History CrapsackWorld / MythsAndReligion

** The stars in Aztec religion were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars. Those human sacrifices were, in part, needed to keep the sun god strong enough to fend off the attacks from the moon and stars. And that's before we go into the part where they believed that the earth was a sleeping eldritch abomination that also needs to be fed with sacrifices so that it won't wake up and davour...well...the cosmos.

** The world is ruled by a pantheon of JerkassGods who will [[DisproportionateRetribution utterly screw over mortals]] ([[DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal often literally]]) for the most petty of reasons, or no reason at all. (The Olympian gods deposed the Titans, who were allegedly worse, but we only have the Olympians' word for it.) Oh, and by the way, [[YouCantFightFate destiny rules everything]] and [[YouCannotChangeTheFuture man has no control over his own life]]. Nice to note that of the five deities in the pantheon that were actually nice or nicer to humans, one was [[EverybodyHatesHades god of the underworld]], one was his wife, one was a Titan - who created humanity in the first place (Prometheus), the other had that as her primary character trait, and the last one was the dark goddess of magic and witchcraft, described as living in the Underworld too.

** The world is ruled by a pantheon of JerkassGods who will [[DisproportionateRetribution utterly screw over mortals]] ([[DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal often literally]]) for the most petty of reasons, or no reason at all. (The Olympian gods deposed the Titans, who were allegedly worse, but we only have the Olympians' word for it.) Oh, and by the way, [[YouCantFightFate destiny rules everything]] and [[YouCannotChangeTheFuture man has no control over his own life]]. Nice to note that of the four deities in the pantheon that were actually nice to humans, one was [[EverybodyHatesHades god of the underworld]], one was his wife, one was a Titan - who created humanity in the first place (Prometheus), and the other had that as her primary character trait.

** Despite being considered worse than the Olympians, the Titans are said to have established a 'Golden Age' where man wanted for nothing. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks a bunch, Zeus]]. But many would be very pissed off if their father ate their siblings and tried the same to themselves. Then there's that whole slave to fate thing, so it's not like he really had a choice.

** The stars in Aztec religion were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That pretty much tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars. Those human sacrifices were, in part, needed to keep the sun god strong enough to fend off the attacks from the moon and stars. And that's before we go into the part where they believed that the earth was a sleeping eldritch abomination that also needs to be fed with sacrifices so that it won't wake up and davour...well...literally the entire cosmos.

-->''The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart ... Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.'' ([[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis 6:5-6, 11-12]])
** The Literature/BookOfEcclesiastes is basically about Solomon's struggle with his faith. His belief that he lived in a CrapsackWorld offered him no relief of a heavenly afterlife after death, but mere eternal unconsciousness.

** Despite arguably being worse than the Olympians, the Titans are said to have established a 'Golden Age' where man wanted for nothing. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks a bunch, Zeus]]. But many would be very pissed off if their father ate their siblings and tried the same to themselves. Then there's that whole slave to fate thing, so it's not like he really had a choice.

** One last thing that cements Greek mythology as being this trope: There is a reason that Hope is one of the things in PandorasBox. The Greeks didn't have a very high opinion of it, because they thought it deludes people into thinking that they live in a WorldHalfFull, only to [[YankTheDogsChain crush this belief utterly]].
* Many mythologies have one or several deities occupied with creating intricate traps and riddles in order to "test" humans. The only problem is that many to most of these tests could only be passed with [[Manga/DeathNote Light Yagami-like]] levels of omniscience. Which is to say they are impossible, unless you have the [[ScrewTheRulesIHavePlot Power of Plot]] on your side OR [[LuckBasedMission you don't actually solve it,]] but [[BornLucky are ridiculously lucky]].
* Myth/NorseMythology, in which the world is doomed to end in ice and fire overrun by giants and monsters and the gods themselves will die? The light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train. Going to Valhalla just means training for the Final Battle of Ragnarok.

* Myth/AztecMythology: The Aztec afterlife required you to run a big damn gauntlet to get to it, at which point... you spend eternity sitting around inside a pyramid, doing nothing, only even getting to ''eat'' on the Day of the Dead. On the plus side, you can read the life stories of everyone else who got there, maybe write your own.

** If you think the afterlife was bad, in life the god who controls the sun is a bloodthirsty, warmongering psychopath. If the Aztecs do not constantly war with other tribes and perform grotesque human sacrifices, he will refuse to let the sun rise and the entire world will freeze.
*** To be fair to said god, it's not spite: he'll ''starve'' if he doesn't get the necessary hearts. And according to one version of the relevant origin myth, he sacrificed himself that the people of the earth could live to become a sun god. Sometimes all the gods except the wind sacrificed themselves to fuel the ignition of the sun and have no bodies but the temple statues, and so require much blood to persist and protect.
*** Not only that, but well...you know the stars? Those pretty lights you see at night? In Aztec religion they were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That pretty much tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars. Those human sacrifices were, in part, needed to keep the sun god strong enough to fend off the attacks from the moon and stars. And that's before we go into the part where they believed that the earth was a sleeping eldritch abomination that also needs to be fed with sacrifices so that it won't wake up and davour...well...literally the entire cosmos.

* One of the basic tenets of both UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} and Jainism is that the Samsara (the universe we live in) is an never-ending cycle of pain.
** For more detail (at least in regards to Buddhism): Existence inevitably leads to pain. Pain is caused by desire, which generates karma, which leads to reincarnation, which leads to more desire, and therefore pain and karma... It`s a wonder Buddhism has an image as an optimistic religion in the West.
* [[Myth/MesopotamianMythology Sumerian Mythology]] only seems to have one afterlife destination, which is a dusty, barren and empty hall described as sucking immensely.

** Also, the pain of whatever killed you in life carries on eternally in the afterlife. [[NightmareFuel Ponder that for a moment.]] There are ways to improve the general shittiness of the afterlife, however. First and foremost is having lots of children.[[note]]And consider the FridgeHorror of ''that'' considering that in pre-industrial societies the leading cause of death for women is childbirth...[[/note]] Having few, or no, children will severely increase your suffering in the afterlife. The reason for this is unexplained, but one would assume it is related to the lack of grave offerings or something of that sort. There is also the possibility of being upgraded to godhood upon death (which happened to Gilgamesh himself in one of the Sumerian poems) which will give you a small part of the underworld to reign over and possibly improve.
* Greek Mythology depicts the world as ruled by a pantheon of JerkassGods who will [[DisproportionateRetribution utterly screw over mortals]] ([[DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal often literally]]) for the most petty of reasons, or no reason at all. (The Olympian gods deposed the Titans, who were allegedly worse, but we only have the Olympians' word for it.) Oh, and by the way, [[YouCantFightFate destiny rules everything]] and [[YouCannotChangeTheFuture man has no control over his own life]]. Nice to note that of the four deities in the pantheon that were actually nice to humans, one was [[EverybodyHatesHades god of the underworld]], one was his wife, one was a Titan - who created humanity in the first place (Prometheus), and the other had that as her primary character trait.
** Despite arguably being worse than the Olympians, the Titans are said to have established a 'Golden Age' where man wanted for nothing. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks a bunch, Zeus]].
*** To be fair, many would be very pissed off if their father ate their siblings and tried the same to themselves.
*** Then there's that whole slave to fate thing, so it's not like he really had a choice.

* And how can we forget Myth/NorseMythology in which the world is doomed to end in ice and fire overrun by giants and monsters and the gods themselves will die? The light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train. Going to Valhalla just means training for the Final Battle of Ragnarok.

* The book of Ecclesiastes in Literature/TheBible is basically about Solomon's struggle with his faith. His belief that he lived in a CrapsackWorld offered him no relief of a heavenly afterlife after death, but mere CessationOfExistence.

* And how can we forget Norse mythology in which the world is doomed to end in ice and fire overrun by giants and monsters and the gods themselves will die? The light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train. Going to Valhalla just means training for the Final Battle of Ragnarok.

* The Aztec afterlife required you to run a big damn gauntlet to get to it, at which point... you spend eternity sitting around inside a pyramid, doing nothing, only even getting to ''eat'' on the Day of the Dead. On the plus side, you can read the life stories of everyone else who got there, maybe write your own.

*** Not only that, but well...you know the stars? Those pretty lights you see at night? In Aztec religion they were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That pretty much tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars. Those human sacrifices were, in part, needed to keep the sun god strong enough to fend off the attacks from the moon and stars. And that's before we go into the part where they believed that the earth was a sleeping eldritch abomination that also needs to be fed with sacrifices so that it won't wake up and eat...well...literally the entire cosmos.

*** Not only that, but well...you know the stars? Those pretty lights you see at night? In Aztec religion they were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That pretty much tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars. Those human sacrifices were, in part, needed to keep the sun god strong enough to fend off the attacks from the moon and stars.

*** Not only that, but well...you know the stars? Those pretty lights you see at night? In Aztec religion they were believed to be scary lady skeletons called the Tzitzimimeh who wanted to eat the sun and could possess humans during eclipses. That pretty much tells you all about Aztec mythology, that they saw something baleful even in something beautiful as the stars.

* Sumerian Mythology only seems to have one afterlife destination, which is a dusty, barren and empty hall described as sucking immensely. The entirety of ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh'' is an ode to the concept that dying can only result in endless tedium and suffering. Also, the goddess in charge of the place routinely threatens to unleash the angry, bored dead to fuck up the living world if her father, the head honcho god, doesn't agree to her arbitrary whims.

* One of the basic tenets of both UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} and UsefulNotes/{{Jainism}} is that the Samsara (the universe we live in) is an never-ending cycle of pain.

* Calvinism is a denomination of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} that believes {{God}} [[YouCantFightFate preordained everything]] before the universe was created like a movie script with every single detail plotted out before hand. Most of humanity is doomed to [[FireAndBrimstoneHell eternal damnation]] while a select few are chosen to enter heaven. What is truly horrifying is the concept of predestination: [[YouCantFightFate no human has any chance or choice to avoid their fate]]. It was all decided beforehand so [[DespairEventHorizon the damned have no chance to escape eternal damnation.]] Despite this, [[DesignatedHero God is supposed to come across as good]] when to many he [[GodIsEvil comes across as very, very evil]].

** Their are a few Aztec afterlives that are a paradise or at least better, but usually involve dying a violent death or under very specific circumstances. Tlalocan is eternal springtime, but reserved for those who died from drowning, lighting strikes and other things related to the rain god Taloc.

* The basic idea of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}} Gnostics]] was that Earth is a Crapsack World made by a flawed would-be God that trapped humanity in a prison of matter and flesh and tyrannizes over them.
* The book of Ecclesiastes in Literature/TheBible is basically about Solomon's struggle with his faith. His belief that he lived in a Crapsack World offered him no relief of a heavenly afterlife after death, but mere CessationOfExistence.

* Greek Mythology depicts the world as ruled by a pantheon of JerkassGods who will [[DisproportionateRetribution utterly screw over mortals]] ([[DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal often literally]]) for the most petty of reasons, or no reason at all. (The Olympian gods deposed the Titans, who were allegedly worse, but we only have the Olympians' word for it.) Oh, and by the way, [[YouCantFightFate destiny rules everything]] and [[YouCannotChangeTheFuture man has no control over his own life]]. Nice to note that of the four deities in the pantheon that were actually nice to humans, one was [[EverybodyHatesHades god of the underworld]], one was his wife, one was a Titan - who created humanity in the first place (Prometheus), and the other had that as her primary character trait.
** Despite arguably being worse than the Olympians, the Titans are said to have established a 'Golden Age' where man wanted for nothing. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks a bunch, Zeus]].
*** To be fair, many would be very pissed off if their father ate their siblings and tried the same to themselves.
*** Then there's that whole slave to fate thing, so it's not like he really had a choice.
** The ancient Greek word for "safe" translates to English as "free from fear". Their word for "safe" meant that they weren't in danger. It's a negative. To them, the default state of existence was "not safe".
** One last thing that cements Greek mythology as being this trope: There is a reason that Hope is one of the things in PandorasBox. The Greeks didn't have a very high opinion of it, because they thought it deludes people into thinking that they live in a WorldHalfFull, only to [[YankTheDogsChain crush this belief utterly]].
* Sumerian Mythology only seems to have one afterlife destination, which is a dusty, barren and empty hall described as sucking immensely. The entirety of ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh'' is an ode to the concept that dying can only result in endless tedium and suffering. Also, the goddess in charge of the place routinely threatens to unleash the angry, bored dead to fuck up the living world if her father, the head honcho god, doesn't agree to her arbitrary whims.
** Also, the pain of whatever killed you in life carries on eternally in the afterlife. [[NightmareFuel Ponder that for a moment.]] There are ways to improve the general shittiness of the afterlife, however. First and foremost is having lots of children.[[note]]And consider the FridgeHorror of ''that'' considering that in pre-industrial societies the leading cause of death for women is childbirth...[[/note]] Having few, or no, children will severely increase your suffering in the afterlife. The reason for this is unexplained, but one would assume it is related to the lack of grave offerings or something of that sort. There is also the possibility of being upgraded to godhood upon death (which happened to Gilgamesh himself in one of the Sumerian poems) which will give you a small part of the underworld to reign over and possibly improve.

* Many mythologies have one or several deities occupied with creating intricate traps and riddles in order to "test" humans. The only problem is that many to most of these tests could only be passed with [[Manga/DeathNote Light Yagami-like]] levels of omniscience. Which is to say they are impossible, unless you have the [[ScrewTheRulesIHavePlot Power of Plot]] on your side OR [[LuckBasedMission you don't actually solve it,]] but [[BornLucky are ridiculously lucky]].

* And how can we forget Norse mythology in which the world is doomed to end in ice and fire overrun by giants and monsters and the gods themselves will die? The light at the end of the tunnel really IS an oncoming train. Going to Valhalla just means training for the Final Battle of Ragnarok.
* One of the basic tenets of both UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} and UsefulNotes/{{Jainism}} is that the Samsara (the universe we live in) is an never-ending cycle of pain.
----

** Also, the pain of whatever killed you in life carries on eternally in the afterlife. [[NightmareFuel Ponder that for a moment.]] There are ways to improve the general shittiness of the afterlife, however. First and foremost is having lots of children. Having few, or no, children will severely increase your suffering in the afterlife. The reason for this is unexplained, but one would assume it is related to the lack of grave offerings or something of that sort. There is also the possibility of being upgraded to godhood upon death (which happened to Gilgamesh himself in one of the Sumerian poems) which will give you a small part of the underworld to reign over and possibly improve.

** One last thing that cements Greek mythology as being this trope: There is a reason that Hope is one of the things in PandorasBox. The Greeks believed that it was just as bad, or even worse, then all the other ills in the box, because it deludes people into thinking that they don't live in a Crapsack World, only to [[YankTheDogsChain crush this belief utterly]].

* Should you die in Pharaonic Egypt, you have to take a very long walk across the desert (hope the people who buried you put a map in your tomb), at which point your heart gets weighed. If it outweighs a magical feather representing Truth, it gets thrown to the beast Ammit, who eats it and condemns you to CessationOfExistence. If the feather outweighs it ([[Literature/AmericanGods "We made it really heavy"]]), you get to... work in Osiris's fields for all eternity. [[SarcasmMode Hip hip hooray]]. You get to do what, in all likelihood, you did for your entire mortal life.
** Not quite. Initially, only the Pharaohs got an afterlife. Later dynasties would expand the afterlife to all the nobles. The commoners who would actually work in the fields got nothing.
*** This isn't quite true. There just isn't a detailed guide to how ordinary people's afterlife will work, like with the Pharaohs and nobles. Even the commoners were mummified, albeit in a very simple manner, so they must have expected some sort of afterlife for themselves. But that's the ticket - you could expect to be in the same condition in the afterlife as your corpse is in the living world. Think about it for a few moments.
*** At least symbolic animal sacrifices made of clay could be expected to count. I'd have looked forward to having a whole herd of goats to milk whenever after struggling with no livestock, hey?
** Even at the pharaoh level, the image of the afterlife wasn't quite unified, let alone static.

* The book of Ecclesiastes in Literature/TheBible is basically an affirmation of this. The Ecclesiastes himself offers no relief nor heavenly afterlife after death, but mere CessationOfExistence.
** Not quite true, given the nature of Ecclesiastes, that is more about struggle of Solomon with his faith

* Calvinism is a denomination of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} that believes {{God}} [[YouCantFightFate preordained everything]] before the universe was created like a movie script with every single detail plotted out before hand. Most of humanity is doomed to [[FireAndBrimstoneHell eternal damnation]] while a select few are chosen to enter heaven. What is truly horrifying is the concept of predestination: [[YouCantFightFate no human has any chance or choice to avoid their fate]]. It was all decided beforehand so [[DespairEventHorizon the damned have no chance to escape eternal damnation.]] Despite this, God is supposed to come across as good when to many he [[GodIsEvil comes across as very, very evil]].

* The book of Ecclesiastes in TheBible is basically an affirmation of this. The Ecclesiastes himself offers no relief nor heavenly afterlife after death, but mere CessationOfExistence.

** One last thing that cements Greek mythology as being this trope: There is a reason that Hope is one of the things in PandorasBox. The Greeks believed that it was just as bad, or even worse, then all the other ills in the box, because it deludes people into thinking that they don't live in a CrapsackWorld, only to [[YankTheDogsChain crush this belief utterly]].