The "little bit of hell" cosmos is why I found Philip Pullman's "The Amber Spyglass" so depressing and unsatisfying. God, heaven, immortality are all a big lie, but the reader is subjected to 60+ pages of detail about a horrific underworld. Thanks for naming this particular kind of post-Christian despair. Perhaps this happens because the writer's now-lost faith was the only thing protecting them from underlying anxiety/depression?
My only quibble with The Good Place is that (spoiler alert) Ted Danson's experimental bad place still seems like an improvement over regular everyday life, but "little and petty" is a pretty good description of it!
The "little bit of hell" cosmos is why I found Philip Pullman's "The Amber Spyglass" so depressing and unsatisfying. God, heaven, immortality are all a big lie, but the reader is subjected to 60+ pages of detail about a horrific underworld. Thanks for naming this particular kind of post-Christian despair. Perhaps this happens because the writer's now-lost faith was the only thing protecting them from underlying anxiety/depression?
My only quibble with The Good Place is that (spoiler alert) Ted Danson's experimental bad place still seems like an improvement over regular everyday life, but "little and petty" is a pretty good description of it!