34 Comments

I like this (and thanks for the link.) Let me offer a thought that ties up both of our insights. What I called, for the sake of argument, Progress, Moloch, the Machine etc has another name in the Christian tradition: the adversary, the enemy, Satan. The great force that opposes the will of God and which enlists us in his work. The smaller demons which tempt us daily through our vices are his various legions. Both big and small forces are worth attending to.

Regarding your final paragraph, Orthodox elders have warned for two millennia that demons will repeatedly appear as angels to trap the unwary. Satan himself will often appear as an angel of light: as will Antichrist. We are quite easily fooled.

As you say, talking too widely about this will get you labelled as a nutter, but that is probably a badge of honour at this point.

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I have an essay coming up either today or tomorrow that parallels this, as I've been thinking particularly about the terms "ideological capture," the much-ignored fact that psychology means study of the soul, and the animist understanding of thoughts as spirits themselves. I'll definitely mention your really great piece in it.

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Jul 7, 2022·edited Jul 7, 2022Liked by FFatalism

Amen to this. All of it.

It reminds me of Gabriel Marcel, e.g., "As soon as we accord to any category, isolated from all other categories, an arbitrary primacy, we are victims of the spirit of abstraction”

Marcel saw his entire philosophy as an, “obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction”. I know I am surely captured by many unbeneficent abstractions. But I nonetheless, and because of being so captured, join in the battle against the abstractions which imprison us.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcel/#SpirAbst

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Goodness me. This piece landed just as I’m having negative thoughts about Cartesian reason as the great benefit to humanity we assume it to be. Sorry if this sounds incoherent.

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Jul 7, 2022Liked by FFatalism

Timely piece for me. I've been warily considering this topic for some time now.

I subscribe to Yoshi Matsumoto's substack where he delves into this topic from a Christian perspective:

https://matsumoto.substack.com/p/what-is-a-spirit-anyway

https://matsumoto.substack.com/p/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-flashdark

'Someone might ask ‘if demons, then why not angels?'

- Indeed. I've read about cases of demonic possession where the sufferer demonstrated superhuman strength. Perhaps 'hysterical strength' comes from angels? You know those cases you occasionally read about where an ordinary person somehow finds the strength to lift a car off someone who's been crushed beneath it? Maybe the source of that power is angelic?

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You sold me at Anscombe.

Sociological theories love excluding human actions and purposes from the so-called serious explanations. Meanwhile, they're happy to postulate their own intangible ghosts, and attribute them powers to move human wills and bodies, while demons and fae are "superstitions".

It's always struck me as a dodgy move. But that is where we are.

Try explaining this to one of today's lay positivists and they'll accuse you of... witchcraft.

Charles Taylor has written some fascinating papers on this flaw in historical explanations and their widespread use in social sciences, as they try to do too much explaining with too little recognition of the obvious.

I don't think we're so far from the ancient Greeks as we'd like to think. We're still speaking of gods and daimons and all manner of spirits. Maybe we don't give them the metaphysical weight (consciously and explicitly) that our ancestors did, but at a psychological level it's hard to argue their influence on us.

Being an old relic of the atheist/materialist/rationalist world, part of me still wants to resist the idea of actual demons. These days, I just don't know anymore. It seems as believable as anything if not more -- at least there's precedent in old wisdom.

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Sep 7, 2022Liked by FFatalism

The greed/capitalism point is reminiscent of The Pardoner's Tale, and the usually mis-quoted verse from 1 Timothy 6:10 "The love of money is the root of all evil". People seem to find it easier to remember and share the meme "money is the root of all evil", passing the blame away from themselves and humanity. In the Chaucer story, the money does nothing, it simply sits beneath a tree existing - the reactions of those that discover it are what leads to mayhem.

Still, worth remembering that the Pardoner's motivation may well have been "Don't get so hung up on money...give it to me".

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Jul 12, 2022·edited Jul 12, 2022Liked by FFatalism

I've been on a bit of a journey about the sacred position of "Science". (I've also learnt to be mindful about cultures where religion and magic are still being used for control of ideas, instead of the Modern reverence for Science.)

A lot of religion appears to have started in meaningful observations related to personal mental health, but become lost in placing these sacred ideas as external entities rather than names to provide common language descriptions. I think this transformation has largely occurred in translation between languages - this comes to mind with Zen - the famous idea of "searching for the mind" - I put the Chinese for this into Google translate mind becomes heart, which gives a totally different interpretation of the meaning.

Eternal damnation is just supposed to be about mental and social health in your current life, kick the talk about God and Satan out, their usefulness has been lost by changes in meaning. Sin is akin to regret, things that you've done in your past that dominate your present. God isn't the one damning you, unless you call yourself God.

I mean to write something on longer on this someday, but I hope this was coherent.

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This is a difficult subject. Even in the case of demons, we tend to abstract them, or make them cartoonish. Anyone who has encountered the presence, or activity, of a real demon (without any lovely disguise) knows the unique terror of that experience and does not want to experience it again. It’s like discovering the person you love and utterly admire is a psychopath, manipulating you at the most intimate levels.

Even taken seriously, it’s hard to discuss in a concrete way, given so many unknowns. How does spiritual reality (demonic or otherwise) influence our own? I think we need abstractions for heuristic reasons, but at bottom your thoughts bring me back to the idea that reality is underpinned not just by forces and energies, but beings, intentions, and purposes, that are as complex and idiosyncratic as the physical people around us.

And it all sounds so crazy.

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