The Urge to Torment

Sometimes it’s not enough to say it comes from Satan; in our culture that can serve to dismiss any number of horrible sins and leave us no way to uproot them from our own souls.

The psychology of Christian Mysticism aims to recapture in some measure the state-of-mind from the Bible that we can use today. This is not a psychology limited to what behavioral science can detect, but presumes to explain a whole range of influences that are typically labeled “subconscious.” We seek to pull some of that into the light and offer norms that Western social sciences resist by relying on ancient wisdom common to folks before the West arose, because the Bible belongs to that pre-Western world.

For example, The Cult is a sample of typing psychology. It isn’t about a concrete entity, a literal group of people forming a cult. Rather, it’s a characterization of a psychological influence that can be discerned as consistent over long periods of human history. It works the same as a religion or cult, yet is not organized by people, but by its own nature. It manifests in other human organizations. You can tell when people operate under this influence and know what to expect. It’s a reliable predictor of future behavior and explains the motivations, etc. It also clearly separates between those who consciously embrace it — very few in number — and those who are simply steered by it — the vast majority.

A critical element in this influence is the perverse delight in tormenting others. But people who consciously embrace this influence seldom engage directly in torture, preferring to let others do it for them, as a means to pervert those who serve without full awareness. Most of the people who do the performing of torture are totally unaware what it does to themselves. A critical element is the compartmentalization of conscious awareness — it induces a kind of schizophrenia. It’s not psychopathy, but a deep perversion that remains in its own space and operates alongside the rather mundane and decent personality most folks manifest. Within the realm of activity ruled by the bureaucratic consensus, the actor is dominated by the evil self and there is zero conscious guilt of moral wrong. You should understand that grisly and horrific torture is just the outer edge of a singular tendency that often shows up somewhere short of that.

In other words, it is essential to bureaucracy itself. Where did it come from in our culture? It’s part of the worst elements of Germanic tribal mythology generally (Anglo-Saxon specifically), whose chief deity is that grouchy Nordic sonuvabitch we all recognize as the soul of the Western conceptions of God. Once you can make that connection, you understand how bureaucrats can operate with zero conscience and go home feeling morally approved after a day at the office tormenting their fellow humans. It’s not mischief; it’s perfectly normal for them. You deserve that torment. And if you review the history of this Anglo-Saxon middle-class bureaucratic cancer on the earth, you’ll recognize the relentless slow creep into greater dehumanizing depravity. It cannot help but get worse over time.

I feel sorry for those of you who work in a bureaucracy, because it is very hard work to remain sane. Stranger yet, working in that atmosphere is no insulation against bureaucracy you face when working outside your own. It really is a horrific, perverse thing.

So your response needs this kind of understanding. This is why I warn folks that legislation means nothing, because the folks who write and implement that legislation, and who interpret and enforce it, are all bureaucrats at heart if not in fact. How do you stop it? You don’t. God could if it matches His ineffable wisdom and planning, but we already know He confined Satan to this earth for a particular purpose. That you suffer personally is not the objective, but to make sure that sin reaps what it sows. Satan’s punishment is holding the job roughly equivalent to Potiphar in the story of Joseph in Egypt, though not Potiphar’s character. If most of humanity is confined within Satan’s dominion, then they are slaves to things they seldom comprehend. They are victims in their own right. Whatever we might do toward their redemption and release includes not taking it personally, but recognizing this world is no longer Eden. It is a fallen realm of Satan’s dungeon, in effect. Torment is built in.

Don’t get in a huff because that’s just the another feature of the same dungeon. It serves to enhance the torment if you buy into the idea of rights and laws as if they made any difference in outcomes. No system devised by humans will ever restrain this evil, because the systems arise from the same perverted atmosphere that allows torment in the first place. The bureaucracy is simply the latter stages of the same crop of fruit. Recognize the tree as poison and don’t eat the fruit.

Learn to discern the system and how it works.