I like the motto which reads: "All it takes for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
I also subscribe to the dictum that warns “if you're not a part of the solution, you're part of the problem.”
So with that said…
This morning an ad came up on my newsfeed for a black and grey area rug covered with upside-down pentagrams and centered by a large depiction of the Baphomet doing the 'as above / so below' gesture.
Now, I am not going to pursue why a product I feel is an abomination came up on my newsfeed (although it does trouble me—and if I were a conspiracy theorist, I might even think good ol’ Facebook is mocking me).
Instead I am going to share some of the comments:
"Satan is soooo trendy now" said one.
"Do what thou wilt" announced another.
There were an abundance of heart emojis, and too many tags of people who would likely be interested in this item than I took time to count.
How interesting.
How appalling.
There is a core belief being hustled within a dark product like this, and it is disturbing:
“DO WHAT THOU WILT”
And, before any know-it-all hops aboard to elucidate me, thanks, but I already know that this tenet of Satanism, as bleated by Crowley and LaVey and their acolytes is, in whole: “Do what thou wilt so long as it harms none’.
Right. Except…who is deciding if there is harm being done?
Did Jeffrey Epstein believe he was harming girls when he raped them, sodomized them and sold them to people like Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton? Or did his grandiose narcissism believe he was helping them? Does 9 year old “Desmond-Is-Amazing’s” mother think she is harming Desmond by pimping his transgendered self out to dance at gay night clubs…or is she just illuminating him? Merely embracing the diversity of his nature? How about the thinly veiled man who, calling himself Jessica, is trying to get his scrotum waxed by immigrant aestheticians who are barely earning enough to tread above the poverty line—is he harming them? He doesn’t think so. In his head he is the one being violated. Then there’s the (not unsubstantial) crowd who want to tack a “P” onto LGBTQ, thus including ‘Pedophilia’ as one of the sexual preferences to include under the umbrella of tolerance. They sincerely do not believe they are harming the children they rape and molest. They say ‘Love is love’ So… “Do what thou wilt”?
And how about the extremists, Right AND Left who bully and shame and punish, with violence, anyone who dare breathe an opposing viewpoint? They most certainly do not believe they are ‘harming’ anyone’. In fact they think YOU are the harmful one for daring to believe differently than they do. Ergo in exercising their right to force their values down your throat…it’s for your own good.
Thank you. I think.
Now, anyone who knows me is aware I’m no religious zealot, so I hope it does not get lost in religious analysis (or, worse, dismissal) when I kick this ball a step further and say this:
While everyone is burying each other in the quagmire of 'It's guns!' 'It's mental illness!' 'It's guns!' It's mental illness!', the beach ball-sized point is being missed and it is this: in our harder and harder and still harder push, globally, to “do what thou wilt”, aka: to tolerate and accept everything with no checks and balances, no condemnation, zero consequences, and all the lovingly open arms in the world, we are sowing some seriously heinous shit.
Because healthy people, healthy families, and healthy societies do not just indiscriminately embrace and tolerate everything.
Know what happens when they do?
Well….some angry and empty people in a society like this may feel like their own sense of right or wrong have become such a joke that they are angered, over and over, every time they are scolded and shamed by a (paradoxically) “forgiving / tolerant” society. As such, marinated in this mindset of ‘tolerance-trumps-all’, their rage is internally justified again and again until the very philosophy twists itself into an ugly mirror image that at last acts out like: “FINE! You think you can just do whatever the fuck you want and I’m supposed to like it? You think you can come over my border, and infiltrate my land illegally? Well, I have rights too. I’LL SHOW YOU”
On the flipside, another empty, angry person, similarly marinated in the same indiscriminate culture—except coming from the opposing point of view—has also spent a lengthy time feeling offended and hemmed in by every (even perceived) limitation placed upon him and everyone else. As such, seeing disapproval and sanctimony everywhere, he too feels justified when he hones in on his enemy and says: “You self-righteous, filthy Christians! White Nazi bastards! I’LL SHOW YOU.”
Boom
Boom
Boom
Hanging every hat on guns is woefully and naively inadequate. Similarly, pointing the finger at mental illness is just as thin. For while both guns and mental illness have supporting roles, violence of this magnitude is a poisonous stew comprised of a multitude of variables. Toxic, traumatically impacted culture is one of the biggest portions in the cauldron.
And make no mistake: the philosophy of “Do what thou wilt” creates a toxic, traumatized culture. Because we can’t just do whatever the hell we want. When we do we create bedlam, chaos, anger, and moral decay.
The media certainly knows this. It banks on this. Divisiveness, fighting, screeching, blaming and finger pointing SELL BIG COPY.
(Sidebar: so why—WHY—we are allowing media to turn a buck at the expense of our sensibilities eludes me. The media is corporately owned. Everyone knows this, and if you don’t I implore you to look it up. Therefore ask yourself—who benefits by inciting violence and hatred and intolerance of diverse opinions, morals, and values? Hint: NOT the consumer).
For God’s sake (no pun intended, actually): think for yourself. Ignore the media.
And beyond that: Start saying brave things. Brave things that shouldn’t have to be brave at all. Brave things that were actually once known as Common Sense. Things like: “No, babies do not belong in beauty pageants. You may not do that.” and “No, little boys do not belong on stage dressed as showgirls and being kissed on the mouth by grown-assed men. You may not do that”. We need to say “Yes, business owners do have the right to refuse you service if they feel unsafe”, and “NO, you may NOT take them to Court for that.” Whether we like it or not, we also have to say that if laws surrounding immigration exist in countries—any countries—then, yes, those laws must be obeyed, and yes, there will be consequences you might not like if they are not. We need to expose and charge powerful men and women who like sex with children just like we’d expose and charge random Peter-the-Pervert who lurks around the trailer park down the street.
We need to do better, and better means re-building a culture with more rules, not less. Because just like children in a home need boundaries, expectations, and CLEAR ‘nos’ and ‘yeses’, so too do members of any society.
We need to put our collective foot down and stop tolerating bullshit that should be, by its evident self-explanation, intolerable.
We need to blast Facebook when some barf-bag rug celebrating Satanism pollutes our page. As in “Get this filthy shit out of my line of vision. Take your ‘Do what thou wilt’ and shove it up your ass."
Links to my fiction: