The suggestion 'perhaps worse than hell' seems a bit odd to me. Eternal miserable existence sucks either way, but unending boredom is far more tolerable than constant torture. Nitpicking, but I'm curious if anyone else agrees with that statement.
Hide / Show RepliesLook into how the human psyche reacts to isolation and deprivation of sensory input. Like solitary as used for punishment in prisons. Now take that Up To Eleven (you'd lack even say the comforting hum of a light fixture). If being tormented one (arguably) has a tormentor that provides a measure of social activity who you can rage against.
Obviously may vary, which is arguably why Hell diverged from this trope.
Well, if you're in the "nothing after death", your brain simply stops processing that fact after a while. A much milder version of this phenomenon is how people who live in Hershey, PA simply don't notice the smell of chocolate anymore.
It's not the boredom. It's the fact that there's nothing to potentially provide a comfort or distraction. I also shouldn't have to point out the difference between a perfectly normal city that happens to smell of chocolate and a place of eternal darkness where there is nothing to do, no way to move, and noone to interact with. Also, if you got used to the nothing after death eventually, wouldn't you get used to hell as well?
I'm a Troper!!!Reincarnation and nothing after death could be one and the same. Since I believe that when you entre the darkness, you realise that your body is reduced to a head and a tail and you are bumping into a whole lot of other bodies that are also just a head and a tail.
Hide / Show RepliesIs it just me or are most the examples here...not? A lot of them are just references to darkness coming, as in...you know, what it's like to lose consciousness (like you would do if you were dying). I've lost consciousness before, pretty sure it didn't temporarily trap me in some plane of utter nothingness. It was just a time skip between "darkness rolls in" and "wake up ouch head hurt where am I?".
I removed the "you are here" image from the page as it has nothing to do with the trope.