| Sympathy for the Devil |
[Sep. 28th, 2011|09:10 pm]
Scott
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After re-watching Futurama's The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings, I'm reminded of how much I like the mythology surrounding the Devil. He's just such a great character!
Also useful. I'm thinking of the study where people who believe in a vengeful, punishing God - and presumably the Devil too - are less likely to cheat than people who are merely religious.
It's impressive, but fear isn't a very clever way of motivating people, and merely stopping cheating is a boring goal. I think belief in the Devil might also improve behavior in a more elegant way.
Consider the Bad Guy Bias. People tend to care about evil and suffering if and only if it's someone's fault. As the article puts it, "When nearly 200 people in India were killed in terrorist attacks late last month, the carnage received saturation media coverage around the globe. When nearly 600 people in Zimbabwe died in a cholera outbreak a week ago, the international response was far more muted."
We see the same thing closer to home. If a serial killer shoots five people, everyone locks the children inside and barricades the doors and demands that someone throw money at the police force until the problem is solved. If fifty people in the same city in the same time period die in car accidents, then people only pay as much attention as it takes to grumble about Big Government if someone tries to impose seatbelt laws. Likewise, declaring War On Poverty or War On Drugs is nowhere near as satisfying as declaring War On Saddam Hussein, even though the latter is the least important of the three.
To an atheist, most of the evil in the world is faceless, impersonal evil. Temptation is just things you ought not to do. It's hard to get worked up over that kind of evil, and it's hard to muster a whole lot of energy to fight it.
But if you believe in the Devil, all of a sudden everything that's wrong with the world is caused by this one guy! World hunger? That's the Devil. Earthquakes? That's the Devil. There's someone to get angry at! You want to ruin the Devil's day by totally thwarting his plan to make lots of children die of malnutrition.
And temptation? Instead of "I'll just have one cigarette, no one will ever know", you're imagining the smirk on the Devil's face and you don't want to give him the satisfaction. And if you succeed in quitting, then you imagine the Devil gnashing his teeth and stomping away in a rage.
My few experiences with people who genuinely believe in the Devil have confirmed that their lives seem to have more meaning and narrative structure. I'd try believing myself, but unfortunately I don't consciously control my belief structure, and I'm worried he might be a sort of gateway supernatural being anyway.
Or maybe that's just what he wants me to think. I'm reminded of Steven Kaas: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was spreading a catchy quote denying all tricks greater than the one about faking nonexistence." |
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