Go to Hell!
You ever said that to someone?
Go to Hell!
You’re assuming a lot with that particular pejorative. First off, you’re assuming there is a Hell. Secondly, you’re probably holding onto the belief that it’s a bad place.
I don’t really have time to deal with the concept of an afterlife in this limited forum, so we’re going to focus on the latter preconceived notion.
Have you ever been to Hell? Do you really know whether it’s that bad?
Now, we’ve all read Dante’s Inferno…OK, I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it. What I gather is that Dante thinks the circles in Hell are pretty bad. I can understand that because circles generally cause a lot of traffic problems. I much prefer the grid system used by major cities like New York and Philadelphia.
The thing about the traffic circles is that they developed in Europe because as a town or city expanded, the circular periphery of said town or city was pushed back. I think a lot of the time what are now circular roads began as walls. I’d have to look that up though.
But, I digress. Needless to say, the grid system works better, so that’s one strike against Hell because nobody likes to be stuck in traffic.
What about the good side of Hell though? It’s warm. There’s no snow. Think about snow after it’s just been sitting around for a while. It becomes all slushy and dirty. It stains the bottoms of your pants. This never happens in Hell because snow don’t last.
You can wear shorts all the time in Hell. You probably pick up a good tan from all the fire, and I hear brimstone’s an incredible exfoliant.
So, no snow, shorts and clear skin. That’s three big plusses for Hell.
Now we get to kind of a sticky situation: eternal damnation. I’m not going to say that this is a good thing, but how many times have you been “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” on Earth? Are you really going to tell me that you can’t deal with an eternity of damnation?
Wah wah wah.
Why don’t you suck it up already?! You get to wear shorts… shorts!
What have we learned from all this?
We shouldn’t assume that Hell is bad just because society says so. We should examine not just Hell but all things from a number of perspectives before passing judgement.
Maybe in the future you’ll think twice about saying “Go to Hell!” and about constructing cities based on a circular road system…