Is hell other people? By Anna TA DAC

Hell is indeed other people

50,7% of people are introverts. For them, the 49,3% of people who are extroverts are, often, “hell” to put up with…

Most people have to live in cities, packed like sardines with millions of others. That can be hell.

Cosmopolitanism is a nice ideology, but groups of people, whose values and practices are different, find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to share a public space or territory with other groups of people. Culture shocks are common, leading sometimes to conflicts; think of the hellish civil war in Syria...

Most of us, to some extent, are afraid of and reject those that are different from ourselves. History is a long list of one people excluding, rejecting, persecuting, exploiting, denigrating, or trying to annihilate another people. Just one example: the White supremacists in the USA are more active than ever and they intend to continue making the lives of Blacks “hell”.

Some people are/become bad. Rapists, terrorists, and other such criminals, hurt and sometimes kill people, often for no apparent reason. They shake our faith in the goodness of humanity, making us feel unsafe and isolated.

Emil Cioran wrote: "Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us." Hell is other people precisely because they are like ourselves. Perhaps we are all, to various degrees, guilty of self-loathing and misanthropy?

But hell is also the absence of other people...

Loneliness is the state of being alone and feeling sad about it. It affects everyone no matter their origins, gender or age. In fact, 1 in 5 Americans suffers from loneliness. In the United Kingdom, 51% of people aged 75 and over live alone (ONS, 2010). This problem has become so common it isn't surprising anymore when someone says that they are suffering from loneliness. “I don’t feel well in this society” is a recurring sentence heard by psychologists. However, their answer is often: “Don’t worry, it’s normal.” Yet it shouldn't be. Loneliness is a growing problem and studies show that it shortens your lifespan. But the number of lonely people keeps increasing. Even very young kids are confronted with a major problem: how to make friends. People who suffer from a lack of human contact are at risk of depression and other mental illnesses. This proves how important human relations are.

Most people would not survive outside society. Community means safety and the sharing of knowledge; progress comes from people working together. Solidarity is what makes us human and I believe that feeling supported is crucial to a person’s well-being. When you have a family and you have friends, when you live in society, you are usually happy.

People also help you “discover” yourself, and open up your mind to give you a different view on the world. That is why children need to learn to live with other children in order to become sociable adults. Without positive interaction with others, we become totally close-minded and self-centred. If I was all alone on this earth, my existence would have no meaning whatsoever because it is social interaction that brings colour to my life.

We should try to do our best to get on with each other, so as to make our world more bearable, less hell-like, less lonely, don't you think?

Is hell other people? By Gaëlle DE BRITO

Hell is horrible. It is a netherworld everyone fears, an extremely unpleasant and inescapable place in which the dead are condemned to suffer forever. Hell can also be defined as a personal state of misery and torment. But can hell be “other people”? Spontaneously, I’d answer yes because this world just seems to be getting worse and it is people who are making it so…

Every day, kids suffer from being bullied. Bullying can be physical and verbal (including cyberbullying). People often attack a person just because that person is different (physically) or sometimes just because they feel the need to torture someone else. This has a huge impact on the victim: they feel lonely, unloved, and lack self-confidence, and don’t know how to interact with other people anymore. And they usually never talk about it to anyone and the loneliness with all the bad feelings that accumulate can drive some to kill themselves. The figures regarding bullying keep rising. Prevention campaigns try to make kids aware of the impact that bullying can have.

Bullying doesn’t just take place at school; the same thing exists for adults in the work place: moral (and sexual) harassment. Bullying proves that “hell is other people.”

There are people who are very anxious and being with other people is sometimes very complicated for them. When someone like this has to talk to a group of people, this can be awful for them; it is indeed the presence of other people that makes a living hell for the anxious person. So when someone suffers from severe anxiety (or clinical depression) the whole world is hell. Anxiety is actually a very common phenomenon.

In your life, there must have been people who have disappointed you? They make you feel like you’re important to them, and then they leave you as if nothing ever happened between you and you just feel like you’re nothing in this world and then you’re scared to trust someone again and you just see other people as bad people.

In the past there were bad people, and there are a lot of bad people in the world today. They destroy people’s lives: a violent husband who hurts his wife and his children, or a parent who gives up their child for no real reason, or the parents who don’t really care about their kids. There are also the dangerous people who rape, kidnap, torture, or kill a huge number of innocent people.

We can also talk about the people who are destroying our planet and the life on it just for economic reasons. In Africa there are a lot of poachers who kill elephants and rhinoceroses for their tusks because they can sell them for a good price. People like this are very stupid and their actions are destroying the animal species in Africa (in the past century, there were 20 million elephants, and today there are only 500,000 left). I take Africa as an example, but this happens everywhere; polar bears are disappearing because people kill them for their fur to make coats, and this happens to a lot of animals all over the world. People are destroying parts of the planet like the Amazonian rainforest (58% of the trees that are cut down illegally are not even used). By destroying forests, people are destroying the biodiversity on which we depend. This is further proof that hell is caused by (other) people.

Is there no hope? Are all people bad? No, there are NGOs that help people or try to save the animals. There are people who want to do good. They are generous (think of Les Restos du Coeur, and Wildlife Angel). These kinds of associations do not get enough support; they need to be better known because not enough people have heard of them. Every day there are people who fight for the homeless, or the elephants or the rainforest, or for so many other causes. There still are good people ready to help others.

There are often demonstrations all around the world to free an innocent prisoner or for Gay rights, or to protest against dangerous leaders like Trump or Putin. People are not afraid to stand up to the authorities in order to defend their cause. Even if the cause doesn’t affect them personally, they do this for other people.

This courage is also demonstrated when there are disasters around the world. Hundreds, even thousands of people then help each other. There is real solidarity. Sometimes, on the news, we see a baby being rescued from under the rubble thanks to team effort. So, in this instance, hell isn’t other people because people are not hurting each other, they are saving lives. Every day, in so many places, there are people who work to help and save others: tireless doctors, nurses, surgeons, psychologists, rescue workers, firefighters, teachers, etc. They often risk their own safety to help others.

What about your parents? They, most of them, try to do their best for you. They stand by your side, put you first. They know you better than anyone and they love you. They try to make you feel happy. And this is the same thing with our friends and all the people who love us and who do not abandon us.

Hell is other people? Sometimes yes, other times, no. It’s a bit yin and yang, don't you think? As Sartre wrote: “… in the concentration camps, I learnt to believe in men.” Good experiences usually make people good, and bad experiences often make people bad, but I believe you can, up to a point, choose to do good and even decide if you will let other people make (your) life hell.

Is hell other people? By Laetitia KOECHLIN

You are saying to yourself: “Yes, of course, my life is made hell by other people”. Bullying is a case in point… In France, bullying affects 12% of elementary school pupils and 10% of secondary school pupils. 22% of bullied teenagers don’t tell anybody about their bullying problems. Also, 45% of teenagers feel lonely...

In some cases, people are really bad and close-minded. Their “pleasure” is to make snide comments and to be very mean to others. But, being immoral or bad is not always voluntary. In some cases, a bully does not even realise that he is persecuting someone (though that doesn’t excuse his behaviour).

Some people are stand-offish or unpleasant because they lack social skills. Perhaps they’re very shy or they like to be alone; it surely would not take a lot for them to see that the world is more joyful than they think?

When you don’t know someone very well, you don’t know his real intentions towards you, but, when you get to know him or her better, you can then appreciate his or her qualities and look beyond his or her defects. Everyone is unique and we all understand things differently but that is what makes the world interesting. 

The one big problem in our society is that people are scared of the “other.” We know how to “talk” to someone behind the safety of a screen, but we have forgotten that talking directly to someone is much better. That is why there is more and more cyber harassment.

When you meet a new person, the first thing you give is your name, then your age, mention your hobbies and share part of your past. That way, you can know if you are going to enjoy spending time with them or not. Meeting new people is very interesting. You can learn things from them, and they can learn from you.

Friends can make you challenge yourself. They can help you to push your limits, to show your better side. You can do everything with your friends. You can laugh, cry, and talk to them. Your friends support you when you are feeling bad; they can listen to you and give you advice to help you feel better. The thing which is very good with your friends is that you can tell them everything and they won’t judge you. You can count on them. You can mess around with them.  The great thing is that when you are with your friends you do not have to be serious, you can be yourself.

People are not really mean, you just have to learn to get to know them and, maybe, you will even become friends. Having friends is a very good thing because they can help you, listen to you, cry with you and make you laugh. Obviously, there are always people you won’t like but it does not matter, since you already have the best friends in the world!