The Four Hells of Human Existence: A reflection on humanity’s greatest enemies — and its most unexpected teachers

By Marc Reflects

There are many things in this world that human beings fear, avoid, and struggle to overcome. Some are visible, while others operate silently in the background of our lives. Some destroy our bodies, others imprison our minds, and still others take away our freedom without necessarily taking our lives.

In my reflections on human existence, I have come to regard four conditions as some of the most painful forms of hell on earth: war, poverty, sickness, and dependence.

I call them hells not because they necessarily await us after death, but because human beings can experience their torment while still alive. A person can be alive yet deprived of peace, surrounded by wealth yet imprisoned by illness, living in a country yet denied freedom, or working hard every day while poverty continues to swallow the fruits of their labor.

These four conditions differ in their causes and consequences. Nevertheless, they share something profound: each can expose the vulnerability of human existence and remind us how fragile our freedom, dignity, and happiness can be.

What troubles me most is not simply that these conditions exist. It is that humanity has lived with them for centuries, fought against them with enormous determination, and yet continues to encounter them in new forms.

Why is this so? Have we misunderstood our enemies? Are some of them unavoidable features of existence, while others are consequences of the choices we make? And what does their continued existence reveal about the kind of world we have created?

Let me reflect on each of them.

1. War: When Humanity Turns Against Itself

Since the earliest days of recorded history, human beings have fought over land, power, wealth, territory, resources, religion, ideology, security, and influence. Kingdoms have emerged, expanded, conquered their neighbours, and eventually collapsed. Empires have been built upon the victories of one people and the suffering of another.

As military technology advanced, the scale of destruction grew. What once might have been a conflict between neighbouring communities became a confrontation between nations, and eventually between alliances of nations.

The two world wars of the twentieth century demonstrated just how devastating humanity's capacity for organized violence could become. The Second World War alone caused tens of millions of deaths, devastated cities, displaced populations, and left generations carrying physical and psychological wounds. Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain enduring reminders of what happens when scientific achievement is placed in the service of weapons capable of destroying entire cities.

What is particularly disturbing is that human beings do not wage war because they have no other way to communicate. We have developed languages, diplomacy, international institutions, negotiation, and sophisticated systems of communication. Yet, when disagreements become sufficiently intense, we sometimes abandon these instruments and allow weapons to speak in our place.

In political discourse, war is sometimes described as diplomacy by other means. There is a strategic logic behind this expression: when negotiations fail, a state may resort to force to achieve objectives it considers essential. But understanding the logic behind war is not the same as justifying its consequences.

The fact that war can be explained does not mean that it should be accepted as inevitable.

Why do we fight? Is it always because peaceful alternatives have genuinely been exhausted? Or do pride, fear, ambition, humiliation, mistrust, and the desire to dominate others sometimes make compromise appear weaker than violence?

There are wars fought in defense against aggression, wars intended to protect populations, and struggles against oppression in which force has played a role. It would therefore be intellectually dishonest to claim that every war has the same causes or that every use of force is morally equivalent.

Nevertheless, even when a war has a defensible objective, its consequences must still be examined. Who dies? Who loses a home? Who becomes a refugee? Who grows up without parents? Who pays for the destruction? And who benefits from the victory?

A military victory can settle a political question without healing the wounds that produced the conflict. A defeated nation may surrender its weapons while resentment survives for generations. A border may be redrawn, but the grief of families cannot be erased by a line on a map.

Consider Europe after the Second World War. Its devastation was followed not only by reconstruction but also by a determination among former adversaries to establish stronger forms of cooperation. The development of European institutions demonstrates that historical enemies can choose a different relationship. Their experience does not prove that every conflict can be prevented, but it does show that lasting security can be pursued through cooperation rather than perpetual confrontation.

Yet the contradiction remains.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, the highest annual total recorded in its series. That is an extraordinary amount of money devoted to military activities and capabilities. Military expenditure is not automatically wasteful: countries have legitimate security needs, and defence can deter aggression. But these figures invite a difficult question about the world we are building. SIPRI, 2026.

How much suffering might we prevent if a greater share of our collective resources were devoted to education, healthcare, clean water, scientific research, and economic opportunity? The answer is not as simple as converting every military dollar into social spending, but the question deserves serious consideration.

I also ask myself whether humanity has benefited more from war than from peace.

Some people point to military innovations that later found civilian uses, including advances in aviation, computing, medicine, and communications. Wars have sometimes accelerated technological development, altered political systems, ended oppressive arrangements, or exposed injustices that societies could no longer ignore.

But we must be careful not to confuse what emerged during or after a war with what could only have been achieved through war. Scientific discoveries made under military pressure do not prove that mass killing was necessary for those discoveries. Many technologies can be developed through peaceful research, international cooperation, and sustained investment.

A hospital built to treat wounded soldiers is a benefit. But does that benefit outweigh the lives lost, families shattered, cities destroyed, and resources consumed to create the need for such a hospital? Can the invention of a useful technology compensate a child for losing both parents?

These questions cannot be answered by counting inventions alone.

War can produce winners in a military or political sense, but its human costs often extend far beyond the battlefield. Peace, by contrast, allows societies to build, exchange knowledge, invest, raise children, and resolve differences without routinely turning human beings into targets.

My conclusion is not that peace solves every problem, but that peace gives humanity a better environment in which to solve its problems.

Perhaps the real measure of civilisation is not how effectively we can destroy an enemy, but how wisely we can prevent an enemy from becoming one.

What a hell it is to possess the intelligence to build cities that reach the sky, yet repeatedly use that same intelligence to develop more efficient ways of destroying them.

2. Poverty: The Hell of Having Too Little Freedom

Poverty is another form of hell on earth, and perhaps one of the most misunderstood.

We often describe poverty in terms of money: how much a person earns, what they own, or whether they can afford food, housing, and other necessities. These measures matter enormously. But poverty is also about what a person is unable to do, what opportunities remain beyond their reach, and how much control they have over their own life.

The biblical Book of Proverbs, in chapter 18, verse 23, captures a painful social reality: the poor may have to plead, while the rich can answer harshly. The observation is not that every wealthy person is arrogant or every poor person is powerless. Rather, it points to an imbalance in how society often distributes the power to speak, refuse, negotiate, and be heard.

Imagine two people applying for the same job. One has savings, a secure home, and the freedom to reject unfair conditions. The other has children to feed, rent to pay, and no alternative source of income. Both may possess equal intelligence and dignity, yet they do not approach the employer with equal bargaining power.

One can say no. The other may feel compelled to accept.

That is one of poverty's most painful consequences: it can reduce the freedom to make choices.

A poor person may be unable to obtain medical treatment when it is needed, provide adequate nutrition for their children, continue education, or invest in an idea that could improve their future. A talented young person may abandon their ambitions because the immediate need to survive is more urgent than the opportunity to develop their abilities.

In such circumstances, poverty does more than empty a pocket. It can narrow a person's future.

It can also create a cycle in which disadvantages pass from one generation to another. A child born into a household with inadequate nutrition, limited educational opportunities, and unstable housing may face barriers that another child never encounters. The first child may work extraordinarily hard and still begin adulthood several steps behind.

Of course, people do escape poverty. Individuals, families, and entire societies have improved their circumstances through education, enterprise, public investment, social protection, and economic growth. Their achievements deserve recognition.

But we must also acknowledge that not everyone begins from the same position. Some people are born into circumstances they did not choose. Others fall into poverty through illness, disability, unemployment, conflict, displacement, crop failure, or the death of a breadwinner. A family can work hard for years and lose much of what it has built after a single serious crisis.

This raises a fundamental question of fairness: why should a person's opportunities depend so heavily on the circumstances into which they happen to be born?

Humanity has not ignored this problem. Governments have created social programmes, businesses have invested in employment, charities have supported vulnerable communities, and international institutions have established development targets. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals place the eradication of poverty at the centre of the global development agenda.

And yet poverty remains.

The World Bank's 2025 update to its international poverty estimates revised historical figures but retained an important conclusion: progress against extreme poverty has slowed considerably, with a substantial share of extreme poverty concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bank estimated that approximately 1.5 billion people escaped extreme poverty between 1990 and 2022 under its revised historical series. That is genuine progress, not failure. But it also reveals how much work remains. World Bank, 2025.

Here, we encounter another contradiction.

Humanity has developed the capacity to produce enormous quantities of food, construct sophisticated buildings, transport goods across continents, and create wealth on a scale that earlier generations could scarcely imagine. Yet millions of people still struggle to secure basic necessities.

The problem is not always that the world lacks resources. Access, distribution, conflict, governance, infrastructure, discrimination, limited opportunities, and economic vulnerability can all determine whether people benefit from what exists.

It would therefore be too simplistic to say that poverty persists because humanity has done nothing. We have made substantial progress in many places. Nor would it be accurate to claim that poverty has one universal cause or that one programme could eliminate it everywhere.

The deeper problem is that poverty is continually reproduced by changing circumstances and interacting systems. Even when one barrier is removed, another may arise.

So, can poverty ever disappear from humanity?

I believe that we should distinguish between eliminating extreme deprivation and eliminating every form of economic inequality. The first is an achievable moral and practical ambition, even if it is exceptionally difficult. The second is a different and much broader question.

We may never create a world in which everyone possesses exactly the same wealth. People have different needs, abilities, preferences, opportunities, and circumstances. But that does not mean we must accept a world in which people lack food, essential healthcare, safe shelter, basic education, or a fair chance to improve their lives.

Perhaps poverty will remain a challenge for as long as humanity exists. But its persistence should not become an excuse for surrender.

If we cannot guarantee that everyone will be wealthy, surely we can work towards a world in which nobody is denied basic dignity simply because they are poor.

The fight against poverty should not be measured only by how much money governments spend or how many programmes they announce. It should be measured by whether people gain the practical freedom to live healthier, safer, more productive, and more dignified lives.

Otherwise, we risk creating a world that celebrates economic growth while overlooking the human beings who are unable to participate in it.

3. Sickness: The Prison We Never Know When We Will Enter

Of the four conditions I am reflecting on, sickness may be among the most frightening because it reminds us that our bodies are not entirely under our control.

We can plan our futures, accumulate wealth, pursue education, build businesses, and make promises about tomorrow. Yet an illness can suddenly alter the direction of our lives.

A healthy person may take ordinary pleasures for granted: eating a favourite meal, walking freely, sleeping comfortably, travelling, or spending time with family. But when illness arrives, some of these simple activities can become difficult, painful, or even impossible.

I once heard a story about a wealthy man whose illness had severely restricted his diet. Despite having the financial means to purchase almost any food he desired, he could no longer eat whatever he wished.

One day, he was sitting in his restaurant when a young student arrived and ordered a meal consisting of a variety of foods: beans, bananas, rice, chips, meat, and other dishes. The student ate with appetite and enjoyment, choosing freely from the food before him.

The wealthy man watched him and began to cry.

Surprised by his reaction, the student asked what was wrong.

The man explained that watching the young person eat had reminded him of his own youth, when he could enjoy food without fear or restriction. Now, despite his wealth, he could not enjoy the same freedom.

The student had what the rich man desperately missed: the ability to eat without his illness dictating every choice.

Whether we encounter this story as a personal experience or as a moral illustration, its message is powerful. Money can buy food, but it cannot always restore the body's ability to enjoy it.

The man possessed wealth, yet wealth could not give him back the freedom he had lost.

This is one of sickness's cruellest contradictions. A person may have everything society associates with success and still feel deprived of the simplest pleasures of life.

Illness can also imprison people in less visible ways. Someone living with chronic pain may struggle to work or sleep. A person receiving a serious diagnosis may experience fear long before treatment begins. Families may exhaust their savings paying for medical care. A parent may watch a child suffer while feeling powerless to provide the relief they desperately want.

In these circumstances, sickness affects not only the patient but also the people who love and care for them.

It is important, however, not to equate illness with a life without value. People living with disabilities or chronic conditions can experience love, fulfilment, achievement, and happiness. Their dignity does not depend on being perfectly healthy. The hell lies in the suffering itself, in the loss of autonomy that illness may bring, and in the barriers that prevent people from receiving adequate care and support.

Sickness is also an adversary humanity cannot simply defeat through determination.

Medical science has achieved extraordinary advances. Vaccination, antibiotics, surgery, public sanitation, and improved treatments have prevented suffering and saved countless lives. Diseases that once caused devastating epidemics can now be prevented or treated, and many people live longer because of scientific progress.

Yet new challenges emerge, old diseases persist, and some conditions remain difficult or impossible to cure.

The COVID-19 pandemic offered a painful reminder of our vulnerability. It disrupted families, overwhelmed healthcare systems, restricted movement, damaged livelihoods, and exposed inequalities in access to medical services. The World Health Organization estimated approximately 14.9 million excess deaths associated with the pandemic during 2020 and 2021, including both direct and indirect effects. WHO, global excess mortality estimates.

The pandemic demonstrated that a threat too small to see with the naked eye could interrupt the activities of entire societies. Borders closed, businesses stopped operating, schools changed how they taught, and governments struggled to protect populations.

It also revealed something else: human beings are interconnected. A disease emerging in one part of the world can eventually affect people thousands of kilometres away.

Can we say that sickness has killed more people than war? Without a carefully defined period and comparable historical data, such a claim would be difficult to establish. But we do not need to prove that one is deadlier than the other to recognise the immense suffering caused by disease.

My deeper concern is that sickness will remain a challenge for as long as human beings are vulnerable to biological processes, even as medicine continues to advance.

We can reduce risks, prevent many diseases, develop better treatments, and improve the quality of life of those who are ill. But we cannot promise that every person will remain healthy throughout their life.

Perhaps that is why good health is so easily underestimated when we possess it. We often recognise its value most clearly when we begin to lose it.

A healthy body is not a guarantee of happiness, but the loss of health can reveal how many ordinary freedoms we had taken for granted.

The lesson should not be to fear sickness so much that we stop living. It should be to value health, invest in accessible healthcare, care for those who suffer, and remember that a person's worth is never measured by the condition of their body.

4. Dependence: When the Person You Need Becomes the Person Who Controls You

Dependence is perhaps the most complicated of these four conditions because it is not always an enemy.

From the moment we are born, we depend on others. A child depends on parents or caregivers for food, protection, affection, and guidance. Adults depend on farmers, transport workers, teachers, healthcare professionals, energy providers, water systems, and countless other people whose contributions make everyday life possible.

No individual, however intelligent or wealthy, can independently produce everything required for a modern life.

In this sense, dependence is not a weakness. It is part of the human condition, and it can be a source of cooperation, solidarity, and progress.

The problem begins when dependence becomes a tool for domination.

Imagine a family that relies on a single employer for income, housing, and access to essential services. If that employer threatens to withdraw everything whenever the family questions an unfair decision, the relationship is no longer merely one of economic cooperation. The family's vulnerability has become a source of power for someone else.

Consider a country that depends heavily on a single foreign supplier for essential medicines, energy, food, or strategic infrastructure. If that supplier deliberately uses the relationship to demand political concessions or impose conditions that undermine the country's legitimate freedom to decide its own future, dependence can become a geopolitical weapon.

The same pattern can occur in personal relationships.

A person may depend financially on a partner who uses money to restrict their movements, isolate them from family, or force them to accept mistreatment. Another person may remain in an exploitative job because losing the salary would mean losing the ability to feed their children.

In such situations, the central problem is not simply needing someone. It is having so few alternatives that another person's decisions determine the boundaries of your life.

Dependence becomes dangerous when the power to provide what we need becomes the power to control what we do.

This raises an important distinction between dependence and interdependence.

Dependence can mean relying on another person or institution without having sufficient alternatives. Interdependence means that people or institutions rely on one another within relationships that ideally involve mutual responsibility, fair agreements, and respect.

A healthy society does not attempt to eliminate every form of dependence. Instead, it builds relationships and systems in which people can rely on one another without surrendering their dignity.

There is also a psychological dimension to this problem.

When people feel that their survival depends entirely on another person's approval, they may live with persistent anxiety. They may fear disagreement, avoid asking questions, conceal their genuine opinions, or tolerate behaviour they would otherwise reject.

Over time, the fear of losing support can weaken confidence and make independent decision-making more difficult.

However, we must not confuse dependence with laziness. Someone who is unemployed, disabled, elderly, ill, or experiencing hardship may need support through no fault of their own. Receiving assistance is not evidence of a defective character. Indeed, a society that refuses to support vulnerable people in the name of independence may become cruel rather than strong.

Nor is dependence necessarily the cause of mental health difficulties. Its effects depend on the circumstances, the person's resources, the quality of the relationship, and the degree of choice they possess.

The practical challenge is therefore to reduce unnecessary vulnerability without pretending that human beings can live entirely independently.

For individuals, this may mean acquiring useful skills, building financial resilience where possible, developing supportive relationships, and seeking access to information and opportunities that widen their choices.

For governments, it may mean strengthening institutions, diversifying essential supplies, investing in local capabilities, and ensuring that citizens can access basic services without being subjected to arbitrary control.

For employers and businesses, it means recognising that economic power creates responsibilities. A contract should not become a licence to exploit a person's lack of alternatives.

For families, it means offering support without using that support to demand obedience in matters where another person's dignity and freedom should be respected.

True strength, then, is not the ability to need nobody. It is the ability to participate in relationships of mutual support without being held hostage by them.

Perhaps the greatest form of freedom is not complete independence, which may be impossible, but having enough security, choice, and dignity to say no when saying no is necessary.

Final Reflection:  

Our Unnecessary Neighbors: Enemies We Must Resist, Lessons We Must Learn

After reflecting on these four conditions, I find myself confronting a difficult conclusion: war, poverty, sickness, and dependence may never disappear entirely from human existence.

As long as human beings possess competing interests, conflict will remain possible. As long as resources, opportunities, and institutions are imperfectly distributed, poverty will remain a risk. As long as biological life continues, sickness will remain a possibility. And as long as human beings live together, we will depend on one another.

But there is an important difference between acknowledging that these conditions may persist and accepting every form they take.

We cannot guarantee a world without illness, but we can prevent diseases, expand access to healthcare, and relieve suffering.

We may never eliminate every disagreement between nations, but we can strengthen diplomacy, justice, accountability, and peaceful conflict resolution.

We may never ensure identical economic outcomes for everyone, but we can reduce extreme poverty and make opportunities more accessible.

We may never become completely independent, but we can build relationships and institutions that make dependence safer, fairer, and less vulnerable to exploitation.

In other words, the fact that an enemy may never be completely defeated does not mean that we should stop resisting it.

These four conditions are, in a sense, our unnecessary neighbours. They accompany human history, enter our lives without always being invited, and remind us that existence is less secure than we sometimes imagine.

Yet I also wonder whether they can teach us something.

War teaches us, through its terrible consequences, the value of peace. Poverty reveals the importance of dignity, opportunity, generosity, and justice. Sickness reminds us to appreciate our health and to care for those whose bodies are failing them. Dependence reveals the importance of freedom, self-respect, mutual responsibility, and relationships built on trust rather than control.

I do not mean that we should romanticise suffering. War does not need to happen for us to learn peace. People do not need to experience poverty to become generous. Illness is not a prerequisite for gratitude, and exploitation is not necessary for us to understand freedom.

We should never deliberately preserve suffering because we believe it might make people wiser.

Rather, when these hardships enter human life, we have a responsibility to learn from them without forgetting our responsibility to prevent avoidable harm.

Perhaps their greatest lesson is humility.

War reminds us that power does not make us invulnerable. Poverty reminds us that wealth does not determine human worth. Sickness reminds us that scientific and economic achievements cannot give us complete control over life. Dependence reminds us that no person, institution, or nation exists entirely outside the support of others.

We are not as powerful as we sometimes believe, and we are not as independent as we often pretend.

Our lives are connected in ways that extend beyond our immediate families, communities, and countries. The security of one society can be affected by the instability of another. The health of one population can influence the health of others. Economic decisions can create opportunities for some while imposing hardships on others.

Recognising these connections should not make us helpless. It should make us more responsible.

If we understand that human dignity is fragile, we should defend it. If we understand that suffering can be shared, we should reduce it. If we understand that our freedom depends partly on the freedom of others, we should be careful not to build our comfort upon their humiliation.

And if we recognise that life has limits, we should become more thoughtful about how we use the time and opportunities available to us.

What Matters Most?

When I step back and consider these four hells, I am left with a final question: what should humanity value most?

Is it military superiority, the accumulation of wealth, the pursuit of perfect health, or the dream of complete independence?

Each of these pursuits may contain legitimate aspirations. Nations need security. People need resources. Health matters. Freedom is essential.

But none of these things, pursued in isolation from our humanity, can guarantee a meaningful life.

A powerful nation can be consumed by war. A wealthy person can be imprisoned by illness. A society can grow economically while leaving vulnerable people behind. An individual can become so determined to depend on nobody that they lose the relationships that make life meaningful.

Perhaps what matters most is not the absence of every difficulty, but the way we choose to live with one another in a world where difficulties cannot always be avoided.

We need peace not merely because war destroys property, but because human life is more valuable than the ambitions that lead us to destroy it.

We need to fight poverty not merely because it slows economic growth, but because every person deserves the opportunity to live with dignity.

We need to improve healthcare not merely because healthy people are more productive, but because human beings deserve care when they suffer.

We need to protect freedom not because dependence is inherently shameful, but because no person should be forced to surrender their dignity in exchange for the necessities of life.

Above all, we need to cultivate love, tolerance, coexistence, and unity. These are not sentimental alternatives to practical action. They are principles that should guide how we build institutions, distribute opportunities, resolve disagreements, and treat people whose circumstances differ from our own.

The world does not need us to pretend that we can eliminate every hardship. It needs us to stop creating unnecessary suffering and to respond to unavoidable suffering with compassion, intelligence, and solidarity.

Perhaps one day, future generations will look back at our time and ask why humanity spent so much energy preparing to fight one another while so many people lacked the means to live with dignity.

Perhaps they will wonder why poverty was tolerated in a world capable of producing so much wealth, why people were denied care when medical knowledge could help them, and why human relationships were sometimes turned into instruments of control.

What answers will we give them?

I do not have all the answers. But I believe we must begin by asking better questions, challenging the assumptions we inherit, and recognising the human consequences of our choices.

We may not be able to remove every hell from the earth. But we can refuse to build more of them.

And perhaps that is where wisdom begins: not in the illusion that we can control everything, but in the determination to use the freedom and power we possess to make life more humane for others.

If war, poverty, sickness, and dependence remind us that human existence is fragile, let us ensure that they also remind us why peace, dignity, compassion, freedom, and unity are worth defending.

After all, we share this earth for a limited time. We do not choose every circumstance that awaits us, but we have a responsibility for the world we create for one another.

That responsibility, I believe, matters more than our desire to dominate, possess, or stand above others.

— Marc Ndacyayisaba | Marc Reflects