Author Topic: Hell's Population Clock (Read 7755 times)

Olde Tymer · « **on:** September 26, 2018, 08:59:47 am »

.
Through me; the way to the eternal city.
Through me; the way to eternal sadness.
Through me; the way to lost people.

Justice moved my supreme maker:
I was shaped by divine power,
By highest wisdom, and by primal love.

Before me, nothing was created
That is not eternal: and eternally I endure.
Abandon all hope, you that enter here.

The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
Inferno: canto 3, v.1-9

Dante's poetic epic is called a comedy because it has a happy ending as opposed to a tragedy; at least for Dante anyway. The souls he and Virgil pass along the way through the Inferno portion of Dante's odyssey will never, nor anon, have a happy ending; hence the sign above the entrance to his netherworld: "Abandon all hope, you that enter here."

Webster's defines "despair' as: to no longer have any hope or belief that a situation will improve or change. Well; down in the Inferno section of Dante's concept, despair is a way of life.

One of the hardest concepts to get across is the despair that people in hell must feel in knowing that their situation is a sealed fate with no hope of relief. Dante's odyssey, though of course fiction, is useful for that purpose; especially when it's accompanied by illustrations painted by Gustave Doré.

Jesus warned people that they'd be better off facing eternity with their hands and their feet amputated, and their eyes gouged out, then to end up in a hell he called geena; a much worse place than haides. So in my estimation, Dante's descriptions, and Gustave's paintings, though disturbing enough in themselves, aren't sufficient to impress just how terrible the ultimate hell really is.

POP CLOCK UPDATE: 2 days have elapsed since beginning the thread. If the figures in post #1 are in the ball park, then something like 121,832 new arrivals have checked into the fiery sector of hades since Sept 24, 2018.
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Olde Tymer

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