Hell or Paradise? A Supreme Court Ruling and a Book about Boredom

A short novel from 2012 is getting a new edition. *A Short Stay in Hell*, by biologist and writer Steven L. Peck, describes a hell inspired by Borges’s library of Babel. It is a place of endless books you cannot understand and occasional torture. The main character, a white Mormon from Utah, complains about his surroundings. He is stuck with only white, English-speaking Americans. He longs to “hear someone with a different story to tell.” The narrator says, “The endless monotony of everyone I knew melted into the monotony of this hell. Homogeneity everywhere, stretching without end… Paradise must be as full of differences as hell was of monotony.” This idea of homogeneity is striking for a country like the United States. The US remains a political, economic, and cultural power partly because of its diversity. That diversity has survived attempts to erase it for 250 years. This Saturday is the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776. A recent reminder of this struggle came from the Supreme Court. The Court struck down a presidential decree that tried to end birthright citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the right to citizenship for anyone born in the US has “special importance” in “a nation of immigrants.” He noted the country was built as a “complicated tapestry” from the start. The Court ruled that, regardless of a parent’s intentions, their child is a US citizen at birth. The 14th Amendment and Court precedent protect this right. However, the ruling was close: five votes to four. The current president will leave office in January 2029. But his three appointees to the nine-member Court will remain. The violent defense of uniformity clashes with the diversity that has enriched the US. History shows a society mixing hell and paradise so often that it is hard to know which one it prefers. But it also shows a society that never accepts the current reality. It is always driven by the desire to change. The comfort in this “hell” is that “paradise” is closer. As revolutionary writer Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 to encourage soldiers fighting the British crown: “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”