Hell is (no) other people
Maybe the moment has passed for the philosophical concept known as solipsism. Maybe its cultural impact was all in my head. However, I still remember recently getting questions from students that revolve around this issue. There’d even be an occasional tweet or tik-tok video about it, though certainly nothing like it was in the subsequent years after the first Matrix movie. The idea in question, solipsism, says that everything you see as real is just a projection of your own mind.
While the previously mentioned Matrix movie brought this idea into popular culture, it had been present in philosophical circles for some time. Another popular, modern iteration was the “brain in a vat” scenario attributed to former Princeton philosophy professor Gilbert Harman. Solipsism, the term at least, goes further back to the late 1800s but has been present in seed form since the beginnings of Western philosophy. One can find elements in the 1700s subjective idealism of Berkeley, the 1600s dualism of Descartes, and even the radical skeptics going all the way back to Plato.
While The Matrix presented this concept in a groundbreaking and entertaining way, it was not making any sort of moral statement about it- to its credit. However, in an example of media where exploring questions of morality in an interesting and provocative way is the point, The Twilight Zone, specifically the classic episode “A Nice Place to Visit” from season 1, episode 28, one finds a unique and convicting depiction of the afterlife and a devastating critique of solipsism. Both of these elements prove necessary to a post-Christian, hyper-skeptical and atomized culture.
In this episode, we find lifelong criminal Rocky Valentine escaping his latest heist. Confronted by police, Rocky opens fire and is shot dead. He awakes to find himself whole but confused. He meets Pip, who describes himself as Rocky’s guide and acts as a sort of afterlife assistant, providing anything and everything Rocky’s selfish heart desires: money, women, gambling, cars. Though initially skeptical of Pip’s intentions, he finally says to himself, “this must be heaven!”
Anyone familiar with The Twilight Zone expects the other shoe to drop. I am going to jump right to the end and “spoil” this episode that has been out for over 50 years because that is not the point of the article and not the real value of the episode anyway. After getting bored with having every whim satisfied, he begs Pip to send him to the “other place” as hell has been called to this point. It is here where Pip reveals himself not to be the guardian angel that Rocky had assumed, but someone entirely different and that “this is the other place!”
On the surface, this appears to be just another glossed over Sunday School lesson saying the things you *really want* in life are bad, and you should want God. While this is true, and we need reminding of our own Augustinian “restless” hearts, this message will not resonate with the “Rockys” who are still asking for the earthly goods. I now want to return to some important points in the episode that highlight its real value, and proves my point that solipsism is hell.
While Pip has granted Rocky anything he wanted, there is a poignant moment where Pip actually denies Rocky something. Rocky asks to see his friends from his previous life, and Pip says that would not be possible, because everything here is just for Rocky. Everything given to Rocky so far has been merely a projection of Rocky himself, which had not yet dawned on Rocky until that moment. Later, when Rocky is bored of the money, women and winning of every game, he asks to partake in his former favorite pastime: bank robbing. Before he can begin, Rocky asks Pip, “Is there a chance I will get caught?” and Pip says if Rocky wants it that way. But Rocky can’t know beforehand, or that ruins it.
What Rocky is starting to put together is that what made all those experiences in life enjoyable, alongside their inherent goodness, was the unpredictability. But if we leave it here we are not getting the full picture. It is not that unpredictability is what makes heaven heavenly or what makes the goods of this world enjoyable. However, the unpredictability is what indicates something even deeper, that those goods are real, like really real, outside of us. There is hard objectivity to those goods. While it may be frustrating when we cannot control them because they are not projections of our selves, it is actually what makes their goodness real.
This is an important idea to grasp because many have unknowingly been conditioned by the atheist, existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, who famously says in his play No Exit that “Hell is other people.” Sartre assumed that existence precedes essence. This means that first we are, then we determine by our wills what we are, which reversed the traditional idea that God created us with an essence and we become what God made us to be. Sartre saw other wills, including God’s will, as in competition with his. Hell is other people to him because their real wills were just impositions to his.
But then what, or who, are Sartre, Rocky Valentine and other pure existentialists left with, no one but themselves and the projections they can come up with. They may be very realistic, provocative and exciting projections, but ultimately still projections that we cannot deceive ourselves from realizing forever. Hopefully we realize it sooner than Rocky did, for our own sakes, and everyone else’s, for real.
