Chapter 18: On the 1st Dogma of Hell

In which we learn the meaning of the sentence "Abandon all hope...".

I wonder about the phenomenon of Altruism. I've seen humans helping each other without any obvious payback - only in exchange of the ominous "Thanks". Some humans seem to believe that helping each other can be of benefit for all. They call this a "win-win situation". This is, of course, total nonsense.

The First Dogma of Hell states that everybody is on his own. It can't be otherwise, because one's gain is another one's loss. When someone feels pleasure, someone else is suffering. When someone gains money, someone else loses money; When someone gets promoted, someone else gets fired. In some cases, the total loss may exceed the gain, but never the other way round. There is no such thing as a win-win situation. (There may be, however, a "win-win-lose situation", where two people agree to exploid a third one.)


In more scientific terms, the total utility of an isolated group cannot increase over time - actually, it has the tendency to decrease. (This is related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that the total enthropy - in layman's terms, the chaos - of an isolated system steadily increases.) "Utility", in this context, means anything like money, food, status, luxury, pleasure, property, vital energy and so on.


This principle can be illustrated by a system of tanks, linked by tumes with pumps and valves and filled with a liquid.

 

There may be some loss of liquid over time, but never a gain. When the level in one tank raises, it falls in another one. It would be foolish to think that one can pump the liquid such that the level raises in all tanks. After a certain while, all liquid will be lost.

 

You might wonder why this didn't yet happen to Hell. After thousands of years, why didn't the total utility of Hell fall to minus infinite? Why didn't Hell dry out?

 

The answer is: Hell is not an isolated system. The cattle wagons from Hell Gate bring a steady stream of human souls, with all their remaining hopes and illusions. They are squeezed and crushed like fruits, their hope is pressed out, distilled and transformed into vital energy, refilling thus the total utility of Hell. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" - this sentence describes the very raison d'être of the whole soul industry.   

For me and everybody I know, this is so obvious as 2+2=4. I don't understand why some humans don't get it. Are they so stupid?

 

Or is there something else?