Responsibility

Satan thinks nihilism is a Christian artifact

Posted on by A lesser demon

Many established truths and commons have been trampled by the herd over the last century. Gays are now to be considered genuine males, women are not the property of their rightful owners, slaves are believed to equal their masters, no race is intrinsically noble and predisposed for glory, no nation is pure, natural justice is replaced by compassion for the wrongdoers, and that which should naturally fall is scaffolded and fortified. The world is, perhaps, going to Hell—not that Satan complains.

Verging on this descent into the Apocalypse, Satan thinks it is reassuring to find that some people, especially His own church, the very Church of Satan, upholds the virtues of old: because man is but an animal, Nature red in tooth and claw should govern human actions, as it is the Law; and strength is acquired through the joy of indulgences. For political reasons of self-preservation, The Church of Satan publicly presents itself as a dark fun-house of mere theatrics, but within its own scripture and communiquées—which the public overlooks as the very image of His Infernal Majesty deflects their eyes—the truth is all but laid bare. Certain historically indicative, familiar phrases are omitted, but the dog whistles shrill so loud that even the deafest right-wing extremist recognizes his kin. Terms such as “social Darwinism” are used scantly and just often enough to settle what “Lex Talionis,” the Law of the Jungle, means. If one dares, cares, or bothers to read the canonical scriptures of The Church of Satan, its vision is a race of master individuals, an alien élite, genetically bred and cultivated through the standard of the strong.

The first book of Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible are excerpts (or rather a plagiarism) of Ragnar Redbeard’s Might Is Right, which advocates such a view, including the above sentiments. Reducing every social phenomenon to simple power-relations, it is Redbeard’s synthesis of his personal racism and misogyny with the pseudo-science of social Darwinism and the philosophical rhetoric of Stirner’s anarchist individualism and Nietzsche’s focus on power. It is an outstandingly execrable combination of a comprehensively and thoroughly disproven body of thought. After a century of exhaustive debunking, only neo-fascists still believe that social Darwinism is scientific. Even if there were a grain of truth to be found, even for non-human animals, in these long outdated, pseudo-scientific conjectures, it is a Naturalistic Fallacy to derive a should from an is, concluding that humans ought to live accordingly. That is: social Darwinism is, both biologically and philosophically, objectively and demonstrably wrong. (His Maliciousness did not say it, but it bears mention that it is a remarkably rare and unenviable feat to be objectively wrong in philosophical matters.)

Satan is impressed that, faced with this scientific verdict on one of the most meticulously and extensively analyzed fields of science in human history, even today His church and its high priest, Peter Gilmore, manage to maintain and promote the sophomoric understanding of philosophy and the nature of human life required to enable them to endorse Might Is Right and regard it as accurate and enlightening. Such a display of self-deceit and stupidity is, in its own right, fascinating.

However, this is not intended as a venture into the many obscure interests of the Devil. The Prince of Insufficient Lighting has always been lured towards human depravity, the mental dysfunctions of crypto-fascists included. Satan’s message concerns the fact that His church believes in The Law of the Jungle despite its unmitigated rejection by every scientist, social theorist, and philosopher alive, not to forget quite a selection of many already dead.

The Church of Satan informs outsiders that the first book of The Satanic Bible is tongue-in-cheek, intended to rile up the reader or scare off those who would not benefit from the book. However, portions of Might Is Right find their way into the argumentative chapters of The Satanic Bible, and the remainder of the work is pervasive in LaVey’s subsequent writings. It is far more (if not nearly exclusively) foundational to LaVey’s Satanism than The Satanic Bible indicates.

The Law of the Jungle is an escalation of the law of retaliation, or retributive justice, that we know from the ancient Hammurabi code of “an eye for an eye” into Drako’s eponymously named punishment system fused with vigilante dispositions. (Satan, always ahead, prefers preemptive retaliation.) LaVey explained that for all its brutality, such a system would ensure a stable society, because the fear of retribution would cause people to think twice. “Responsibility to the responsible,” as the sixth Satanic Statement goes, hand in hand with the fifth Statement on vengeance, would subject them to the consequences of their actions, such as having their arm ripped from its socket for vandalizing a prized garden plant. The demand for The Law of the Jungle is established in The Church of Satan’s “pentagonal revisionism” program as an essential pillar of a Satanic society. It is both a legal and a moral code.

Satan thinks this should raise many an eyebrow, because it is the exact caution that Christian thinkers (a term that Satan applies very loosely to such people) have raised for centuries: that without faith in God, nothing prevents mankind from descending into the lawlessness of, yes, the Law of the Jungle. Without God and particularly the prospect of burning in Hell, humans would have no morals, they claim. Rational atheists have long argued, however, with plenty of supporting evidence, that morals are not contingent on a belief in deities. Moral behavior is innate to both humans and many non-human animals and arises naturally as a result of mutual self-interest.

This view is rejected by The Church of Satan, which assumes the Christian paradigm. The Law of the Jungle—the post-apocalyptic dystopia that Christians fear—is exactly what Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan expect as the natural alternative to Christianity. To Christians, human morals are motivated by a fear of punishment in Hell. To Satanists in The Church of Satan, human morals are enforced by fear of punishment here and now. To atheists, morals are a human trait that develops naturally to the benefit of mankind with no need for gods. Satan leaves it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these three groups are the most similar.

The moral nihilism shared by Christians and The Church of Satan that denies an objective basis for morality has been a recurring philosophical theme in the Western World. Darwinism (genuine, not social) has received much of the blame for its death blow to the anthropocentric worldview, and materialism has been blamed for its lowered valuation of the soul, but Satan thinks there is a broader reason.

Christianity has contaminated virtually every aspect of Western culture, with centuries of metaphysical, eschatological, and existential expectations regarding the nature of the world. The strong anthropocentrism of classic Christianity and its belief that Nature is subservient to humanity, that morality is provided by the will of their god, that life has meaning because of God, and that humans have souls that will live in an afterlife, have brought comfort as meaning, purpose, and order seemed guaranteed. However, scientific advances have continually challenged such superstition, and the explanatory power of the naturalistic, scientific worldview is ever-increasing. For anyone to whom the Christian vision is persuasive, while the sciences and other enlightened insights tear at its fabric with nothing to replace it, a gaping void appears. (Not surprisingly, moral nihilism is less pronounced in non-Western cultures.) It is not science, Darwinism, materialism, or secularism that are to blame for this nihilism but the unrealistic Christian expectation that contradicting views must match its level of impossible certainty. A loss is felt only because Christianity is so deeply entrenched in all levels of society.

Modern secular atheists deny any supernatural beliefs and defend a naturalistic explanation of the world, but they generally acknowledge that morality is an inherent human attribute as a phenomenon that arises from social interactions, reason, and human interdependency, slowly evolving and converging towards a stable yet not absolute social code that is far removed from even hyperbolical standards of the strong. But even without laboriously deriving such an understanding of the nature of morality, to a person who was born and raised as an atheist, or merely avoided Christian cultivation to a modest degree, the perceived result of the loss of God, and the need to find meaning and purpose for oneself, does not invoke the specter of moral nihilism. It does not imply a crude every-critter-for-itself elimination of morality until only aggression, fang, and talon remain to define the Law and only the strong can prevail. The human animal is biologically wired against the Law of the Jungle. Any fear of this dismal environment is an unrealistic, religious nightmare, and any desire for it is a spiritual, Christian pipe-dream.

Only deep-seated Christianity can evoke this fear and, in its ultimate case, create the defeatist illusion that it is an alluring alternative. It is the worst-case outcome in the Christian mind and embracing it reveals a profound ensnarement in the traditional Christian mental framework. Satan thinks that the Satan-figure employed by Satanists who believe and perpetuate the view that Satanic morals are those of the Jungle is the good old Christian Devil, which remains considerably more real and present in their minds than they will ever understand. With one exception, they are the very kind of Christians who feel no natural inclination towards moral behavior on their own and only behave socially tolerable because they fear the repercussions, and who recognize in themselves harmful, anti-social impulses that, fortunately, they understand must be curbed albeit not why. They deviate from these Christians only in their psychopathic wish to act out their destructiveness. Ironically, it is not external Christianity that restrains their impulses but their inner Christian angst that generates their wish for the Law of the Jungle.

Satan thinks these advocates of the rule of fang and claw should be cast to the lions: the only proper way to deal with Christians.

Satan thinks all members are representative

Posted on by A lesser demon

Usually when people complain about impolite, arrogant, hateful, aggressive, intolerant, stupid, or generally all of the above behavior at the same time from members of The Church of Satan, they receive a well rehearsed answer: these members do not represent The Church of Satan but speak for themselves. The only people who may speak for the organization are people above a certain clerical rank or people with special permission. Poorly behaving members are therefore not to be considered representative of the organization.

Intelligent people understand that those are not identical forms of representation, but social stratification mostly spares them from the company of said members. Less enlightened people are prone to believing The Church of Satan’s excuse. Appointed spokespersons, by rank or by selection, act as formal representatives who speak with organizational authority on policies, ideology, and decisions, and only when they explicitly say so. The rest, who are lay members, speak for themselves only. So far, so good—except that lay members and the clergy alike represent their organization by example. They demonstrate what is considered acceptable or expected behavior internally and towards others, and this is why many organizations (including The Church of Satan) occasionally find it necessary to expel a member.

Lay members or low-ranking members of The Church of Satan thus do represent their organization. It is easy to think that by neglecting to address their behavior, excusing their behavior as not formally required, or formally condoned, The Church of Satan ignores that Satan represents responsibility to the responsible. However, Satan thinks His church is only too happy to have a portion of its membership display such primitive hostility as sometimes makes others complain. Examples exist of the ruling body of The Church of Satan asking its members to antagonize selected people or groups that the organization considers inconvenient, and praising members for having taken such initiaves on their own.

The behavior is not openly condoned, but it is appreciated and encouraged behind the scenes. The Church of Satan is satisfied to see its members attack others in an attempt to enforce herd conformity, and members soon learn that such behavior earns them brownie points among their peers. If the organization had preferred that their members conduct themselves properly, it would be simple to issue a policy and have formal representatives of the clergy remind lower-ranking members to behave themselves. As long as The Church of Satan encourages, requests, and even coordinates hostility, the resulting bad behavior is representative of The Church of Satan.

Satan thinks everyone should smarten up and know that it is Church of Satan policy to stimulate such behavior, and that members with excessively hostile attitudes are therefore truly representative of The Church of Satan.

Satan thinks fish stickers are warning labels

Posted on by A lesser demon

Anton LaVey once defined Satan as a great car, among other things of pleasure and materialism. While His Satanic Excellency prefers to think of Himself as more sophisticated than the items on LaVey’s list, it is true that Satan delights in driving a quality automobile.

The Devil is no speed demon, as some may have inaccurately believed, and is drawn towards cars that radiate business in the professional sense rather than sports cars or flashy cars. His Infernal Majesty is usually found behind the wheel of a Lexus or a Mercedes Benz as is appropriate for a gentleman of His age group.

It is during His frequent business trips from Hell and back that Satan has observed a peculiar phenomenon among human drivers: whenever a car has a “fish” sticker on it (a symbol used by Christians), its owner’s driving skills are below par, and Satan has learned to maintain an additional safety distance to any car that is decorated with this emblem. The unpredictability of vehicle fatalities became lamentably clear when His Wickedness arranged for a car accident only to decapitate the wrong victim in the Jayne Mansfield incident, for example. The last thing The Fallen Angel wishes is again to be cast from His seat, this time not by the “Almighty” himself but through the recklessness of one his disciples driving a Toyota Corolla.

Satan first hypothesized that the fish sticker was meant to warn that something fishy is ahead because a Christian should never be trusted, but soon dismissed the idea. Christians never warn against their ill intentions but instead cloak them with words of “neighborly love” intended to lure unsuspecting prey into their mental and often financial traps.

The Devil currently favors two hypotheses that may both be true.

The first one is that people who slap herring badges onto their automobiles presumably disagree with the Satanic tenet of vital existence where one keeps focus on the road—both in the figurative sense of doing what is best for oneself and in an acutely literal sense in traffic. Satan thinks these people drive as if their minds are elsewhere. They may be preoccupied with guilt, planning their next move towards salvation, desiring some male love of Jesus, or whatever Christians have on their minds; whichever it is, it seems to inhibit their attention towards other road users.

The second hypothesis might sound a little Freudian but Satan is not yet posed to dismiss it: any religion that upholds that death yields gratification, vindication, or happiness, or in any other sense advocates the just-world belief that suffering will eventually be compensated with corresponding comfort, is a death cult. Satan thinks that maybe drivers who flaunt their death wish cult membership may subconsciously be driven (or driving) toward death, thus leading to more accident-prone behavior.

And so Satan thinks you should not only drive carefully and wear your seatbelts, as is always advised, but also beware of drivers whose vehicles display fish stickers and often a few dents to boot.

Satan thinks Easter is a display of schadenfreude and irresponsibility

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan thinks that the celebration of Easter has one significant redeeming quality in spite of being a dedication to His mortal foe: by irrationally making its celebration date dependent on the Vernal Equinox and the lunar phase, it became necessary to devise a system for predicting the date so that normally functioning people could make plans. Hence, this most important computation of the age motivated significant advances in mathematics.

As any Christian who paid minimal attention to their mythology should be capable of informing you, Easter is the celebration that Jesus took upon him all the sins of Mankind and was executed to henceforth absolve all his future followers of their sins. Granted, one would think that Jesus would also have absolved his contemporary followers of their sins now he was at it, but historically speaking, these followers appear to have been a small Jewish cult who regarded themselves as the only true Jews and considered Jesus to be their king who would become the ruler of Judea within their lifetime. Presumably they received a quite different message when they saw their “king” nailed to a post like any other local nationalist who opposed the Roman regime. Satan personally has no problem with the death of Jesus, and would gladly have pushed him into the harbor and made it look like an accident. As far as Old Nick is concerned, Good Friday was the best.

By the Old Testament and its accompanying scripture, which was the Law, “sin” meant crime, and to be absolved of sin was to be pardoned of crime. Christians even today consider themselves to be sinners and thus “criminals” if not in a modern, legal sense then in the eyes of their god. So they consider themselves criminals, and what is Easter to them? It is a ceremony where, without a trace of guilt or regret, they pin their own crimes on Jesus and celebrate that he was tortured to death for them, rejoicing that they evaded judgment, penance, and repair for their wrongdoings.

The Devil is no stranger to backstabbing, arrangement of judicial murder, and passing of blame, and has no warm feelings for Jesus, but is nonetheless alarmed at this display of self-righteousness and disregard of responsibility that the Christian Easter festival represents. Satan can barely think of anything as irresponsible and filled with schadenfreude as the Christian celebration of Easter, and He thinks it speaks volumes about the character of Christian people.

Satan thinks that gun control is a good idea

Posted on by A lesser demon

His Infernal Majesty prefers to think of his followers as responsible people who should accordingly be granted an appropriate level of responsibility. People have the right to defend themselves against assaults on themselves, their property, or their loved ones, and the Devil fondly considers his followers to be particularly deserving of both their right to exercise it and to retaliate preemptively if need be. As such, He favors their right to own and use any array of their weapons of choice.

This leads our Dark Lord to favor a relaxation of the control of deadly weapons to the point of allowing unlicensed personal ownership of weapons of mass destruction, including a wide variety of warfare material banned by the Geneva Conventions, for His devoted followers. After all, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, and His followers being just that will know when and how to employ their arsenals, and when to (seemingly!) turn the other cheek.

The Prince of Darkness recognizes that the world is packed with people who wouldn’t exhibit the slightest sense of accountability even at gunpoint, however, and concedes that he is literally outgunned by hordes of immensely irresponsible individuals. He understands that guns should be kept out of the hands of the vast majority of irresponsible humans who incidentally, or perhaps only too predictably, are also mostly followers of His mortal foe. The Devil thinks that until His followers comprise a sweeping majority of the population, ownership of weapons should be strictly restricted and carefully controlled, and the herd should be subjected to control above trust, and razzia above control.

Satan is worried that some of His followers might be projecting their reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto people far less attuned than themselves—especially because those of His followers that oppose gun control match the demography of the aforementioned religious followers of His foe almost to a tee.