# Would there be simulated violence in Heaven? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2023, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481 "2023-05-02T23:28:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2023, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/41 "2023-05-31T08:08:54Z")
If you’re still slave enough to your human desires that you long to be a superhero or to wield power over your world, that’s not heaven. Desire is suffering, and if death doesn’t free you from that suffering then what is the point? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2023, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/42 "2023-05-31T11:24:56Z")
In CS Lewis’s _Screwtape Letters,_ he speaks a few times about how humans are a kind of mashed together spirit half and animal half. When you die, only your spirit half remains. All the various urges we’re talking about in this thread would presumably be the urges of the animal half. So in heaven you simply wouldn’t care about that kind of stuff. There’s an argument to be made about whether we’d still be “us” without those urges, but as children we can’t really conceive of adulthood. It doesn’t seem specious to say that mortals, I’m the same manner as ignorant children, can’t really conceive of heaven. But that’s just one interpretation of one kind of afterlife. There are thousands of religions and holy books and prophets and traditions all postulating different ones. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/43 "2023-06-01T11:10:21Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > The question is whether it is natural to identify violence with eutrapelia, and therefore the virtue of temperance. As I say, the OP describes some actions that I wouldn’t personally see as violence-seeking in the first place. I don’t play chess out of a desire to butcher soldiers on a battlefield. Heck, I don’t play first-person shooters out of a desire for violence either, they’re just games of skill to me. > [@Max\_S](#): > > The natural state of man, it seems to me, is to find violence unpleasant and discomforting. I think human history and events in much of the world say otherwise. I think humans are complicated. We _are_ violent. But we’re also empathetic. And we generally don’t want to be violent towards people in our tribe who have no specific beef with us. The latter two facts have been leveraged by society to create civilization. A world in which, almost all of us, almost all of the time, do not experience violence. But we shouldn’t forget that under it all, our genetics haven’t changed. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/44 "2023-06-01T14:41:05Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > I have a feeling it wouldn’t take me long to turn to violence, simulated or otherwise, if I heard one more bloody harp. Could be worse: [accordions](https://herereadthisarticle.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/welcome-to-hell.jpg?w=242). > [@Kyomara](#): > > Desire is suffering, and if death doesn’t free you from that suffering then what is the point? That is not a bad argument in favour of abolishing death, right? I see a nice hijack potential here. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/45 "2023-06-01T15:33:12Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > Could be worse: [accordions](https://herereadthisarticle.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/welcome-to-hell.jpg?w=242). Or [this](https://youtu.be/ect-u9VJtdg) on repeat ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/46 "2023-06-01T18:32:27Z")
Bagpipes. Don’t forget the bagpipes. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/47 "2023-06-02T00:37:39Z")
I can assert with complete confidence that there will be no bagpipes in heaven. Bagpipes will be in the other place. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/48 "2023-06-02T06:02:36Z")
The original post brings up a slight hijack: what light entertainment faces me, a lapsed Catholic, for my indefinite stay in purgatory? I would hope not accordians. I am headed there to atone for my sins, after all. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/49 "2023-06-02T06:31:33Z")
If purgatory, no entertainment. You’d just be scrubbing, mangling and ironing angels’ robes. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/50 "2023-06-02T14:33:05Z")
According to Dante, Purgatory involves singing hymns a capella while going up the longest spiral parking ramp in the universe. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2023, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/51 "2023-06-03T10:32:33Z")
If I had to sing hymns in purgatory, they would never allow me into heaven… ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2023, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/52 "2023-06-03T19:22:07Z")
LOL. I relate to that. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2023, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481/53 "2023-06-03T23:13:29Z")
OK, I was being flippant earlier, now I’ll be serious. If the very existence of Heaven is unknowable, its nature is doubly so. But I’ll speculate. First, some have postulated that when (if) you go to heaven you get there as a sort of idealized version of yourself. OK, that gives you some serious issues of identity. But assuming that it’s you that goes, I mean you you, as you are. People seem to be looking at models such as holodecks or Westworld, but I think that the SF model that comes to mind is “The Nexus” from ST: Generations. Kirk’s idea of heaven seemed to be chopping wood and shacking up with some gal named Antonia. (Just as an aside, I wish they’d sprung for Joan Collins. That would have gotten some gasps.) But whether your appetites lean toward the cruel, the carnal, or the culinary, one fact remains. The novelty is bound to wear off after the first few millennia. You could conquer the world and it would have all the significance of winning a Risk game, because you’d know it was all simulated. IE: Fake. How many times can you go to that little coffee shop down the street and hear John Lennon, Buddy Holly, and Harry Chapin. Or read the latest “Founation” novel by Isaac Asimov (what’s he up to now, twenty?) You’ll soon find yourself in the position of the Larry Blyden character in that old Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit”, only you’d actually _be_ in heaven. Perhaps the ultimate entertainment in heaven would be watching the only place where it’s real and the game is played for real stakes. Earth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-simulated-violence-in-heaven/983481.md?page=2)