So I've spent a lot of time over the last few decades meditating on the idea of hell.
Partly because I find religion fascinating (though I don't really ascribe whole heartedly to any particular standardized theological ethos), and partly because I suspect that if there is an afterlife, that's probably where I'm headed.
Anyway, a few years back I ended up seeing a version of 'No Exit' by Sartre'... Now I'm not that in to theatre, and I'm not much of a Francophile, but I did find his portrayal of hell intriguing, and it set me to wondering.
If there is an afterlife, and it does last an eternity, it sure would get awfully dull.
I mean, suppose the only people you were allowed to interact with were people who were interested in interacting with you? Like a giant social networking/online dating site, but without the comfort of interacting through a computer screen. All your pertinent data (your past, your crimes, your petty jealousies, all the secret little moments of cruelty and selfishness in the face of suffering, all the schadenfreude and deception of your life) displayed for the benefit of the folks who had never met you so that they might decide whether or not you were worth interacting with.
Who you were in life would have a drastic impact on the quality and quantity of folks who were interested in visiting your little sphere of existence, or letting you visit theirs.
I mean your friends, your family, the people who love you would likely come to visit, at least at first. But as the millennia wore on those visits would become fewer and further between. You would eventually tire of each others company. All you would have left would be your spiritual resume, and the little world you created for yourself in your own little corner of eternity.
How long before you started relaxing your standards?
How long before your isolation and solitude started eating away at your sanity?
How long before you came to think of yourself as a god?
A madman?
The devil incarnate?
How long before you started creating imaginary folks and thinking they were real?
Before your immersed yourself in a fantasy existence to stave off the ever-present boredom and loneliness?
How long before you forgot?
Before your fantasy became real?
And once that happened, how would you handle the cracks in the facade?
How long before you became aware of the formulaic behavior of the simulacra you created to populate your existence?
And, given enough time, how could you be sure?
Would you start noticing patterns of speech?
Stories?
Music?
You know... I've heard it said that there are only seven basic story lines (which can be found, in one form or another in popular entertainment dating back thousands of years)... That there is a progression of four magic chords that basically guarantee a hit song... That there are really only a handful of basic flavors for cooking (though infinite combinations)...
Step lightly my friends, we may all have a very long and very lonely road ahead of us.
