Do you agree with the statement "Hell is other people"?

I don’t think Sartre meant that it’s other people who make us miserable. A more accurate translation of the French would be “hell is others”. I understand this to mean that suffering comes from seeing the world in terms of self and other. The suffering arises along with the conviction that “I am here, and you are there”, a belief in the fundamental separation of one’s self from others.

well. thanks for that…

yes to a point. Dealing with some people is like being on fire for all eternity while demons poke you with pitchforks and make snarky comments about the diminutive size of your genitals.

Wait a minute, compared to some people I know, Hell is a holiday in the Bahamas.

Life is about choices, your results may vary.

Question: Have you always felt this way, or has some event in your life occurred for you to have this view on people and life?

Second Question: Have you considered the possibility that your view on life, although it represents your individuality, could somehow change to benefit you? That there is another window of life to look out of, and not just the one you are looking through?

Well I think i have become much more negative because of my teenage experience with bullying.

I don’t want to throw a pity party, in fact, I have gotten used to this misery. It’s comfortable to me. There is a sense of happy rebellion when I say F you to everyone else, but at the same time I also feel some bitterness.

I don’t know why I even make this topic, I just want to know if anyone feels like I do, because the social world is full of people I can’t stand and its hard to find someone who is as self indulgent and introspective and as negative as I am. I hate this!

I want to be miserable with someone!

I feel like I will never grow out of this Holden Character from Catcher in the Rye. This is not a phase, this is a life time occupation for me.

The most creative and depressing people can be loners and social “reject” or weirdos, and these people seem to love misery but at the same time, I am suprised that these people, some of them, deep inside, really want to belong with everyone else. It’s this bitter struggle , of not wanting to know if we should continue to take pride and comfort in this loner existence and this also vulnerability and bitterness about never being able to be like most people.

I am never going to have kids of my own due to biology, and I feel like i am i should have been taken out from natural selection and this is nature’s way of taking me out and I am fine with that, but i still have to live for now, and i am not finding the motivation to do all these things so i can stay above the water finanically.

Life has its good moments, but most of the time, its just me talking to myself in my head, and i really can’t even stand myself alot of the times, I can’t believe i made this pyscho post. ahh.

When I read your description in the question, what came to my mind was that you may be clinically depressed. I wonder how your outlook might change if you had treatment, possibly medication, for your depression?

Much of what you wrote seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your hostile view of others may reflect low self-esteem.

As to the inner dialogue that is your driving force, perhaps that is what you should question. Did you know that much of it (85% or more) is repetitive? Also, that much of it is negative? Finally, a lot of it is not true. Yet, it constantly plays over and over again in our heads reinforcing itself. Here is an article about self-talk that you may find interesting.

I do not think that hell is others. I think that hell often is a prison of our own making.

It is a complicated quote from Sartre’s Huis Clos, a famous play. “L’enfer, c’est les autres” needs to be taken in context with both the drama (setting is Hell – literallyl’enfer-)
and Sartre’s complicated philosophy.

Here is part of a very dense Wikipedia article:

The basis of Sartre’s existentialism can be found in The Transcendence of the Ego. To begin with, the thing-in-itself is infinite and overflowing. Sartre refers to any direct consciousness of the thing-in-itself as a “pre-reflective consciousness.” Any attempt to describe, understand, historicize etc. the thing-in-itself, Sartre calls “reflective consciousness.”

There is no way for the reflective consciousness to subsume the pre-reflective, and so reflection is fated to a form of anxiety, i.e. the human condition. The reflective consciousness in all its forms, (scientific, artistic or otherwise) can only limit the thing-in-itself by virtue of its attempt to understand or describe it. It follows, therefore, that any attempt at self-knowledge (self-consciousness – a reflective consciousness of an overflowing infinite) is a construct that fails no matter how often it is attempted. Consciousness is consciousness of itself insofar as it is consciousness of a transcendent object.

The same holds true about knowledge of the “Other.” The “Other” (meaning simply beings or objects that are not the self) is a construct of reflective consciousness. A volitional entity must be careful to understand this more as a form of warning than as an ontological statement. However, there is an implication of solipsism here that Sartre considers fundamental to any coherent description of the human condition.

Sartre overcomes this solipsism by a kind of ritual. Self consciousness needs “the Other” to prove (display) its own existence. It has a “masochistic desire” to be limited, i.e. limited by the reflective consciousness of another subject. This is expressed metaphorically in the famous line of dialogue from No Exit, “Hell is other people.”

@Marina

Actually I have taken many kind of medications, I am on one now. I feel better than ever, compared to my own standard. I am not feeling suicidal, I will go on, i am drifting along till it is all over. I am just not keen on living, but i don’t want to die.

meh. I am also exercising alot, so i am doing the best i can, under the circumstances, but the state of the world is not going how i want , i am not feeling like I am going anywhere and i am easily fed up with the bullshitness of people and society. I am OKAY, i am just shutting out almost everyone in the world because not alot of people are like me and they are a waste of time apparently.

@airowDee: I think most of us have felt this way at one time or another. Some consider it a phase in their life, others have embraced the pain and made this their cross to bear, and used the pain to be creative. But, there is a cost to constantly feeling depressed and lonely—it takes it’s toll on us physically and mentally. I don’t think mankind was meant to be isolated, that’s the irony. We think that if we isolate ourselves from the world of people because they were the initial cause of pain, the pain will go away. But the fact is, there are also people who bring joy to our lives, and if we allow ourselves the chance to be vulnerable again, than maybe we can find that joy again in life. But, the catch 22 is that you have to take the risk.

And I think that’s what life is all about when it comes to people and “hell”: taking a risk with each new relationship.

I have a boyfriend and I have a dog. They are mostly happiness to me. If both of these things are taken from me, which I always think will happen somehow, than I would be even more in love with my misery, which i feel like is what i really wanted some times, I am trying to be not too miserable though, its a constant battle! what can i say.

But I am not happy most of the time, the best I can do is NOT TOO DEPRESSED.

lol.

Ranting helps though, Siren, you are an angel.

@airowDee: Thanks for the compliment. I have been in the abyss of hell myself on occasion. In fact, occasionally I will find myself looking deeply into it when I hear about all the injustices in the world on the news, and wonder “why go on?”. But, the truth is, that we EACH count, in some way. Something we can do on a small level to better the world around us. It’s very empowering when you think that way, that you can make a difference. And it’s true.

And, for your situation, you are truly doing your best. Is it too much to hope? I think that’s what keeps us going right?

well, dying is not an option, not when my mom is still alive anyways. She almost gave up her life just to raise me.

So yeah I will go on and I hear you about all the unjustices in the world. I love politics but I hate it at the same time, the truth is , the same problems we have today will continue to be there as long as humans exist because there are just too many bastards out there who want to ruin things and dominate other people and shut out people who are different than them. It makes me sick. TV makes me sick. People make me sick. Everything makes me sick. I make myself sick. lol.

Looks like you’ve found 3 reasons to keep going: your dog, boyfriend and your mother.

I bet there’s more too…

Well, i am flattered you care about whether if I die or not. I don’t care much about people, even though on an intellectual level, i know “we are all one”. I do love animals more than anything else. I guess that’s another thing. Meh. peace.

Everyone will die some day, either naturally or through an accident or you just reach a F__king breaking point and in that case, you just do it and thats it, there is no need to “talk about it”. So i am not there yet obviously.

@airowDee I am glad to hear that you are on medication and that you are exercising. Both of those are positive things.

I am always sorry to hear when someone’s life feels bleak.

My brother is an alcoholic (a self-medicating depressive). He recently went through a period where he was suicidal. He told me that life was not worth living.

I told him, and I say to you in the same spirit of love, that if I had his life, I would not want to live either. His alcoholism had isolated him. He had no friends—only his booze. His family relations were troubled, because he had used and manipulated everyone around him to support his drinking.

Now, this is an Internet Q&A. We can’t possibly know the whole circumstances of why your life feels so very gray and without meaning.

I have a lot of empathy for you, because that is a horrible feeling.

Ways that life has meaning for me are in the relationships that I build and in the things that I do. I know that changing your life is not easy. It involves trying and failing multiple times. But one way to look at it is that it is better than the emptiness you are experiencing now.

Can you volunteer or help those less fortunate? That can sometimes help in changing perspective.

Do you have topics that interest you? Or causes? Have you checked the web to see if there are groups supporting those? Maybe you need to meet a different type of people.

I am glad you are not giving up on life. I am glad that you reached out with your question.

Start improving your life by pursuing one small thing that you like or feel positive about.

@Marina: good game plan

@airowDee: People do care in general. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it when we get side-swiped by people consecutively or over and over again and can’t come up for air. That’s when we start believing the whole humanity is warped and people are harmful for us. But they are out there: those caring, nurturing individuals. And animals are truly amazing creatures: sometimes they show us how to love again. I have a few of my own and consider them an antidote to a bad day.

You take care.

I have a friend who was recently diagnosed as a mature adult as having Asperger’s disease. She has spent most of her life with very few friends and little need for socail interaction. I was like that for most of my life as well. I have a few friends, but what I truly love is the fact that I no longer have to work in an office with a bunch of other people. Instead I can choose who I see and when. That makes people much more enjoyable.