Consider the Massachusetts “satanic preschool” trials.

Here, “the possibility of satanic cult activity” was reified.

Let’s say that local secular  therapists were talking to themselves about how “creepy” those Christian preschools were.  Was there not a problem with their faith^Christian, as opposed to our university-trained faith^UnChristian?

Then the serpent joined their conversation, speaking through the mouths of children, telling them exactly what they already suspected.

The therapist’s “metaphorical” truths became “empirically” true.

How could the children’s claims be “metaphorically” true?

All families feel vulnerable to external forces.  What external force is more immediate than that little preschool down the street?  Parents never really know what is going on behind those closed doors. So their anxiety was written all over their faces when their child causally mentioned, while they read the New York Times on one fine churchless Sunday morning, that her preschool teacher touched her lips with a hypergalactic space probe.

The serpent converted the metaphorical truth of the therapists into an empirical truth.

Welcome to MA: First in Witch-hunts.

What seems really weird, to me, is that Ted Peters did not even see the Blasphemy involved in the Democratic Party – er, Progressivist – Takeover of California in the 1990s.

Instead, he kept his blinders on and focused on Satanism as a type of Private Cult within the spectrum Private Cults that constituted the New Age Movement.  He spent over 20 pages wondering whether Satanic Cults really existed.  Perhaps, they were figments of therapists’ expectations.  Perhaps, they were exaggerations of fundamentalist Christians.

Peters discussion has the same quality as the scene where the serpent appears in An Archaeology of the Fall.  Somebody was telling secular therapists and fundamentalist Christians something that they – on an unconscious level – already knew.  The secular therapists and the fundamentalist Christians thought they knew something – I mean – saw ‘something’.  And what they saw was a distorted image of themselves.

During the Enlightenment, the “language of Christianity” was co-opted by the Parties of Collectivism.

The Modern “social constructions” of Fascism and Communism served as sites of unparalleled cruelty.

Why?  Because their divinities were Blasphemy Incarnate that allowed – really, seduced – individuals into becoming their Instruments.  Personal responsibility was eclipsed in favor of instrumentality “without conscience”.  And what a pleasure that instrumentality turned out to be.

Fascists and Communists were “radically evil” in that they sought to deprive their victims of solace of any God Beyond Their Instrumentality.

Their cruelties were so cruel as to pose the ultimate question.

Do you know why you are here?

You are here to give us the thrill of destroying your conscience.

An Archaeology of the Fall provides a secular parallel to this theological transformation.   Every “language” is a symbolic order that exists as a system of differences.  Because humans evolved in a Lebenswelt of hand talk, we project “referentiality” onto each word in each system of differences and thereby socially construct our diverse worlds in our one Civilization.

Each “social construction” or “language within the Language” has a buttonhole, a word that cannot be defined, that serves to anchor all the other symbols in the system.  These buttonholes are vulnerable to concerted political action, characteristic of the competition by institutions for the role of Sovereign.  At the same time, when the Sovereign falls, these buttonholes are open to institutions that develop character instead of pursue sovereign power.

Institutions that pursue the Role of the Sovereign develop “ways of talking” consistent with the God of the Institution’s Instrumentality.  That is, the Sovereign becomes the Instrument of this God.

They blaspheme by co-opting words developed by Institutions that built a consensus in their worship of a God Beyond Their Own Instrumentality.

When the cruel person acts as the Instrument of God, she blasphemes.

Who is she blaspheming?  The God of Her Instrumentality or the God Beyond Her Instrumentality?

The reputation of Christianity may be trashed whenever the Bible is used for “seeking the thrill (without conscience)”, but that does not tell the whole story.  What has really happened?  The ideologue-blasphemer has interpreted the words of the Bible in a way that anoints her with Power.

She has transformed The God Beyond Her Instrumentality into the God of Her Instrumentality.

In many ways, this transformation from Epicurean to Sadist captures the difference between concupiscence and cruelty and the difference between the planes of “doing” and “perversion”.

Concupiscence() seeks all sorts of fulfillment^selfs.  That is the nature of “being in the state(with Cupid)”.

Cruelty() seeks the rush of anti-fulfillment^self, where the victim is deprived – like those little crawfish in the marsh of Peters’ childhood – of her legs and claws.  Watch her squirm at the debasement!  What fun!

Unfortunately, you can only do it once to each crawfish.

So perhaps the nature of “cruelty” is “seeking the thrill(without conscience)”.

Just as Cupid’s arrow takes over the person’s heart or “state of being”, perverse instrumentality (“without conscience” in its myriad of possibilities) removes the most important hindrance to the thrill of debasing others.

The Marquis de Sade was so complete a perverse instrument of “the Pleasure of Giving You Pain”, that he longed for nothing more than the pure thrill of acting without conscience.

Today’s sadists are not so agenda free.

Today’s sadists pose as “the Instruments of Some Higher Order that Will Take Away Your Pain”, like National Socialism, Communism or Progressivism.  In this way, the pleas of their victims float like incense above their Lack of Conscience and fill the nostrils of a Divinity Who Feeds Off Love.  Look.  We have taken away the Pain of Your Own Conscience.  Too bad that also required putting that probe into your brain.

Do you know why you are here?

You are here to give us the thrill of destroying your conscience.

Today’s Sadists have transcended their Master.

At the point, Peters brought up the issue of Sadism.

The word comes from the name of a member of royalty – or, perhaps, if you will excuse the pun – a royal member who spent half of his life in prison for petty crime and debauchery.

What better place to pen one’s life-style setting treatise?

The Epicurean motto was: Seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Sade asked: What if your pleasure comes from other’s pain?

Then the motto transforms into: Seek thrills and avoid good conscience.

How do describe cruelty?

Peters started with childhood memories of little cruelties committed by children “just because they could”.

He continued by envisioning the many cruelties committed in history.  The primordial image of “the wolf” raises its head here.  Who is afraid of the big bad Wolf?  And weirdly, biological observations of wolf behavior occasionally confirm the intuition of the folklore.  Talking to them is useless.

Peters moved on to specific cases of torture.

In all his examples, individuals act as instruments of a Political Power while inflicting cruelty.

Peters pointed out that the cruel person has two faces: The face of the one who tortures others and the face of the regular family person, living an upstanding life, who is just like you and me.  He called it “doubling”.

“Doubling” may be defined as “the wolf putting on sheep’s clothing”.  The person in sheep’s clothing talks a shifty technical vocabulary that masks the wolf’s predatory procedures.

In the same way, dictators “hold elections” in order to “appear legitimate”.  The whole charade is bogus.  The words are changed in order to advance the Powerful.

Once every word has been “redefined” by the “Powers That Be”, cruelty becomes the social norm.

The same ploy is evident in people diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  These people can act with exceptional cruelty.  At the same time, they can manipulate words in order to seem perfectly normal.  They will not play by the rules.  Instead, they create the rules as they go along.  They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Beware of the Apparently Normal Person who manipulates Words for the Advancement of the Powers that Be.

Thoughts on Sin by Ted Peters (1994) Cruelty 7A

Step 6 on Peters seven steps to Radical Evil is titled Cruelty: Enjoying My Neighbor’s Suffering.

Cruelty is one level above Pride.  Cruelty takes place on a plane that puts the situational plane of “doing” of “justification^self(concupiscence())” into context.

At the moment, I do not name this plane.

The words “willful” “inflicting” “causing anguish and fear” describe a situation of willful “ignorance” or “blindness” of “the victim” while, at the same time, a “knowledge” or “agency” of a “higher force of righteousness”.

Cruelty is like concupiscence.  It is pleasurable.  It is addicting.  But unlike concupiscence, which is all about “me”, cruelty is all about “my treatment of you”.  Cruelty is inherently relational.

Peters said that cruelty is a “perverse pleasure”.  In saying this, he inadvertently uses a term that figures in the writing of the Slovene Postmodernist Slavoj Zizek, whose foundational works were written between 1989 and 2000.

A “pervert” is “a person who becomes an instrument of a Power”.

In the remainder of Chapter 6, Peters wrote about justification of faith.

Justification^God refuses to co-opted by our habits of justification^self and scapegoating.