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June 6, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:46
5191 The Ethos of Demons

Why is the story of selling your soul for fame so common in all cultures?The answer will shock and enlighten you.

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Well, good morning, good morning.
So anytime there's a general myth across humanity, there's usually some real deep moral truth in there.
And we're going to unpack selling your soul to the devil.
I think it's kind of where we are as a culture as a whole.
We were offered a whole bunch of stuff for free and now the bill is coming due.
The problem is we had enough wealth to make this an intergenerational deal, which is one of the most unfair things.
So the general story of selling your soul goes something like this.
The devil offers you happiness through the avoidance of virtue.
The devil offers you God, Jesus, philosophy, goodness, offers you happiness through the promotion, pursuit, and achievement of virtue.
But the devil offers you happiness through the avoidance of virtue, through some other mechanism.
You know, wealth, beauty, fame, riches, whatever, talent.
So the devil says you don't have to be good to be happy.
You just need to be popular, you need to be rich, beautiful, in demand, envied, screaming crowds, whatever it is, right?
And the devil uses you as a mechanism by which he can transmit that happiness can be achieved in the avoidance of virtue.
Right?
You think of a singer singing on a stage and tens or hundreds of thousands of people chanting and dancing along in the audience and that's happiness.
But there's no virtue in it.
Now, don't get me wrong.
There is happiness in life that is not the direct result of the pursuit of virtue.
Absolutely.
For sure.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with enjoying music and I used to get runners high and so on.
Although that had something to do with discipline as well.
I like winning at sports.
So it's not like
It's not like you can never achieve happiness without virtue.
There's moments, but it tends not to last, right?
It tends to be rather momentary.
As that famous tennis player was a woman, she said the thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
So it tends to be addictive because you have to keep pursuing it.
And the more you pursue happiness
through the avoidance of virtue the shorter and shorter your happiness will be and the more addictive you have to become and this is why you end up with these wild extremes like global celebrities and and so on so the devil says
I'm going to give you happiness and you don't have to be good.
Now, once you avoid being good and you have the appearance of happiness, you become enormously popular to everyone else who also wants to find a way to avoid virtue but achieve happiness.
So if you think of makeup, like this multi-trillion dollar industry or whatever the heck is going on, like women who spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a year on makeup and so on.
Well, they're trying to be happy, which is to be desired through the enhancement of appearance rather than the manifestation of virtue.
And so you see a pretty woman in a magazine ad and you're like, she must be so happy because she's in demand.
She's wealthy.
She's desired.
She's beautiful.
And so if I also become physically beautiful, I will gain happiness.
Now, of course, the legion of beautiful, miserable people doesn't matter because the devil will offer you happiness through the avoidance of virtue.
You work on your skin toner rather than the quality of your soul.
So when the devil says you can be fulfilled and happy through the avoidance of virtue, he dehumanizes you.
Why?
Well, virtue is what defines us as human beings.
Virtue.
Now virtue being the definition of universal abstract moral standards and the pursuit thereof.
The definition of abstract moral standards and the pursuit thereof.
That's something that only human beings do.
I mean, we're not defined as human because we have hair on our bodies, we breastfeed our young, we give birth to live young, and so on.
We're not defined as human because of that.
We're defined as mammals, but we share those characteristics with many other species.
But virtue
Defines us as human beings.
Now, you could argue, and it's a good argument, that in general, it is our capacity to crystallize, define, and use abstract standards that are universal, right?
Then the science goes into that as well.
A dog can catch a frisbee, but only a human being can define the path through equations.
And, you know, there is, quote, kindness among animals, but it tends to be programmed in, like lust and hunger and so on, tends to be programmed in.
It's not really virtue.
A dog will care for her puppies, but does not have an abstract standard of moral virtue, and so on, right?
So virtue is what defines us fundamentally as human beings.
Of course, virtue is available to everyone.
Scientific competence and expertise is available to a small number of people based upon training, intelligence, and predilections, and so on.
So virtue defines us as human beings.
So when the devil says, you can be happy through the avoidance of virtue, he's saying you can be a human being
Pursuing the pleasures of an animal and you will be great.
You'll be just great.
It'll, it'll fulfill you.
So you can be a human being pursuing in a sense, the opposite of what a human being is, and you will be happy.
And that's, you know, I hope when I crystallize it that way we understand that that's not a very good deal, nor does it make any sort of rational sense.
Now, of course, we have a thirst to be desired.
We have a thirst for wealth, the accumulation of resources.
Absolutely.
And again, there's nothing wrong with these things.
We are animals with the post-Monkey Beta expansion pack called Humanity at the Top, right?
So, we are animals, and a good meal is great, and sex is great, and exercise which gives you pleasure is great, and feeling desired is great.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with these things, they just don't define us as human beings, because we share those characteristics with most of the higher animals, right?
And so what defines us specifically as human beings is the definition, promotion, and pursuit, and hopefully achievement of virtue.
Virtue is conformity to universal abstract moral standards.
So virtue also is win-win.
So, win-win.
And that's a pretty wild thing when you think about it, right?
So, in this old analogy that if I share the light of my candle, the fire of my candle with you, I don't lose my candle light.
In fact, we get twice the illumination.
If I do something to define and promote virtue in you, that's win-win.
Whereas if you look at something like
Fame is win-lose.
So I remember reading a novel many years ago which was talking about how everybody in the audience of a rock concert wants to be the singer.
And the singer
is receiving all of the attention and giving almost none of it back.
In fact, one of Freddie Mercury's great gifts was to actually play with the audience in a two-way street, but it's very rare, right?
So, a fame is win-lose.
You have 10,000 people in an audience all looking at the singer.
The singer is winning.
Now, the audience is winning insofar as they're enjoying the concert and so on, but it's not a two-way street.
Now, when you get engaged in win-lose,
What you're actually getting, like what is the devil actually offering you?
is winning over others, right?
So if the devil says, I will give you great wealth, well, that wealth is coming from other people, and you are now wealthier than other people.
You have dominated them, you have won great beauty, you have now dominated and winning, you're winning against other people.
It's not like, if I become more virtuous, it's not like the rest of the world becomes evil, sort of by definition, it's not sort of win-lose, but
As people, if somebody is really, really beautiful, other people look less attractive and the attention goes to the beautiful person.
It doesn't go to the less beautiful or the ugly people around.
So what the devil offers you is animal dominance.
You will win over others.
You will take their money.
You will take their attention.
You will take their resources.
You will take from them.
It will win to you and, in a sense, lose in a very real sense.
Thank you!
Although you are a human being with the capacity for virtue, and that is what defines you as a human being, because, again, other skilled intellectual pursuits, such as mathematics and science, are also defining abstract universals and manipulating and pursuing them, but that's not available to everyone.
Virtue is available to everyone.
So, the devil says, you can be happy by being an animal, by dominating others,
By winning at their expense, you can be happy as a human being by pursuing win-lose animal dominance.
And so when the story goes,
That the devil says, live like an animal.
Give up what is most essentially human in you, which is win-win virtue, and transfer to win-lose animal dominance.
Give up what is most human in you, and you will be happy.
What does the devil take?
The devil takes your soul.
And you become an animal.
We're good to go!
Receiving that through the avoidance of virtue you then transmit the quote happiness of avoiding virtue to everyone else and this is how the devil uses you as an amplification mechanism to draw people away from the pursuit of virtue and have them fall into the canyon of pursuing animal dominance win-lose
Paradigms.
And he uses you as a giant net to catch more souls.
To catch more souls.
And the reason why he takes your soul is your soul is the capacity for the definition, pursuit, and promulgation of virtue.
That is what is human about you.
So if we say that the soul is the essence of humanity, he takes away your pursuit of virtue by offering you happiness in the satisfaction of animal dominance, win-lose scenarios that you'll win.
So he takes what is most human about you, which is the pursuit of virtue.
Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
He says, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Just go out and dominate other people, win at their expense.
Be famous, be rich, be beautiful.
Having an excess of resources is in the animal kingdom.
You see these male birds that build these crazy nests to attract females and animals will regularly store up resources or show their capacity for physical fitness or reproductive fitness and so on.
You think of the giant tail, or the peacock, or the giant antlers, or the stag.
This is all saying, well, I can survive even with these drawbacks.
Or for the stag, it's the combat, and so on.
So a display of resource acquisition, or the capacity thereof, that's all very common.
And it's win-lose, right?
So if you get to mate with the female, then the other males don't get to mate with the female.
So that's all win-lose.
Descend to the animal, abandon the human, and you will be happy.
But when you descend to the animal and abandon the human, your happiness is very short-lived.
Your happiness is very short-lived.
And so you have to have more and more and more.
Now, if you look at what is promoted as well, so if you look at
Say, songs, right?
If you look at songs and say, okay, well, you've got 10,000 people in the audience, you've got a singer caterwauling on the stage, what are they promoting?
They are promoting shallowness.
They are not promoting virtue.
I mean, back in the day when I was a kid in the choir, right?
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.
Right?
Away in a manger, no crib.
So this was about the promotion.
Hark the herald angels sing.
This is all about the promotion of virtue.
But if you look at sort of modern pop songs, I mean, they're generally wretched.
They're generally wretched.
They promote misery, breakups, mistrust of the other gender.
They promote materialism and shallowness, like there's a Taylor Swift song, like the guy over there with the hella good hair.
And it's funny too because I remember Jennifer Aniston was saying, I never date a guy who's balding.
Never date a guy who's balding.
Now of course I'm balding and I understand blah blah blah.
But in that pursuit and you know she was married, Jennifer Aniston was married to Brad Pitt.
Brad Pitt has famously good hair and Taylor Swift's boyfriends have all had great hair.
And so they're promoting you looking for the
Physical animal characteristics like a male with a good head of hair.
Well, you don't earn a good head of hair.
I mean you're born with it and it's genetic and so on, right?
So they're looking for, they're saying that the qualities you should be looking for are accidental animal characteristics.
Not virtue, not integrity, not kindness, not generosity, not moral courage.
And so, and of course, these women, through the pursuit of mere physical characteristics, have ended up sterile.
And I think Taylor Swift just broke up with her long-term boyfriend, and Jennifer Henderson never had any kids, and I don't know if she's single now, but she's had this whole series of failed relationships.
So that's the punishment, right?
So they're out there literally saying to people, and also through their appearance, right?
They're saying to people, pursue lust, right?
So when you focus on the physical characteristics of someone and pursue that in the belief that that will make you happy, that love is chasing after a guy with a great head of hair.
Which he did not earn, right?
You will get love through the reduction of someone to shallow material characteristics.
Avoid virtue.
Pursue lust.
The pursuit of lust is the avoidance of virtue.
And again, lust is a great thing.
I'm not trying to put any mind-body dichotomies in here.
All lust is a sin.
No, no, no.
Lust for a woman who's virtuous, lust for a man who's virtuous is a beautiful thing.
That's the alignment of the mind and the body.
of the flesh and the soul.
Right?
If the flesh is led by the soul, then it's a beautiful thing.
If the soul is abandoned for the sake of the flesh, well, you go to hell.
And you don't just go to hell, you recreate hell.
And Taylor Swift's all of her songs about, you know, this guy was bad, I broke up with this guy, we're never getting back together, men are treacherous, men will betray you, men are bad.
This is all programming.
It's all programming girls.
All programming girls to mistrust men, to mistrust boys, to be suspicious, to be defensive, to be wretched, to be unhappy.
Because
There's no Taylor Swift song that I know of, and as Lord knows, I don't know much of her oeuvre, but there's not much.
There's no Taylor Swift song that I know of where she's like, well, I made a terrible mistake.
I listened to lust.
I pursued guys for their looks.
And the person I need to mistrust is myself.
It's not the fault of the men.
It's the fault of me for having ridiculously shallow standards.
Well, I mean, she's half anorexic and complains about constantly being hungry.
I think as Jennifer Aniston did as well, she normally has a
Have a great day!
Because it's about the flesh.
It's about the flesh.
It's about the flesh.
I remember seeing, was it Jamie Foxx in some old movie with Jennifer Aniston?
I think it was.
And he's got these, you know, Ross laser bright supernova tombstone teeth.
And it's like, man, think of how much work Jamie Foxx put into having his teeth capped and done and perfect and he can never drink coffee.
And it's like, well, if you put that much
Work into the quality of your soul.
Well, maybe he wouldn't have ended up At the moment.
He seems to be blind and paralyzed according to some reports.
So So yeah, you distract your audience from the pursuit of virtue and the devil in this analogy would use you as a mechanism to which to amplify the pursuit of animal dominance when lose Greed for the material
So then the question is, okay, if we say I will accept the standards of the animal and abandon that which is specifically human to me, I give up my soul and in return I get
this this fame this this wealth this these looks or whatever right i mean i think of you know people with unbelievably sordid histories i mean there's there's so many rock stars who engaged in statutory rape of of teenagers right i was reading about led zeppelin and and you know the 14 year olds that floated around them and you read what
Stephen Tyler did, and I mean just David Bowie, and just absolutely horrifying, wretched, appalling stuff.
Illegal.
And yet they are celebrated, right?
And of course, you know, they have talent, and the music is catchy, and I get all of that.
But, you know, human monsters, right?
So what are they transmitting?
What are they transmitting?
Of course, we listen to the Doors, and what they're transmitting is black-hearted nihilism, right?
Five to one, baby one of five, no one here gets out alive.
I'm a backdoor man, the men don't know, but the little girls understand, right?
Doesn't that sound like child rape?
So, yeah, and of course the same thing with Led Zeppelin, just a lot of really dark and nihilistic
Monstrous stuff being transmitted same thing with ACDC.
I'm on the highway to hell like it really is pretty common and if you look at someone like Katy Perry who started out as a Christian singer and then ended up completely swallowed up by the music industry and spitting out this half-satanic stuff that happens later in life and That's a pretty monstrous journey as a whole so then the question is okay
The story is, you sell your soul to the devil, you get riches, fame, whatever, right?
And then these things become increasingly hollow and negative to you.
And then what happens?
Well then what happens is, you desperately want your soul back, but you can't get it.
You can't get your soul back.
And then you realize, as you age, that hell awaits you, the devil laughs at you, the pleasures are all deep in the rearview, and after a few flickering bits of giddy animal joy, a few flashing fragments of momentary ecstasy, you face an eternity of torment.
Is there a tipping point?
Because look, we all make mistakes.
We all fall prey to lust.
We all fall prey to greed.
It's just a natural tension between the animal and the human, between the mammals and the angels of our natures.
So can you recover your soul?
Because listen, I mean, half the calls that I get in my call-in shows are this question.
Can I rescue the souls of multi-decade unrepentant evildoers?
Can I fix them?
Right?
You know, there's this joke on social media that there's some pretty... there's some headshot from some pretty woman and all the guys say, I can fix her!
You know, it's a joke, right?
Some dangerous woman.
Can you get your soul back?
So, the bad conscience is the outraged, murdered aspect of your humanity that has been slaughtered in the stampede towards the animal, the material, the greedy, the win-lose, the dominance paradigm.
And as you slaughter the soul in pursuit of the false pleasures of the mere physical dominance paradigm, the soul is outraged.
The soul punishes you.
And that's called the conscience.
And if you trade virtue for talent and goodness for fame and moral happiness for money,
Your conscience is outraged and your conscience grows in power over time as the pleasures diminish.
The conscience for women is called the walk of shame in some ways, right?
That's when you stagger along a street in the same clothes you went out in the night before because you had shallow, meaty mammal sex rutting with a man of low quality who's never going to have anything to do with you.
It's called the walk of shame.
I saw a video of some woman doing the walk of shame and she's like, oh is something running down my leg?
And it's called the walk of shame.
It used to be the walk of shame.
Now it's like ha ha funny funny because I mean who's winning?
It's not not not the angels.
Yes, can you get your soul back?
Just by the by, I've mentioned this before, but people's reaction to universally preferable behavior is their conscience's reaction to their own actions.
When people get really angry, or avoid, or dismiss, I mean, it's because they have a bad conscience.
UPB is the formal recognition of the inescapability of the conscience.
Which is why people...
have such a weird relationship to it.
Where they have such difficulty, most people have such difficulty analyzing UPB and are outraged and angry and messed up by it because UPB is simply the syllogistical proof of the validity of their own conscience.
They don't like anything that strengthens the conscience.
Of course the conscience has to be kept at bay.
The conscience has to be kept at distraction.
The conscience has to be buried in stimuli.
The conscience has to be subsumed and eaten up by the pursuit of material stimuli in the here and now so that whispers don't save you from, in many ways, a fate worse than death, right?
So, can you get your soul back?
Can you get your soul back?
You can get your soul back if you can undo the damage you've done.
Right?
So, you know, we have physical pain so that we can
Navigate away from damage, to avoid damage, to note when damage is happening, right?
So we have physical pain as a constant feedback mechanism to help us pursue a path to safety in life, to maintain the maintenance of physical health.
If you bury your conscience, if you sell your soul, then you no longer have that feedback.
You no longer have that feedback of when you're doing wrong.
What Socrates called his daemon, the aspect of his mind that whispered in his ear when he was doing something wrong,
We would call it a conscience.
UPB, manifested in the unconscious, is what we would also call it.
When we claim virtue, but are doing evil, our conscience will rebel.
And the way that we bury the rebellion of our often whisper-thin conscience is through external physical stimuli.
Like a doom scrolling through social media, or video games, or whatever, movies, and
Going out and sex and we just try and drown out the conscience with physical stimuli because the human in us is outnumbered by the animal because the animal's been around for billions of years and the human is only a couple hundred thousand years old at max.
So it's easy to bury the conscience in the sensations of the flesh and of course that's what the devil says.
You don't need no conscience.
Conscience is just going to make you unhappy, which is true.
Conscience will make you unhappy.
So you can avoid the conscience, you can avoid the unhappiness, and you can pursue the pleasures of the flesh, the win-lose animal dominance, and lo and behold, you will be happy.
And you won't, of course, but that's sort of the deal.
So can you get your soul back?
Well, certainly not.
If you've been prominent, and you have
Lead people away from their conscience and towards the material.
If you have used your public presence to promote amorality or immorality, then you can't get your soul back because unfortunately you have just led too many people to abandon their conscience and pursue the degradations of the physical dominance path to evil.
So, yeah.
If you spent years and years and years singing to millions and millions of people,
And leading them in a bad direction, well, you can't undo that.
You can't undo that.
And when you can't undo it, you can't get your soul back.
And this is the tipping point, right?
If you're a smoker, then there's one cigarette.
That means you die.
If you stop smoking before that cigarette, you won't get that illness.
If you smoke that cigarette, you will get that illness.
There's that one cigarette.
And nobody knows where that tipping point is, which is why I don't smoke.
So, if you have worked towards the destruction and corruption of other people,
And it's going to happen, right?
You're going to make mistakes.
You're going to say bad things.
You're going to have a temper.
You're going to insult someone.
You're going to undermine someone in the pursuit of virtue.
I mean, you're going to do it.
We've all done it.
And you catch yourself because you have a conscience that's lively and you're engaged with.
It's part of the system, the ecosystem, the aspects of the personality that everyone gets a seat at the table.
So you listen to your conscience.
Your conscience says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Not good.
Not good.
Not good.
Not good.
And you apologize, and you make your restitution, and you learn your lessons, and this just happens, right?
In the same way, you know, if you're moving around the world, you're gonna stub your toe, right?
I played volleyball the other day, and my shoulder hurts, right?
So, you know, I just need to know, I need to work a little bit more on my shoulder exercises and all that, right?
So, you navigate through life with a constant companion called pain and potential pain, and that's what instructs you on how to live well, because things change over time, and so on, right?
So if you also navigate through life with a lively and connected relationship to your own conscience, then when you do wrong, when the, you know, finger of the devil starts wriggling towards you like a gray centipede, then you're like, Whoa, get behind me, Satan.
My conscience is telling me this is not the right thing to do.
So I won't do it.
Whereas of course, if you numb yourself and you bury your conscience in
Stimuli, and you bury your conscience in win-lose, fame, wealth, beauty.
It could be skinniness too, envy, whatever, right?
If you bury that, then you just continue.
And then, because you continue in the avoidance of virtue, and you broadcast that happiness results from the avoidance of virtue, then you have infected countless people.
And, of course, they're still responsible for their own decisions, but it's not like you haven't helped, right?
You know, if you're a tobacco executive and like the Marlboro man, I think he died of lung cancer, right?
Like if you've promoted smoking, yeah, everybody's responsible for smoking, but you haven't helped.
And you've certainly gone in the wrong direction as far as the promotion of health.
And yeah, you have ashy blood on your hands, right?
And so if you've gone too far, and recovery is not possible because you can't make restitution, especially if you've targeted children, right?
So a lot of pop music is targeting children.
And once you've targeted children and corrupted children,
You can't recover because you can't undo that which was inflicted upon children.
Say, ah yes, well it's their parents' fault.
Yeah, I get all of that.
I get all of that.
For sure.
For sure.
But of course the devil wouldn't influence you to spread corruption if spreading corruption didn't work, particularly towards children.
Particularly towards children.
So, if you've done the tipping point, if you've passed the tipping point to permanent evil, if you've distracted too many people from virtue,
Then you can't get your soul back, because you can't undo the damage you've done.
Now, theoretically maybe it's possible you have a full reversal, you expose everyone, but then you just will... Here's the problem.
If you've delivered a message because you're famous and part of the delivery of that message, or part of your fame is based upon you delivering that horrible message, or that negative message, or that distracting message, right?
I mean, how many Queen songs are about the pursuit of virtue?
How many Beatles songs are about the pursuit of virtue?
Other than, you know, and in the end the love you make is equal to the love you take.
It doesn't really mean much, right?
Or Taxman, I guess.
That's one for you, nineteen to me.
So, how much of that?
So you're only prominent because you spread distraction and corruption.
And so if you say, well, I want to use my prominence to reverse that message, you just won't be prominent anymore.
You'll just be deplatformed.
You'll vanish.
And so you only have the microphone when you're spreading corruption.
When you don't want to spread corruption, you have neither a microphone nor a stage.
And we've seen this a zillion times, that people try to find their conscience, they try to reverse their path, and they simply vanish from social life, right?
Now the other thing too, what you can't undo as well, is that, you know, I think there's some pretty bad people in charge of culture as a whole, and I mean, there's exceptions and some really great stuff out there, give your money to nefarious, they've earned it, but I think there's a lot of, you know, pretty corrupt people in charge of culture.
Now, when you go out there and sing or act or dance or prettify yourself into distracting people from the pursuit of virtue, then you get a small amount of that money, but the people in charge of the culture get a huge amount of that money.
And can you undo that?
No, you can't.
You can't get that money back and they'll use it to fund new pursuits of, you know, potential corruption and so on.
So you can't undo the message you spread, you can't undo the people you have helped to corrupt, and you can't undo the flow of money to people who may not have the best interests of everybody's virtuous souls at heart.
So the story that the devil offers you gratification and glory, and the devil of course never offers you the challenges and trials of virtue.
The devil offers you something for free, which is the happiness that is reserved for virtue, but through fame and beauty and money and talent and so on.
And power, right?
Power is the big one.
Power is the big one.
Because if you are virtuous and you study virtue and you study communication, then you can influence people through making good arguments and so on.
But of course, if you want to influence people or control people without going through the pursuit of virtue and eloquence, then you become a sophist and you get political power and now you can order people around without having to have their respect or without having to have pursued their virtue, right?
Without having to promote a virtue to become an example of virtue and so on.
So the power is the big one, right?
That you will be happy because you have power.
And of course you will get a certain amount of primal bonobo animal joy through the pursuit of power and climbing up the social hierarchy and ordering other people around and all of that.
Yeah, you'll get all of that.
But you will not have sustained happiness.
And so the devil offers you something for nothing.
He offers you the sustained happiness that is reserved for virtue, but offers you that sustained happiness through the avoidance of virtue, which is like offering six-pack muscles through the avoidance of diet and exercise.
He asks you to only give up that which is most essential to you, which is your soul.
Of course, he doesn't say that, which is most essential.
He just says, give up your soul and I'll give you this.
And he's offering you animal dominance, win-lose pleasures at the expense of the pursuit of virtue, which is what is most human about you.
And then he uses you as a mechanism by which to broadcast vice and the avoidance of virtue to other people.
And after a certain amount of time, and that time is actually, and the more famous you are, the more rapid that is, which is why you almost never see any truly famous people becoming virtuous later in life.
Well, once you've corrupted enough people, you can't get your soul back.
And then you double down, which is why people double down when confronted on morality.
The devil keeps the soul, no recovery is possible.
And particularly if you've corrupted children.
So for all of you out there thinking, I can save the souls of those around me, I can recover the souls of those around me, I can wrestle them back from the devil and put them back in their heart, even when those people have not admitted any fault, you're saying you're stronger than the devil and wiser than God, because God will not recover a soul from an unrepentant sinner.
And the devil will not give it up of his own volition.
So you are saying that you are stronger than the devil and wiser than God.
And so the desire to save souls in this way is falling prey to the sin of pride, of vanity.
I'm stronger than the devil, I'm wiser than God.
And the devil doesn't care how he catches you.
And he just wants to keep you close to those who corrupt and frustrate you.
And he wants you to pursue impossible tasks in the realm of virtue so that you can broadcast how incompetent, irrelevant,
And ineffective, helpless, virtuous.
So the devil wants to point you in pursuit of saving souls, which he's never going to give up.
To have you bang your head against the wall of his resolution, his skill, his dominance, his multi-millennia expertise.
He's near infinite power.
He wants you to beat your head against the wall trying to save souls.
He's never going to give up.
So you can broadcast to everyone else that the pursuit of virtue leads to frustration, helplessness, pointlessness.
And that he can use your desire for virtue to create and broadcast hell on earth.
Which is why it is such a fundamentally dangerous pursuit and one I'm damn glad I got out of.
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