There is a hierarchy of evil (or "lowerarchy", as CS Lewis terms it in The Screwtape Letters) - by which I mean there are degrees of evilness.
This was evident in the Birdemic of 2020 and the (allegedly preventive) Peck which followed later; and is evident in the ongoing West-provoked/ escalated/sustained global wars.
The three main levels of the hierarchy of evil can be defined in terms of motivation; and are, in ascending order of evilness of motives:
1. Profit and Pleasure
2. Sadism
3. Damnation
1. Profit and Pleasure
These are those humans (and lower-status demonic beings) whose motives are essentially selfish and short-termist.
They cause, continue and use events like the Birdemic to get pleasure and to avoid suffering. For instance; they aim to make money, and to get rich/ famous/ powerful/ popular.
As example: the people who got massively wealthy from manufacturing and distributing "personal protection" products and the Peck during the Birdemic. Or in wars; the corporate types who manufacture and trade armaments, the politicians and journalists who benefit from bribery and other corruptions.
This kind of evil is widely acknowledged as a real factor in the world; indeed for most modern people selfish short-termism is in the only kind of evil they acknowledge. They will use it to to explain everything that happens and which they dislike.
2. Sadism
These are those whose motives are sadistic and destructive. Their main gratification is spiteful: to enjoy the suffering of others, especially when they are involved in inflicting it.
Such a motive isn't rare; and often finds expression in resentment-fantasy, gloating and Schadenfreude.
It can be recognized as dominant when people will sacrifice their own profit and pleasure in order to try and damage and destroy those people and entities (e.g. religions, institutions, nations) they most dislike.
In the Birdemic the sadism-motivated were evident in their eager and sustained support of "face-coverings" and the variety of "social distancing" policies. The resulting loneliness, illness, decline and despair of the coercively-isolated was their primary satisfaction.
In war, they are recognizable by their tenacious support of policies that have (and are, by them, intended to have) the opposite effect to that claimed. Such as "sanctions" that damage everybody, but mainly those doing the sanctioning. Or military "aid" that leads to the progressive annihilation of the people and society being supplied with aid.
3. Damnation
At the highest level of evil (or more exactly, the highest level at which evil-intent coheres, and remains capable of some cooperation and a degree long-termism in aim - there is a level beyond) - the motivation is to work for the damnation of others.
In other words, the aim is spiritual. It is to oppose God and divine creation in all ways possible, and in particular to deter or prevent people from choosing to accept the gift of Jesus Christ (i.e. resurrection to eternal Heavenly life).
Since salvation is a matter of spiritual choice (an "opt-in"); this level of evil works on trying to shape and manipulate what people want.-
To ensure damnation of souls; it is not enough to have people Do evil stuff, they must ultimately Want evil stuff.
In the Birdemic we saw this in the propaganda that tried to make people accept, demand, and celebrate the measures that were designed to harm them spiritually (as well as physically).
Many people were induced to desire the escalation and permanence of lock-downs, masking, social distancing; and to advertise positively their own compliance with the Peck (IRL as well as in social media).
It wasn't just that these things harmed them; but that they wanted the harm - they agreed to being harmed, and sought more of the same.
And we currently see this damnation motivation among those who use untruthfulness (distortion, selection, outright lying) and knowingly-false interpretations; to depicts their actually-evil-intending (anti-Good-motivated) wars as an ideological/ spiritual conflict with the worse side presented as the better.
Among those (many) who express such sentiments - and we may infer that these such persons have potentially embraced their own damnation as a personal ideal.
This is the ultimate success of the demonic powers - to induce people not merely to seek their own pleasure and profit; and not only to enjoy the infliction of pain and destruction - but to hate God/ Creation? Jesus and reject the hope of salvation.
Instead; to adopt and practice value-inversion... understanding and rejecting Good as evil, and adopting evil as the highest Good.
Because value-inversion (commonplace and official in the modern West) is the surest path to damnation - as by it, the divine is mocked, despised and hated, while the demonic is regarded as heroic, fun and "cool".
And, thereby, the people shall positively affiliate themselves with the demonic agenda of damnation - to become active agents for propagating their own miserable fate.
From the highest levels of the hierarchy of evil, such was-and-is the intent and triumph of 2020; and of the subsequent and ongoing global wars.
Note added: In case the above induces a feeling of helpless and incipient despair in face of the vast power and influence of evil in the world (and especially the West) - it may be worth reminding oneself that this is a spiritual war I am describing. So that explicitly recognizing the relevant evil motivation for oneself, and inwardly rejecting it; counts as a personal spiritual triumph; and this is exactly the kind of spiritual learning-from-experience that is such a vital aspect of our mortal lives - one of the reasons we are here, and now.
It seems true that besides the obvious temporal connection, there is also a spiritual connection between the Birdemic/Peck and current wars. In both instances, the things that we do to ourselves (social distancing and the peck passport during the Birdemic, closing the borders to the Fire Nation during the latest wars) are blamed on the other side (the unpecked, the Fire Nation). These things have harmed us both immediately and in the long term but are presented as both necessary and desirable.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there will be a revealing of the harm caused by these policies to the persons who have supported them? This would then seal the damnation if the evil consequences are then explained as good. Although, the consequences should already be obvious and the blindness could be acknowledged as wilful.
Anyway, it seems that the spiritual war is bound to escalate. If profit and pleasure or sadism were the primary motivations, there would be more variation in the events as the motivations might be satisfied. Now, it seems that escalation is relentless.
@Matias F - I agree.
ReplyDeleteEach escalation paves the way for the next. Yet our civilization is so far down the path of value-inversion, that "delusional" is too small a concept to describe the mainstream, official, approved world view.
I cannot imagine the correction of our deadly and self-damning societal errors. Where would one start, when So Many fundamental assumptions are interlocking and sustaining each other?
The actual, relentless foci of modern morality are almost incredible in the pettiness and unreality. For instance, the way that people have been agonizing and ranting moralistically about the construct of "global warming" or racism for more than three decades, is truly fantastic in terms of gross dishonesty, futility, and sheer misdirection of values.
One of the most basic things I tried to do in today's post, was to show that while selfish short-termism (pleasure and profit) is indeed a major evil of this world, as it always has been - we Must (as you say) have a deeper and spiritual understanding of evil to explain why evil is directional, why the pressure towards destruction is continually increasing.
And the vast (and successful) efforts to achieve tolerance, acceptance, embrace and promotion of the most significant and widespread actual and besetting evils.