The Myth of the Inner Deamon

The Myth of the Inner Demon

Another important factor in the deep reasons which lie underneath the “wars against” which the decent folks are so fond of leading, is their distrust of their own impulses. According to their logic, inside every man lives an animal, which wants to satisfy its wishes, wishes which society, or at least the neighbors, directly or indirectly repress. This “animal logic” means that each one of them also has an “animal inside”, and, for instance, when a housewife can not stop eating chocolate, or her husband can not quit his whiskey habit, it is not a question of a mental problem connected with emotions, motivation, self-perception, etc., but a question of an inner animal, an inner demon, which is too powerful. The drama of lighting a cigarette and hating yourself for it, is not seen as a struggle between mind and habit, but between “virtue”, “self restraint”, and “pleasure”. So from the mechanical point of view, once we dig past the mental layers which are a product of the industrial revolution, it is still all a question of struggling against forbidden pleasures. Those who do not struggle against these forbidden pleasures are sinful and must be punished, or shown the error of their ways (cured), or preferably both.

The intensity of the war for decency, is based, these days at least, primarily on the fears of the honest folks, that if they are surrounded by accessible forbidden pleasures, they will surrender to them. That is why, the regular Mr and Mrs Smith may state, that the children must be protected from drugs, from pornography, from competing religious sects and from following their own sexual impulses, but this is just another fictive wish. The real wish, hidden away by the inner mental censorship, is their desire for them and not so much their children, to be protected from temptations. What is happening, is that they are subconsciously doing the work of god – leading themselves not unto temptation.

Therefore, in plain language this means the following:
- when a “plainly decent” citizen is disgusted by the naked flesh on television and magazine pages, his or her as the case may be, disgust, is a disguised fear of their own weakness. Or something which they see as their own weakness. They are afraid of becoming lusty animals, which lead a life of continuous adultery. Quite often, this fear is strengthened by their tabu fear (never admitted to themselves) that they are in fact ugly and bad at sex.
- when they insist that drugs be forbidden and not available in drugstores, they are also doing this for their own sakes. They are afraid that if “drugs” are freely available they will not be going out of their homes but just stay there experiencing pleasure. To them, taking illegal drugs is a question of forbidden pleasure as well. A collective fantasy, consisting of a mystical, indecent ecstasy, for which the user, in the best pseudo-biblical traditions, pays the price by dying. They are afraid of having the possibility of choosing the ‘indecent ecstasy’.
- Likewise with action films, horror movies and aggressive music. When a human being is seen as an animal repressed by virtuous social programming, not only ecstasy from sex or from drugs is feared. There is also the deeply hidden dread of the ecstasy of rape and murder. Bloodlust. The honest folks are afraid that that they a) have impulses to kill and rape which they repress and b) that films and music can make them lose control, lose their minds and turn into mad killers/rapists; ironically, while fear and disgust is expressed at the new hip hop single in which the words ‘shit’ or ‘bitch’ are used, its seen as understandable, and not even worth all the fuss, when riot police, soldiers, or just righteous mobs are gripped by quite direct physical bloodlust and turn into bad ass monkeys who beat into pulps or destroy in other manner every ‘enemy’ human in their way.
- Finally, the desires to have a social or religious guiding hand, a real or ultra-real Big Brother; Mighty Father; Kind Mother, who choose instead of you what is good, what is bad and who you are, all speak of the same. The wish to fight to the death for the right to have a god, a pope, a military dictator, or just a kind, fatherly leader above mundane things like political parties, is a wish which mirrors the fear of one’s own weaknesses. “I am weak and bad, and someone must protect me from myself, or I will choose the path of wrong, the path of sin.” While I am a proponent of diversity, and believe that everyone has the right to make an informed decision on his/her lifestyle, I find it uncalled for, when this decision is forced upon me as well, to follow or be punished.

What the decent folks feel and think to be the inner daemon, the beast inside, is just their shadow, which they have created with their lies. It really does have demonic power over them, but only because they keep it beyond their consciousness. If the pain, fear, and ‘disgusting’ fantasies, kept locked away, are allowed to emerge into the light, then they become visible, knowable, controllable. If you keep something in the darkness – like sex – it becomes an independent demon. If you keep it as part of yourself – it’s just an element of your experience of the world. If prostitution or abortion or alcohol are kept in the dark – everyone does it anyway – but people get ill, poisoned, or killed. If these things are brought out into the light, they become visible, knowable and controllable. They have clear boundaries and dimensions and can be made as little fucked up as possible.

Of course, I have as much mental programs as the next guy. When the Mohamed cartoon controversy was on, and disproportionately upset Muslims were chanting “Europe is the cancer – Islam the cure!”, “God bless Hitler” and “9/11 was nothing!”, I suddenly lost sense of proportion as well. For a few seconds, as I read an article on the matter, I was not a skeptical liberal, but identified myself in a very primitive way with “Europe”, with “the white civilization” and images of planes dropping napalm with a “Die Walkure” soundtrack and glorious knights defending Vienna against evil Ottomans, flashed through my mind, accompanied by bubbling of adrenalin. Clanking of steel, buzz of airplanes, villages in flames and banners waiving in the wind – I am a product of my environment and I do sometimes suffer from “white power” attacks. But the difference between me and the religious, nationalistic or racist fundamentalists, is that I detect these processes in me fairly quickly after they appear, and they do not completely take over my thoughts and emotions. Because I am familiar with my mental and emotional processes – because I have studied them carefully for years. My instruments in achieving this were drugs and books. Reading certain books is forbidden in some societies, taking certain drugs – in others, and yes, these societies are protecting themselves from information which may change them. The “normal psyche” is very afraid of change. It tries to freeze the moment, and keep death away. This can never work but it can and does produce much unneeded misery.

And when they are afraid of certain drugs or book or films, when they are afraid of certain information – this is because deep down many are convinced that ‘civilization’ will be ‘destroyed’. If the ‘bad’ information is accepted, then the current reality stops making sense. The irony is of course, that their lives make no sense anyway, but they fool themselves that they do make sense, by not thinking uncomfortable thoughts and not allowing themselves to feel unhappy emotions. And they are quite right in fearing, that another gram of ‘bad information’ will be too much, and their mental defenses will be overwhelmed. But its not civilization, and not reality which will collapse, but just an individual house of lies, which is being confused, on purpose, with the world as such.