I think more people than you might expect would receive the news well, that they’ll live their exact life over and over again forever. At first it would be shocking, horrifying maybe but after some reflection they would feel relieved because demystifying the greatest unknown there is transfigures existential fear into Sisyphean destiny.
Yet this relief is not amor fati. It is great neither in affirmation or lamentation. What it is is a clinging, a grasping, a sucking on the pacifier of the Known and the Same. Thus Gehenna commences its deposition over immanence, spiritual hell purchased through psychic complacency…
Of course this is just the Last Man and not fundamentally different from how he had already been being, but let’s keep the question open and ask whether even he would not be galvanized in some way by this knowledge. Years ago a popular study found that college kids were equally likely to buy a Hawaii vacation regardless if they passed or failed a test, but less if the results were still up in the air. So the dichotomy isn’t pass/fail so much as mystery/certainty; similarly der Letztermensch might, after the immediate relief, choose to affirm his life regardless if the demon’s news came as gospel or damnation. Even if you knew you were hellbound amoring your fati while alive would still be the move1.
But what if, instead, your eternal did not return. You could live as someone else. Would this be better? Would you roll the dice? What if you had to? Had to live as everyone else? Also forever?
Oh… for sure, there’d be a few wondrous, enviably blessed runs. But then. Imagine: a Lennon song, or in current parlance “don’t let it be you” any unconscionable existential decision on another’s behalf- imagine drinking dasani water, not shopping at farmers markets, etc, imagine going to a my chemical romance show- imagine being tarred and feathered in 1773, impaled by vlad, flayed live by apaches, those forced while bound to watch their families undergo the unspeakable, dwelling /pol/, imagine being florida man, chris chan, lucas room and other “cursed” photo inhabitants, medical gofundme shillers when their one tweet goes viral like gods last mulligan, children kept in dungeons, fema detainees, bottom elo dating appers, mumbai sewer divers, the hollygroomed, gooners, bugchasers, dysphoriacs, botched plastic surgery attempts, botched gender reassignment attempts, liveleak casualties, snuff vidthusiasts, lepers, furries, alopeciacs, receding hairliners, microphallic, any combination of these, those with cluster headaches, leto cultists, youtubers who make vids about whether morbius is stronger than venom, anabolic steroid injectors, cordycepted by an nft (except mildays), nyc subway crazies, linkedin superusers, kekistani pseudolarpers, bluechecks, loathsome dung eaters, tyson foods assembly line butcher, foxconn suicide, indentured migrant in saudi arabia, uyghur beneath chamaths line, essential worker, uvalde parent, falsely imprisoned for decades court cases, underfunded social services drone, cartel gangbanger, former mexican policemen now mutilated cadavers displayed on fishing lines under highways, graphic designers for hallmark cards, hazmat suited chinese street disinfectors, intubated quadriplegics, truly this is not what sartre meant when he said l’enfer c’est les autres but so immense is the carnival of suffering on earth alone2 you don’t need to imagine to see, the descent to hell is as bottomless as the turtles upholding the cosmos
All this in mind if N’s demon said you’d just have to live your life and not these, would it not seem like a great good news? But also do you consider yourself ABOVE these existences? Do you consider yourself BETTER? “Because you are not better” is how I would respond, did the subtext not imply “actually Im better than you” which’d be hypocritical of me who would nevvvver presume such a thing, r-right? Even were it the case (that you are not better) you’d have to discover and digest this for yourself; all I can do is gesture at a moon which may not even be there in your personal Weltanschauungsmöglichkeiten. But I am talking to myself; you (not that you need permission) may read into this whatever you wish.
The phrase “There but for the grace of God go I” recognizes the potential of inhabiting another subjectivity, typically one felt to be a close call; imagine a car crashes right in front of you, you think oh jeez Rick that coulda been me, or if you hadn’t manned up and talked to her in high school back then you would instead of having a nice trad wife in a self sustaining off grid home stead in the everglades some where be in cell, and then you’re grateful, and wish to honor that gratitude and/or the lives that could have been yours by living the one that is more fully... but maybe cometh the apocalypse twas really HERE but for the grace of God went THEY, and YOU were the sucker all along? Seen from first person, only those perceived near misses conjure any salience and for sound reason, but seen from afar all these existences- all existence, is so infinitely close to your own that you might as well have been them. Yet you’re you. Is that not grace?
So neither is it very great to affirm your life, in fact it is the least you could do regardless which if any metaphysical truth obtains, and should it be eternal return you out of goodwill ought live such that your life is a nice present for your next iteration to come along, who hint hint is precisely this iteration, aka you, the girl reading this
A particularly devilish conditional might be: “Only those who affirm their lives will go to Hell,” but adequate reflection reveals this to be a practical contradiction in terms.
In Buddhist cosmology you can also reincarnate as animals, insects etc but I don’t find these as horrifying because however they participate in Being is so distant from our own experience that projecting becomes an exercise in pure imagination. Some even say that the mind, our reasoning and reflective faculty, is exactly wherein the Fall consists and deem animal existence superior due to its lack of this. For my part I take from the Parable of the Prodigal Son that rising after having fallen- the passage from innocence to experience to salvation- is much worthier an undertaking and one whose rewards are commensurate.