And therein lies the curse of consciousness. To have an organism complex enough to know that it is itself an organism means to have an organism complex enough to know that it itself is pointless. This sensation we experience called thought is just some random mistake in the complexity of our minds that has somehow formed in a way that mimics a transcendence of the physical. We experience it as this higher form of conscious thought, captured in the illusion that this thought actually has any meaning. This consciousness gives us the hallucination that we can actually choose our own actions, our own thoughts, our own opinions, but in reality the only possible thing a conscious mind can do is ponder the fact that it is a conscious mind, and that it is ultimately pointless. And that thought is a terrible, terrible thought. If only humans were still just apes living in the trees, free of the realization that they will die, the people around them will die, and the entire world will end. And I suppose that we as a species have found ways either to regress to that ape-like state or to find some false meaning to our existence in the cosmos. Ignorance, religion, have become rampant in society as people try desperately, terrified, to justify their own lives so they can sleep at night. They sleep, and their minds dream of worlds where they mean something, ignoring the terrible conclusion that their prescribed self-worth is no more that a sleeping pill and a blindfold to cover their afraid and pointless eyes. But so the human mind creates these illusions for itself, trying desperately not realize the true nature of its existence, making and destroying its own purposes and destinations. If it stops, the world will become its own hell, full of people driven insane by the horrifying truth. If it continues, the world will become its own hell, full of people broken into delirious, depressed, psychotic beasts that desperately want to believe they have a purpose. Either way, we all die, and there is no meaning to conscious, and no destination for the dead to go and find it, and the world will turn to the very hell that people still believe could exist.
Friday, February 14, 2014
"The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
I would just like to take a moment and say that I absolutely hated that hell assignment. Now don't get me wrong, imagining how to punish people for the terrible shit we've all done is great, but it's all just a happy fantasy that ends as soon as you actually think about it. It's great to believe that in this big, confusing universe, there is some form of higher justice beyond it that can really make up for the evil in our world But that's where the fantasy stops. I would absolutely love to believe that some hell exists, but I can't. There is nothing after this. Good and bad people alike will cease to exist. once you die, you retain no memories, no emotions, no thoughts. Nothing. The only thing that remains of you is the rotting pile flesh and stink that used to be called by your name and the memories that you left in others, who also will end up rotting corpses indistinguishable from your own. And the assertion that life has a purpose, or that in turn hell has the purpose of canceling out all of life, is just completely wrong. All of life is just some accident of probability, some mistake that infinitely small chances in the universe brought forth. There is no higher purpose to our existence, except to quietly pass from the universe. And that's not even on an individual level: our entire planet's eventual destination is a fiery death in the heart of the sun. We can only hope that all of life is still on that boiling rock when it happens, and the human race, or any other race of creatures doesn't exist to parasitize and vandalize any other planets with our disgusting presence. "But what's the point of there being a universe if there is no one to observe it? I mean, the universe might as well not exist at all if there's no one there to see it." Exactly. There is no point to the universe. It's just some void with rocks floating in it that got there by some accident of the Higgs field changing states. It's meaningless.
And therein lies the curse of consciousness. To have an organism complex enough to know that it is itself an organism means to have an organism complex enough to know that it itself is pointless. This sensation we experience called thought is just some random mistake in the complexity of our minds that has somehow formed in a way that mimics a transcendence of the physical. We experience it as this higher form of conscious thought, captured in the illusion that this thought actually has any meaning. This consciousness gives us the hallucination that we can actually choose our own actions, our own thoughts, our own opinions, but in reality the only possible thing a conscious mind can do is ponder the fact that it is a conscious mind, and that it is ultimately pointless. And that thought is a terrible, terrible thought. If only humans were still just apes living in the trees, free of the realization that they will die, the people around them will die, and the entire world will end. And I suppose that we as a species have found ways either to regress to that ape-like state or to find some false meaning to our existence in the cosmos. Ignorance, religion, have become rampant in society as people try desperately, terrified, to justify their own lives so they can sleep at night. They sleep, and their minds dream of worlds where they mean something, ignoring the terrible conclusion that their prescribed self-worth is no more that a sleeping pill and a blindfold to cover their afraid and pointless eyes. But so the human mind creates these illusions for itself, trying desperately not realize the true nature of its existence, making and destroying its own purposes and destinations. If it stops, the world will become its own hell, full of people driven insane by the horrifying truth. If it continues, the world will become its own hell, full of people broken into delirious, depressed, psychotic beasts that desperately want to believe they have a purpose. Either way, we all die, and there is no meaning to conscious, and no destination for the dead to go and find it, and the world will turn to the very hell that people still believe could exist.
And therein lies the curse of consciousness. To have an organism complex enough to know that it is itself an organism means to have an organism complex enough to know that it itself is pointless. This sensation we experience called thought is just some random mistake in the complexity of our minds that has somehow formed in a way that mimics a transcendence of the physical. We experience it as this higher form of conscious thought, captured in the illusion that this thought actually has any meaning. This consciousness gives us the hallucination that we can actually choose our own actions, our own thoughts, our own opinions, but in reality the only possible thing a conscious mind can do is ponder the fact that it is a conscious mind, and that it is ultimately pointless. And that thought is a terrible, terrible thought. If only humans were still just apes living in the trees, free of the realization that they will die, the people around them will die, and the entire world will end. And I suppose that we as a species have found ways either to regress to that ape-like state or to find some false meaning to our existence in the cosmos. Ignorance, religion, have become rampant in society as people try desperately, terrified, to justify their own lives so they can sleep at night. They sleep, and their minds dream of worlds where they mean something, ignoring the terrible conclusion that their prescribed self-worth is no more that a sleeping pill and a blindfold to cover their afraid and pointless eyes. But so the human mind creates these illusions for itself, trying desperately not realize the true nature of its existence, making and destroying its own purposes and destinations. If it stops, the world will become its own hell, full of people driven insane by the horrifying truth. If it continues, the world will become its own hell, full of people broken into delirious, depressed, psychotic beasts that desperately want to believe they have a purpose. Either way, we all die, and there is no meaning to conscious, and no destination for the dead to go and find it, and the world will turn to the very hell that people still believe could exist.
"All right, then. I'll go to hell."
Hell is a place where all of evil resides. It is a place where, after death, human conscious goes to recognize all the evil they have done in the past. All evil people are there, taking their turn. It is a place full of fire and lava and rock and ice and wind and all terrible things. The sun burns overhead, the hellfire boils the skin that no longer exists. The biting cold freezes the fingers and toes and noses of souls. But that's just the line. The main point of hell is some sick form of justice - giving the evil what it deserves. We'll look at this from an individual level: a soul dies, and goes to hell, and waits in all that burning and freezing and whatnot for about eternity. Everyone goes through that, regardless of what they did in life. Then they get to their actual "treatment". It's basically just sitting in a room, strapped to a chair, and the entire events' of the souls life are played out. It ignores the good, righteous, whatever, parts of life and goes to everything the soul had done wrong and draws it out infinitely. The theory behind it is that the soul will feel some remorse for those bad things, some regret. It has learned its lesson. After that, justice is served. Hell for that individual has served its purpose, and the soul ceases to exist, no memories no emotions, nothing. There is no heaven, no paradise. That's the fairytale told to grown ups so they can sleep at night. There is only infinite suffering. But you can't say that's unfounded. The afterlife parallels the world. The only reason infinite suffering exists in the afterlife is because there is infinite evil in the world to supply it, justify it. Hell exists to rectify all the evil we humans produce.
You literally just need to exist in an intelligent, self-conscious mind to go to hell. Generalizations are just about exactly what I don't stand for, but I'll just quietly ignore my own value systems I hold for other people and say that everyone is evil on the inside. Not on the individual level, but as a whole society, we are all terrible. We all do things that are bad. My definition of bad is essentially it affects negatively someone else somewhere in the universe. So basically everything can be considered bad, which is why everyone is in hell. But the thing is, that while the entire "hell process" I maintain is a generalization, it is even more specific and personal than any system that groups people by the blanket sins they have committed. Each individual sees exactly what they themselves have done, and their level of torture is proportional to what they have done in life. If someone has actually done nothing wrong, they will merely by presented with moments when they were apathetic to some cause or instance repression - "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis" - (Dante). And of course in that sense then all people are damned to the worst tortures.
The punishments in hell are all one and the same for each person. After standing for eternity in a long line (wait the DMV is hell!) while being buffeted by hellfire and burning cold at the same time, you get to a room where you review your entire life. The images of your life are sent into your brain, so you may experience not only sight and sound, but all the senses and thoughts, to share in the emotions of the people that surrounded you your whole life. It speeds up the parts of life that were devoid of wrong, but spreads out, slows down, and painstakingly repeats over and over whenever the individual did something bad. Eventually, after repeating the life over and over, the hope is that the soul will show some sort of remorse for each and every thing they did. At that point, hell has run its course and the soul ceases to exist. No paradise, no heaven, nothing. Only hell and then cessation of existence. That's all the punishment necessary.
Hell looks like every single Judeo-Christian depiction of hell ever. Lots of tinged-red rocks, stalactites, stalagmites, fire, bones, but at the same time is freezing cold and the burning sun shines overhead. Not a friendly, nice, yellow sun, but a terrible, harsh, unforgiving red behemoth so close if you reached your hand up it would be set ablaze in the fire of the sun above and the ground below. The rocky path stretches down and down, farther into the abyss, until you get to the viewing room, which is a lot like those time travel machines in Twelve Monkeys. The line stretches out forever. How people view it is interesting. Most of the detail stuff is hallucinations by each and every soul. None of them actually retain their bodies or their flesh, they are just manifestations of their conscious minds. But to their minds, they have their bodies and as they stand in line forever, their skin and flesh slowly melt of their bodies. They can see and hear the souls in front of them one step further in decay, screaming in agony, and they can hear themselves screaming too as they catch up to the people in front of them.
No one does escape hell, because there is no place to escape to. Obviously, ceasing to exist is an escape from being strapped to a chair and reminded of all the wrong you ever did in your life. And being strapped to a chair and reminded of all the wrong you ever did in your life is an escape from waiting for all eternity in a line while slowly decaying in hellfire. But no, there is no redeeming place for good souls. There is no place for good souls period, as good souls do not exist. Everyone is subjected to the tortures of hell. There is no way to avoid it, no place to go instead.
The symbol for this version of hell would be a bloodshot eyeball. Most people would think that out of the two things, waiting in line burning in hellfire is the worse of the two. But that's not true. To relive every moment of your life, every hour, every terrible decision and bad choice replayed thousands of times with no reminder of any of the good that came with life. Sleepless, without food or an sort of comfort or release until the end, the psychological torture of that would be far greater than any physical pain you could endure. Just watching, over... and over... and over...
Every person who has every existed and will ever exist is in hell. Ever since man first realized he was a man, he has been going to hell after death. It would be far easier to specify who's NOT in hell. Only people who were literally powerless to prevent any evil of the world and that did not contribute at all to the evil of the world would just cease to exist immediately after death.
You literally just need to exist in an intelligent, self-conscious mind to go to hell. Generalizations are just about exactly what I don't stand for, but I'll just quietly ignore my own value systems I hold for other people and say that everyone is evil on the inside. Not on the individual level, but as a whole society, we are all terrible. We all do things that are bad. My definition of bad is essentially it affects negatively someone else somewhere in the universe. So basically everything can be considered bad, which is why everyone is in hell. But the thing is, that while the entire "hell process" I maintain is a generalization, it is even more specific and personal than any system that groups people by the blanket sins they have committed. Each individual sees exactly what they themselves have done, and their level of torture is proportional to what they have done in life. If someone has actually done nothing wrong, they will merely by presented with moments when they were apathetic to some cause or instance repression - "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis" - (Dante). And of course in that sense then all people are damned to the worst tortures.
The punishments in hell are all one and the same for each person. After standing for eternity in a long line (wait the DMV is hell!) while being buffeted by hellfire and burning cold at the same time, you get to a room where you review your entire life. The images of your life are sent into your brain, so you may experience not only sight and sound, but all the senses and thoughts, to share in the emotions of the people that surrounded you your whole life. It speeds up the parts of life that were devoid of wrong, but spreads out, slows down, and painstakingly repeats over and over whenever the individual did something bad. Eventually, after repeating the life over and over, the hope is that the soul will show some sort of remorse for each and every thing they did. At that point, hell has run its course and the soul ceases to exist. No paradise, no heaven, nothing. Only hell and then cessation of existence. That's all the punishment necessary.
Hell looks like every single Judeo-Christian depiction of hell ever. Lots of tinged-red rocks, stalactites, stalagmites, fire, bones, but at the same time is freezing cold and the burning sun shines overhead. Not a friendly, nice, yellow sun, but a terrible, harsh, unforgiving red behemoth so close if you reached your hand up it would be set ablaze in the fire of the sun above and the ground below. The rocky path stretches down and down, farther into the abyss, until you get to the viewing room, which is a lot like those time travel machines in Twelve Monkeys. The line stretches out forever. How people view it is interesting. Most of the detail stuff is hallucinations by each and every soul. None of them actually retain their bodies or their flesh, they are just manifestations of their conscious minds. But to their minds, they have their bodies and as they stand in line forever, their skin and flesh slowly melt of their bodies. They can see and hear the souls in front of them one step further in decay, screaming in agony, and they can hear themselves screaming too as they catch up to the people in front of them.
No one does escape hell, because there is no place to escape to. Obviously, ceasing to exist is an escape from being strapped to a chair and reminded of all the wrong you ever did in your life. And being strapped to a chair and reminded of all the wrong you ever did in your life is an escape from waiting for all eternity in a line while slowly decaying in hellfire. But no, there is no redeeming place for good souls. There is no place for good souls period, as good souls do not exist. Everyone is subjected to the tortures of hell. There is no way to avoid it, no place to go instead.
The symbol for this version of hell would be a bloodshot eyeball. Most people would think that out of the two things, waiting in line burning in hellfire is the worse of the two. But that's not true. To relive every moment of your life, every hour, every terrible decision and bad choice replayed thousands of times with no reminder of any of the good that came with life. Sleepless, without food or an sort of comfort or release until the end, the psychological torture of that would be far greater than any physical pain you could endure. Just watching, over... and over... and over...
Every person who has every existed and will ever exist is in hell. Ever since man first realized he was a man, he has been going to hell after death. It would be far easier to specify who's NOT in hell. Only people who were literally powerless to prevent any evil of the world and that did not contribute at all to the evil of the world would just cease to exist immediately after death.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
"I believe that... myth is more potent than history... That hope always triumphs over experience"
I'm really curious as to the origins of the story skeletons like the Tragic Hero and the Hero's Journey. It's obvious that these base story lines are present in almost all of fiction, but it seems curious that storylines such as the Hero's Journey and the Tragic Hero are the ones that form. The Hero's Journey consists of being called to action, a road if trials and tests, a pit or deepest cave, and a return to the world. The Tragic Hero starts at a place of high status and as a result of some terrible character fault, falls to suffering, never to return. They are both very specific - and very peculiar - story lines that seem to permeate all of myth. The question though, is why those stories? Why are they the ones that people keep gravitating to, listening to, eating up and retelling?
My own answer to that is as follows. For the Hero's Journey, it's all about the identification with glory. The Hero's Journey is amazing, and everyone wants to live the life and journey and glory of the hero, so the Hero must start out as some ordinary person, called to act by some extraordinary force (a possibility open to all). They travel down the roads of trials, victory after victory to finally arrive at the centermost cave, the ultimate trial. We all love the story of the last-minute victory, the comeback, the underdog. So the Hero must embody all of those things at once and return to the world no longer the average joe we all associated with, now someone extraordinary, something everyone else wants to be too. Everyone out there could possibly be this hero, it could be any of us. That's why we love those stories, we believe in our minds that we ourselves could be that same person. The Tragic Hero is basically the educational what-not-to-do-now story that comes after the Hero's Journey. The Tragic Hero starts at the place of status attained by a Hero. We all love to see how others make the mistakes we know we could never make, and in a fashion opposite of the Hero's Journey, we automatically don't associate ourselves with the Tragic Hero. We see ourselves as the version of the Tragic Hero that attains the initial success of him but we don't lose it. We immediately gravitate towards stories we want to be ours, without the possibility of the story ending badly. They are all of our stories, to ourselves, in our imaginations. That is why we, as a society gravitate towards those story arcs.
My own answer to that is as follows. For the Hero's Journey, it's all about the identification with glory. The Hero's Journey is amazing, and everyone wants to live the life and journey and glory of the hero, so the Hero must start out as some ordinary person, called to act by some extraordinary force (a possibility open to all). They travel down the roads of trials, victory after victory to finally arrive at the centermost cave, the ultimate trial. We all love the story of the last-minute victory, the comeback, the underdog. So the Hero must embody all of those things at once and return to the world no longer the average joe we all associated with, now someone extraordinary, something everyone else wants to be too. Everyone out there could possibly be this hero, it could be any of us. That's why we love those stories, we believe in our minds that we ourselves could be that same person. The Tragic Hero is basically the educational what-not-to-do-now story that comes after the Hero's Journey. The Tragic Hero starts at the place of status attained by a Hero. We all love to see how others make the mistakes we know we could never make, and in a fashion opposite of the Hero's Journey, we automatically don't associate ourselves with the Tragic Hero. We see ourselves as the version of the Tragic Hero that attains the initial success of him but we don't lose it. We immediately gravitate towards stories we want to be ours, without the possibility of the story ending badly. They are all of our stories, to ourselves, in our imaginations. That is why we, as a society gravitate towards those story arcs.
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