The philosopher Sartre said, "Hell is other people." From his play No Exit (Huis Clos) - his definition of "hell" isn't others per se, but the way their gaze and judgment trap us and force us into self-perception as objects.
Just thought a lot of users would appreciate that and actually probably already know this quote lol
Across different cultures, you always imagine that the good gods are in heaven and all the gods that can take care of us and we really depend on are all in the sky. And whats beneath the earth is always something like hell, like the underworld, it's for dead people. And then if you read the folklore, the gods in the sky are basically assholes. But for example the god of death, like how you pass, where you're going after you die, there's a certain level of compassion to it. I think we realized there's this random in nature. You were just working on the land and all of the sudden there's an earthquake or a flood coming so you probably think that those gods don't have a good temper. So you start to envision them being dicks all around just messing around with people. But death is certain and we have this sympathy and empathy towards deceased people. So we imagine that when they die maybe they're in some peaceful place. Maybe they needed to explain to themselves because there's a lot of unpredictability in life and especially in nature so maybe we offended the gods in some kind of way by not doing something they wanted us to pay attention to. And I think that's where the whole sacrifice thing comes in. The whole giving up on something in order to get something else down the road. I think there's a lot of that involved. Because I think when these gods, these religions came into play we kind of moved into agriculture. So we started thinking about the future more. Probably as humans. Planning more. What we do today is going to reflect whats coming down the road.
For a more theological take:
