A Practical Guide to Navigating Hell
R. F. Kuang's Katabasis is an exploration of not only the author's fictional Hell, but also the myriad Hell myths we've created over thousands of years.
Whether its the Greeks facing the Underworld or Jesus rescuing the Old Testament prophets, the world’s mythology is filled with accounts of the descent into Hell.
R. F. Kuang’s novel Katabasis follows graduate students Alice and Peter as they travel to Hell to rescue their advisor. Their advisor is the key to both their careers and, from Kuang’s telling, appears to be worth the journey.
At least, he does at the beginning. There are many reasons he belonged in Hell.
But Alice’s and Peter’s sojourn to Hell has practical lessons for those of us in our own Hells right now. Soe of those lessons are tidbits about shoddy thinking. Others are spiritual lessons that can fuel us through our own journies through Hell.
Bad Group Thinking
There are plenty of ways to harness the wisdom of crowds, but stuffing a group of undergraduates in Hell together isn’t it. One of Alice and Peter’s first encounters in Hell is with the shades of several students killed in an accident early in their professor’s career.
As Alice tried to ask them about where the professor could be and how to proceed next, the undergrads argued among themselves about whether they should pass on or remain shades. Alice noticed:
“Undergraduates did this often—they worked each other up over the wrong ideas, compared problem sets and confused themselves so much that untangling their thoughts took twice the work. Undergraduates were five blind men and an elephant; were three blind mice leading one another in a circle.”
These undergraduates were unable to keep their focus on the crucial problem at hand. They lost themselves in arguments that had little to do with the central problem before them. Questions about whether the new life they would be reincarnated into was preferable to the lifetime they knew were distractions from the questions Alice had for them. They didn’t have the skills the graduate students had honed to focus on the correct problem and argue about the proper things.
Leaders dodging responsibility for confronting difficult problems can always find refuge in new questions. If undergrads can do it, surely high-ranking government officials can master this evasive skill as well.
On the other side, followers who wish to avoid confronting ugly realities have their own trick available to them.
Belief is Always Optional
In Kuang’s telling, Hell is a university campus. (At least, the upper levels with structure are. The more traditional deserts and swamps lie deeper in Kuang’s Hell.)
In one trap laid by demons, Alice and Peter must complete essays to escape the building and move on to the next level of Hell. Peter confounds the demon by trapping him in an infinite logic loop. He uses modus ponens, a foundational logical pattern: if P, then Q. If one fact is true, then it should lead to a reasonable conclusion.
However, Peter pointed out a structural challenge equally foundational to logic:
”‘Why should any two premises compel the conclusion, valid though they might be? No one has a good solution. You actually can’t prove modus ponens. But if we don’t have modus ponens, then we might as well be in the Stone Age, because modus ponens is the foundation of everything else…’”
Alice cut Peter off before he spiraled into his own infinite loop of explanations. But the truth Peter observed is all around us. It doesn’t matter how many reasons we give to support a conclusion. There is always another piece of evidence we can add to support our reasoning. We never actually have to draw a conclusion that we don’t want to reach.
Contrived uncertainty is a useful refuge for anyone who hopes to avoid seeing the world in front of their eyes. There’s always another fact or point of view that could be considered. We can always pine for more evidence to appear high-minded and fair. That same whining for more can also be a feint to avoid assigning blame on a worshiped political leader or valued friend.
Reflexive doubt is corrosive to serious thought, but so is the refusual to draw hard conclusions.
No Way Out But Through
The practical lessons get Alice and Peter through Hell, but there’s one overarching truth that Alice identifies early in the novel.
In Kuang’s universe, Lord Yama, the Buddhist lord of Hell, rules over the domain. Alice’s ruminations over his plan points to universal questions about what the point of Hell is:
”For all our theories and stories and myths, Lord Yama’s design remains an utter mystery. No one knows for certain what precisely happens in those courts, or why; least of all the Shades within them. If it is a test, no one knowns how to pass. If it is mere torture, no one knows how long it will go on for. One cannot anticipate, cheat, or find a shortcut through redemption. We cross the Lethe and reincarnate whenever Hell deems us ready. It happens when it happens. Until then, we get what’s coming.”
It’s no coincidence that Dante’s exit from Hell was through the Ninth Circle at Hell’s lowest depths. The only way to escape Hell is to push through the trials until they end.
Back in the real world, struggles can begin for mysterious reasons. Their endings can be equally arbitrary and inexplicable. The only way to end them is to struggle against whatever the world has lined up against us.
Even if these challenges can’t be overcome by purely individual effort, the struggle against them is the only path to their end.