What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3)

by David Wong

“I don’t believe in Hell because it would make Heaven impossible.” “Because you couldn’t enjoy Heaven if you knew those people were suffering.” “I think if you’re capable of enjoying an eternal paradise while millions of other people are screaming in agony, forever, you’re a sociopath.” David said, “That’s my point. Right there. The assholes throw themselves into a fire, but then your happiness is ruined because they get burned. They use your sympathy against you. That’s the final trick of Hell—its fire burns everyone.”

We will live and die according to how we interpret the unfamiliar. All of human culture is nothing more than that very process, playing out again and again.

the common question, “What would you have done in my position?” is nonsense. If you fully inhabit “their position,” then you’re taking on their body, brain, personality, and life experiences. That means the answer to the question is always, “I would have done the exact same fucking thing,” whether the asker is your spouse or Osama bin Laden. Maybe all that separates you from the sadistic serial killer or greedy CEO is that you’re experiencing a different umwelt, that the empathy, values, and beliefs that keep you from committing atrocities is as alien to them as the pink on an owl. If that’s true, how and when are you able to judge other people? If your response is that you simply judge by the result regardless of how it looked from their end, I bet there’s one person you will want to exclude from that standard, and you can find their face in your nearest reflective surface. If you haven’t done at least one thing in your life so wretched that it now feels like the actions of a stranger, well, something like that is almost certainly coming in the future. At this point in my life, I’m no longer rooting for some day of judgment at the end of the world, but a day of mercy. Or, at least, that’s how I feel once I’ve had my caffeine.