So, I'm in the homestretch of Orwell's 1984. I've gotten to the point in which our protagonist has been captured by the Party and is now undergoing a good deal of torture. After reading for more than an hour, I put the book down to think over what I had just read.
As is not uncommon with me, an altogether different meme popped into my mind. I mulled it over for a while and decided that, for whatever reason, I could call it a disjointed epiphany: Heaven and Hell would be the same place.
Since we can only know a thing by its opposite, if we reside in some realm with only one constant (love and/or pleasure in heaven and pain and/or suffering in hell), it would lose any substantive meaning. Love without suffering and suffering without love would each be a neutral experience. So, if human souls are sent to such destinations, it would seem that it wouldn't matter where a soul was sent because each destination would elicit the same result.
If the result of one is the same as the other, this would suggest that there is no other. If there is no other, then it would follow that heaven and hell are names affixed to the same place.
As is not uncommon with me, an altogether different meme popped into my mind. I mulled it over for a while and decided that, for whatever reason, I could call it a disjointed epiphany: Heaven and Hell would be the same place.
Since we can only know a thing by its opposite, if we reside in some realm with only one constant (love and/or pleasure in heaven and pain and/or suffering in hell), it would lose any substantive meaning. Love without suffering and suffering without love would each be a neutral experience. So, if human souls are sent to such destinations, it would seem that it wouldn't matter where a soul was sent because each destination would elicit the same result.
If the result of one is the same as the other, this would suggest that there is no other. If there is no other, then it would follow that heaven and hell are names affixed to the same place.
That place is life. Hell for some Heaven for others, really dictated by the way they see.
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