According to my sister, who is usually right about stuff like this, Milton posits in Paradise Lost that the Devil can “physically” leave Hell whenever he wants to. The problem is that damnation goes with him wherever he goes, turning it into Hell. As an observation and a metaphor, that is… incredibly astute; people, Devil or not cannot escape the damnation they bring with them when it is an essential part of who they are.
When Becky mentioned it, I believe it was in the context of all the folks who were exiting California and moving to Montana to “get away” from the noise, the congestion, the crabby people, etc. They got to Montana and discovered a land where the grocery store closed at 7:00 and Starbucks was only a stock ticker. Despairing that they had come to such a wasteland, soon their conveniences followed them on a wave of entrepreneurial spirit and malls, 24 hour groceries, coffee shops, and all the other amenities sprang up. Then. Lo, they looked forth one day and realized the place they had come to was every bit as noisy, congested, and unfriendly as the place they had come from. Puzzled at this strange fact, they moved again, to get away fro it all, only to discover yet another barren heathen wasteland. No worries soon conveniences would follow.
Milton’s model can be applied to almost every aspect of modern life. Cell phones, politics, economics, all of it. People always bring their own hells with them and then wonder how it is they can never seem to “get away.”
No comments:
Post a Comment