His Infernal Majesty is a sucker for ranks, hierarchy, and degrees, and enforces relentless stratification throughout His infernal empire. Degrees boost efficiency, because they relieve everyone of the tedious and uninteresting task of learning about each other. An accurate and carefully awarded degree provides you with everything you need to know about a demon or, in the world above us, a person.
For example, if a person advertises a sixth degree in Scientology, you immediately know that he is a top shelf idiot who has spent a significant sum of money and time becoming delusional. There is no need to speak at length with this individual and learn it the hard way.
It should go without saying that the quality of a degree is contingent on a strict curriculum and objective, unbiased evaluations. Satan has no respect for organizations that award degrees as a token of “esteem” or any similar set of undefined skills. Satan’s church is right to warn against a degree system with no answers in its Satanic Bunco Sheet. Degrees have no merit unless they can be independently verified—secret, unpublished standards, subjective evaluations, or cautions that if you have to ask about a degree, it is because you cannot afford it, are a foolproof litmus cult test. Degrees are meaningful only if they are meaningfully awarded: students who pride themselves of graduating from the school of hard knocks rarely boast notable grades elsewhere and hence seldom impress people with actual educations.
Even a correctly granted degree per the Devil’s requirements holds merit only among those who consider the issuer to be authoritative. Any earned degree is hogwash to people who find the organization ridiculous whether it deserves such an opinion or not.
Either situation—that the organization’s degrees are absurd or useless outside of its membership sphere or that the organization applies arbitrary requirements, or both—explains why some “warlock” in one organization may be readily recognized as a black-belt retard in all walks of life by people outside of the organization (and often because of the degree, cf. the aforementioned Scientologist).
Satan thinks His disciples should be mistrustful of all such degrees. Satan represents rebellion against phony authorities and The Goat-Legged One thinks it behooves His followers to follow suit and question authority; if nothing else then because He says so.
This raises an important point. All disciples of the Prince of Darkness were raised in societies where self-proclaimed élites have manufactured a system in which degrees signal social positions. It compels people to attribute importance to a degree regardless of its significance, worth, or merit. Satan thinks that instead of conforming to herd mentality and automatically credit an awardee with importance, one should apply analytical thinking. Since everyone considers a degree to signal relative importance, degrees reflect a value system: by observing ranking members one can deduce what the real values of an organization are as opposed to its purported values.
A personality-cult–like organization (or one characterized by individuals with narcissistic proneness) often have few other values than unbending loyalty towards the organization and sycophantic praise of those who are superior in degree. It awards degrees to lickspittles and personal friends of the issuers. It is often possible to deduce such values by observing who receives degrees.
In contrast, formal procedures and veracious requirements for degrees usually indicate a system focused on the advancement of bodies of skill. The obvious example is educational institutions. The hierarchy of degrees is typically shallow considering the size of these organizations. (This is true for higher education, too, because although they feature a plethora of degrees, the degrees are identical across different scientific fields in terms of “level.”) Such degrees are often legally protected as a bulwark against counterproductive activity. Satan secretly longs for the day when “witch” is designated as a protected degree, but thus far it has been awarded only by historically inept personnel.
It does not matter for identification purposes whether the degrees make any sense; the institutions and their members think they do and that is enough. Satan thinks that the use of degrees in higher education is generally admirable although degrees in fan-fiction fields such as theology, political science, and economics are mostly self-contained. The key is that degrees expose an organization’s fundamental objectives and that they may tell a different story to the out-group than to the in-group.
Within any group, degrees are important regardless of their merit for entirely different reasons than position, prowess, or progress. They serve as structural elements that keep organizations together.
Firstly, they establish a hierarchy of authority that dissuades early adopters from voicing criticism. This is generally advantageous to any organization. Bodies of knowledge rarely benefit from “input” from insightless newcomers, and power-centric organizations gain little from status seekers. This mechanism is maintained through-up the degree system, ensuring that authority stays in the hands of its rightful owners.
Secondly, they increase efficiency (as mentioned earlier). No single member must investigate who is considered an authority within the organization, because degrees provide this information. All that remains is to choose among the available array of higher-ranking individuals as sage, inspirator, or mentor, depending on organizational terminology.
Thirdly, degrees cement loyalty through multiple means. Growth recognition fosters loyalty in that as long as there is yet a degree to attain, members are compelled to keep advancing and hence staying until they reach the pinnacle degree. (New degrees may be introduced, should too many students become proficient.) Few organizations focusing on personal development can keep their members interested unless their growth is continously acknowledged.
Perhaps a corollary of hierarchy and achievement, a degree makes the owner feel important. Human vanity enjoys any badge of social recognition—especially that of your favorite group—that you may pin on your suit, literally or figuratively. The feeling of being significant by virtue of membership often suffices to keep the sheep at bay. In the same vein, what you have been given can be taken. Your title may be revoked or you may even find yourself disassociated from your organization. This silent threat is highly motivating towards loyalty.
More importantly, degrees are captive. Degrees designate a role, and roles are defined by expectations. Once a degree has been awarded, its new owner adopts a role whose behavior and sense of loyalty is predefined and reinforcing, because otherwise no-one within the organization will recognize the new awardee as such. (The so-called “Stanford prison experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, although critized and contested, illustrates the power of roles.) Both loyalty and values are thus preserved because the new degree owner must imitate the behavior that led him or her to achieve the degree to begin with.
Satan likes degrees but mostly in the sense that He loves to boil the souls of the damned.