Life in Hell?

nyarlothothep

Came across this

http://www.livereal.com/spiritual_arena/life_utter_hell.htm

What are your views on this? My opinion would be that a lot of people end up messed up, anti social, aggressive/obnoxious whatever you want to call it because the environment they're born into is very hostile. If you look at the animal kingdom its a thankless struggle to survive and human society doesn't appear to be much different. In fact for all the benefits we have our history is steeped in misery eg

the Hiroshima atom bomb- 78,500 killed in less than 5 seconds
the holocausts (Germany and Japan)
5 million acres of Vietnam destroyed by Herbicides during the Vietnam war
2 million Kampucheans killed by Pol Pots resettlement program
21 million people died during the reign of Belgian King Leopold, the Second, in the Congo Free State
In less than a hundred years the Spaniards caused the deaths of an estimated 24 million South American Indians through disease and abuse.

The only argument I could think of is that as a species we have a limited but cumulative escape velocity from the cruelty of the natural world (including the universe) as we perceive it, insofar as we can reflect on it and think outside natural confines to conceive of things which do not occur within nature.

nyarlothothep

no doomers? Are we all optimists?

nyarlothothep

I would welcome serious discussion on this, I find it interesting that every effort no matter how insignificant involves suffering and how our history is one that has been unremittingly self destructive and cruel, how the universe seems to be mean, inhospitable and random.

Joe1919

Arthur Schopenhauer Studies in Pessimism http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter1.html

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD.

misfortune in general is the rule.
.. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt.

...This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful.

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

Discussion. The last quote is worth pondering on. Schopenhauer argues that pain is always necessary if we are not to become intolerably arrogant. Even though Schopenhauer is influenced by Eastern religions, nevertheless his opinion is worth comparing to the to the Christian view that 'salvation is only attainable through suffering'

Ginja Ninja

honestly i haven't read that article (connection and other commitments)but the whole concept og "evil" is a human thing take the natual world we are ,after all, animals there is no evidence(i know of)that proves any other species has the concept of revenge and wrong doing

therefore if we had no more than what we needed to survive and had not seeked more would we have a concept of evil ?

also does anyone else know the details of the "hell has gone out" i think it relates to how the bible has no specific reference to "hellfire" and the likes just says it is like the desert/wasteland/whatever

Black Swan

Why dwell on suffering, doom and gloom? Or await some hellish Biblical armageddon by a vengeful anthropomorphic god because you stopped going to church on Sundays? An alternative perspective exists in the poetic work translated by Fitzgerald: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam.

"Behold the morning! Rise up, O youth and quickly fill thyself with this rosy wine sparkling from the crystal cup of the dawn!"