The Demon Haunted World

It’s been a long time.

I finally got the motivation and the time to write, and it’s good to be back.

As I have mentioned before, I was a materialist atheist and libertarian back in my early adulthood. Libertarianism seemed to be the ultimate rebellion against the PC-soaked, leftarded stuff that was gaining traction on university campuses in the early 2000s. I was one of those neo-con small government types (at some point pondering anarcho-capitalism) because it was very clear that the Marxists wearing Che shirts down at Degeneracy University were an enemy to humanity.

Why was Marxism so repellant to me? Well, I had grown up in the shadow of the Cold War. I was well informed of the horrors of the USSR while enjoying the halcyon years of 1990s America. Although we were “working class”, a comparison of our material prosperity versus theirs gave me the illusion that our system was Good, and that it ought to be defended. I ended up joining the Marine Corps and volunteering for the infantry. I was prepared to fight and die for this publicly stated reason.

But I think, deep down, my private reason was that my life felt quite worthless, and sacrificing it for someone else may give it purpose.

Regardless, seeing the horrors of war firsthand, and seeing the “crazed religiosity” of men who would strap bombs on themselves to commit murder drove me further into the “materialist, rationalist” camp. By the time I was out of the Corps I was your typical Reddit mid-wit. I started reading books like “The God Delusion” by Dawkins and pop-science articles. One of the books that was canon for the mid-wit materialist was “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan.

The book, subtitled “Science as a candle in the dark”, is Sagan’s testimony to the triumph of the scientific method and human rationality. Similar to Dawkins, he invites the reader to imagine someone claiming that an invisible dragon lives in his garage. (For Dawkins, this was an invisible teacup orbiting the Earth, or something). Sagan and Dawkins both argued that if the thing you’re claiming is unobservable to human senses, then it basically does not exist.

Made sense to me, right? If you can’t objectively claim something is true, then it’s obviously not worrying about.

Or is it?

This argument began to fall apart during some dark days of personal failure and a revelation on the absolutely hideous truths about world politics and culture. The events going on in the world made me open my eyes to the truth. It was a shedding of the veil. We were being fed lie after lie, and indoctrinated into some of the biggest lies of all: the rebranding of misdeeds, failures, selfishness and weakness as strength, virtue and compassion.

Despite my godless state, I still clung on to old-timey notions of virtue. I valued, (and still value) truth above all. It’s probably what drew me so closely to the sciences and rationality.

I valued courage and self-sufficiency and politeness and even chastity to a degree (Or at least, at the time, some restraint from utter depravity).

But what rationality couldn’t explain was evil. Evil is Sagan’s dragon. You can’t put your finger on it. You can’t quantify it. Hell, sometimes it’s hard to even define, but you know it’s there. Seeing these sins espoused as virtue was my first and biggest clue that evil exists.

The alternative was believing that these sins were virtues, and that was a bridge too far for me to cross. It seemed that as much as “modern philosophers” tried to deconstruct the nature of morality, they end up dismantling reality itself instead. In few places is this more apparent than with the gender ideology nonsense. In fact, it made me question whether or not dismantling reality itself was the goal. It made me question whether these were the actions of a people who hated the world, and hated mankind, and therefore hated God.

Yes, my first turn back to belief in a God was the evidence that His enemies hated Him. If He truly didn’t exist, why try to destroy Him and His creation? Similarly with Jesus Christ in particular. The zeitgeist in media didn’t seem to be not believing in Him, but actively degrading and mocking Him.

Even my lefty colleagues feel something is wrong. Other teachers at my school lament at the growing amount of students who are detached, aimless, selfish and vacant. I had almost let slip my power level a bit when I responded to one by saying “We’re facing decades of social rot. Are you not surprised?”

I stopped short of saying “And we perpetuate this in the nonsense that is in your curriculum”.

I had fostered some puppies last week. If you let puppies free-feed, they will eat so much that they’ll get bloat and die. I had to carefully regulate how much they ate at certain parts of the day. This is the behavior and instinct of a beast.

And that beast lives in man. It wants to feed, and to fuck, and to kill and to dominate. The beast will do this to its own destruction. The logical conclusion of materialism was that this is the fate of man. It is inherently misanthropic. It is why lefties speak of humans (other humans, not themselves of course! They are enlightened) as a plague upon the planet.

The logical endpoint of modern philosophy and psychology was that denying these impulses is akin to caging a lion at the zoo. Freud convinced people that caging the beast was the cause of their problems; that repression was the worst sin imaginable.

The “freedom” talked about during the Enlightenment was carried to its logical conclusion as well: You ought to be free to act like a beast. Like an animal.

Like a soulless being.

“Freedom” now means buttsex and Mukbang and endless profanity and mockery of the divine.

“Freedom” by today’s standards is slavery to the beast’s material desires.

Meanwhile the freedom to worship, or to own land, or to have children, or to form prosperous communities withered and died. Maybe not banned by law in all cases, but constrained and mocked and denigrated. It’s made as difficult as possible to raise children in a caring community free from the beast.

This is what we are fighting against. This is what I am rebelling against. This is what keeps me up at night. I do not believe that human beings are beasts. I do not believe we are a miraculous combination of proteins that occurred without a miracle. There is, undeniably, something else there that transcends crude matter.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

At least Star Wars got one thing right.

There is something that wants us to forget this. There is obviously a mechanism and a plan in place to get humans to forget their divine and transcendent nature.

The world is, unironically, haunted by Demons.

The Devil’s Advocate

My wife had suggested a show called Evil which started on CBS. It’s about a lapsed Catholic clinical psychologist who is recruited by a Catholic assessor to investigate miracles and demonic possessions. In the first few episodes, it seems to let science triumph (Oh that wasn’t demonic growling but a dishwasher valve!) while still hinting that the supernatural does exist.

It seemed cool, and surprising for something so recent to not go straight to the mocking of the Catholic faith, but of course as I continued watching I got a bad feeling in my stomach. The dialogue was banal as everything on CBS is and had all the charm of a CSI episode. Then it got to the point where atheist psychologist lady asks the black priest if he agrees with the Church’s treatment of homosexuals and abortion, which he of course disagrees with (he’s the “good guy” after all!) .

Throw in the Persian guys’ sister being a brilliant engineer and multiple episodes about white guilt (OMG the hospital gave CPR to this girl longer because she was white because of medical raycism!) and I was out.

But aside from being hammered by “The Message”, the worst part about the show (and most shows involving this kind of stuff) shows this cartoon version of God and the Enemy. The demons come as a guy in a black rubber suit who do patently evil stuff.

When I was younger, I was mystified by why anyone would side with the devil anyway. After all, he’s obviously evil right? In media, the demons are always scary looking, and will always tell you about their plans of human subjugation and torment. Who would want that?

But of course, consider the source. I firmly believe that this misrepresentation of God and the devils; this “Children’s cartoon” version of theology, was crafted either out of A: A misunderstanding of Milton and Dante’s allegory or B: A purposeful misunderstanding of Milton and Dante’s allegory.

Regardless, the show got me thinking about a much better piece of media that got this blend of allegory and symbolism correct. It’s good enough that I consider it a relative miracle that it was even funded, filmed and marketed given what Hollywood’s purpose is. I am speaking of course, about The Devil’s Advocate.

If you haven’t seen the film, then I suggest you watch it, or allow me to spoil it for you here.

It follows Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves), a Grisham-y small town lawyer from Gainesville, Florida. He catches the eye of big-city lawyer John Milton (played by Al Pacino. Also note that the film is not subtle with its symbolism!) who is impressed by his clever defense of a teacher* named Lloyd Gettys who is accused of molesting one of his students. He’s learned enough to know his client is guilty, but follows through and wins the case nonetheless. After all, that’s his job as a defense attorney right? (Ah there’s rationalization again).

Already, here, we see something unconventional: A suggestion that the “rule of law” is not necessarily a moral system.

(*I didn’t learn until later that in the novel, the teacher is a female as well as the victim. So of course they had to change the sex of the teacher in the film to avoid accusations of “homophobia”. Hollywood’s still gonna Hollywood I guess. )

He ends up getting recruited by Milton to work at his law firm in New York City. Lomax’s mom appears to be your stereotypical version of a southern Bible thumper. She warns him of succumbing to the glitz and glamour of big city life. She quotes Revelation 18:2 to him:

Alice Lomax:
Let me tell you about New York.

Kevin Lomax:
Let me guess.

Alice Lomax:
"Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great. It has become a dwelling place of demons." Revelation 18. Wouldn't hurt you to look it over.

Kevin Lomax:
Couldn't forget it if I tried.

Alice Lomax:
Oh, really? And what happened to Babylon?

In most media, Alice’s character would have been ridiculed. Or she would have been the villain, or she would have been humiliated somehow. She is the embodiment of the repressive cultural guilt that accompanies doing what feels good, so by modern standards, she is essentially the devil.

She’s been “indoctrinating” her “hateful ideology” into Kevin’s life since he was a child, and his poor soul is just yearning to be a free individual. He’s got to loose himself from her shackles and “go out and be the best version of himself”, right?

But the film doesn’t do this. In fact, it goes on to prove her completely correct. The Bible Thumper is absolutely and totally vindicated in this story. This is exceedingly rare in modern media.

Here’s a little snippet when Milton and Lomax talk about their business. Let’s consider this against the “love-bombing” that goes on in the gender cult, polyamory, “love is love”, “just be a nice person” crowd. The people who think “loving your children” means never disciplining them, but being “nice” to them.

John Milton: So... have we been treating you well?

Kevin Lomax: Very well, thank you.

John Milton: And your wife? She had a good time?

Kevin Lomax: She sure has, it's been great. The whole thing's been great.

John Milton: That's our secret. Kill you with kindness.

Lomax’s first case involves defending a voodoo priest is charged with violating health codes by ritualistically slaughtering a goat.

How racist and insensitive is that!? This poor black immigrant wants to worship as he pleases. How dare the system persecute him this way! And this is exactly how Lomax defends the case:

It's certainly not a religious practice performed by everyone, it's not as common as circumcision, it's not as common as the belief that wine transforms into blood, some people handle poisonous snakes to prove their faith, some people walk on fire. Phillipe Moyez killed a goat and he did it while observing his constitutionally protected beliefs. This case is not about keeping goats transporting goats or goat licensing, the city was clearly less concerned with the care of the animals than the manner in which they were slaughtered. The city timed this police action to catch my client exercising his constitutionally protected right to religious freedom.

Moyez uses a little of the ol’ black magic to silence the prosecutor during the trial. It works.

Lomax continues working as his wife, small-town girl Mary Ann, feels more and more abandoned. Lomax meets a gorgeous woman in the office that he continually fantasizes about while his wife is haunted by demonic visions and dreams.

This scene scared the shit out of me

He ignores her because he’s got a big case to win: a triple murder case in which the defendant is a billionaire real estate developer.

Trump Expy?

Milton suggests Lomax finds someone else to take the case due to his wife’s deteriorating mental health:

John Milton: It's your wife, man. She's sick, she needs you... she's got to come first. Ah, wait a minute, wait a minute. You mean the possibility of leaving this case has never even entered you mind?

Kevin Lomax: You know what scares me? I quit the case, she gets better... and I hate her for it. I don't want to resent her, John, I've got a winner here. I've got to nail this fucker down, do it fast, and put it behind me. Just get it done. Then - then. - put all my energy into her.

John Milton: I stand corrected.

He abandons his wife to defend this piece of shit who murdered his stepson, wife and maid and who is most likely sexually involved with his stepdaughter (as evidenced by the scene below where he sensually thumbs the small of her back). Lomax flashes back to the smirk the pedophile teacher gave him at the trial in Florida.

Yet he tells himself that this is his job. It’s his duty. He doesn’t lose. He’s going to win this one.

Milton visits Mary Ann in her loneliness. She invites him inside. This is a mistake.

Lomax finds her nude in a church with slashes all over her body. She’s hysterical: “He did this to me!”

Lomax checks her into the psych ward, but it’s too late.

She ends up killing herself.

Long story short, it goes off the rails: Milton is Satan, of course, and wants Lomax to bed the gorgeous woman in his office. Milton is revealed as Lomax’s father, and the woman is Lomax’s half-sister. The plan is to birth the Antichrist.

Ahh incest. Taboo in the 90s but now a popular porn genre and subreddit.

Pacino’s wonderfully hammy sales pitch/rant is where this really comes together.

What Milton says here is essentially the defining narrative of our age. When Lomax asks what he wants of him, he responds:

I want you to be yourself. You know, I'll tell you, boy. Guilt - it's like a bag of fuckin' bricks. All you gotta do is set it down....Who are you carrying all those bricks for anyway? God? Is that it? God?

Well, I tell ya, let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for His own amusement, His own private cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition!

It's the goof of all time. Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is He doin'?

He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off. He's a tight-ass. He's a sadist. He's an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never!

Hubris. Resentment. Pride. The expectation to shoulder guilt is wrong. Do whatever you want, whenever you want it. Why not? Anyone that tells you otherwise is just a mean poopy-head. Who are they to judge huh? How does your choice impact them? Only a tight-ass wants to see you not enjoy yourself all the time!

Satan’s speech is essentially the modern discourse distilled.

As we continue:

Kevin Lomax: "Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven," is that it?

John Milton: Why not? I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began! I've nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him, in spite of all his imperfections!

I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist. Who, in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin! All of it! Mine! I'm peaking, Kevin. It's my time now. It's our time.

Here is the Father of Lies. We know he’s lying about being a “fan of man” because of his earlier rant on a character named Eddie Barzoon (played, interestingly, by piece of shit child porn enjoyer Jeffrey Jones). Barzoon is a senior attorney in a position that Milton wants Lomax to occupy, so he sends demonic minions to kill him off.

You can run on for a long time… run on for a long time…

While his death scene plays out, we cut back to Pacino delivering this monologue:

Eddie Barzoon, Eddie Barzoon. Hah! Oh, I nursed him through two divorces, a cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist. Heh. God's creature, right? God's special creature? Hah! And I've warned him Kevin, I've warned him every step of the way. Watching him bounce around like a fucking game, like a windup toy! Like 250 pounds of self serving greed on wheels. The next thousand years is right around the corner, Kevin, and Eddie Barzoon-take a good look, because he's the poster child for the next millennium!

These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god, and where can you go from there?

And as we're scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, and even the bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity. And it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare. It's buy futures, sell futures, when there is no future!

We got a runaway train boy, we got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of 'em getting ready to fist-fuck god's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out toward their pristine, cybernetic keyboards to total up their billable hours. And then it hits home! You gotta pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now! Your belly's too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot, and you're screaming for someone to help! But guess what? There's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie. You're god's special little creature. Maybe it's true, maybe god threw the dice once too often. Maybe he let us all down.

Evil wants you to miss. It’ll claim it’s your advocate. It’ll claim that you should “love yourself” by indulging in your every whim, and then when it ultimately destroys you, it’s going to laugh in your face, like Milton does to the degenerate Eddie Barzoon.

Note that Milton blames God for Barzoon’s failure, even though he’s the one that tempted Barzoon at every opportunity. He’s not angry at God for restricting us, he’s angry at God for creating us and giving us choice. He hates us, and he will shake your hand while preparing to stab you in the back.

Regardless, Milton’s sales pitch to Lomax is the most important, for it contains this:

John Milton: Never lost a case, why? What do you think? Because you're so fucking good? Yes, but why?

Kevin Lomax: Because you're my father…

John Milton: I'm a little more than that…Awfully hot in that courtroom wasn't it? What's the game plan?

“It was a nice run, it had to close out some day, nobody wins them all.”

Kevin Lomax: Mary Ann, she knew it so you destroyed her

John Milton: You blaming me for Mary Ann? I hope you're kidding! You could've saved Mary Ann whenever you wanted. All she wanted was love but you were too busy!

Kevin Lomax: That's a lie.

John Milton: Face it, you started looking to better deal her the minute you got here.

Kevin Lomax: That's not true, you don't know what we had!

John Milton: [playfully] hey, I'm on your side!

Kevin Lomax: You're a liar!

John Milton: There's nothing out there for you, don't be such a fucking chump. Stop deluding yourself! I told you to take care of your wife, I said the world would understand. Who told to pull out all the stops on the Getty's case?

Kevin Lomax: I know what you did, you set me up!

John Milton: Who made you make that choice? And Moyez? The direction you took? Popes, Swamis, snake handlers all feeding at the same trough? Whose ideas were those?

Kevin Lomax: You played me, it was your test!

John Milton: And Cullen knowing he was guilty and seeing those pictures, you put that lying bitch on the stand

Kevin Lomax: You brought me in, you put me there you made her lie!

John Milton: I don't do that! Vanity is so basic, its self-love, it's the all-natural opiate! It's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann it's just that you were a little more involved with someone else which was yourself. Don't be too hard on yourself! You wanted something more, believe me.

In the end, Kevin’s worst enemy was himself. Same with Eddie Barzoon. The Devil doesn’t “make people do” things. The Devil is in you. This could have easily been a conversation that Kevin had with himself. Kevin’s only path to redemption comes when he realizes that his own moral failings were his, and his alone. He rejects the offer of power and sexual pleasure and sacrifices himself to prevent the highest of evils from manifesting in the world.

And he goes out smiling…

Who hasn’t looked themselves in the mirror and has not recognized the person in it? You walk around and make decisions in your life. Some of them are awful, terrible decisions with awful, terrible consequences.

There are times I looked in the mirror and saw a demon staring back at me. It’s one of the things that woke me up.

I realized that there is no “John Milton”, of course. There is no “Satan”, in the corporeal sense. This is a narrative device. The truth is that Evil lies in the heart of man.

Fortunately, so does goodness. So does God.

Not existing in the corporeal sense does not mean that these things do not exist. Just because a myth did not happen in history does not mean it is untrue. Dante,Milton the Faustian legend and quite possibly the Bible itself were not written to be taken as historical stories that took place on this particular plane of reality, but as commentary and knowledge on the nature of being itself.

So modern psychologists would discount angels and demons as being “merely a byproduct” of our society and psychology. Does this make them any less real? Are our minds and consciousness not real? Or is there a dimension outside of our own observable one where these things are determined? Is there another battlefield, another plane of existence outside of this one made of matter?

And are these things waging a war right here in your soul? In our souls, to be more precise?

Haughty atheists (including myself back in the day) made the fundamental, prideful boast that what is observed by our senses is the only thing that can be said to exist. The notion of there being something just outside of our comprehension was not worth thinking about.

Now I believe this is a mistake, and a major one. And this idea is not new. We were warned, over and over again, about not making this mistake. And we ignore it at our peril.

The ancients wrote about the Maya extensively and only now thousands of years later, is this starting to be considered by natural scientists. The more questions we have about the nature of “matter”, the more questions are raised.

Another important realization is that there seems to be an entire apparatus set up on Earth to blind you to this reality. Powers and principalities that, like Milton, want you to forget about the cosmic and indulge in the material. It also seems to be the same people every single time.

The film has an 80% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the erm, “Hollywood types” have it at a 63%. Here’s what the “Hollywood types” had to say about the film:

Jonathan Rosenbaum: At half its present length it might make an OK midnight camp item…

Dennis Schwarz : Couldn't be more ridiculous.

Owen Glieberman: At once silly, overwrought, and almost embarrassingly entertaining…You go in expecting a brazenly hokey, in-your-face portrait of evil, and that, I'm happy to say, is just what you get.

Scott Mendelson: "I love this trashy, vulgar, unapologetically puritan melodrama more than I care to admit"

Methinks they doth protest too much.

The fact that Hollywood hates a morality play, (unless it’s inverted morals, of course), makes it pretty obvious who’s running the show there. The Passion of the Christ got a similar shellacking for the same reason.

Here’s another good one:

Emanuel Levy: Stylishly seductive and well-acted by Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, but thematically flawed, Taylor Hackford's film is yet another version of the Faustian morality tale.

Ah yes, all of those Faustian morality tales that Hollywood just loves to write about! Just like, erm… exactly what again? Tell me, which modern Hollywood movies have a non-inverted Faustian tale that explicitly mentions God and the Devil?

This is why I am amazed that the film exists.

Yes, it’s obviously a retelling of Faust. Yes, it’s obviously inspired by Paradise Lost (I mean, John Milton? Come on). Like I said, it wasn’t subtle, but neither were Faust and Milton. The story has been told before, but not in the modern era. Hollywood wants you to forget these stories. They don’t want them to be told.

How many of these kinds of stories reach a modern audience when the only “literature” that is taught to students these days involves self-hatred in the form of slavery and the holocaust?

Not many. That’s why this one is special.

They’d rather sell you on fake Christianity with interracial love stories where a female psychologist seduces a black priest who doesn’t see a problem with sodomy or abortion.

They’d rather sell you on stories about how a love of order and peace is an evil white nationalist plot driven by hatred.

They’d rather sell you on stories about how identifying self-destructive behaviors as self-destructive is an oppressive and dangerous idea.

How do you fight back against this?
What is the lesson?

Well it is exactly what I mentioned earlier: You have the capacity to be your own worst enemy. That’s not exactly revelatory to many, but I’ll add this:

“There is a force in the world that is actively trying to get you to destroy yourself”.

As Charls Carroll put it, there are forces in the world with a vested interest in sending you to Hell before you die.

One day I’ll get to you

And teach you how to get to purest Hell

Radiohead- “Just”

Your job is to first recognize (Notice?) when this is happening and who is doing it to you. If you follow me on Twitter, you may notice that I am extremely vocal about who this is, but I want to give a caveat: I am not shifting blame for the state of the world on these people. It is entirely our failing.

Free will. It's like butterfly wings. Once touched, they never get off the ground. No. I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.

-John Milton, The Devil’s Advocate

Or in other words:

You do it to yourself, you do

And that's why it really hurts

Is that you do it to yourself, just you

You and no one else

The problems we face are not political. They are not organizational. They are not about marketing or rallying or protesting.

They are about the spirit, and only about the spirit.

We win by rejecting their temptation.

We win by rejecting their loveless, meaningless sex

We win by rejecting their opiates, both literal and figurative

We win by rejecting their affirmations when we sin

We win by rejecting their abominable moral framing

We win by rejecting magick and the occult and any other false pathways to enlightenment or empowerment

We win by rejecting their cynicism

We win by rejecting their misanthropy

We win by rejecting their weaponization of empathy

We win by rejecting their lies

We win by rejecting their mendacious press

We win by rejecting their invitation to vanity and pride

The devil really hates when we reject his oh, so reasonable offers:

You will be tempted and tricked and lied to. You were warned about this. You will fail at times and if you fail enough, or big enough, do not be surprised when you find yourself in a Hell of your own making. This may seem unfair. Why must this be so difficult?

Because living a life of comfort and ease is the life of cattle, that’s why.

That’s how these entities/people regard you: Cattle. They will feed you and pamper you until you are ready for slaughter.

So ask yourself: Are you cattle? Are you a beast?

If not, how are you going to prove that?

Thanks for reading, and God be with you.