I’m obsessed with a thought experiment called “The Hellbaby”. Hear me out:
The Hellbaby’s name is Gloria. She’s a regular-acting baby. Born to a loving, ordinary family – except they live in Hell. That life is all that they’ve ever known so they accept it as natural.
Similar to our world, Hell offers both tortures and delights. A dog may be born on a puppy farm, where it is raised in a tiny cage and ends up hacked to bits for a delicious stew. Another dog may be born to a pampered life as a Hell-Celebrity’s companion, hitching rides in her handbag. It’s quite the lottery.
Some people wonder whether their world is the worst of all possible worlds, the best one, or… kinda in between. How could we help Gloria figure out she’s living in Hell?
Well… if you pay close attention, you’d notice some odd features in the fabric of Gloria’s universe.
For example: the fact that everything in the universe gets progressively more disordered. If you put an ice cube on a hot rock, the energy in that system would be in equilibrium if the ice cube got colder while the rock got hotter. But it never does – the ice cube melts (irreversibly) and the rock gets colder. The disorder in the system grows.
Or: Gloria loves social media, but she keeps on seeing conspiracies and lies in her “feed”. That’s because something funny happens in Hell when truths and lies compete. The lies travel faster. Residents of Hell often joke that “a Lie can travel halfway around the world, while the Truth is still putting on its shoes”.
Another quirk of Hell is the way money behaves. In our universe, when someone accumulates a natural quantity – like “tallness” or “cowrie shells” – there are some natural limits on how this stuff is distributed and how much of it a single person can have. It would be impossible to hoard a mountain of precious seashells. But money is not subjected to these constraints in Hell so it can accumulate exponentially. This results in wild situations where money keeps flowing to a small group of “winners” while everyone else remains a “loser”:
Gloria goes to school and takes history classes where she learns about a group that was called the “NotNiceys”. They were a bunch of blonde guys (just like their leader) who were handsome (like their head of PR) and really into fitness (like the boss’ second-in-command). These guys, while dressed sharply in Hugo Boss suits and sipping on Fantas, would do all sorts of dastardly deeds. For example: they invented rockets and lobbed them at other countries. They got defeated, because the NotNiceys were huge losers despite talking a good game about their military abilities.
But, because this happened in Hell, the bad rocketmaking guys did not get punished. Instead, they got an all-expenses-paid trip and a new lease of life living with the “Good Guys”. Because the NotNiceys could kickstart a “Nice Allright Space Agency”.
Also, the NotNiceys got to live long and happy lives. Their country got a makeover and became the economic engine of their entire region.
Well, at least the NotNiceys felt bad about what they did…
Out East, their buddies – called the “Shōwa” – also did some bad things, like torturing people in new and exciting ways (trigger warning: don’t click if you value your happiness). Those guys also lost the war. But because it happened in Hell, everyone forgot about the terrible things those Shōwa did; their country went on to new heights of prosperity and, to this day, they live on openly as unrepentant racists. It’s all due to a Hellishly-clever PR campaign that associated these bad guys with kittens and spice and everything nice!
In the present, our Hellbaby lives in a place where everything is a grift. Where countries that used to manufacture things are now burning enormous amounts of energy on generating funny-money that’s mainly used by criminals to launder money.
A place where artists, musicians and writers have to struggle because society undervalues what they do. Where caretaking and child-rearing are not considered “real work” and are intentionally hidden from government labour statistics. Where choosing a profession where you make physical things is a choice that lands you in lifelong poverty. But where management consultants, emerald-mine nepobabies, financiers and fluff artists are richly rewarded.
A world where the very agricultural revolution that enabled Gloria’s lifestyle, also created enormous suffering for the humans and animals that are part of the system.
The evolutionary success of the Agricultural Revolution (greater population) was actually cause for much suffering on the individual level. Not just for humans, but for domesticated animals like cows, sheep, and chickens as well.
Wouldn’t it be a real mind-fuck to live in Hell but miss all the signs because it’s the only home you’ve ever known?
😉
