I love the idea of applying the trinity/trimurti to evil, but I’m still struggling a bit to identify a clean correspondence between the trinity of evil and the (Father-Son-Spirit)/(synthesis, thesis, antithesis)/(create, preserve, destroy). Maybe it relates to the old saying “die young or live long enough to become a villain”. That is, maybe a Father that lives too long becomes Satan, the Son becomes Beezelbub, the Spirit becomes Lucifer—so Evil is like a transition— an edge between nodes of good.
I like that reflection, thanks for sharing. The mapping tracks intuitively. And yes, it's the way the function manifests that makes it evil (if it's taken to an extreme).
I think the trimurti of evil would be the dark side of the classic (create, preserve, destroy) aspects.
Lucifer (creation/ambition): Obsession with power and achievement shadows purpose and morality.
Satan (preservation/control): We are so attached to what we have that we become fearful of change.
Belzebub (destruction/addiction): For something new to arise, death is necessary. Addiction and the infinite possibility of choices make us numb to meaning and thus avoid destruction.
I think our mapping is actually pretty similar. For example, let’s say Lucifer represents ambition. I agree that is related to creation but it’s a precursor that can go wrong. Similarly, addiction/rot can be viewed as a continuation of the preservation process, but also a precursor to destruction, etc.
I view the Spirit as something like the recognition of something new that reveals the rot/insufficiency of the status quo (hence, antithesis).
I grew up loving comic books and let's be honest, I still do. But sometimes I think comic books and mythic stories did us a disservice by teaching us that villains look like villains. They don't. The supervillains of the real world are diffuse, spread amongst many people. Usually people who aren't maniacally laughing because they think they are doing the right thing!
Well, there is one comic book villain who that’s not true for— Darkseid. He can be seen as the personification of systemic evil, who drives people to despair merely through making people understand his existence.
And, of course, Darkseid is. The actual character with Greek letters on his gloves isn’t real, I assume. But in this interpretation what he represents is real— just as the thunder is real, and Thor is the thunder
when personifying them, I choose to use photorealistic images. making them look just like real people. these illustrations made sense for simpler times. that way it'll be one more step away from the abstract notion of the egregore. I am building a grimoire of folk spirits and I find it more compelling when I imagine them as people walking among us. especially when each one is ambivalent and the dosage and their position relative the others really counts. Great grimoire work btw
I think Moloch's demand for children sacrifice is also a useful metaphor: by over optimizing our own good, either by law, virtue or utility, we undermine the future of those who will follow us.
6 years I've been the last scientist on earth with a working brain investigating what supernatural force made the entre planet divide into tribes over COVID and everyone forgot all basics and turned vile.
So I've done 6 years going "am I damead,Vis is satan, is it Archons, what the Fuck is doing this to the planet, AAAAAARGH!!! is it Thanos, is it mk Ultra. It's so Babylon revelations, bit which ..."dark wizard "????? AAAARRGHHH HELP!!!
And sidnely I find your article going. "It's 3 of them ".
And it's made me go.
"Oh yeah, that's actually a good thesis. ".
So ...cool.
10 independent scientists and doctors tors by the way have all utterly confirmed that what your claiming (or sometning like it". Is the fact of our reality.
But they all so foggy. Best guesses are "some force blinding us". "Darkforce".
Meanwhile me for 6 years.
"YEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGH THAT!!! AAAAAAAAARRGH AAAAAAAAARRGH HEELP! AARGH FICKING DMEONS NAD ZONBIES AAAARGH.. FUCK ME YOUR ALL STUPID , ARRGRG.
AARGH
AAAAAAAAARGH...
WHATTHEFUIIICK!.
HOPE THIS JESUS GUY COMES SOON, PLEEEse!!!
-The Last Scientist.
Parasychologist.
World's smartest human by a huge margin. (Im not blinded.
So like EZEKEIL. 2.0.
or somethiing.
Yes I've got evidence.
Everyone here will be unable to discuss science facts with me.
How would this show up in a place without strong institutional infrastructure, say Gaza or Sudan or a merely dismal state without war? Would the devils be easier to spot maybe even obviously so? Or, would they need different anatomisation?
I loved the piece and my comment/question above comes from a friend who I shared your piece with, who pointed out that the title might be “The Satan of First World Problems”.
The examples in the post are indeed “first-world problems” (that’s where I can speak from experience).
However, the claim is that the devils and their dynamics are universal. Satan doesn’t have to be bureaucracy, it’s any type of tyrannical structure. Examples also include warlords, organised crime, and religious suppression (e.g., mutilation practices).
This is a very sophisticated perspective from a clearly intelligent individual. There are some ideological biases that show up here and there throughout your essay that don’t necessarily follow from your otherwise very well argued points. I wonder if you’re aware of them?
Thanks for the comment. This isn’t an academic thesis where I’m pretending to be objective. I’m also being provocative and ironic at times (which I know doesn’t always come across as intended). The aim is to make you think, not to convince you of anything :)
That being said, feel free to point out where you perceived bias and ideological colouring!
1) I notice a lot of resistance to accepting a trinity of Devils when it seems just as possible you to have two (e.g. in my own thinking so far I've generally collapsed Lucifer and Satan, as metric-optimization and bureaucratization seem similarly information-destroying) or many more than 3 (clearly there are many "demons" out there, such as the ones you mention inside serial killers, that don't easily fit into any of these three). Curious if you have an argument for why there must be exactly three, why such a tripartite structure is more "natural" than its alternatives. (I didn't really understand the mapping from Devils to Buddhist poisons but perhaps we can import arguments from there).
2. Related to the above, my own preferred moral theories tend to be contractarian, something like "the Good is the settlement that all beings would negotiate with unlimited time and resources" - deontology, utilitarianism, and (if you squint) virtue ethics can emerge as special cases / heuristic approximations given realistic transaction costs. I wonder if it has its own fourth demon or if it is somehow an unholy mix of the the other three.
1) The three come from the three moral frameworks (primarily). There are definitely more specific, identifiable forces of evil (demons) that follow from the three devils. More on that in part 2.
2) I would push back on that specific formulation, but that’s probably not a discussion for comments here. Even if we found a single sentence to encapsulate the good, my strong intuition is that it would contain elements of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. So I would expect we could also break it down into three definitions of good and evil.
Great multi-dimensional declension of Evil, which it is by nature. Pervasive and elusive in the same time. The enframing of mankind within a technician system (Ellul for technique, Harendt for blind bureaucracy, Tocqueville for atomization amd Castoriadis for anaesthesia) is one of its most powerful modern era avatars.
Wake up friends, new meditations on Moloch just dropped!
This is so so good thank you
Glad you liked it! And I'm flattered
Dang talk about an endorsement!
I love the idea of applying the trinity/trimurti to evil, but I’m still struggling a bit to identify a clean correspondence between the trinity of evil and the (Father-Son-Spirit)/(synthesis, thesis, antithesis)/(create, preserve, destroy). Maybe it relates to the old saying “die young or live long enough to become a villain”. That is, maybe a Father that lives too long becomes Satan, the Son becomes Beezelbub, the Spirit becomes Lucifer—so Evil is like a transition— an edge between nodes of good.
I like that reflection, thanks for sharing. The mapping tracks intuitively. And yes, it's the way the function manifests that makes it evil (if it's taken to an extreme).
I think the trimurti of evil would be the dark side of the classic (create, preserve, destroy) aspects.
Lucifer (creation/ambition): Obsession with power and achievement shadows purpose and morality.
Satan (preservation/control): We are so attached to what we have that we become fearful of change.
Belzebub (destruction/addiction): For something new to arise, death is necessary. Addiction and the infinite possibility of choices make us numb to meaning and thus avoid destruction.
I think our mapping is actually pretty similar. For example, let’s say Lucifer represents ambition. I agree that is related to creation but it’s a precursor that can go wrong. Similarly, addiction/rot can be viewed as a continuation of the preservation process, but also a precursor to destruction, etc.
I view the Spirit as something like the recognition of something new that reveals the rot/insufficiency of the status quo (hence, antithesis).
This is good and right.
I grew up loving comic books and let's be honest, I still do. But sometimes I think comic books and mythic stories did us a disservice by teaching us that villains look like villains. They don't. The supervillains of the real world are diffuse, spread amongst many people. Usually people who aren't maniacally laughing because they think they are doing the right thing!
Well, there is one comic book villain who that’s not true for— Darkseid. He can be seen as the personification of systemic evil, who drives people to despair merely through making people understand his existence.
And, of course, Darkseid is. The actual character with Greek letters on his gloves isn’t real, I assume. But in this interpretation what he represents is real— just as the thunder is real, and Thor is the thunder
I hear you but personifying it still conveys this idea that evil takes the form of a leader
When, in fact, it's more diffuse
It's an emergent property
I would love if these ideas found their way into a comic book in some roundabout way
excellent! very useful for seeing our blindspots - our favorite good and how we perpetuate the cycle making other's goods a villain.
another potential parallel:
1st person - Virtue/Beelzebub
2nd person - Deontology/Satan
3rd person - Utilitarianism/Lucifer
"Love becomes attachment theory, and awe becomes predictable neurochemistry. His trick is not denying the sacred but explaining it away."
Let me think of this (and the next few posts) by Yudkowsky.
https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7uwhDxDR/p/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x
when personifying them, I choose to use photorealistic images. making them look just like real people. these illustrations made sense for simpler times. that way it'll be one more step away from the abstract notion of the egregore. I am building a grimoire of folk spirits and I find it more compelling when I imagine them as people walking among us. especially when each one is ambivalent and the dosage and their position relative the others really counts. Great grimoire work btw
hell has less fire than this post.
perennial piece here bravo sir. 👌
so we’re a bit like a game of rock paper scissors or in a nash equilibrium?
I think Moloch's demand for children sacrifice is also a useful metaphor: by over optimizing our own good, either by law, virtue or utility, we undermine the future of those who will follow us.
Excellent science thesis..
6 years I've been the last scientist on earth with a working brain investigating what supernatural force made the entre planet divide into tribes over COVID and everyone forgot all basics and turned vile.
So I've done 6 years going "am I damead,Vis is satan, is it Archons, what the Fuck is doing this to the planet, AAAAAARGH!!! is it Thanos, is it mk Ultra. It's so Babylon revelations, bit which ..."dark wizard "????? AAAARRGHHH HELP!!!
And sidnely I find your article going. "It's 3 of them ".
And it's made me go.
"Oh yeah, that's actually a good thesis. ".
So ...cool.
10 independent scientists and doctors tors by the way have all utterly confirmed that what your claiming (or sometning like it". Is the fact of our reality.
But they all so foggy. Best guesses are "some force blinding us". "Darkforce".
Meanwhile me for 6 years.
"YEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGH THAT!!! AAAAAAAAARRGH AAAAAAAAARRGH HEELP! AARGH FICKING DMEONS NAD ZONBIES AAAARGH.. FUCK ME YOUR ALL STUPID , ARRGRG.
AARGH
AAAAAAAAARGH...
WHATTHEFUIIICK!.
HOPE THIS JESUS GUY COMES SOON, PLEEEse!!!
-The Last Scientist.
Parasychologist.
World's smartest human by a huge margin. (Im not blinded.
So like EZEKEIL. 2.0.
or somethiing.
Yes I've got evidence.
Everyone here will be unable to discuss science facts with me.
On mass.
Proof.
Outstanding! I read this three times today, the last time aloud to a friend. Thank you!
How would this show up in a place without strong institutional infrastructure, say Gaza or Sudan or a merely dismal state without war? Would the devils be easier to spot maybe even obviously so? Or, would they need different anatomisation?
I loved the piece and my comment/question above comes from a friend who I shared your piece with, who pointed out that the title might be “The Satan of First World Problems”.
The examples in the post are indeed “first-world problems” (that’s where I can speak from experience).
However, the claim is that the devils and their dynamics are universal. Satan doesn’t have to be bureaucracy, it’s any type of tyrannical structure. Examples also include warlords, organised crime, and religious suppression (e.g., mutilation practices).
This is a very sophisticated perspective from a clearly intelligent individual. There are some ideological biases that show up here and there throughout your essay that don’t necessarily follow from your otherwise very well argued points. I wonder if you’re aware of them?
Thanks for the comment. This isn’t an academic thesis where I’m pretending to be objective. I’m also being provocative and ironic at times (which I know doesn’t always come across as intended). The aim is to make you think, not to convince you of anything :)
That being said, feel free to point out where you perceived bias and ideological colouring!
Really enjoyed this! A couple notes / follow-ups
1) I notice a lot of resistance to accepting a trinity of Devils when it seems just as possible you to have two (e.g. in my own thinking so far I've generally collapsed Lucifer and Satan, as metric-optimization and bureaucratization seem similarly information-destroying) or many more than 3 (clearly there are many "demons" out there, such as the ones you mention inside serial killers, that don't easily fit into any of these three). Curious if you have an argument for why there must be exactly three, why such a tripartite structure is more "natural" than its alternatives. (I didn't really understand the mapping from Devils to Buddhist poisons but perhaps we can import arguments from there).
2. Related to the above, my own preferred moral theories tend to be contractarian, something like "the Good is the settlement that all beings would negotiate with unlimited time and resources" - deontology, utilitarianism, and (if you squint) virtue ethics can emerge as special cases / heuristic approximations given realistic transaction costs. I wonder if it has its own fourth demon or if it is somehow an unholy mix of the the other three.
Thanks, Ivan!
1) The three come from the three moral frameworks (primarily). There are definitely more specific, identifiable forces of evil (demons) that follow from the three devils. More on that in part 2.
2) I would push back on that specific formulation, but that’s probably not a discussion for comments here. Even if we found a single sentence to encapsulate the good, my strong intuition is that it would contain elements of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. So I would expect we could also break it down into three definitions of good and evil.
This is superb handling of a difficult topic. I look forward to Part 2. Meanwhile, I will browse your other work.
Great multi-dimensional declension of Evil, which it is by nature. Pervasive and elusive in the same time. The enframing of mankind within a technician system (Ellul for technique, Harendt for blind bureaucracy, Tocqueville for atomization amd Castoriadis for anaesthesia) is one of its most powerful modern era avatars.