Conservation Laws

Conservation of kindness: what you put in the world will largely stay in the world.

Conservation of anger: if your side gets angry, people who think you’re against them will get just as angry.

CS Lewis’s Hell

CS Lewis wrote about hell in two contexts.

The first was ‘hell is distractions.’ Getting torn away from something, being unable to do what you want to do because of interference, is a maddening torture. It’s small h hell. This is something I’ve always understood; I relate to this.

The second was a more elaborate discussion of literal Hell, and it’s frankly terrifying. It’s the only description of Hell I’ve ever been able to reconcile with Christian theology, and it’s best summed up, ‘In Hell, all the doors are locked from the inside.’ Basically, it’s not the notion of judgement or condemnation. God isn’t turning away from anyone. The damned turn away from God, and lock themselves away from him. Maybe because of bitterness or old grudges, maybe because of pride, fear, or selfishness, but they’re the ones with the locked doors. I could see that.

The two are related. One could easily lock the world out to focus, to exclude the distractions, and if that world involved God, one could easily put one’s self in CS Lewis’s Hell to avoid his hell.

On the other hand, one does have to be able to concentrate.

I suppose the difference would be malice, willfully shutting out people out of spite, to shut them out and not ignoring distractions to get something done: a negative focus as opposed to a positive focus.

Biden’s Bike-fall

Is not news. Dude fell off a bike. I fall on my skis all the time.

There’s a bit of amusement because he set up a photo op, and it went wrong. I get it, and eh, it is a little amusing to see someone in power with a carefully scripted appearance flub something. But that is it. Of problems with Biden, that isn’t one.