Today I am reading about Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan. They don’t actually worship Satan, by the way, or even belive that he exists (and before you go quoting Verbal Kent on me, I’ve heard it before). Instead, they revere what he represents: indomitable will and ultimate freedom.
I think that LaVeyan Satanism actually has a lot to commend it, and I wouldn’t mind reading the Satanic Bible to see what he has to say (in more detail than a Wikipedia article at least), but I’m not sure that the kind of cutthroat all-against-all (or as my dad would put it, “Hooray for me and screw everyone else”) world that it envisions would really be a very nice one. Too much like law school. I guess the Satanist answer would be that they’re not trying to create a utopia; they’re simply reflecting and accepting the world for what it is (reflective rather than aspirational).
There’s no reason a Satanist can’t be nice to other people, if being nice to other people pleases and fulfills him, but he recognizes that ultimately he’s doing it out of self interest (Remember the argument between Joey and Phoebe about there being no completely selfless act? This is kind of like that).
But it also looks like LaVeyan Satanism owes a lot to Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand (with a veneer of probably worthless occultism), and I have historically thought their ideas were dumb.
Sailing to Byzantium 
I’ve never understood why people get so hinky about Satanists. They are basically about being hedonistic and selfish, not killing babies or other such nonsense. Yes, a few disturbed individuals have done terrible things in the name of Satan, but one would not have to look very hard to find misguided Christians who have done the same. And they certainly aren’t trying to spread their faith, it’s more an opportunistic faith than a proselytizing one. There’s a whole lot of other groups I’d worry about before Satanists. BB and JMO -Doug
To be fair to old Freddy N., if his work is read as an attack on the philosophical trends and moral hypocrisies of his time (which is how the moral philosopher Mary Midgely reads him) he *does* come off as having a couple of good points (along with a lot of bizarre ranting, but no one’s perfect). He’s not really a good systematic philosopher, though (largely because he despised them). I can’t see him reacting very well to the Church of Satan, though…
So not a fan or Rand huh?
You might like the book Satan is a Gentleman. I’m reading it now. The author visits and studies many fringe religions and you end up seeing they’re all the same people- and all lost in religion.
One of my best friends actually just reccomended Satan is a Gentleman to me.
I would have to agree, all fringe cults are pretty much the same. Satanism, UFO cultists, whatever…just lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own. Mostly harmless, I mean things like the Solar Temple, Jim Jones, Aun Shimrikyo make the news…but there must be million’s of people in fringe cults around the world so the dangerous ones are the exception, not the rule. And mostly dangerous to their own members even when they do go nuts. Often confused too, like the dyslexic Satanist who sold his soul to Santa. 😉 JMO —Doug
unitedcats, you sure do generalize about people in “all fringe cults,” claiming that they are all “just lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own.” People in nonmainstream religions have a variety of different motives, just as people in mainstream religions do. You have fallen into the common human tendency to oversimplify and to be socially dualistic, to see everyone outside one’s own little box as being fundamentally all alike. But that’s an error — they aren’t all alike. Nonmainstream folks are even more varied than mainstream folks.
dianavera… are you not guilty, in that last line, or doing the same thing you decried of unitedcats? Why would non-mainstream folks be “even more varied” than mainstream folks?
You get some pretty different ideas, regardless of where you’re looking.
I could have stated my point better, I wasn’t saying they are all the same, I was saying they do all share some common traits.
katyjane wrote:
“dianavera… are you not guilty, in that last line, or doing the same thing you decried of unitedcats? Why would non-mainstream folks be ‘even more varied’ than mainstream folks?”
Obviously there are more ways to differ from the norm than there are ways to be normal. That’s simple math.
Of course it’s true that even amongst “normal” folks there is quite a bit of variety.
unitedcats wrote:
“I wasn’t saying they are all the same, I was saying they do all share some common traits.”
Well, I totally disagree with you about the alleged common traits too. You say they are all “lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own.” Some folks are nonmainstream for precisely the opposite reason — they have too strong a sense of their own identity to be able to stomach certain conventional expectations.
Really it’s not a good idea go generalize about the motives of people in a wide variety of nonmainstream religions.
Oops! I meant to say, “Really it’s not a good idea TO generalize ….”
Diane wrote:
“Obviously there are more ways to differ from the norm than there are ways to be normal. That’s simple math.
Of course it’s true that even amongst “normal” folks there is quite a bit of variety.”
It’s not simple math. If you asked me what ‘normal’ was, and then asked someone else, you’d have different answers. The math would be fuzzy at best.
Indeed. There are as many ways to be “normal” as there are normal people. No two people are exactly the same. Not only is “normal” completely subjective, but it’s a continuum.
Katyjane, what does the word “normal” mean to you?
To me, “normal” means “fitting into some norm.”
For example, here in the U.S.A., the majority of people are Christian; hence it’s “normal” to be Christian. Obviously there are many different non-Christian religions, and many of them differ from each other as much as or more than they differ from Christianity. For example, Judaism and Islam are staunchly monotheistic, whereas the Pagan Reconstructionist religions are staunchly polytheistic. Christianity it basically monotheistic, except that the “Trinity” idea looks borderline polythiestic and “idolatrous” to Jews and Muslims.
In the case of religion, one could expand one’s idea of “normal” to refer not just to Christians but also to several other “great” religions. But this still leaves thousands of other religions that differ from the so-called “great” religions — and from each other — in one way or another.
Kullervo:
“Indeed. There are as many ways to be “normal” as there are normal people. No two people are exactly the same. Not only is ‘normal’ completely subjective, but it’s a continuum.”
True. Still, no matter how you define “normal,” there will be more ways to differ from your norm than there are ways to fit within it.
“Still, no matter how you define “normal,” there will be more ways to differ from your norm than there are ways to fit within it.”
You say that like it’s a truism, but I challenge your assertion.
As for the “simple math” I referred to earlier:
Suppose you define “normal” as “having both trait A and trait B” (regardless of what traits A and B might actually be). There are three ways to differ from this norm:
* having trait A but not B
* having trait B but not A
* having neither trait A nor trait B.
Likewise, suppose you define “normal” as “having traits A, B, and C” (again, regardless of what A, B, and C actually are). There are at least seven ways to differ from this norm:
* having trait A and B but not C
* having trait B and C but not A
* having trait A and C but not B
* having trait A but neither B nor C
* having trait B but neither A nor C
* having trait C but neither A nor B
* having none of traits A, B, or B.
More generally, the number of ways to differ from your norm varies exponentially with the number of traits considered. if your definition of “normal” encompasses N traits, then the number of ways to differ from that norm is at least 2 to the N-1 power.
Not only that, but, for any given trait A, there is usually more than one way to be not-A, as in my religion example (where A = Christianity and not-A = the many non-Christian religions).
Kullervo wrote: “You say that like it’s a truism, but I challenge your assertion.”
I challenge you to give me a counter-example.
Your simple math makes unfounded assumptions that “normalcy” is expressed in terms of simple traits with an on-off swtich. Like I said, most things that peope would come up with as “normal” are really points on a broad continuum.
For example, it is a misleading oversimplification to try to say that “Normal” means the trait “Christian.” There are as many different kinds of Christians as there are peoplwho call themselves Christian, with differences in approaches, attitudes, theological views, soteriology, etc. I don’t have to give you a counter-example, anyway. You’re the one making broad assertions.
Here’s what it boils down to: you’re mostly just arguing to argue, and I don’t want that here on my blog, so knock it off. Thanks.
People with a strong sense of their identity…don’t join cults. Being in a cult is about as antithetical to having one’s own identity as it gets. Cults in fact go to great lengths to discourage their members from having their own identity through a vast array of brain washing and control techniques.
And studying people and making observations is not the same as making generalizations.
To Kullervo:
Looking back at my replies, I see that some of them were rather abrupt in tone. I would like to apologize for that.
No, I’m not “just arguing to argue.” But I will comment further on my own blog rather than here.
I would also like to apologize for having commented only on some replies and not on your original post, which I largely agree with. I’m glad to see your open-minded attitude toward LaVeyan Satanism, about which I agree both with most of what you said you like about it and also most of your reservations about it. (I myself am a Satanist of a different kind, not LaVeyan.)
To unitedcats:
It looks like I may have misunderstood what you meant by the term “fringe cults” in your post to which I replied initially. Thus I may have overreacted. Again, more about this on my own blog later today.
[…] had appeared there yet. It hadn’t, but my eye was caught by a blog entry titled “The Devil Is In The Details” on a blog called “Sailing to Byzantium.” The post was about Anton LaVey. I […]
[…] Eariler today I posted a blog entry titled “Fringe cults”, about the debate following “The Devil Is In The Details” on the blog “Sailing to […]
[…] Satanism as a uniform entity 06Jun07 On another WordPress.com blog, Sailing to Byzantium: There’s no reason a Satanist can’t be nice to other people, if being nice to other people pleases and fulfills him, but he recognizes that ultimately he’s doing it out of self interest. (Link) […]