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Last night I dreamed about Hell. Here’s what it looked like.

It was a hilly region filled with big boulders that people were pushing, at great effort, in big circles. There were two groups of people in this version of hell–Mormons and ex-Mormons–and they were pushing the rocks in opposite, though circular, directions. Boulder pushing took most of their effort, but, when they passed each other on their circular paths, they summoned all of their remaining strength to shout accusations at each other in the form of two rhetorical questions. The Mormons shouted, “Why did you leave?” and the ex-Mormons shouted “Why do you stay?”

In my dreams, you see, Hell is not unlike the comments section of a typical BCC post.

The image comes from Canto VII of Dante’s Inferno, which I taught every semester for twelve years and, therefore, could easily recognize even when asleep. In Dante, of course, they are not the Mormons and the ex-Mormons. They are the hoarders and the wasters who push boulders and shout, “Why do you hoard?” and “Why do you waste?” This is the scene illustrated by Gustave Doré in the picture at the top of this post.

I don’t believe much in the significance of dreams. But I do believe in the significance of Dante, and in this particular scene he teaches us a lot of valuable things about Hell–most of which, I think, apply perfectly well to comments sections and many other human endeavors. For some reason, my subconscious wanted to remind me of these things.

First–and this is one of the keys to understanding the Inferno–nobody is making the hoarders and the wasters push the rocks. There aren’t any demons prodding them with pitchforks or infernal bureaucrats establishing production quotas. At any moment, they could all stop, lean against the rocks, and spend eternity in pleasant conversation.

But they don’t because it is not in their nature. The rocks are the only material things that they can possess, and it is in their nature to want to possess things, so they spend eternity trying to own the rocks by pushing them continually in a circle. God does not create a Hell to punish them. He simply leaves them alone, and they create their own Hell to punish themselves.

Second, from the divine perspective, there is no difference between the hoarders and the wasters. They are both people who are entirely defined by a single idea–the idea of possessing material things. That some of them are defined one iteration of this idea (hoarding stuff ) and the other by another iteration (consuming stuff) is a distinction that exists only in their own minds. In God’s mind (and, if Dante is doing his job right, the reader’s mind as well) they are people with the same obsession with stuff.

And just about any obsession can work like this. For example, one can be consumed by sexuality in different ways: one can be lead about by one’s passions in a way that devalues other people and subordinates them to one’s sexual desires. Or one can see other people’s sexual expression as an existential threat and warp all of the powers of law and religion to try to control them. Those who spend all of their time thinking about sex–either positively or negatively–are in the thrall of an obsession. And it is ultimately the same obsession.

If my dream is to be believed, the same goes for those for those who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about whether other people should, or should not, be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And this leads to Dante’s third point: that (as Sarte put it in his play No Exit), “Hell is other people.” The essence of Dante’s Inferno is that the greatest punishment that an unrepentant sinner can have is to spend an eternity with other unrepentant sinners. You put angry people together, and they fight with each other; you put thieves together, and they steal from each other; you put traitors together, and they betray each other. Hell, too, has a Golden Rule–people do unto you as you would like to do unto them.

And here is the thing: none of this requires anyone to die. Just as we can build the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, we can Build the Kingdom of Hell. We have all the tools we need for either kingdom. As Milton said, through the voice of his Satan, The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

So, too, the comments section.