I wrote this article several years ago for a now defunct web-zine, and ran across it today while updating my accounts elsewhere. The ideas in this article were described as "challenging" and "dangerous"... no doubt ideal for my brethren in the Cult of Cthulhu. Let me know what you think.[/i]
Satanism, perhaps, has answers to what needs to be done to ensure a better future for society. Any serious student of the Satanist Movement will eventually attempt to discern the social goals and potential impact of that movement on society at large. We are a "movement" after all, but the question raised is a movement toward what?' The fringe elements of our movement, generally lead by short-sighted but mildly charismatic people and composed of followers grasping for some reason to be "a part of something special", suggest agendas like the abolishment of Christianity, the preparation for the final holy war', even the downfall of society. The unrealistic goals of the lunatic fringe keep the simple-minded, both within their organizations and outside the Satanist Movement, in awe and enthralled while making no actual progress toward anything. Satanists, of course, are not interested in the downfall of society; this society has provided us with the means of expression and the pursuit of our personal growth. We aren't interested in some mythical holy war'; we recognize the ebb and flow of human history and are well prepared for whatever may come while we indulge in and maximize the now'. We could care less about the drivel of Christianity; they have proved to be less and less effective in their 2000 years of practice and are clearly on the verge of imploding. Our focus, as it has always been, is on ourselves as individuals and how to achieve the most personal success and pleasure form our endeavors in the time we have to pursue them.
When we dismiss the fictions purported from within and without our movement we come to the more rational question of our goals. Among them is the concern that we would be interested in seeing a world populated by Satanists. After all, this tends to be the goal of most major religions, and almost all the minor ones (whether actively pursued or passively waited upon). As we are to the contrary on so many other points, it is often surprising, even to some Satanists, that such an idea is not only incorrect, but abhorred by most Satanists. Satanists are leaders and creators; they require a group willing to be lead and willing to appreciate their creations. A world full of Satanists would rip itself apart; 6 billion plus individuals seeking to establish their own mark on the planet and our history. Furthermore, being a Satanist is in itself a rare commodity; most people do not have the inherent compulsion and would be ill equipped to be a Satanist, or even to fake it. Satanists are "real" unto themselves, a perspective that cannot be artificially induced.
This leads to the next proposal; as Satanists see themselves as leaders, then is it our goal to take up leadership roles within our government, potentially in a conspiracy manner to shape society in a manner more befitting our personal vision? The term "leader" in this instance is being under-appreciated. In most governments, politicians, no matter how wealthy or powerful, remain servants. They are servants either to the will of the people or to the special interests that helped place them in the positions they hold. Being a politician is far outside the desires of most Satanists. Even dictatorship is an unsavory prospect; a dictator still looks to the needs of his people and the demands allow little freedom for personal expression and development. Being the head of state is being the state, not a Satanist. Leaders', in the sense of being a Satanist, are innovators. They find new ways to live, new manners of expression, and provide an example of the human potential for others who are strong enough to follow.
Clearly, the goals of the Satanist are personal goals, efforts to achieve personal growth, expression, and to maximize the opportunities our lives offer. Despite our staunch individualism and self-interest, there exist several inherent social goals within the Satanist Movement. These goals focus on permitting the continued individual pursuit of happiness and self-expression. They would include the defense and growth of personal liberties, the limitation of "moral" law and the expansion of "rational" law, and ensuring that the opportunity to achieve based on ones efforts is ever present in our society. With this in mind, obviously Satanism cannot exist in a vacuum outside the tides of the greater society, as hard as we might try. Instead, we must analyze those tides and attempt to shape them in a manner that best supports our efforts as Satanists. Anton LaVey, in the 1960's, considered these social tides and came to several conclusions about the future and how it should be shaped to benefit the continuation of Satanism. We must keep in mind that his Pentagonal Revisionism Statement was written from a perspective that is now 40 years in history and could not account for all that has come since that time. Despite this, it is surprising just how accurately he envisioned the future.
The first point of this statement was the continued stratification of society. LaVey spoke of this during the era of "peace and love", when flower-children where selling the idea that everyone should return to nature, love one another, and be equal. Imposed equality was especially a theme of the time; the women's and minorities' rights movements where in full swing, creating an environment where individual achievement would no longer be a factor in determining status. This was not the intent of those movements, they in fact advocated individual achievement over race and gender as a determining factor, but their movement was co-opted by politicians and misguided social engineers. LaVey saw the folly of this, recognizing that societies operate better when the majority of its populace is aware of their stratus on the ladder of order. The opportunity to rise from one rung to the next would not be eliminated, only the delusion that everyone is equal would be torn away, replaced by the fruits of raw talent, hard work, and sheer luck, as nature intended. Individuals prosper when the possibility of being extraordinary is real; the delusion of equality makes everyone feel special, and therefore makes everyone mediocre.
The second point of the statement is to begin taxing all religious organizations as businesses. After all, they are in the business of producing and selling their message to the masses. By preventing religious organizations from being subsidized by the government they would be forced to subsist on whatever profits could be generated from their patrons. If they cannot continue to be in business then they simply close up shop. The focus of this goal is to inhibit religions ability to influence political and social policy. Instead of having thousands of tax-free dollars to use for advertising and inflicting their agendas on the rest of us, they would have to do so from their earned profits. This means that if any religion was still left standing to purchase television air-time, magazine advertisement, or bill-board space, they would have to be the most successful and of the broadest scope. Like any good business, they would have to speak in the interests of the majority to have that kind of purchasing power.
The third point, re-establishing "Lex Talionis", speaks directly to the idea of eliminating "moral" law in favor of rational law. Individuals and organizations would begin to be legally held accountable for their actions and forced to defend themselves through evidence and truth instead of policy manipulation and liberal humanism. Criminals would be treated as criminals, with no allowances given for the trumped-up reasons for their criminal behavior. Taking this a step further, it would be ideal to incorporate this point with the first point of stratification. Criminals would abdicate all rights as citizens, and upon being found guilty for their crimes would be reduced to the lowest cast, a sub-class, performing all the most menial tasks our society requires. It would mean the return of the work-farm and breaking rocks and the end of prisons with gyms, cable television, and even schools of higher learning. Rehabilitation would be a matter of personal effort of the prisoner after they had experienced the true purpose of criminal conviction; punishment. Life of the criminal sub-class should be so hellish, and potentially short, that there would be no time to reign as a gang-lord or drug-king from within the system. Those who survive the experience would have real reason to avoid the choices that placed them in prison in the first place.
LaVey's fourth point suggested the development of a new industry; the creation of artificial companions. These androids would exist to give everyone the opportunity to rule over someone else, allowing each individual to be a petty dictator and enjoy the benefits of having an abject slave. Or, to the contrary, have an ideal master to serve in the privacy of their own home. In the 1960's, this seemed like an excellent manner to address a need that exists in all people and the technology to accomplish this goal did not seem very far off. Today, as the population of the world approaches 7 billion, it is clear that the social motivation for accomplishing the creation of artificial beings is not soon to be realized. After all, an artificial workforce is difficult to rationalize when we aren't able to generate enough work for our existing workforce. Furthermore, a mechanical answer is less likely than a biological one. Our focus has turned from machines to the potentials of genetic engineering. Wealthy members of our society already enjoy the option of producing "designer babies"; children engineered from their sperm and ovum for specific traits and genetic potential. Fertility clinics the world over keep on hand extraneous embryos resulting from their efforts to help couples have viable offspring. Engineered subordinates are much closer to becoming reality than artificial ones.
Still, a more immediate solution exists in regards to satisfying an individual's need for customized companionship. Again, as there are over 6 billion people on the planet, many of them without gainful employment, perhaps it is time to consider and promote the idea of voluntary servitude. This requires no development of new technologies, merely a shift in law and moral perspective. A subset of the BDSM community already fulfills this principle; men and women pay good money to dominate others and be dominated by others. Some even enjoy these voluntary positions on a permanent basis. The social stigmas surrounding prostitution and servitude would have to be adjusted, allowing an individual to choose to enter an agreement with another that would result in a voluntary enslavement, with each member of the agreement establishing the parameters for that relationship. These "slaves" would earn a wage based on their desirability and the flexibility of their personal limits. Many members of our society would truly relish a situation which offered total freedom from responsibility for performing arguably minimal mundane tasks. Like the geisha of ancient Japan, some of these wage-earning "slaves" could even attain fame and notoriety for their value in their chosen social role.
The fifth and final of LaVey's points was the establishment of an additional industry; the creation of artificial designer environments. Every individual could create a miniature world of their own design. Imagine the holo-deck of Star Trek fame. Many Satanists already strive to achieve this ideal through current means; using decoration, lighting, music, and scents to create environments in the enclosures of their home. Each room often takes on a particular theme conducive to certain activities or moods. Bathrooms become sumptuous Roman baths and bedrooms become private pleasure-domes. The industry would allow a person to purchase a device or service that would give them the option to escape the mundane pressures of the world for their own private wonderland.
The Satanist Movement; the philosophy behind it, is beginning to consider other social issues that, if adjusted or corrected, would increase the opportunities for individual potential to be expressed. The welfare state is currently a drain on tax dollars that could be better spent on more socially advantageous efforts while promoting the lack of personal responsibility in those the state supports. The producers in society are forced to relinquish a portion of what is rightfully theirs to support those who, for whatever reason, fail to produce. Unfortunately, the stigma of being supported by the "charity" of others has been eliminated, replaced by a sense of entitlement. Indeed, getting the most from these social support programs is a symbol of status in these welfare communities. The irresponsible spend the money given to them in a naturally irresponsible manner, and once on a social program are actively discouraged from ever earning their own way. With so few being encouraged to manage on their own, it is only natural that more people will choose to join the welfare state rather than support themselves and be forced to support others.
In order to discourage these parasites from continuing to feed off the productive members of society, perhaps new standards of welfare regulation should be enforced. Welfare recipients should, for example, be forced to relinquish certain privileges; their finances should be strictly managed by an outside party (generating new employment in the accounting industry), forcing them to live by a strict budget. Luxury items would be forfeit, a cell-phone is unnecessary when potential employers can call a land-line phone just as easily and at less expense. Cable television is not a need for someone who should be spending their day trying to find employment or who would benefit more from a trip to the free public library. They should be forced to liquidate their holdings, no need for a luxury car when a economic model would better suit their travel requirements, no point in owning a video-game system when time should be spent filling out applications. Furthermore, drug-testing should be mandatory. Fail a drug screen and go without benefits for a month and potentially go to jail and join the criminal sub-class. Children could still be seen to; case-workers could be assigned to make certain they are going to school, being fed, and being clothed (providing a boost of employment opportunities).
In the same vein is another social issue that has a Satanic element; family cohesion and population growth. This idea is along the line of eugenics, a word feared many intellectuals due to the overzealous and horrendous efforts of Nazi Germany. Eugenics is simply the idea of applying scientific principles to heredity for the improvement of the species. This is already a de facto practice in our society in a positive manner; the wealthy and successful breed with the wealthy and successful, producing offspring with a greater genetic potential and raising them in and arguably preferable environment. The problem is that the reverse is also true; the poor breed with the poor, and they do so in greater numbers and with less concern about the environmental standards in which those offspring are raised. While an upper-middle class family in the United States might consist of one or two offspring, the low income members of our society sometimes produce dozens, increasing the cycle of welfare state dependency. The solution is not what methods should be used to encourage the successful to breed more, but how to encourage the unsuccessful to breed less. The welfare state is currently arranged counter to this proposition; women on welfare earn more per child, especially if they cannot readily identify the father. This should be reversed. While it would not be appropriate or successful to inhibit the individual's assumed right to reproduce (note that this "right" does not actually exist), it would be appropriate to limit the benefit such an individual might receive for irresponsible reproduction. With population size being a concern, perhaps it would be beneficial to society to limit welfare benefits to three children. After this point, it would be considered criminal neglect to have a fourth child that the individual is financially unequipped to raise. A woman who has two children and is a welfare recipient could be offered $10,000, tax-free, to voluntarily have her tubes tied and be considered "not at fault" if additional pregnancies where to occur while under these conditions. A woman facing criminal charges for child neglect could avoid prison by also undergoing the surgery. Men should be offered $2000 to undergo a vasectomy.
Another change in the social perspective that would help alleviate the problems of unwanted pregnancy, aside from making abortions easier to acquire and bringing more stringent criminal charges against those who impede an abortion, would be insisting that the woman be more responsible for her reproductive potential. The women's movement championed the idea of a woman's right to her body, but seems to have been lax in its enforcing of the responsibilities inherent in those rights. Men may deliver the genetic payload that results in a life, but women are the gatekeepers, the one's who choose to house this gift' in their bodies. If a woman was told, from the first days in elementary school when reproduction was discussed, that she would bare the ultimate financial responsibility for any children born outside of a contractual family agreement with a man, then these women would grow up more insistent about the use of the birth control options available to them and more selective about the men they choose with which to engage in intercourse. Indeed, if abortion laws were relaxed and a woman's right to her body fully recognized, then it could be considered entrapment to become pregnant by a casual partner and then demand child support for a child that the male did not consciously advocate the creation of!
Our society's maintenance of the tradition of marriage is an antiquated principle. Marriage was originally the means of securing paternal rights and responsibilities. Clearly, who a child's mother was would not be in question, but without a socially enforced arrangement backed by religion the responsibility of fathering a child (and supporting the mother) would either go unfulfilled or need be fulfilled by the state. Marriage as an institution before the advent of adequate birth control helped maintain the stability of society. Now that adequate birth control is readily available, the religious aspect of marriage is irrational and unnecessary. Marriage instead should be a simple matter of securing certain rights and responsibilities between two adults who have agreed to share resources in the support of one another and potentially a family. Marriage is therefore a business contract, and should be seen as such. It should be more expensive to get married than to get a divorce, with lawyers and contracts entering the picture at the time of inception of the arrangement rather than at its dissolution. In this manner, each party is clearly informed of their expected responsibilities and the limitations of the arrangement. The concern for advocates of the status quo is that, with these considerations to take into account, fewer couples will actually get married.
When applied to the other social principles that are advocated by the Satanist Philosophy, it becomes clear that a woman would want to marry before becoming pregnant, thus establishing her male partner's financial responsibilities toward any resulting children. Child-birth would then become a well considered choice rather than an ever more frequent "accident" (the very idea of an "accidental" child-birth is in itself a social delusion; it is common knowledge that sex, especially without adequate preventative measures, frequently results in a child and that once a party is aware of an unwanted pregnancy that party has as much as three months to opt to abort). Taken a step further; the society could mandate that couples considering having children undergo financial review and genetic screening. The state could set guidelines delineating which couples are fit for reproduction and which are not. Those couples deemed unfit would not be required to relinquish their right to reproduce, but instead could be offered money to undergo surgery to voluntarily eliminate the possibility of reproduction while at the same time being advised that choosing to reproduce without the sanction of the state would result in being ineligible for future support for their children should either of the individual's find themselves in need of it. All risk would fall on the parents warned that they were not socially solvent for reproduction.
In regards to the homeless issue; with such stringent controls on reproduction and the family, it would be criminal for members of a family to fail to support the members of their own family who require it. A return to homesteads with land and wealth being hereditarily passed down from one generation to the next would occur. Families would need to step up, budgeting a portion of their increased wealth through the reduction of the welfare state toward the support of family members who require it. As it was a century ago, a persons retirement would be secured through the success of their children, thus a parent would need to invest considerable time and effort in the rearing of their child into productive adults. Of course, this also means that the family would be responsible for stepping in and putting an end to dangerous drug habits or behaviors that would normally make an individual a burden to society.
There will be, of course, many bleeding hearts for which such rational propositions are impossible to grasp. They will instead cling to traditional delusions, emotional urges, and failures in logic to advocate their positions against doing something to reduce the burden of the unproductive on the productive members of society. They would rather see the current system continue to spiral into oblivion than advocate such an immediate and surgical response, cutting off the cancerous from the healthy. Satanists will need to continue to champion responsibility for the responsible, and serve as an example to the rest.