Do we live in Hell? [closed]

Question

WARNING this is a negative view of life so if you are a sensitive to negativity I'd recommend not to continue reading.

Now, if we define hell like a location or state in which souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture as punishment.

Wouldn't be certain to think that we can be in a type of hell?

What makes me think this?

BIRTH / ENTERING

Nobody chooses to be born, you are brought by other people who are in hell already. Souls are dragged into this existence, and since we are born, it hurts. Everything hurts. Growing hurts, learning new capabilities hurt. No mentioning, how vulnerable babies are.

LIFE

To live we need to consume other life, be it animal or vegetable, so we literally feed on other souls which would makes us evil. Nobody is born evil, but as you live, trauma, experiences, etc... develop a sense of evil (to a greater or lesser extent). So literally, the more you live, the more evil you become. Also, we tend to like things that are evil like power, money, etc... Anything we like is bad for us and anything that is good, it is hard to earn, for example. We like food, but too much or the food we like is bad for us. We like drugs, or money, or any other thing there is always a limit to how much good we can take.

However, for things that are good, like exercise, it is hard to achieve and generally, through pain.

Someone might say that life has good things but, of course it does. How would you keep anybody in this world if there is nothing good? That is the hook. Having good enough to keep you living.

DEATH

We don't know what is afterwards because if it is bad, anyways, we have survival instincts so we would like to live here as long as possible anyways and if it is good, nobody would stay here (alive).

Do you know any authors or philosopher who played with this idea already? has this been discarded from the philosophical point of view? I'd love to know people's point of view on this.

Answer 1

This outlook on life is usually expressed by existentialists.

Some existentialist, like Albert Camus in the Myth of Sisyphus, try to give a positive spin on what they see as the absurdity of existence -- the essential meaningless of life, the lack of any transcendent purpose or goal, the total indifference of the universe to our suffering, the ridiculousness of all our striving in the light of our unavoidable death. If life doesn't have a deeper meaning or purpose, we can simply say: "I don't accept that, I will still continue on living (and create my own meaning)." It's kind of a heroic gesture, but it seems rather reactive: it seems to only make sense as a last reaction to certain religious ideas of overall meaning -- ideas that had already lost their vital value -- but keeping a shadow of those ideas still alive... (If God is dead, why keep walking around with his corpse?)

There are darker, more radical existentialists, that don't find Camus' heroic gesture appealing. One vivid, fictional example is the protagonist in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground which is told in the form of diary, an angry rant - ridiculing the belief in rationalism.

The diary starts with the words

I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite.

And later

I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness.

Another dark, but real person who was very much in tune with such a view of life is Emil Cioran. Cioran is intensely sceptical of abstract speculation, ratiocination, system building, philosophical pretense and philosophical "theory"; he mostly expresses himself in lyrical, emotive rants and aphorisms. If you are not able to read French, it's worthwhile to learn how to do so, just to be able to read a bit of Cioran. If you're able to read German - then you might be interested in reading Paul Celan's translation of some of his essays in "Lehre vom Zerfall" (The Doctrine of Decay). Wikipedia has links to some of the translations into English, for instance to The Trouble with Being Born.

The paradoxical effect of reading Dostoevksy or Cioran is that afterwards you may feel - strangely enough - kind of invigorated... Perhaps it's good to see your own innermost, purely subjective feelings mirrored by another human being. Though, honestly, I have to say that Cioran (and the underground man) can also become just a little too predictable and tedious, so I rarely reread them. But still, he may be a antidote (or immunizing agent) to a culture of toxic optimism and positivism that seems to prevail in some circles (for instance in large cooperations) :)

Answer 2

Some pessimist philosophers argue that humans are inherently doomed

Many of these aspects of life have been pointed out by existentialist and pessimist philosophers. Pessimist philosophers typically don't assert that the world is "Hell" in a religious sense (as being an afterlife for the damned proceeding some other earlier life), but they do say that living conceptual beings like us are inherently flawed and that nature is inherently horrific in the requirements it forces on us.

In view of your interest in this topic, you might find it useful to read the book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti. Ligotti argues that the situation is even worse than you describe and that the problem is not just circumstantial. He argues that the root of the problem is that ---through an accident of nature--- humans have evolved beyond the simpler animalistic forms to possess a consciousness with a conceptual faculty that effectively forces them into a position of being at odds with nature. The human consciousness and conceptual faculty (which Ligotti calls "malignantly useless") constitutes a "conspiracy against the human race" which Ligotti views as a mistaken mutation that humans have effectively been cursed with. He observes that humans consistently engage in intellectual maneuverings that limit their awareness of the negative and horrifying aspects of their existence in order to be able to survive with a conceptual faculty that makes them aware of the horrifying circumstances of nature. Ligotti views humans as a kind of natural "mistake" who are inherently doomed by the fact that they have evolved in a manner that is in opposition to nature.

Answer 3

Yes, philosophy has writings around the concept of suffering. Partly because in the history of humankind, many people were actually suffering a lot—not like the whiny neurotic modern city dweller who thinks life is hell because the Facebook news are so bad and there is inflation and global warming and their coffee store around the corner is going to close.

People lived in constant physical pain from malnutrition, lack of medicine, lack of security, lack of education (and many people still do).

As an example, from Buddhism (quoting some obscure site):

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

Sounds familiar? Still, this is sold with a resolution and a method to deal with it, yet the OP seems to prefer relishing in their own self-perceives suffering of life being hell without obvious solutions like "make an appointment with a shrink, you can afford it." So not sure if that answer counts.