Hell and make it what he wants it to be, rather than understanding that he doesn’t have that power and that when and if he goes to hell it will not care one whit about what he wants. The whole POINT of hell is that it is a place where what you want doesn’t matter. If you thought you felt ignored and insignificant here on earth, try putting yourself in a place where you can’t just say no one cares (because you feel sorry for yourself and want sympathy and pity) — it will be a stark reality. What will you do when you say no one cares about you — and it’s true? And you can’t escape it.
What a hypocrite Manson is. And of course, we all do what he does. We minimize the consequence of our own wrongdoing. We try to get the easy way out; we don’t want to suffer. Hell is a place of suffering and all the jokes in the world won’t change that. Even the Devil himself doesn’t care about those in Hell. People think they have an ally in the Devil, like he cares and will give them what they want. They think they can lie and cheat and steal and destroy and then go to the Devil’s waiting bosom for accolades and comfort. Little do they realize that the one who taught them to lie, cheat and steal is actually lying to them, cheating them and destroying them. When he’s done getting these tools to do his bidding (thinking that they’re actually indulging themselves, of course) he throws them away and thinks on them no more.
So is hell something that exists on its own or something we have made up? Could there be a place for people to be punished as a consequence of their bad behavior? If there is no hell, will the perpetrators of rape, murder and brutality get away with their crimes? Will the victims of violence be shown that their pain meant nothing? Will there be any justice for them at all when it can not be had in this world? Is it really so strange to think there could be a place where the playing field is leveled and the perp gets to live out just exactly the pain he or she caused? You get what you give. What goes around comes around. Karma’s a bitch.
Sartre once said, “hell is other people.” From observing the way the world works and from listening to reports from those who say they’ve been there, Hell appears to be a place where there is no one at all. Loneliness, isolation. No one to cry to, no one to pray to, no one who cares, no one to sing your songs or read your stories or watch your films or hear your voice. Hell is having to face the horror of yourself for all eternity without anyone or anything to distract you from it.
your Origami reporter,
Momo
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