Status Updates From This Republic of Suffering:...

228

This book is astonishingly readable for being about such a grim topic - I’m impressed

•1860s rise of spiritualism-ouija board, books, magazines, group meetings
•”The Gates Ajar” promised the notion that heaven is a more perfect earth, an extension of earthly world

•Death was reconceptualized as transition to a different life rather than an end, soldiers sought it over the battlefields. “Redefined as eternal life, death was celebrated in mid-nineteenth-century America.”
•Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell in 1758 marked origin of movement away from the idea of heaven being far away/theocentric, but a modern notion of heaven being the same world except in its perfection

•conflict between religious beliefs and new scientific discoveries led to increasing questions about what happens after death.
•some argued religion enabled the slaughter—“confidence in immortality could encourage soldiers to risk annihilation”, “firm conviction could yield confidence that bordered heartlessness”. Christian soldiers contributed more to the war machine bc of the lack of fear of death.