The difficulty of Heaven is that it requires mutual love, mutual harmony, mutuality of purpose. Whereas Hell is potentially a solo venture - we can 'go it alone'. Hell does not need other people, and tends-towards solitude.
It is typical of the value-inversion of an atheist-communist that Sartre got things exactly wrong; when he said that Hell is other people."
Rather: Hell is what you get from having Sartre's conviction that Hell is other people. Hell is a consequence of souls who regard other people merely as instruments or obstacles to the assertion of one's own Self; who regard 'other people' as objects to be manipulated or eliminated as required to attain one's own goals; and this attitude is itself a product of the rejection of Love.
Heaven is essentially a family; and for a family to work - all of its members must be loving of each other. Any one can opt-out of family, reject family, unilaterally; but sustaining family requires mutuality.
This shows, in microcosm, the sense in which Heaven is difficult, and Hell is easy.
But when Heaven does happen (which it can, since the work of Jesus Christ has - by resurrection - made possible a permanent and eternal commitment to Heaven); then the possibilities are open-endedly expanding.
Heaven will spontaneously increase, will develop, will create - without limit; because in Heaven creation is mutually-reinforcing and cumulative - because Love feeds on itself, nourishes itself.
However, in Hell the opposite is true: Pride feeds upon itself; Pride increases at the expense of everything-except My Self.
The long-term tendency in Hell is towards rejection of cooperation, towards solitude; thus towards diminution.
In The Great Divorce, CS Lewis depicts Hell as a place where everybody tries to get-away-from everybody else; by spreading-out, locking themselves in and others out; by socially-distancing.
Lewis's Hell spreads-out even as all human interaction breaks-down. Men contract and repel, thus Hell spreads.*
This contraction of Hell to self-isolated and mutually-hostile souls happens as a natural consequence of increasing Pride: Self-assertion, self-ish-ness, and ever-more immediate short-termism... all these ensure that life trends-toward a continually-escalating conflict of each against all.
*However, in a Hell ruled by Satan; the population who crave self-isolation would be prevented from spreading-out; and would instead be forced-into close proximity in over-populated cities; in order to torment them further. And this is indeed the Global Establishment's plan for planet earth.
Note: By no coincidence; we can perceive an earthly approximation towards Hell in the global developments of 2020: towards a world of self-asserting, resentment-driven, mutually-hostile individuals - each of whom increasingly regards himself as a victim of the prejudice and selfishness of others. A world that regards other people as threats and obstacles. A world of physically-distanced and identity-obscured solo-individuals; fighting (hopelessly) against overwheling impersonal tyranny by asserted entitlements and 'rights'. A world demanding to 'use' others and their lives to extend my personal survival. Here in the UK millions of people are currently legally consigned to the literally-Hellish state of 'self-isolation'; characteristically (fiend-ishly) presented (by our inverted morality) as a public duty, for the 'protection' of others. PSYOPS...
6 comments:
Yes, that's Hell all right. Alone or in very bad company.
Good morning to you too. ;-)
Very interesting. I suspect this imposed-Hell is "necessary" to push acceptance of a dubious vaccine/tracking regime (which seems the real interim objective). Those who refuse (mostly out of Spiritual discernment) are going to lose the ability to travel, enter stores, etc... Voluntary church shutdowns indicate many (most?) religious leaders are going to promote this as a virtue. It also appears the legal groundwork is being set to deny relief for any "extremists" who would refuse. Feels a bit like a Black Mirror episode...
Cities seem like the "perfect trap" for Hell-on-Earth, with the total absence of nature. Especially once the play-time/toys of hedonism, drugs, flashing lights, etc. are removed.
I find great relief from the media-imposed sense of pervasive fear by just looking out my window or hearing the birds. It is like fresh air, and makes the fake reality PSYOP seem like a bad dream.
I can imagine it being possible, at some point, to have a generation to be raised as so incredibly fearful of leaving their own home, or the city, that it requires no policing. All fake and imposed mental prison. I think there have been some science fiction books written with that scenario in mind.
My first encounter with Sartre's "No Exit" was a low-key university production. After the play, I distinctly remember thinking about how incomplete Sartre's "Hell is other people" line was - that other people could be heaven as well . . .
At any rate, I didn't make the deeper connections you have succeeded in making here. When I think about Heaven, I picture it in much the same way you describe.
And hell? Makes you wonder if the modern push to herd people into culturally-enriched megacities in which everyone is essentially alone with everyone else is not a purposeful temporal foreshadowing of hell. "See? You don't have to care about anyone and no one has to care about you! Congratulations. You're free!"
After watching the woke tear each other apart on social media and in university cancellations, I've come to think of "No Exit" as an accurate parable of life on their side. It's not universal and it doesn't apply to God's side, but it doesn't have to, to be great literature. Let us judge it for what it is: a portrayal of Hell. Sartre's writing makes it clear that he's very conscious and thoughtful about the world he's portraying, and he understands its mechanisms and flaws; but I can't tell if he was aware that there is another side where things are different. Quite possibly not, he being a Marxist atheist. And possibly a pedophile, with all the compression of personality that fetish-chasing brings.
T.S. Eliot made the same observation, contra Satre is his 1950 play 'The Cocktail Party'
“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”
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