The previous post alluded to "Satan's limits." As a youngster I heard over and over on the radio that even the Devil is in need of some restraint, so we should just call him Lucifer. But I never really thought about it. I just liked the song.
As far as metaphysical principles go, to the extent that the Good exists -- and it does -- then we have to concede that evil is built into the cosmic cake. This orthoparadox is both disappointing and perfectly understandable -- like saying evil cannot not be and you cannot participate in it. Or, offenses must surely come, but wo, dude! to the guy or gal through whom the offense comes.
Still, the basic point isn't beyond our grasp: only God is good and this ain't Heaven, so evil is the price we pay for being creatures living in a subcelestial creation: original sin and all that.
But when someone personalizes this principle -- or inevitability, if you prefer -- now we don't know whether to take it as a myth, bearing in mind, of course, that myth isn't synonymous with false, much less a lie.
Rather, myth is here to teach us something that is true, has always been true, and will always be true about the human adventure. It is a true story that never happened, but which happens every time, e.g., Genesis, Exodus, Flood, etc. Just because it didn't happen that way doesn't mean it doesn't always happen that way.
Interesting that Satan makes his first appearance right there at the genesis of things. Or at least a few paragraphs down. For it means that man was aware of his presence within moments of becoming man.
By the conclusion of Genesis 1 it's still All Good, indeed, Very Good. But then midway into Genesis 2, evil makes its first inconspicuous appearance, albeit as a mere possibility ("the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"). But everything is still good so long as we steer clear of the latter. No worries.
Just after that an ambiguity enters the narrative. It's not evil, just not ideal, i.e., not good, in reference to our being all alone. This I think is a hint about God's own trinitarian nature, because God is both One but never allone, i.e, a radical monad. So if we are to be the Image and Likeness, we need a coequal helpmeet made of the same substance, which is to say, an irreducible substance-in-relation. Is God just ribbing us? Yes and no.
By the way, while all this is going on -- as God is finetuning his most theomorphic creature -- man gets to name everything. Among other things, this proves the falsehood of nominalism, deconstruction, and postmodernity. Put conversely, it vouchsafes the metaphysics of realism, transcendence, and cosmic order. There are things and names for things. It's not all in our heads, and reality isn't just perception.
Things go south quickly in the next chapter. Interestingly, the last word of Genesis 2 is ashamed, but it's still in the context of goodness, so it's good to be capable of shame. Which is why it is bad to be a shameless progressive.
But just three words later the Serpent makes its appearance on the stage of cosmic mythtery. In other words, evil is now personified, or at least ssssquamatified.
What the heck?
No, I mean, what the heck, just as things are about to get interesting, I have to get ready to leave!
Let's wrap this up with some preliminary bobservations. First, Satan is depicted as an ironic fellow, but it is important to emphasize that irony itself isn't necessarily satanic, but that Satan's irony has a superficially cynical, seductive, and deceptive edge to it -- for example
Just as every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints
While this sounds sophisticated to progressive sensibilities, it is so deeply stupid that even Bill Maher no longer sympathizes with it. That verse continues with
As heads is tails / Just call me Lucifer / 'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
A sophisticated cynic might say that one man's heads is another man's tails, and vice versa: one man's vice is another man's virtue.
To put it in more abstract and conceptual terms, it would seem that authoritarian absolutism masquerading as a pseudo-generous & openminded relativism is the basis of every satanic ideology, or at least CHANGE MY MIND. Unless you are a troll, in which case your very existence proves my point.
This conveniently brings us back round to some recent notes to myself which I would like to clear from the desk. They touch on the subject of Satan, or are at least close enough for rock & roll. I'll just reproduce these first notes below and try to explain later what they might mean, if anything:
Hydraheadedness of Satan; each head is an -ism, each hand a non-STEM department, discipline, cable news station, or center of power.
Regarding the latter, we can see how important it was for the founders to divide power against itself -- and conversely, why it is so important for the left to reunify it via court-packing, the politicization of Justice, the state-media complex that transforms the means of information into a mechanism of threat and coercion, or Education into Big Indoctrination.
Each must be the counterfeit of something real & untarnished by pettiness, pseudo-omniscience, the will to power & other deformities of the spirit.
relativism, materialism, empiricism, positivism, naturalism, feminism, humanism, reductionism, racism...
Every Ism is a declaration of independence from the Whole, even though it only exists as a consequence of it -- like the Son declaring independence from the Father, the ultimate engenderation gap.
Weird way to end, but it can't be helped. I'm out.
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