Pain

Did I, God, create hell?

Pain, Agony, Suffering, Torment, Misery, and Anguish (Pastma)

Unpleasant sensations and feelings are a part of life. Life isn't fair. Some people believe it is, and karma rules everything, and everyone gets what they deserve. Furthermore, religious doctrines teach that there will be reward or punishment in the next life, based on merit or lack thereof, whether that be a reincarnation on earth, or in heaven or hell for eternity.

I have been a bit schizophrenic (in both senses of the word) in my previous posts on the matter of life after death. On the one hand, scientists are saying consciousness exists in all matter. This was described in the movie, What the bleep do we know, with water "reacting" to being loved or hated or whatever. On the other hand, I have said no one lives forever, and once you're dead, that's it: kaput. The hell is not knowing. I am not omniscient. To know, in the biblical sense, is to have sex with. I'm not even all-knowing.

I have shown the definition of life, of organisms, and of animals, and I'm not really sure any of it matters, if consciousness exists in everything. Does having consciousness imply it can feel, whether good or bad? Is the idea of a fiery hell meritorious, in the sense of matter burning in cremation, or like the fusion of hydrogen in the sun (which takes a very long time to reach the surface). The military has a new "ray gun" which I have mentioned. Could this make matter itself feel "unhappy." Does a rock even have a "sense" of time?

I have even said we are all kind of dead already, just as matter that happens to have dna in it, and thinks and breathes and whatnot. We are like biological robots. It's just a matter of form. Animalia comes from anima, which means spirit, or breath... I had a religion teacher who said plants reacted to Led Zeppelin negatively. I don't believe in souls, like some ghost that inhabits our bodies. Breath could be like the decay of a rock: all matter has a half-life. Is "life" the wrong term, like the "life" of a tire? As Pink Floyd sang, every day is "one day closer to death." So, in that sense, we're like a rock or a star, which decays and dies, like us. Jesus even said he was "the light of the world" and the son of man (is the homonymy with sun intentional) as well as a rock.

So is everything "dead" or is everything "alive" -or neither? Is everything "undead?", like robot zombies, just acting according to natural laws? Is this how seeing into the future is possible? Maybe everything just is. Labels and form are, in a way, irrelevant, perhaps.

So maybe we are all immortal, in the sense of the conservation of matter. What we are and have been made of will pretty much always be, cycling through the universe. Matter can change into energy, of course. We can be eaten and we can be burned.

I don't subscribe to the "law" of karma. Everyone dies, and that's the ultimate "punishment", and you either live well or you don't, according to the rules (whatever they may be, and for whatever reason) of what make you happy. Billy Joel sings, "only the good die young." But this is ridiculous. Good people die old, and "bad" people die young. There's a lot of pressure and even "force" to act certain ways, which can be really unfair and make people very unhappy. Even thoughts are regulated, and mind control is a pervasive reality. It seems everybody wants you to believe certain things, reject others. Even America is not free. Cops and robbers is both about people trying to be happy, by their own lights. Happiness can be putting a murderer behind bars, or it can be, in the words of the Beatles, "a warm gun, mama." Even pain makes some people happy. But nobody would want to have RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy).

Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be abused by you. Everybody's different. Although, if you get to believing a movie like the Matrix, it may seem like everybody isn't even real, like a program, part of a machine. To quote Pink Floyd again, welcome to the machine. Is life just a dream? If so, who's doing the dreaming? And when were we all dreamt up? Are any of us truly free? Are we all "programmed"?

Not being free, in any sense, is painful. No one wants to be enslaved, incarcerated, or restricted. We dream of flying, of living well, and being in exotic situations. We dream of heaven, because we are so unfree during our lives. Even religion, which hopes to offer hope, can be painful, if you see the beliefs as absurd or lies. Depression and misery are common, with "chemical imbalances in the brain" caused by valid angst in what can truly be a miserable world.

Good people live with chronic pain. Neuralgia is an unkind disease, to say the least. Of course, there are cases of people born (without neurons?) or the part of the brain that interprets pain or something, who don't feel pain. These people can die from not having the feedback mechanism that indicates danger or harm that pain provides. There are sadists, who enjoy giving pain, and masochists who enjoy receiving it. Torture techniques have been refined by militaries, making maximum psychological effect on people with even the highest tolerance and resistance to being "broken." It's a cruel world, with sick, twisted people.

If there is a God, in the conventional sense, why would he create us to be so sensitive to pain? If non-living matter has consciousness, it still doesn't have neurons, and so, presumably, cannot feel pain. Why aren't we like that? But, what is pain?

A lot of it is conditioning and what one is used to. Pain and suffering is a legal phrase used to collect damages. Can one learn to "turn off" pain? How does Paris Hilton's suffering a few days in jail compare to a prisoner of war in the harshest of conditions? What about schizophrenics who have constant mental turmoil and psychological hell? Some "schizophrenics" however, enjoy their voice, and it is not an unwelcome or unwanted intrusion, to a captive audience, but rather a conversation with an intimate friend. Is it possible to trick one's mind into thinking any kind of pain is pleasurable?

Christians believe in the redemptive value of suffering. Buddhists are all about the cessation of suffering. Jesus died on the cross, and a Buddhist monk sacrificed himself through self-immolation during the Vietnam war outside the white house.

The right to privacy can be most impinged with the case of telepathy, if not schizophrenia. It is, in the words of Silence of the Lambs, having "(someone) in your head." To quote Pink Floyd again, it's having "someone in my head but it's not me." Basically, if it's God that mines your mind, and can mold your thoughts and dreams, and can see what you see or whatever else, then He is a CRIMINAL. If he is not welcome, he is invading your right to privacy. Everyone should have sovereignty over their own body and mind.

There are the terms "open-minded" and "closed-minded" My own "God" is a closed minded person who demands access into everyone else's mind, in my opinion. God, devil, whatever. I want everyone out. I don't care if I'm not in anyone else's mind, especially if they don't want me there.