For some people, Hell or Hades is a real place, it lies beneath out feet and is a place where unbelievers or wrongdoers are sent to face an eternity of torture and damnation. Of course those same people would claim to be tolerant and filled with forgiveness and smugly confident that it is a place only for others.
Hell is an invention, a conception so diabolically evil, (no pun intended), that it could only have been devised by minds fundamentally warped and desperate to bring others into line and to accept their ways of thinking. The same minds conceived heaven; a place where the simpering goody goodies can kowtow to their master and spend eternity being humble and grateful that they are not in hell. On the surface of things it sounds better than the alternative but eternity is a bloody long time.
In reality, Hell is with us all of the time and it can take many forms. For Jean Paul Sartre, hell was other people, and by and large he got it right. There are so many situations where the presence of other people is a punishment. A crowded bus of train, finds you in close contact with strangers, all of whom would rather be somewhere else than have their own space invaded by all sorts. Being surrounded by the great unwashed, inhaling their emissions and sharing all their bugs is bad enough, but having to interact with some of them can be a torture in itself.
For me, glimpses of hell can be found in reality TV. Any programme devised to make the masses believe that they matter should be declared as immoral and illegal, and yet these outpourings of mediocrity are sucked up each week by millions, enabling their organisers to become extremely wealthy.
Hell can be the agonies of depression, it can be a raging toothache or a terminal disease. It can be a tragedy or a break up of a relationship, it can be war or starvation or even a really bad sunburn, and sometimes it can be a 24 hour exposure to spiderman. It can be whatever you choose it to be, but please don't try to tell me that it is a place that I will be going just because I do not believe in fairy tales.
Hell is an invention, a conception so diabolically evil, (no pun intended), that it could only have been devised by minds fundamentally warped and desperate to bring others into line and to accept their ways of thinking. The same minds conceived heaven; a place where the simpering goody goodies can kowtow to their master and spend eternity being humble and grateful that they are not in hell. On the surface of things it sounds better than the alternative but eternity is a bloody long time.
In reality, Hell is with us all of the time and it can take many forms. For Jean Paul Sartre, hell was other people, and by and large he got it right. There are so many situations where the presence of other people is a punishment. A crowded bus of train, finds you in close contact with strangers, all of whom would rather be somewhere else than have their own space invaded by all sorts. Being surrounded by the great unwashed, inhaling their emissions and sharing all their bugs is bad enough, but having to interact with some of them can be a torture in itself.
For me, glimpses of hell can be found in reality TV. Any programme devised to make the masses believe that they matter should be declared as immoral and illegal, and yet these outpourings of mediocrity are sucked up each week by millions, enabling their organisers to become extremely wealthy.
Hell can be the agonies of depression, it can be a raging toothache or a terminal disease. It can be a tragedy or a break up of a relationship, it can be war or starvation or even a really bad sunburn, and sometimes it can be a 24 hour exposure to spiderman. It can be whatever you choose it to be, but please don't try to tell me that it is a place that I will be going just because I do not believe in fairy tales.
