Self-deceit

Satan thinks nobody says it like it is

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Lord of Lies appreciates honest communication but finds that whenever someone “says it like it is,” it is never like that.

People who “say it like it is” use simple words that are each readily understood, but the statements in which the words are used carry little or no meaning on their own. Often they are unclear, ambiguous, or incoherent and riddled with non sequiturs and random thought-associations, and make no sense to an educated or intelligent person, who attempts to analyze and understand the statements. Such statements make sense only if the audience fills in the blanks and finishes the sentences as the statements trail off with no ending.

Less gifted people overlook the inherent inconsistencies and missing internal logic, however. They are provided with fuzzy implications and hazy connotations only and then reach their own conclusions—believing it was the speaker who offered them this conclusion, too. If they are assured that “you know who I’m talking about,” they imagine the speaker describes whoever they think it is, and if the speaker knowingly assures them that he offers a solution without mentioning which one, they each believe that the speaker is talking about the solution they are thinking of.  They introduce their own bias into the incomplete statements believing it to stem from the speaker.

By thus leaving it to the audience to fill in the blanks with their own ideas, explanations, and desired solutions, the audience is bound to agree with the speaker because they are their own ideas. From an analytical point of view the speaker said nothing at all, but it sounds as if the speaker “says it like it is” because all they hear is their own voice.

Everyone is prone to such confirmation bias, especially if feelings are involved, as is usually the case when someone delights in hearing something being “said like it is.” Feelings are the language of the “primitive” part of the human brain which is concerned mostly with survival. It thinks fast but is careless and error-prone, as opposed to the later evolutionary layer of the brain which adds rational thinking and the capability of weighing pros versus cons and outlining plans, at the expense of speed. All other things being equal, the capacity of afterthought and critical thinking enabled by intelligence and education helps reduce the tendency to add confirmation bias; or as Satan prefers to phrase it: confirmation bias is wholesale among stupid people.

All of the above is true for written documents, too. No book is known with certainty to provide sufficient information, and no text is exempt from interpretation. All communication, written or otherwise, is a two-way street. There is no book that “says it like it is” or provides “bedrock” that is not subject to the reader’s adding his or her bias wherever the reader fails to understand the author’s intent, regardless of cause or blame. Satan wishes to skip any detailed examples, however, because He feels at risk of insinuating that His followers are stupid for believing that, say, The Satanic Bible clearly outlines “it” in a way that anyone should be able to understand, or that His followers in His temple are stupid for believing that seven vague tenets suffice.

At the end of the day, the Devil knows that whenever you think that someone “says it like it is,” it is just you who are being stupid.

Satan thinks vegans have a point

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan agrees with vegans and vegetarians on one of their chief arguments: it is less expensive—both financially and ecologically—to live on plant matter than on meat, even if accounting for the required haulage of seasonal products that were generally unavailable a century ago in order to satisfy the nutritional needs of a human being. The Devil does not wish to discuss obviously untenable or plainly stupid arguments; for example, there is no reason to debate that Man is biologically an omnivore not a herbivore.

Yet agreement is one thing, caring is another. The latter turns the ecological fact into a moral question, and the Devil asks His followers a few rhetorical questions: are humans unconcerned about the future for vast population groups including their own? Are humans willing to live on a polluted planet, and can they look themselves in the eyes knowing they leave an exhausted Earth to their offspring? Do humans believe that a reduced production of meat should be permitted? The vegan answer is no, and disagreement with them is impossible without either being ignorant or feeling guilty. (The latter option being reserved for humans, of course, as Satan has no idea what it means.)

But, acknowledging the validity of one moral argument is a slippery slope, and allows the vegans to present another moral argument, which is perhaps their primary argument: how can humans, living and feeling beings, justify killing and devouring other living and feeling beings? Why do humans find it dandy to eat cows but not each other?

Meat eaters sometimes argue that other carnivores and omnivores usually have preferences, too, and usually do not eat their own species; however, this does not necessarily apply to humans, who might be one of several exceptions. Humans have eaten only certain species for as long as we can remember but that is a naturalistic argument, and vegans are correct when they state that humans have the capacity to make a choice, as humans have done in other areas of their biological history; for example, when they take medicine.

Humans who eat the flesh of other beings genuinely have some explaining to do: they do not have to kill animals for food. They choose to do it, and it changes nothing trying to justify the killings by peeping that the animals maybe individually and most likely as a species would meet their destiny more brutally in the fierce struggle for survival in Nature. At best, humans can patch their guilty conscience by killing their prey “humanely” (which Satan thinks sounds a little disturbing, because it reveals human standards for killing each other in cold blood), and thus flaunt your hypocrisy by wanting the dead animals on the one hand but feeling uncomfortable killing them on the other. Vegans see through this hypocrisy and stress that humans do not escape their choice by pretending to be friendly executioners.

Killing animals for food is perfectly legal, and like the ecological view it is a moral choice. It is unnecessary; it is impossible to pretend otherwise. Satan thinks it would behoove His meat-eating followers to admit that they kill intentionally and harm the planet merely to satisfy their own culinary pleasure. Satan does not personally care what humans eat, however. He is the Devourer of Souls and would never lower Himself to consuming the improper foods of humans.

Satan thinks that by their sins shall ye know them

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master strongly urges His followers to disbelieve any claim that any god makes about itself, its religion, or its followers. And while He is at it, He also urges His followers to disbelieve any claims the gods make about each other, their religions, or their followers. They all take credit for human behavior that would otherwise have wiped the species from the face of the planet had not humans figured it out entirely on their own already, and they all blame each other—but more often my Master—when their ill-wrought plans invariably go haywire.

There is one exception to the above: the gods make the religious equivalent to a Freudian slip when, observing their followers, they declare certain types of human conduct to be sins and respond with ordinances and statutes intended to prevent their followers from committing them.

Sins are the dirty laundry aired in full view. Unlike other religious gobbledygook the sins were not invented; no, says the Devil, what became sin is what the followers actually did to an excessive degree. Sins are the warning label that Satan thinks His own followers be wise to read and remember when they encounter a follower of his enemies’. If it is a Buddhism sin to possess an ego, expect your average Buddhist to be egoistic above average. If Christianity views adultery as a sin, keep an eye on your daughter if she mingles with conscientious Christians. If Allah forbids his Muslim followers to feel pride, know that a Muslim will respond especially hostilely when insulted. Jehova identified an impressive array of punishable mistakes made by his desert people that makes one realize that their managing to feed and to procreate without genetic starvation must have involved the help of friendly neighboring tribes. Satan has no specific recommendations regarding the Jews, who realize that faced with such a wealth of options for sinning, sinning is an inevitable part of life and thus the Jews seem less prone to being subconsciously obsessed with actually trying.

Religions evolve along with Society, though, and Satan cautions that millennia-old sins should be taken with a grain of salt and be trusted somewhat losely. The Devil thinks that His followers should grant the followers of old religions some benefit of doubt if they seem moderate in their beliefs. Conversely, the lists of sins of younger religions are perfectly up to date. If the Devil heard of a religion established within the last century or two which had identified traits such as stupidity, counter-productive pride, self-deceit, etc. as its sins, He might like the religion but would conclude that its followers were mostly a sorry bunch of self-inflated, juvenile know-nothings.

Satan thinks His followers should boast some more

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan does not recall demanding the same display of humility from His followers that His opposing gods invariably seem to require of theirs, even if the latter generally ignore the requirement and consider themselves intrinsically superior simply because their gods are better.

My master of all things evil is many things but unfortunately is not omnipresent and must instead rely on reports from His lesser demons and followers. We are, regrettably, not being driven to overwork ourselves informing our infernal master of the excellence of His followers, and He is quite surprised at the low level of bragging he receives from them, too. He would have imagined His alien elite to both stand out from the herd and to loudly flaunt their accomplishments or skills, but rarely sees or hears mention of neither.

The Devil acknowledges that human beings usually repond with humility in recognition of the vast pool of knowledge yet to be gained and mastered once undefiled knowledge has been inflicted upon them, thus transferring them outside the criteria of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but their attendance in His churches and temples nonetheless strikes Him as staggeringly low. All He hears is the fanfaronade of shock value focusing amateur musicians, would-be artists, want-to-be photographers, and won’t-be authors, and perhaps a few nondescript web designers who use their self-taught HTML hacking skills to provide yet another web page telling the “truth” about Satanism as a subconscious approach to developing their own understanding of the subject. The Devil appreciates such web sites, of course, but has stopped reading them as they all seem curiously alike to Him, as if no new thoughts have been manufactured for decades.

Our Dark Majesty cannot help but suspect that perhaps the routinization of the charisma of His denizen Anton LaVey, who had no education, plays a role in this. LaVey’s claim to authority, which consequently became his organization’s claim to authority, was his—in part fabricated, but our King of Lies would never hold that against him—life of carnival performance, thus making feats of entertainment rather than mental agility or academic performance their measure of demonic worth.

Never accepting defeat even if cast into the deepest of pits, the Devil believes, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that a good deal of His followers are found in the fields vital to the construction of artificial human companions, both directly in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and mathematics, and somewhat indirectly in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology. These fields have more exact definitions and requirements to quality than the aforementioned arts (a term which Satan uses somewhat benignly about His followers’ works) and deal particularly harshly with empty posturing, so Satan has no doubt that their enthusiastic announcements be somewhat curbed. His Unholiness would, however, be very pleased to find an occasional scholar or highly intelligent individual among His followers and asks them to please brag a little and mention His name as a token of respect.