alright im back to thinking about the shape of hell and how it forms for others. i wonder if the academics’ hell only forms in this somewhat-expected way with the eight circles and the city of dis because it is what all the literature on hell reads. are these spaces formed by the expectations of the masses????

idk i started thinking about how some ancient native philosophies and metaphysics didn’t necessarily have punishing afterworlds and instead were just a part of the flow of life (ie., in ancient aztec thought, the afterlife you arrive in is based instead on the ways you died, like drowning, and after serving for a certain amount of years you reincarnate) — is this an understanding that different types of the afterlife for different broad groups of people might exist differently?? Is this more specifically the vaguely-western-civilization-academic-hell???? ALSO is there a heaven in this understanding????

I have so many questions

i can’t stop thinking about if hell looks the same for everyone in this iteration or if alice is seeing a specific type because she’s a PHD candidate and because she goes to cambridge. Does somebody who dropped out of high school and dies with a laundry list of actions that would land them in hell also have to write these dissertations? Or does the action of repentance look different for them?

Surely, a dissertation is probably the best action for hell (because i would rather die (again, hypothetically) than write a dissertation) but it all seems like a very elitist way of viewing the cosmos — even here, those that can afford grad school are inherently (seemingly, at least, by the very virtue of having greater experience with it) at an advantage. Classism won’t leave you alone, even in hell.

i can’t stop thinking about if hell looks the same for everyone in this iteration or if alice is seeing a specific type because she’s a PHD candidate and because she goes to cambridge. Does somebody who dropped out of high school and dies with a laundry list of actions that would land them in hell also have to write these dissertations? Or does the action of repentance look different for them?

Surely, a dissertation is probably the best action for hell (because i would rather die (again, hypothetically) than write a dissertation) but it all seems like a very elitist way of viewing the cosmos — even here, those that can afford grad school are inherently (seemingly, at least, by the very virtue of having greater experience with it) at an advantage. Classism won’t leave you alone, even in hell.