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We are living in hell: we just don't realise it.

dhcdavid

dhcdavid

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Whilst half-heartedly trying to get a handle on what David Lynch's 1977 film "Eraserhead" is all about, I turned to the user reviews on imdb.com and after reading several wildely differing and conflicting theories - some extraordinarily complimentary, some phenomenally derogatory - I found one review (by dr steve http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/reviews ) which essentially said that we should all stop trying to analyse this film and explain its "plot" because "Eraserhead" quite simply couldn't be analysed as it was a piece of art.

The review ended with this thread's title: We are living in hell: we just don't realise it, which simply struck me like a bolt of lightning and even if this idea was not the film reviewer's own, original intellectual achievement then I had certainly not heard it anywhere else and decided it merited some discussion on Bluelight!

(Just out of curiosity, has anyone come across this notion before and if so where?)

I would be fascinated to know some of what other folk in P & S think of this idea....not so much of "hell on earth" as "hell is (being) on earth".

Then surely if we held this concept to be true then we straight away have a handy explanation for ALL the misery which occurs on earth: be that human-perpertrated or "natural disasters"/ "acts of God"............. and being familiar with Christianity (and not unaware of the basic tenets of the other great [as in size] monotheistic religions Judaism and Islam), the "problem" of evil - and especially the "problem" of finding a way to "square the circle" which is that God is all powerful AND loving (anyone ever heard the lovely-sounding but intellectually vacuous statement "God is love" before?) yet at the same time God allows evil to exist on earth - is a massive intellectual stumbling block for any free-thinking individual seeking spiritual solace within organised religion.

(Here assuming the term "organised religion" to refer to the "holy trinity" of Christianity, Islam and Judaism AS WELL as Hindu, Buddhism and Sikhhism - essentially the "state-sponsored" religions which I believe the majority of the earth's population either "belong to" or are at the very least raised in families and countries which adhere to some of the basic tenets of these main religions.)

SO, if we truly are living in hell but are simply unaware of the fact, at the very least does this concept not provide some relief? Insofar as it answers a massive yet essentially unanswerable question for maybe a few billion people: namely, why is suffering a seemingly inescapable part of the human condition?

Well, on initial examination, this thread's title does indeed seem to intellectually provide some relief to me with regards to the "problem" of evil: as for years I've been trying - and spectacularly failing - to square the intellectual circle which is that from as far back as I can remember I've been told by various "authority figures" that life is a beautiful gift, life is a miracle, love is beautiful, God is love, we should strive to emulate the lives of the successful people we see on our TV screens and in glossy magazines who all seem so happy and content etc etc....but THEN, the majority of what I myself have discovered about life, "human nature" (whatever the fuck "human nature" actually is!) and the world in general has unfortunately emphasised the veracity of the exact polar opposites of those listed "teachings".

Evil and suffering seems to be everywhere: but please note that I'm not denying the contemporaneous existence of love and goodness; I'm merely stating my observation of what a phenomenal amount of bad shit seems to be "out there"..........

If we accepted the idea that "We are living in hell: we just don't realise it" as a true statement about life, then does this not answer another of mankind's questions which is almost constantly asked yet never answered in an intellectually satisfying manner: Why does "evil" exist?

OK, if you're still with me by this point then I really do thank you for taking the time to be with me whilst I grapple with an idea and I would be honoured and fascinated to know what you think of the thread's title statement and/or my initial response to it.
 
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I agree with the thread title, but not so much with the idea that this literally is hell as relating to any religious idea of such a place, or as an explanation relating to "God" or such. I came to the conclusion of the thread title myself at around the age of 18 (i'm mid-twenties now).. people call me cynical, boring, depressed, grumpy etc when i confront them about any one of the MANY reasons why our society sucks, but it's true.. our society does suck. Everything we do without exception is inverted, perverted, a counterfeit of what it should be. What is even more heartbraking is that we literally have the capacity within us to become something we can't even begin to imagine.. but what keeps this from arising is society itself, it damages us biologically from conception onwards. THAT is why this place is hell, because we can't reach our true potential and must wallow half-way whilst being forced to believe this is all there is/that we should just accept this corporate nightmare and stfu.
 
-=SS=- said:
we should just accept this corporate nightmare and stfu.
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The quoted final words of your post resonnated so very strongly with me. Whenever I listen to politicans and so-called intellectuals these days I've noticed, despairingly, that suggesting any other system but capitalism might have something to offer is treated ALMOST UNIVERSALLY as blasphemy or heresy - a 21st Century equivalent of saying that the EARTH is flat.

I know that was only a small part of your post, -=SS=-, and I don't really want to derail this thread by moving onto the ills of capitalism and wankers', sorry, bankers' bonuses etc etc but when the Metropolitan Police ban people from demonstrating against capitalism/the financial industry around Canary Wharf or outside the Stock Exchange because apparently those spaces have been classified as PRIVATE PROPERTY (we're talking about spaces near buildings which are roads and thoroughfares - and since when are roads PRIVATE PROPERTY?) and folk are reduced to having to camp outside St. Paul's Cathedral (which to those unfamiliar with London's geography, is but a short distance from the financial CBD of London where buildings such as the Stock Exchange and the Bank of England are situated) because at least there they're not going to risk having their skulls smashed in by baton-wielding thugs or being tasered or pepper sprayed..........

Well, the constant message being communicated to the masses of Western democracies (anyone remember when "a Western democracy" was a compliment?) most certainly does seem to be: accept this corporate nightmare and shut the fuck up. SO well put -=SS=-.

I for one will not be in the least surprised if Satan himself soon reveals his true self to the World and we discover that he was behind Enron, runs the "big four" accountancy firms and employs Rupert Murdoch as his PR man.
 
Everything we do without exception is inverted, perverted, a counterfeit of what it should be. What is even more heartbraking is that we literally have the capacity within us to become something we can't even begin to imagine.. but what keeps this from arising is society itself, it damages us biologically from conception onwards.
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Like a caterpillar dreaming of butterflyness and the rest of the caterpillars telling it to be content and stop dreaming of flying. Its delusional and impossible for a caterpillar.

I think David is seeing the counterfeit of a realm separated from God and starting to see or feel that God shaped hole.. its like an
agonising void in your being that nothing other than God can fill. Society will keep trying to direct your attention away from God but if you ache youll keep looking. ' Seek with all your heart' :)

I wonder if youve looked at Revelations David? It prophesizes a complete collapse of the economic system in the end..
 
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dhcdavid said:
Whenever I listen to politicans and so-called intellectuals these days I've noticed, despairingly, that suggesting any other system but capitalism might have something to offer is treated ALMOST UNIVERSALLY as blasphemy or heresy - a 21st Century equivalent of saying that the EARTH is flat.
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Doesn't just apply to political/governmental/economic systems either.. it applies to ontological systems too. This is why the establishment has tried so hard to push under the rug (eradicate) as many indigenous people's as they possibly can, those who construct reality in a different way, because if the people of the capitalist world got wind that there is another way of being the rulers would be totally fucked! They need our slavery to survive. They are parasites. :!
 
IF this place was some kind of mass unreality, i'd suggest it is more likely a limbo than a hell. everyone seems to be waiting for something which never comes.

i don't think you need the hell explanation to make sense of suffering, which along with frank pain can be written off as chosen mental states. of course we'd prefer not to feel these things, but we are so conditioned to, it's incredibly difficult to resist. think about the root of suffering, a desire. what use is a desire for something not within your reach? this could be a fortune, or this could be food. even if your situation is life threatening, suffering only comes about with a refusal of acceptance on your part.

you can't compare suffering. it is possible a spoilt kid not getting the latest phone suffers greater than a starving child, although the injustice difference is great and obvious. it comes down to individual case by case.

so, instead of trying to find sense in suffering if God is all loving, ask what is the source of your suffering, and is it really constructive to dwell or even spend any time or emotion on it? can you do anything about it? if not, then forget it. If so, then become active.

even more importantly, what suffering do you cause (even accidently)? what can you do to reduce this for others?
 
I had a similar realization a couple of years ago in the vein of what L2R is saying. Not being Christian, or anything for that matter (wasn't raised with religion), the closest analogy I could find was the Eastern concept of samsara, or the cycle of suffering (birth, death, reincarnation) from which we try to escape into nirvana. Essentially, we are all trapped in our own personal, psychological samsara, in which we repeat bad habits while only hoping and expecting to change; to escape we must realize this, and only then can we change our world by truly acting to change ourselves.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a physical "reality", a la Heaven and Hell, but rather that we bring our negative thoughts into physical manifestation through attitude and action (or inaction). The world is terrible because most everyone is miserable and projects this attitude out into their environment. Despite all our cultural advances, the majority of people are still ignorant of the bigger picture.

What only makes it worse is that we have made survival a time-consuming toil for ourselves (wage slavery) in the interest of feigning godhood, culturally driven to fill the endless void of the ego. Basically all tribal cultures, who "worked" an average of three to five hours a day to meet their survival needs, agree that our mode of subsistence leaves us in disharmony with our environment; thus, we constantly fight nature for our scraps of bread, with comparatively little time to think and reach the aforementioned philosophical conclusions. I believe this is why Buddhism was founded, as a reaction to preserve the spiritual cult of a way of life that was rapidly being driven to extinction.
 
The world is terrible because most everyone is miserable and projects this attitude out into their environment.
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Not sure if most people are miserable - I think most people are miserable at some point - what you project certainly may affect how your environment will treat you & it may not - the trick lies in not expecting & it's a hard trick to pull off
 
I agree, I consider most people "miserable" because we are raised with certain expectations, and are easily frustrated when life doesn't meet said expectations. Culture is all about theoretically bringing said expectations into reality, which is where we get into conflict with ourselves and our surroundings, by assuming that our culture goals are "right", and everything else is "wrong".

But yes, humility and lack of expectation is hard to pull off, and is usually the best approach. Maybe this is why it's prioritized over individualism in Eastern cultures.
 
^don't forget, that desire and misery is cultural. there HAVE been peoples living on this earth without it, and in sustainable harmony with nature. insatiable greed is not a necessary aspect of our species.
 
why is suffering a seemingly inescapable part of the human condition? ....Evil and suffering seems to be everywhere: but please note that I'm not denying the contemporaneous existence of love and goodness; I'm merely stating my observation of what a phenomenal amount of bad shit seems to be "out there"..........
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Huh? I don't get it. Not seeing it that way from here.
 
fridgebuzz said:
Huh? I don't get it. Not seeing it that way from here.
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FB:Please note that although your quotation of some words of mine from the first post in this thread contained words which indicated how great I believed the level of suffering out here in the world is; it also stated quite clearly that I wasnt' saying that love wasn't out there either. Merely that "suffering" seemed to be winning the battle for the human condition.

But hey, I 'm not sure how much I agree with that and it was precisely because of such intellectual grey areas that I came up with such a rhetorical type of question for a thread here in P &S.
 
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This thought has crossed my mind once before. It is very possible that we are in Hell because there are so many problems and stuff that we don't yet understand. It is the fact that human beings like me and you don't want to discuss that kind to other people because it results in disorder and chaos which is already present in the world. The apocalypse or the contact of extraterrestrial aliens is what excites us because it produces feelings of curiosity and bewilderment which is basically inborn in all of us from the beginning of life when we are still infants. I have been having thoughts of the origin of mankind and the future of it for the past few years and it never hurts to ask yourself these kinds of questions. Here's a thought: What if the entire race of humanity knew deep down inside that they are living in some kind of universe that represents Hell in a different way than what we already perceive Hell to be like. God damned us all with his Son and all the angels and holy entities that might exist up there in Heaven for us, dwellers of Hell to be cast into this dimension forever and for eternity, similar to Heaven. I like to think of it as the glass is half full if we truly were living in Hell because there are still things in Earth that are worth fighting for like love, peace, happiness, beliefs and culture that define the very existence of mankind and its struggle to prosper till the end of time. Faith will lead us back into the Kingdom of God if only we accept Jesus for his act of forgiving us for sinning and so forth. My 2 cents.
 
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I was talking about this in the pub the other day - that heaven and hell as above and below concepts are ridiculous.

We are indeed living in hell, and heaven.

THis world is what you make of it - far too many people think the grass is greener on the other side - the other side of hte country, the other side of the world, outer space, and even "heaven".

How ludicrous - if this world we live in is a hell, then why not strive to make it as heavenly as possible considering we are all here, and it seems we're stuck that way for a while?!

There's good and bad happening on this planet, and heaven and hell happen on a local, national and international scale, yet we look elsewhere...for "something more" than ourselves.

I see this as just not taking responsibility for our actions, and not seeing our influence on our environment, as we don't want to accept full autonomy, because that would just be far too scary.

We are living in hell because, as a species, we are not evolving - we are stagnating.

They say we only use 10-15% of our brain's capacities.

If we strived to unleash more (god forbid, all) of that potential, we could make this world a heaven, and far less of a hell, and outer space woulbe be the last thing on our mind's until this world we lived in was perfect, and we truly had reason to explore what's "out there" as curiousities would then NEED to be satisfied.

But right here, right now we need to change our ways, and take care of our planet, and brethren, because the hell fire is coming - it is the Age of Aquarius.

THere was a great flood/ice age before, and everything moves in cycles, so it's moving towards time for fire - the sun, killing life on earth through holes in the atmosphere and ozone layer.
 
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Yea dude the sun is going to shine so bright it'll puff out all the evil and negativity infecting our planet like a virus.
 
could hell be considered the contraction of the universe instead of the expansion? like cons and rods darting towards the surface of the eye then digressing back.
 
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