Steff Fox’s Reviews > Katabasis > Status Update

Broadly understood, eternal recurrence argues that the events of the universe are fated—or doomed—to repeat themselves over and over again, for there is a finite amount of energy and material in an infinite universe, over an infinite amount of time, and the combinations with which they can interact are finite as well. The eternal hourglass of existence, so to speak, turns over time and time again.

The Eight Courts of Hell are not arenas of eternal punishment. For one thing, this would be wildly unjust. No sins, no matter how heinous, deserve an eternity of punishment. That would be disproportionate; the math does not check out.

…given the population on Earth it is overwhelmingly likely we will be reincarnated into lives under the poverty level. Most of the world population never go to school, let alone Cambridge. An unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates tells us. Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living.

Loss of identity was a terrifying prospect.

Peter Murdoch: coat unbuttoned; shirt untucked; papers flapping from his satchel[…]looked like he had never tried at anything in his life. He was simply born brilliant, all that knowledge poured by gods without spillage into his brain.