Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

  • Thread starter dekoi
  • Start date
So, in summary, the conversation discusses the concept of Earth being a "hell" or experiencing a "decay of humanity." The idea of a "hell on Earth" is discussed, as well as the idea of happiness being short-lived. The conversation also brings up the belief in Buddhism that Earth is one of seven hells and the concept of reincarnation. The conversation then shifts to a theory that our actions in the present can affect the past and future, potentially causing harm to the fabric of time. The conversation ends with a discussion about the power of the sun and how our actions may have a larger impact on the world and time than we realize.
  • #1
dekoi
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
-Aldous Huxley

Could our contemporary society be an example of "hell" in the future?

Could our current society be looked at as a 'hell' by another alien life?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #2
According to Buddhism, Earth is one of seven hells.

When you die, they read the Tibetian Book of the Dead over your body. Basically it just says things like "A ball of green light will approach and you will feel overwhelming envey... just ignore it, it will go away." If you give into the temptation, that is the hell you are reincarnated in.
 
  • #3
hell? hell no! there ain't no hell!

or heaven for that matter.

love&peace,
olde drunk
 
  • #4
theres a lot of depressed, tortured, broke, hungry people out there who would agree with you

theres a lot alot of happy people who will disagree with you

but then again there's that theory that everyone in this world who is happy is just saying they're happy, even lying to themselves and believing it..

honestly I am never happy for a long period of time. To me, happiness comes in quick spurts (literally).
 
  • #5
Olde drunk: you are referring to a theological type of hell and heaven. Although i would disagree with you on that subject, i am here referring to a 'a hell on Earth' -- a decay of humanity so to speak.

--

Wuliheron: perfect example of the piece of truth in every religion. precisely why everyone should recognize a sense of truthfulness in every faith.

--

Erazman: i was agreeing with you throughout your reply, until i reached the last line. So you subjectively state there is no eternal, perfect happiness?
 
  • #6
Erazman said:
honestly I am never happy for a long period of time. To me, happiness comes in quick spurts (literally).

Take it while you can. :biggrin:
 
  • #7
dekoi said:
Olde drunk: you are referring to a theological type of hell and heaven. Although i would disagree with you on that subject, i am here referring to a 'a hell on Earth' -- a decay of humanity so to speak.
ah hell, humanity goes through cycles, like everything else. perhaps you see the downward spiral as being negative. while i agree that we have problems, i also see that it is motivating change.

personally, i suspect that the unrest of mother Earth (bad weather, volcanos, earthquakes, etc) is a physical manifestation of our mass feelings of dissatisfaction.

putting labels on our world only perpetuates a bias. i do not see it as a heaven or hell. our world just 'is'. we can not detach, but we can understand that our view influences our future actions and reinforce making our prediction a reality. accepting the world the way it is, makes it easier to work toward my idealized future.

love&peace,
olde drunk
 
  • #8
wuliheron said:
According to Buddhism, Earth is one of seven hells.

When you die, they read the Tibetian Book of the Dead over your body. Basically it just says things like "A ball of green light will approach and you will feel overwhelming envey... just ignore it, it will go away." If you give into the temptation, that is the hell you are reincarnated in.

Where are the other seven 7? :confused:
 
  • #9
Here is my strange theory of the week. A couple of years ago it was reported that the first poetry was discovered, and it was by a woman, a Babylonian priestess (I think), something of that sort. She was wailing in this poem about why God would bring this terrible destruction upon them? Why there was this killing fire in the sky that was destroying so grievously her world? Suddenly this popped into my head today, and I wondered, what if we are only vaguely separated from all of time and being, and her complaints, coming to us from 6000 years ago, are actually about things happening in her time due to what we are doing in her area, in this time? What if things are a lot more delicate than we can imagine? What if the hellish actions we take in this time, move through time, and influence or damage time its self. Now the tremendous power of the Sun is a part of what we all share and have shared, it isn't constant, but it is a constant of existence, both its energy and its embrace. Maybe our acts are so extraordinary, and contrary to the process of life, that they do damage across a spectrum, we do not yet understand? Maybe that Buddist thing of doing no harm, and staying unattached has to do with leaving the fabric of time intact?
 
  • #10
Dayle Record :There is something BIG to your theory.I feel it.
 
  • #11
Dayle Record said:
Here is my strange theory of the week. A couple of years ago it was reported that the first poetry was discovered, and it was by a woman, a Babylonian priestess (I think), something of that sort. She was wailing in this poem about why God would bring this terrible destruction upon them? Why there was this killing fire in the sky that was destroying so grievously her world? Suddenly this popped into my head today, and I wondered, what if we are only vaguely separated from all of time and being, and her complaints, coming to us from 6000 years ago, are actually about things happening in her time due to what we are doing in her area, in this time? What if things are a lot more delicate than we can imagine? What if the hellish actions we take in this time, move through time, and influence or damage time its self. Now the tremendous power of the Sun is a part of what we all share and have shared, it isn't constant, but it is a constant of existence, both its energy and its embrace. Maybe our acts are so extraordinary, and contrary to the process of life, that they do damage across a spectrum, we do not yet understand? Maybe that Buddist thing of doing no harm, and staying unattached has to do with leaving the fabric of time intact?


Interesting theory
 
  • #12
I don't think Earth is a hell for other planets and their residents, but I do think that Earth could be a place of punishment for immoral crimes committed in a past life. I mean, there are a lot of theories claiming Earth to be a place of punishment, and it indeed could be.

-Brad Barron
 
  • #13
heaven and hell are a perspective. you have to take some responsibility for your state of mind and happiness. of course negative things happen to us all, but it is how we approach and perceive the event that gives us that "state of hell". there are many who would rather blame something outside of ourselves for why we are unhappy instead of taking the "free will" of making ourselves happy. religion is a perfect example of this thinking.
 
  • #14
you guys know what sucks?...we will NEVER know if god exists or not, or if there's a heaven or hell, or what happens after one dies.
 
  • #15
Erazman said:
honestly I am never happy for a long period of time. To me, happiness comes in quick spurts (literally).


That is a rather disturbing image.
 
  • #16
This week felt like hell. I had to run to California on a job and in the middle of the desert my truck broke. The engine was too hot for me to touch anything so I decided to wait for it to cool down before trying to fix it. It didn't take long to cool down because at that moment it started to rain. Standing there in the dark and in the rain I found out that the guys at Jiffy Lube had disconnected two hoses and incorrectly installed the air filter. I got the truck going again and continued my trip. I turned on to Highway 215 and almost instantly hit bumper to bumper traffic. After 1 1/2 hours and 1 mile's progress I saw a sign saying that the road was flooded and I couldn't go through. I turned around and went back the way I'd come, then turned on to the 15 as an alternate route. Almost instantly I hit bumper to bumper traffic. Construction zones were causing a major back up and the rain was coming down harder than ever. I finally got to my destination at 1:30am, I had planned on getting there around 6pm. My 5 hour trip to Cali was actually a 12 1/2hour tour through Hell.
 
  • #17
The Earth is OUR hell,... Or Heaven... The choise is yours.
 
  • #18
Some of the people I have worked with have every reason to be happy and positive, but they are living in a mental hell - a world of the worst affliction and despair and hopelessness and inadequacy and darkness. They are healthy and intelligent and educated and should have every ability to at least cheer themselves up but they cannot and do not. They think ghostly thought and are clueless and misguided to a beastial extent. I can only conclude to myself that they are on the face of the Earth to take punishment.

And Wuliheron, that is a great book you mentioned, believe it or not I actually gave guidance on the basis of that book and had some very supranatural experience.
 
  • #19
Why does everyone say we will never know if there is a God or not?

You are assuming you know something that you don't know. Who is to say that this is a question that we can't answer? What credibility or proof/evidence does this person have to make such a statement?

Its like saying we will never know what will happen next week. That makes no sense because if you wait a week, you now you know!

I hate this sort of attitude. I am not saying it is possible to answer whether God exists or not, but I do know I will never say "we will never know if God exists or not". You are stating a fact that we will never know, but you don't even know if we will ever know. It makes no sense to say that.

END.
 
  • #20
Jason, that's the spirit. I fact I think we must be so close to the answer, so tantalisingly close.
 
  • #21
I'm assuming that when you say "prove God exists", you mean 'prove by means of an argument. A proof produced by an individual’s reason can only be used to prove a divine power to that one person. That is the beauty of faith – it is an individual gift. God allows us to use this faith to prove to ourselves the existence of God; not to others. If we use faith to prove the existence of God to ourselves, it will be an objective logical proof for ourselves. There is no objective logical proof for God which can be understood by everyone. A philosophical argument can help everyone recognize the possibility of a higher power, yet it can not prove the complete existence of this power. Our goal should be to recognize how we can bring about the recognition of this Being, and then build our own faith using our own human reason.
 
  • #22
The higher power is govern by the laws of physics, and nothing else.

Note: Maybe Chaos, but we won't get into that.
 
  • #23
decibel said:
you guys know what sucks?...we will NEVER know if god exists or not, or if there's a heaven or hell, or what happens after one dies.

well you might never know (but i intend to find out), but in 2000 years we would have discovered many answers to questions we havn't even asked yet, we will know what death and life really are, and the 'diety' question isn't a large step from there.
 
  • #24
Smurf said:
well you might never know (but i intend to find out), but in 2000 years we would have discovered many answers to questions we havn't even asked yet, we will know what death and life really are, and the 'diety' question isn't a large step from there.
yeah! and since there are an infinite number of questions we should have the answer to at least 3/4 of them by then. I think the deity question gets answered 1 or 2 questions before infinity.
 
  • #25
if Earth was another planets hell, you are assuming that people are not conscious in the hell/ heaven dimension. if we were concious, we would all remember our past lives on this planet. i think if hell exosts, it is far more likely to be conscious as this would make it that much worse as we would have something to compare it to. so if we are conscious in hell or heaven, this therefore disproves this theory. Heaven is another matter. We cannot be conscious to be content.
 
  • #26
And about the God thing, we are all so wrapped up in being better than everything else, that we think we are capable of understanding God! If we were granted with this divine understanding, God would not be testing our faith. Humans are simply not intelligent enough to understand God.
 
  • #27
Impossible? said:
And about the God thing, we are all so wrapped up in being better than everything else, that we think we are capable of understanding God! If we were granted with this divine understanding, God would not be testing our faith. Humans are simply not intelligent enough to understand God.

Partially true. We can create "arguments" for the existence of God; however, they will not prove his existence -- instead, they will provide us with a logical possibility. Faith is given to humans to build upon their already founded belief. Each one depends on each other.
 
  • #28
The 1st noble truth is that life is difficult (though some translate this as 'suffering'). I think that its probably not an either-or situation, but that when you are happy (in love, get the job you wanted) life is heaven for that time, , and when the tide turns (lover dumps you, hate your new boss) life is hell for that time. Then you fall in love with your boss, and live happily ever after. Until the divorce. Then you fall in love with your solicitor. Who turns out to be a fridge-fetishist.

But what is the alternative to life? Eternal bliss? Eternal hellfire? Non-existence? If you are under the impression that life is hell and cannot be otherwise, its probably best to talk to somebody.
 
  • #29
tribdog said:
yeah! and since there are an infinite number of questions we should have the answer to at least 3/4 of them by then. I think the deity question gets answered 1 or 2 questions before infinity.

If there are an infinite number of questions, can you name 3/4 of them? Have you even thought of the smallest fraction of them? In 2000 years we will have 2000 more years of new knowledge, and 2000 more years of new questions that 2000 years ago, we couldn't even comprehend. Rinse and Repeat, I wish I could live forever.

The Deity Question will be answered sooner or later provided there is still intelligent life out there, but by the time we do figure it out our idea of an 'important' question will be so much more 'important' than that boring theory that's been tossed around for the last 10000 years.
 
  • #30
Smurf said:
The Deity Question will be answered sooner or later provided there is still intelligent life out there, but by the time we do figure it out our idea of an 'important' question will be so much more 'important' than that boring theory that's been tossed around for the last 10000 years.

Disagree. Like i said before, the God argument will not be completely proven. If it was completely proven, faith would have no value.
 
  • #31
Smurf said:
If there are an infinite number of questions, can you name 3/4 of them? Have you even thought of the smallest fraction of them? In 2000 years we will have 2000 more years of new knowledge, and 2000 more years of new questions that 2000 years ago, we couldn't even comprehend. Rinse and Repeat, I wish I could live forever.

The Deity Question will be answered sooner or later provided there is still intelligent life out there, but by the time we do figure it out our idea of an 'important' question will be so much more 'important' than that boring theory that's been tossed around for the last 10000 years.
point taken, but I'll bet we can ask almost half of infinity.
 
  • #32
I'm not sure if that's a joke, but I'm quite sure that infinity won't exist once we master Quantum Physics and start experimenting with Alternate universes and realize that time is an illusion and just a 'filler' for that blank part of life we can't understand fully.
but at the same time mathematics will come up with yet another ultimate frontier.

One of the reasons I want to life forever.
 
  • #33
dekoi said:
Disagree. Like i said before, the God argument will not be completely proven. If it was completely proven, faith would have no value.
I think that's one of the most interesting things is that it WON'T have any value, and it will cease to exist, humanity will take a whole new direction. I am not religious and Faith always seemed more like stupidity to me, Believing something because you believe it, I hate people who believe "CNN is the most trusted name in new's" just because they say they are, and to me I can't tell the difference between this and that.
 
  • #34
you need to watch Passion of the Jedi then.
 
  • #35
there certainly is a lot of hype about someone who no one seems to know whether exists or not... ( God )
 

Similar threads

Replies
20
Views
1K
Replies
1
Views
646
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
766
Replies
8
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
6
Views
1K
Replies
24
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
2
Views
1K
Replies
2
Views
2K
  • Sci-Fi Writing and World Building
Replies
13
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
3
Views
661
Back
Top