The real hell is not being heard. Two examples taken from art: one, the end of the film The Secret in Their Eyes (the book narrates a different ending) where the prisoner does not suffer so much from confinement as from having a dry mouth from not having spoken for years; two, the entry of Dante and Virgil into Hell, where the damned beg the poets to listen to them.

Another example: in La Condena and La Metamorfosis, Franz Kafka constructs two protagonists who suffer from the impossibility of speaking, they are not listened to.

To such an extent is it necessary to be heard that the entire building of psychoanalysis is built on that basis: listening carefully to the other.

Why don't we listen? Because we are a sophistic society. We seek to 'win' with language, 'beat' the other. Defeat him in the arena of flaming ego. That usually satisfies competitive spirits.

And our modernity, no doubt, is, par excellence, competitive. Listening implies the possibility, the Great Possibility, of changing your mind. That is, the opportunity to grow human, intellectual, spiritual.

Listening is seeking the Truth. With clarity and humility. You have to be very lucid to accept your own mistake. But we are usually not interested in the truth. Because we seek the imposition of an idea. From there to dehumanized egoism there is a step. If they are not the same.

Hell is having decaying words in your throat. Those words rot, they rot us. They do bad. We do wrong. This is how demons are born.