What if there are areas of Hell where the inhabitants think they are happy? At least, at first.

There, the inhabitants merely suffer perpetual stasis. But this stasis becomes so unbearable after a while that many end up seeking the easy change of a worsening situation to relieve them of the monotony.

And then they get tired of making things harder and join one of the various Societies for the Betterment of Hell. But almost nobody shows up after a while, because the meetings are too monotonous, too many parliamentarian procedures, and nothing ever improves.

So, Hell’s society bounces between two rather mild extremes – the temporary excitements of a worsening self-made crisis and an exhausted return to static monotony.

On a personal level, nobody suffers too much. The nick-nack shelf hangs almost perfectly balanced. Things only roll off now and then. Or maybe you have a low-grade migraine that comes and goes every day. And aspirins are in short supply. (Dope too; the marijuana fields keep getting attacked by new fungi). But there’s also no great suffering at any given moment. (After all, it’s only the “thought” of never-ending migraines that begins to wear you down).

Or, perhaps upon entering hell, you’re given a perpetual membership in Hulu or Amazon Prime or Youtube. Seems nice at first.

But then the prospect of spending the next 5 million years watching re-runs of The Office trends badly. (Also, notice that the “Prospect” of 5 million years occurs to someone as an immediate thought. That’s all it takes to lose heart; you don’t have to wait 5 million years. Hell is an immediate thought).

Also, what makes this hell really hellish is that everyone is free to leave. All they have to do is change their habits. But it’s too much trouble to leave hell; there’s always another youtube short to watch.

Hell is a voluntary surrender facility for the fatally indifferent.

Again, it’s not that hell actually lasts forever. It’s the immediate thought that you’re trapped into remaining in this cornucopia of trivia simply because you’re too indifferent to EVER leave, which is hell.

What eventually drives most of the inhabitants to lower and darker levels of Hell (making room for newcomers) is that immediate but unbearable knowledge of their own freedom to leave. The skies remain too blue here, the trees too green, the flight of the vulture still too serene, to ever let them forget this otherwise passing thought.