“Hell is other people.”
I used to think Sartre was a vicious misanthrope for publishing this line of dialogue. The quote is from one of his plays and I took it as a confession of utter selfishness, utter self-indulgence. For me, it was simply unthinkable. ‘How could you do such damage to the delicate social fabric of our society?’ I wondered, embittered and bewildered. I looked at this French philosopher as if he bore the weight of our entire socio-cultural breakdown. I was so angry at him.
Lately, however, my anger has abated. I still think Sartre was a pitiable example of virtue, but I can at least grant that – in this instance - he was being honest. After all, have you ever really tried to live in a community?
Parish churches are a good example. Here, especially in this age, to be a member of this kind of community means to take one’s place among a collection of rag-tag religious folks who have little but their faith in common. You might think common doctrines offer a strong foundation for a common life, and so they might, but they do not remove the burden of living together. In fact, I suspect that they emphasize it.
In a parish church, each member has a unique view of what our common life ought to look like. It is easy to experience bitterness at someone else because “why can’t they just do it this way?”
Furthermore, the burden of community is keenly felt in a parish church because we do not get to choose the people around us. We are, in the plainest terms, stuck with who we get.
That means we suffer unreliable flakes, know-it-alls, stubborn contrarians – an incomplete list of my personal shortcomings. Indeed, in any common life it is often we ourselves who are the burden on everyone else.
Yet, it is common in our socially disintegrated cultural landscape to hear folks talk about the virtues of community. To be sure, where mental health is in decline and loneliness is rampant, it is good that we ought to strive for community and common life. Nevertheless, we ought to be realistic.
“Hell is other people” might not be true in a technical, philosophical sense, but it is an honest lament against the burdens of community. Community is difficult. This or that can be done better, our closest friends cause us stress or injury, sometimes we nurture powerful anger and bitterness against others, and so on. Indeed, sometimes we experience resentment from others aimed at us. This is all part of the deal. How are we supposed to live with such conditions?
Whether in a parish or not, we are somehow all tied up with one another. The choices we make affect the world and the people in it, both those around and far away from us. Indeed, isolating from those we find difficult amounts to telling ourselves a lie. To ignore or cut off our neighbour is to pretend that we do not relate to them within the total social network of human experience. It is to pretend that we are not connected with them, that our choices do not affect them, when we simply are and our choices simply do.
“Hell is other people” is a selfish statement (and the characters in Sartre’s No Exit are all selfish people) but it nevertheless expresses some bit of truth: other people are burdensome, and their existence imposes itself upon us. Indeed, I am burdensome, and I impose myself on others.
If we want to take our place within the concrete, living, geography that we inhabit, we must acknowledge the very real, very burdensome fact of other people. In this milieu – our disintegrated socio-cultural condition – we need to recognize that we cannot, as a matter of fact, throw off the burdensome chains of our neighbour’s existence. We may be able to fool ourselves by segregating all our activities, never seeing, or dealing with anyone else – but others are always out there, being affected by us and our choices.
Originally, the parish system sought to draw attention to this fact. It was designed to gather Christians according to nearness, rather than economic status, political allegiance, ceremonial preference, or anything else. These days parish churches still present us with the difficult task of togetherness, and that is a good thing. It is good for us to learn to live with difficult people and good for us to learn that we are difficult. The only alternative is to live a lie.
When Sartre wrote No Exit he wasn’t expressing something new in the statement “Hell is other people.” I suspect that he sensed, along with many in his age, a deep social tiredness. No Exit expressed a fundamental sentiment on behalf of our society, an exasperated, post-war: “you people are intolerable.”
We can’t, however, simply break away, do our own thing, ignore our neighbours, and disintegrate further and further into our own abysmal nothing of a life. There is too much at stake. “Hell is other people” may resound from time to time in our inner life, and in the lives of those we distress and upset, but it’s unrealistic. It’s childish. Other people are difficult – I am difficult – but nothing worthwhile is easy. In the end, we’re left with a choice between the truth and a lie.
When Jesus taught us to love our neighbour, he had accounted for the burden of community. He didn’t mean that neighbourliness was a virtue. He wasn’t telling us to let Mr. Johnson borrow a drill from time to time, or to help a stranger change a flat tire. He was teaching us to offer ourselves, everything that we are and possess, for those around us. It is the lesson that he demonstrated when the crowd finally turned on him and sent him to the cross. “Love” never meant “be friendly”. It meant endure the suffering, face the fears, and receive all those who are given to us. In short, shoulder the burden of community.
It is a hard saying for us in this time of social disunity. I am not very good at it. Nevertheless, it is true. “Hell is other people” is wrong. We weren’t created to collapse into our preferred social cliques, but to go out as pilgrims into the lives of strangers. Deep down, I’m not angry at Jean-Paul Sartre anymore. I just feel bad that he fell for the lie.