Hell is other people (and their opinions)
Opening
In 1944, just before the end of the Second World War, when the world was in a state of hell – a stage play by the French existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, hit the stage.
This play was originally titled: In Camera, referring to the legal term where a private conversation occurs behind closed doors.
This play is about the afterlife where three characters who died were punished by being imprisoned in a room together.
These three doomed souls, Joseph Garcin, Inès Serrano, and Estelle Rigault are imprisoned forever in the same room, representing hell. They expected eternal torment and a hellish fire, but instead, they find themselves in a very neat room.
Initially, none of these characters would realise why they are doomed. Joseph claimed that he was executed because he was a pacifist. Estelle continues to say that she made a mistake. Inès is the only one who insists that they stop lying and confess their moral crimes. She refuses to believe that they all ended up together by chance and realises that they ended up in the same room with the mere purpose of making one another miserable – being one another’s martyrs.
Joseph suggests they leave one another alone and be silent. However, Inès begins to sing about an execution while Estelle is just trying to find a mirror to admire her own complection. Inès tries to seduce Estelle by offering to be her mirror, telling her all she is seeing, but instead of telling the truth she is scaring Estelle more than anything else. It is soon clear that Inès is attracted to Estelle. Estelle is attracted to Joseph and Joseph is not interested in anything or anyone.
After long arguments, they decide to confess their misdeeds in order to know what to expect from one another. Joseph mistreated his wife and fled from his country during the war. Inès seduced her cousin’s wife while staying with them. Estelle had an affair, became pregnant, and killed the child, which resulted in the child’s father committing suicide.
Regardless of these confessions, they continue to work on each other’s nerves. Joseph begins to give in to Estelle’s seduction, and it drives Inès insane. Joseph begs Estelle to convince him that he was not a coward to flee his country during the war. Meanwhile, Inès informs Joseph that Estelle just pretends to be attracted to him just to be with a man, any man. Joseph in return, tries to escape.
He tries repeatedly to open the door. When the door suddenly opens, he just can’t come so far as to walk out. Even the other two choose to stay in the room.
He wants to stay there until he is convinced that Inès can trust him. Yet she refuses, saying that he is a coward and promises to make his life forever hell. Joseph comes to the conclusion that hell is other people and that it is worse than any other torture or physical punishment.
In the meanwhile, Estelle is still trying to seduce Joseph, but he doesn’t want to indulge in this, with the thought of Inès watching.
A furious Estelle starts to stab Inès with a paper knife. Since they all have already died, this attack is futile and Inès started to stab herself halfheartedly, eventually bursting out in laughter.
Estelle realises that they are all trapped here for eternity and also started laughing. Everyone laughs until Joseph finally realises: eh bien, continious. Roughly translated as: oh well, let’s move on.
It can become terrible if life has to be like this forever. Hell is to live for eternity with someone who drives you up the wall, while you could barely endure it for five minutes with them in this life. Whether it be a spouse, a friend, or a colleague at work, their annoying habits, stupidity, cynicism, uselessness, and preferences clashing with yours – this is hell.
Other people, that’s hell
Sartre’s idea that other people are hell, is often misunderstood. He didn’t necessarily mean that other people are hell, cruel, or bad.
Sartre’s idea was rather one of thinking about ourselves, we subject ourselves to the perceptions that others have about us as our reference. We use the judgement of other people as confirmation of what we already think and know about ourselves. We allow other people to become our hell. We take other people’s opinions of us seriously, consequently judging ourselves based on their uninformed opinion about us.
Sartre does not deny that other people and their opinions may also be our heaven, but for the purpose of this discussion, the focus is on people being our hell.
More about hell is other people
According to Sartre, it is impossible to form opinions about ourselves via ourselves. We, therefore form our opinions about ourselves, based on the opinions of others about ourselves. If we have a high sense of ourselves – we probably formed that opinion following positive opinions of others about us when we were successful, achieved something, or did something well. The opposite will of course apply to people who nurture negative thoughts about themselves.
Sartre does not necessarily include egotism and narcissism here and he postulated that it can be caused by opinions and fantasies we fabricate about ourselves according to the opinions of others.
We are therefore doomed to need other people, whether we want to admit it or not. It does not matter how much we would like to be free from the opinion of other people, we just can’t. We are trapped. Even though you would like to tell the world you don’t care what other people think of you – you still care. You care a lot. We are addicted to the approval of others. We want people to love, respect, and admire us for who and what we are.
The above stands quite in stark contrast with most psychological schools of thought that propagate an internal locus of control where people are their own masters and not the victim of other people’s opinions. More on this later.
Whether we like it or not, people are using us in some way or another. It might be your employer, who employed you to make money for them; or friends who are using you for company; or any other people who, in some way, need something that you can offer. It can however be for your own benefit.
For a moment, imagine a world where you respect, befriend, and love people solely for who they are. You appreciate them for the wonderful person they are and not for their money or anything else.
Interplay
Sartre leaves us indeed with a stranglehold of a dilemma. His idea of hell being other people can not be wished or taken away. However, Sartre leaves us a loophole to extricate ourselves from this dilemma by the notion that we always have choices. We allow anything in our lives, good or bad. We might even be in our hell. I don’t necessarily have solutions for this dilemma, but can share some thoughts.
An external locus of control
People tend to judge other people immediately based on their clothing, cars, appearance, race, education, social status… the list is endless.
We also judge ourselves accordingly, but also based on how others judge us or would judge us in our interpretation of how they see us.
We actually create this hell for ourselves. The idea of other people creating hell for us is just part of our own irrational thinking.
Psychology refers to this thinking as an external locus of control. We have, according to the father of this theory, Jullian B. Rotter two loci: internal and external. An internal locus of control means that you believe you are in control of your own life. An external locus of control means that your decisions and your life are controlled by factors in the environment over which you have no control. If someone with an internal locus of control failed at something, they will only blame themselves and will find ways to improve themselves, as a human being. People with an external locus of control will blame other people or external factors for their failures.
Living with an external locus of control results in blaming circumstances, government, economics, unforeseen events, and other factors for our challenges and failures. Even though it could be true that external events could be responsible for our challenges, it’s not going to change anything about our feelings or our situation.
We forever seek eternal youth, riches, and fame. We will not be seen dead in public without good clothes, precise makeup, and our best smile. We photoshop our photos before we post them on social media. We buy books or magazines on how to impress other people. Magazines are full of ideas to help us to look younger, live longer, look more beautiful, have the best gadgets, drive the most beautiful car, how to make money or save money etcetera, etcetera. We are forever posting photos on social media of how special we are, what we do, our beautiful homes, and our successes. We spend so much of our hard-earned money just to keep up with the Jones’s. Just to be accepted. We capture ourselves in this hell of other people. Or the hell we create for ourselves by worrying about their opinions of us.
We are all in the same room – to make each other miserable, just like our three characters. We keep on hiding our true selves from others and from the outside world. We are defending our behaviour and if we can’t, we hide behind the fact that we made a mistake. We are only interested in, like Estelle, looking good. When we are not feeling good enough, or like Inès, have a feeling of being abandoned, we make life hell for the person who we actually love (or being done to us). We are doing this because of our own issues, our own insecurities, and not necessarily because someone has done something wrong. We are one another’s martyrs.
It is therefore not strange that research proved that people with an external locus of control are doomed to be unhappy.
Please excuse the interruption… I had to go on Facebook to see who liked something I posted. Positive comments someone made on my post, make me feel good, but someone else made a negative comment. I wonder why the one negative comment tends to outweigh the impact of all the other positive, constructive comments?
Sartre might have pinned it here. Why do the negative comments upset us more than the satisfaction the positive comments we receive?
It is probably idealistic to think that people only focus on an internal locus of control. We are rather somewhere on a continuum between the two loci.
You are always in control
As human beings with an internal locus of control, we should first seek the challenge within ourselves. Of course, there are people who have opinions about us and these people may have their own issues. We will have a closer look at this in the next section.
Are you allowing yourself to allow other people and their opinions to shift you to an external locus of control, as in the case with our three friends?
Is hell indeed other people or is hell caused by ourselves because of our interpretation of other people and their opinions of us?
However, we always have choices. We are always in control of our own life. If you don’t take control of your life, other people will gladly control it for you. It is never someone else’s fault. You are in control of your life and feelings are happening as you allow them to, or not.
To blame someone else is to put that person in charge of your life. People will only begin to treat you differently when you realise that you are in control of your life and will not allow being out of control or controlled by others anymore. However, the first change has to start with you. People become better when you get better, is a well-known quote by Brian Tracey.
The more you change, the more changes you will experience and notice in others.
You might enjoy a sense of freedom to stop continuing to put someone else in charge of your life by blaming them, and in the process disabling you of control over your own life, feeling like a victim.
Who the hell are these people who are hell anyway?
After all, hell is caused by ourselves, but we also have an internal locus of control. This may help you to understand more about these people who are causing your hell. These opinionated people:
are uninformed:
Please consider the following quotes:
the fewer the facts, the stronger the opinions — Arnold H. Glasow.
you are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant – Harlan Ellison.
Indeed, it is the easiest thing to express an opinion about someone or something. Thinking is not needed. Usually, these opinionated people can’t think, according to Carl Gustav Jung: Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no responsibility or understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy. It requires us to move our egos into the background and place ourselves in the other person’s world. To stand in their shoes. It is all about a greater sense of meaning and sense in the world.
Finally, Carl Gustav Jung also said: thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.
have their own inferiority issues:
They may feel that they can’t raise themselves to your level. Since they do not believe in themselves, they will rather try to pull you down to their level. Also, keep in mind that it is easier to pull someone down than to raise yourself up to a higher level.
My thoughts are now drifting off to someone who lived in the same university residence as I did during my university years. I have a tongue-in-cheek tendency to measure someone’s intelligence on their ability to play chess. If I may boost my own ego a little bit, with a good external locus of control – I am very good at chess!
I thus consider myself to be highly intelligent. However, I could never beat Gerald* at chess, not one single game. I assumed that Gerald was more intelligent than I am.
Although we enrolled together as freshmen, this genius, Gerald, was still busy with his first year subjects, while I was already busy with a postgraduate qualification.
I asked him one evening on the balcony of our residence about this and asked how is it possible to keep on failing his subjects, despite his intelligence. His answer to me was: I fail my subjects because I do not study. I asked him why he didn’t study, to which he replied: I will always have this excuse when failing my subjects, but what will happen should I study and still fail?
are wounded souls themselves:
Hurt people, hurt people – Will Bowen
People are hurting other people because of their own inner conflict and pain. They are not just bad people. They are wounded and desire compassion. These people who hurt you so much, have their own pain and trauma to deal with. They usually experienced trauma in their own childhood or in their later life. Their history will always indicate that they are just hurt souls who are trying to deal with their own pain by projecting their pain onto others. It is not necessarily their intention to hurt others, since they are having their own pain and feelings of inferiority and unworthiness, hiding behind a mask of blown-up self-confidence.
have not achieved much in life:
People who have not attained anything in life will always criticise those who have achieved something or their goals, as a result of their own feelings of failure and pain.
are jealous:
One of the fables of Aesopus tells the story of a fox seeing a bunch of ripe, delicious grapes hanging from a vineyard branch. The fox was trying to grab the grapes, but just could not reach it. He tried again and again, without any success. Finally, tired and frustrated, realising he could not reach the grapes, he convinced himself that the grapes are small and still green and probably sour anyway. The term sour grapes have its origin in this fable. Sour grapes indeed refer to someone belittling someone or something they want but can’t have or accomplish, to make them feel better about themselves.
It might not always be clear to you why some people might be jealous of you and try to break you down since they don’t feel they can rise to your standard but rather would like to drag you down to theirs. Yet they won’t recognise their own jealousy, since few people want to recognise their feelings of inferiority and unworthiness. They would much rather prefer, like Inès and Estelle, to feel angry.
Jealousy makes you nasty, is a well-known saying. They themselves may not have achieved much in life and are therefore jealous of you. For them, the best way to hide their own jealousy is by trying to break you down, especially people like Gerald, who haven’t accomplished anything, had much to say about those who have accomplished something, who reached their goals in life.
do not have self-respect:
Someone who does not have respect for other people does not have respect for themselves. As someone once said: I don’t like other people, because I don’t like myself. If you can’t see anything good in other people, you won’t be able to see the good in yourself, and vice versa. Happy people always search for the good in other people, whether it’s people who have reached the highest achievement or whether they are just people collecting stuff from rubbish bins. On the other hand, unhappy people tend to look for the bad in other people and will always find it as it is a reflection or projection of their own unhappiness within themselves.
do not see their own shadow side:
Carl Gustav Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, talked about the shadow side of people.
Your shadow side is in essence that part of you that you don’t like about yourself, and it is the unacceptable part of you that you don’t want to see and your subconscious is literally hiding it from you.
According to Jung, the shade side is instinctive and irrational and can be observed in the phenomenon called projection, which is addressed in the next point.
use projection as a defense mechanism:
A defense mechanism is an unconscious behavioural pattern a person uses to protect themselves from feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, inferiority, or guilt. By using projection, they prevent these feelings from getting to their conscious awareness.
Projection is when someone, at an unconscious level, tries to attribute their own shadow, i.e. unacceptable wishes, traits, shortcomings, attitudes, or subjective feelings unto others. For example, the angry person believes that others cherish anger feelings toward them.
They, therefore, project their own issues and feelings onto you.
This phenomenon is also known as blame shifting. Some people try to defend themselves against their own unpleasant impulses by denying that they have these impulses and projecting them onto other people. The misogynist may, for example, accuse you of abusing women.
Going back to our friends in the play, we see the hot potato syndrome. As you surely know, a potato can become as hot as hell. A hot potato in your hand will cause you to throw it in the air or at someone else and blame them. It is much easier to feel anger than guilt. Someone once said that some people hold you responsible for being the bad person in order to not feel guilty about the things they’ve done to you. By doing so, they want to justify their negative, destructive behaviour and words, by blaming you.
Projection causes people to feel more comfortable with themselves since they are just like anybody else.
When you have decided that the other person does not like you, you simply defend your own decision not to like them either. Thus you are fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy since most people don’t like people who don’t like them.
What they are accusing you of, is most likely nothing else but their own issues. However, you still have the choice of whether you’re going to be affected by these accusations or not.
probably don’t even realise they have hurt you:
Mostly these people don’t even realise they have hurt you. They may even be surprised why some people are avoiding them. Realising this, not judging yourself because of their reaction, will make life much easier for you.
These opinionated people are too busy with their own issues to realise they have an effect on you.
How to handle these people
Think differently about it:
As you’ve seen in the previous point, their negative opinions or accusations are most likely their own issue, and that is none of your concern.
Allowing their opinions into your innermost self, you are giving them some magical powers over you. Who are they anyway to know anything about you? Are they that amazing to be able to read your mind? Do they have all the answers? How do they know what and who you really are? They just are not able to penetrate your mind or soul.
I have studied and have been practicing psychology for many years now, realising – the more I know about psychology, the less I understand people. A person who thinks they can read another person’s mind is simply naive.
People who are happy with themselves will only see the positive in other people. People who are unhappy with themselves will only see and focus on the negative in others. You might even see this phenomenon in yourself – there were times when you were really feeling good and good about yourself. During these times you were most likely to see the positive in other people and you weren’t feeling threatened by their achievements and successes. You were feeling happy with them when they achieved or succeeded in something.
There were also times in your life when you were not feeling well or good about yourself – you were inclined to feel jealous, envious, and threatened by others’ successes. The same applies to people who feel threatened by you. They are normally people who have really not achieved much in life.
You may notice that achieved people only have good things to say about life and others.
A lion never loses sleep over the opinion of sheep – Booth Brothers.
Realise that you are always in control, as we have discussed in the previous section.
Anthony Hopkins stated this strikingly: My philosophy is this: it is not my business what others say or think about me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I don’t expect anything and accept it all. And this makes life so much easier.
Have a good look at yourself:
Ensure that you are not the other person who is the cause of someone else’s hell. You may underestimate your own power, impact, or influence on other people. Everyone seeks acceptance. You may even be surprised by the realisation that the person who is your hell may just be that person who actually seeks your acceptance.
Make sure you are not overestimating another person’s opinion of you. It really is just their uninformed opinion of you.
Are you judging people who are judging you? Do you need to be right about people who might need to be right?
Decide whether or not you need to confront this behaviour:
Do you need to confront this behaviour? Or will you just allow it to be just their circus, their monkeys? Is their behaviour challenging your own self-esteem challenges that should actually be none of your concern?
A Maltese poodle once antagonised a German Shepherd. The German Shepherd could easily have bitten the poodle apart. Yet the German Shepherd fled from the Maltese poodle and did not respond to the confrontations of the Maltese Poodle. Why not?
The German shepherd, unlike people, did not need to prove itself. The German Shepherd had no need to prove who is the strongest and what it is capable of.
You don’t need to take part in every battle you are invited to. You will only participate in such a battle if:
- you are feeling scared;
- you are angry, or
- you feel you have something to defend.
Why would you accept the invitation to such a fight if it is unnecessary? You do not have to allow other people’s own personal issues and conflicts to become yours. You don’t have to do or say anything.
Silence is the best reply to a fool – Imam Ali.
Learn more about these people:
You may be surprised to learn that you are not the only one being abused by them. You may even start to realise that you are not really the problem after all.
You might even realise they’re also just people with their own challenges and uncertainties. You might even develop empathy for them.
Keep realising that you have a purpose in life:
You are here on earth for a reason. You are here with a task to complete. True to Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Irvin Yalom, and other existential thinkers’ ideas, you have been placed on earth with a purpose. No person’s attempt to destroy you can stop you from fulfilling your purpose on earth. They may be able to ruin you temporarily, but not your goal in life. It is not in their hands nor in their power.
Finally
Hell still remains other people and their opinions (if you allow it to be). The characters in Sartre’s In Camera point out that it is all about our and other people’s challenges. The three characters in this play do not want to admit why they are doomed. They all have an excuse, but their good reasons still remain their own challenges.
They are forever trying to get the approval of others, but this only complicates their own challenges.
Is hell indeed other people? Yes, if you allow it to be. But you are always in control and you don’t have to allow anything. As Sartre himself admits – heaven can also be other people. It’s all about the choices you make. You are in control of your own choices.
You have, despite all, still a life duty, a purpose to complete, irrespective of the opinion of others. You have been created with everything needed to perform your task here on earth to be successful. You might reframe your mistakes, unlike our friends in Sartre’s play, as a growth and learning opportunity. Whether the glass is half full or half empty is irrelevant – the glass is refillable.
That’s how your hell can become your heaven.
I think I’m going to ignore that person’s negative comments on Facebook…