Altogether Too Much Sympathy For the Devil

I.

The 2016 TV show Lucifer, first on Fox before getting picked up by Netflix, is about, as the title suggests, the Devil. Lucifer, played by Tom Ellis, has decided to quit Hell and move to Los Angeles, where he starts by running a nightclub, before falling in with a police detective who is also a single mother. Together, they proceed to solve murders, since apparently it’s impossible to make a show about anything else these days. I admit I only watched the first two seasons, so my analysis will be confined to that portion.

If you guessed, from the fact that the Devil is the protagonist and that Netflix picked it up – not to mention the fact it started in 2016, i.e. its mere existence as modern television – that it has a progressive bent to its message and thought, then you probably also know that bears shit in the woods and the Pope is Catholic. From there you might conclude that this show is appropriating Christian motifs and themes in order to critique them from a progressive standpoint. However, this guess would be as accurate as the conclusion that a woods-shitting bear is Catholic (if it shat in the Vatican, on the other hand…).

Because, while it uses Christian motifs and themes, with the traditional trappings of a critique of Christianity, this show addresses absolutely no actual Christian ideas or beliefs.

For example, consider the nature of Hell in this show. In Christianity, Hell is where people who disobey divine law and are not saved by Christ go to suffer for their sins against God. This show does not agree – hardly a surprise, considering they are progressive. Is Hell here, then, a place where racists go to suffer for the sin of bigotry? Or where misogynists go to be reeducated as LGBTQ allies?

Not at all. In Lucifer, people do not end up in Hell by any objective standard of judgement at all. Hell is where people go when they judge themselves. In fact, they can leave at any time – but according to the show, the people there cannot bring themselves to leave because of the shame they feel for breaking their own moral rules. Hell is the guilt and shame that people impose upon themselves. (What about people who feel no guilt or shame? … The question goes unasked.)

The writers do not even address the idea of objective judgement – as if they do not recognize that there could be any such thing.

While you may or may not agree that people ought to feel shame in order to hold themselves to a common social standard, you will surely agree that personal judgement is not the traditional core of Christian values. The Christian God and moral standards are meant to be something outside individuals and their personal feelings, a higher law that transcends human judgements and measures people by independent standards. When a Christian’s feelings do not match with the traditional Christian moral laws – then the feelings are wrong, and it is the duty of the individual to act in accordance with the moral laws anyways, because they are the laws of God. This is what makes true religious thought a level four perspective.

But in this show, there are no objective judgments to be had. In the new left-think, it is only what one feels is right that can be right – a level-three perspective. The fact the show’s perspective on the nature of judgement differs from the Christian outlook is never addressed – as if the writers do not realize that not only their object-values but also their meta-values differ from those of Christianity.

A final example: where is Jesus here? The idea of sacrifice has been twisted on its head – Lucifer burns his wings to attempt to get out of responsibility, sacrificing the approval of authority and his claim to virtue in order to better pursue his own ‘creative individuality and personal expression.’ A real Christian, I imagine, would just call this ‘sin.’ But in a progressive world, this is just another moral tradeoff, since these latter values are held on the same level as the former. In this show, sin and virtue come as a mix that must be balanced, not as a black-and-white divide with one side to be pursued always and the other never.

The fact that Lucifer can make these tradeoffs of virtue for sin but still be far enough in God’s good graces to get new tasks from him is a sign of the writers’ underlying assumptions. One of the fundamental themes of this show is Lucifer’s decision whether to do his actual job and take orders from God, or whether to do whatever he pleases to express his personality and individuality. Of course, the answer he finds is that he must incorporate both into a single path, finding the perfect ‘work-life balance’.

This is not a Christian arc in any way shape or form – it is not even an anti-Christian arc. There is no discussion of the contradictions between traditional Christian values and those of modern progressivism. Within the context of the show, Lucifer is in fact ‘enforcing’ God’s laws (laws that apparently have nothing against premarital sex and homosexuality, since even the angel Amenadiel seems to agree these are fine). There is not a single Christian in this show full of Christian motifs, not even just there to be mocked.

It is as if the writers learned about Christianity from its corrupted presentation in modern progressive culture, and took this as its true and only form, or at least the only form worth addressing. Lucifer is a reaction, not to Christianity itself, but to a progressive redefinition of Christian thought as something more along the lines of ‘obeying theological authorities’.

Was critiquing Christianity getting old and stale? Perhaps. It’s certainly been done more times than one can count. But there’s something to be said for addressing the real ideological positions of one’s opponents, if only to counter them. It implies a certain degree of understanding, of will to comprehend perspectives other than one’s own. What I would call “broad-mindedness” if that term weren’t currently used as synonymous with “ideological conformity to progressive thought.”

No, what this show has done is far more subtle and insidious. By addressing not the real ideas of Christianity, but ideas more suited to progressive understanding presented in the trappings of Christian motifs, it portrays its own progressive-friendly interpretation of Christianity as the real thing. Perhaps it cannot replace the concepts of true Christianity in the minds of those who have encountered the real thing – but for those who have not, it is enough to fill the gap. That is, people who watch this show with little or vague understanding of actual Christian beliefs will come to incorporate this show’s presentation into their understanding, believing they are making their worldview more accurate, filling the holes in their understanding with this mere appearance of truth. These people now think they know what Christian thought is (or was), even though they have never truly encountered it at all. Lucifer is attempting to write the knowledge of Christian thought out of the progressive consciousness, if not out of existence itself.

The progressive Zeitgeist has reportrayed Christianity as another strand of progressive thought, rewritten the concept of Christianity in the progressive mind from what it originally was – the values that can be seen by talking to live Christians or reading historical Christian texts – into something that better suits its purposes. “But wouldn’t it be easy enough to realize this, if you talked to a Christian or read some Thomas Aquinas?” Sure, but is any self-respecting progressive ever going to do that? No, so the bait-and-switch goes unnoticed by the intended audience.

That is, the modern progressive is now living in a simulacrum, detached from history, in which what they conceive of as Christianity bears little resemblance in vocabulary and no resemblance in ideology to the actual historical and even modern constitution of Christian ideas and beliefs.

II.

Here is another way in which this show presents as reality what it wants its viewers to believe is reality, creating a pseudo-truth on-screen for viewers to export out into their own lives.

Lucifer takes the themes and motifs of gods and demons, superhuman entities, but then instead of writing a story about greater, transcendent forces, grand confrontations of good and evil, it populates its story with things that are lesser – things that are human, all too human.

Ayn Rand once said the key to journalism is to take the reader’s vices and portray them as virtues.

Lucifer takes the viewer’s weaknesses and portrays them as strengths.

Consider the sections where Lucifer uses his very underwhelming power of looking at someone and asking “What do you truly desire?” and through magical hypnosis compelling them to give a true answer. (Why can’t he require true answers to any question? Wouldn’t that make more sense if he actually sat in judgement (or in the context of the show, mediated judgement), like a real angel? I guess since it’s a police procedural that might make it hard to get a story – “So are you the murderer?” “…yes.” Case closed.)

So, he asks these people what they truly desire – and what do they respond? The answer almost always fits into one of three molds:

(1) Those whose desires are professional:

The message here is that people’s lives, and the sole and central focus of their time and efforts, should be on their work. Do you think this woman has a family?

(2) Those whose desires are unrealistically above their station:

These characters are promptly mocked by their friends for expressing such goals, as the protagonists, in their moral superiority, condescendingly chuckle under their breath while telling them that it’s fine to think big thoughts since having silly, unrealistic dreams doesn’t impinge upon their intrinsic worth as a human being.

(3) And last but not least, those whose desires are outright pathetic:

That this is meant to be relatable is obvious – who doesn’t want such things on occasion? But – as the true expression of their soul? Really?

Where are the people who desire true love? Achievable levels of wealth and fame? Families? Social influence? Do the writers think there are no people who desire such things? Why do they keep pouring desires in the same old molds, until the characters’ answers lose the ability to surprise?

This is the key to what the writers are doing. They keep portraying these people as having such goals to show that it’s not a joke, it’s not a surprise, it’s not an exception. This is the message:  This is what real people’s true desires are actually like. Either occupational, unrealistic, or pathetic. This is the message they want to send to the viewer: Look, everyone has these sorts of desires, so it’s okay if you do too.

Should we believe them, then? Are all people’s goals either those which will help the company, those which are mere daydreams, or those which they can afford on a middle-manager’s salary?

If by having these desires one means possessing them among others, then it’s true most people have such goals. And probably some people even take them as ultimate, terminal values – it’s a consumerist culture, after all.

But…Lucifer is a TV show, not a reality. It’s supposed to be about literal angels and demons. Its symbols and motifs seem to promise conflicts between greater, transcendental forces. Shouldn’t interacting with these forces bring the people around them up to their level? Shouldn’t the presence of transcendent powers inspire the supporting characters to greater heights of soul, greater desires?

Instead, the humans in this show are portrayed as less than we even expect of the people we meet every day. However execrable the characters’ actions for which they’ll go to prison may be (again, it’s a police procedural – these people all murdered someone, so at least they have that going for them), their goals and desires, the truth of their hearts and souls, are simply outright wretched. The trick is that the show suggests that all people are this way, everyone’s desires are like this, so it’s okay if the viewer has these sorts of desires too. It’s okay that their soul is small – because so is everyone else’s.

But it doesn’t stop there – these sorts of petty desires aren’t just acceptable. In fact, having these sorts of desires is portrayed as a redeeming quality in the characters, what gives them some fraction of virtue despite their flaws. The viewer is meant so sympathize with the villain by the fact that their true desires are also pitiful – just like the viewer’s own.

Why does the show do this? Because that is what the progressive audience has become, is becoming – pathetic at heart and in soul. The old values have been lost – Christian thought has died and been forgotten, while that of the Greeks rots in its grave – and they have been replaced by an ideology of emptiness.

I could almost respect the writers if Lucifer looked into the characters’ souls and saw that what they truly wanted was to eradicate racism from the world, or for women to at last take their rightful place in society as the superior gender. If that was what the show’s authors wanted, what they wanted their audience to want, I may not agree, but at least it would be a truly higher purpose, and likewise make room in the audience’s souls for them to cultivate their own higher purposes. But progressive thought did not replace the personal, individual virtues of Christianity with personal, individual virtues of progressivism. The virtues of progressivism are entirely social, and cannot and do not exist at a personal level. Progressivism took away the old values of the individual, and left them with social values, city on a hill values, but for themselves and their lives, nothing. They are just cogs, pathetic cogs – and progressivism gets them to be happy about their fate by shows like this, shows that tell them pathetic is what individual humans are meant to be, that it is virtuous to want small and pitiful things as long as you give lip and vote service to the right ideology.

And the patheticness of the humans does not stop with the humans – the angels and demons shrink in size to match.

Even the supernatural and divine beings in this show are obsessed with nothing more than small family conflicts and personal tradeoffs between duty and responsibility – what do any of them really care about the fate of the world, about complex moral issues? Even unparsable nonsense like the ending of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time would be preferable to this void of theological or philosophical meaning. In Lucifer, the angels and demons are merely human, and the humans are sub-human. This is the opposite of ascendant – it pushes descendant values, to a decadent population. The Greeks have been forgotten not because what they said and did is no longer true and relevant, but because society is no longer capable of imitating or understanding it – such is our decline. We hide in Ishterebinth committing atrocities and calling them virtues – but without even bothering to mourn what we once were! What plague of wombs has afflicted us, friends?

III.

But wait! The show does teach a message! It teaches us to be kind, to care about people other than just ourselves. Isn’t that the true heart of all human value systems – even Christianity, down in its core (at least if you forget about the Old Testament)? Isn’t that a higher goal, even if not a particularly Nietzschean one?

It would be, if the show actually sent that message. But it does not, and in fact cannot, within the frame it is using. To understand this, we must go back to the concept of narcissism – Alone-style narcissism.

Narcissism, as Alone defines it, is the belief that the world is focused around yourself – that you always have to be the main character in the story, and nothing matters but what plays a role in the world as seen from your perspective. The fact that other people could be doing things unrelated to you is unbearable.

So the premise of the show is that Lucifer starts off as a narcissist – he walks into the room and starts talking about himself, ignoring Chloe (the police detective single mother), disrespecting the dead bodies, etc. etc.

But then he goes through a transformation – and here is the issue. The form of his transformation comes as him realizing he is a narcissist, and that the solution to this character flaw is that he has to care and think more about others. That is, this is his personal journey of self-enlightenment.

But – the TV show is still about him! His personal journey of self-enlightenment is still about him! HE’s incorporating people more into his life-story, appearing as a more caring and kind person, maybe even being a more caring and kind person in some ways – but that doesn’t make him less a narcissist!

The very frame of the story precludes this arc from being completed. For Lucifer to become not-a-narcissist, the show would have to be renamed Detective Chloe. It can’t work.

But that’s not the point of TV shows. The point of the shows is to be about the characters, and the viewer understands that, so of course the story revolves around the main character and it’s not a problem. The characters aren’t narcissists themselves, because in the story they’re just reacting to events. They don’t perceive everything as being about them, they perceive it all as real and hence about itself. The viewer simply is seeing it from the character’s perspective.

But with Lucifer, by following the track that “Lucifer is a narcissist and now he must overcome this character flaw”, the show has taken a step back onto a path of no return. By going into the meta-frame it has hopelessly bound up itself and the viewer into a paradox of perspective. The viewer cannot find a perspective from which Lucifer is no longer the main character. So he accepts Lucifer’s journey to non-narcissism – his false journey – as successful. This is how it works: he thinks, “I’ll care more about caring about others and be fixed”.

Wrong. The viewer is now just looking at things from this meta-perspective, thinking about casting his own life as a movie in which he is not a narcissist. The show has detached the viewer from the concept of being, from even the concept of becoming, which is to transform from a real state to another real state. The viewer now thinks of true transformation as meta-becoming, transferring from a simulacra state to another simulacra state. Since Lucifer’s object level is the viewer’s meta level, Lucifer’s meta level is the viewer’s meta-meta-level – so now the viewer thinks of transformations as being in the meta-meta-level, between meta-level states – and not as occurring at the meta level, between object-level states.

It’s a trick. The show presents Lucifer’s personal journey of change as an argument for why people never have to really change since they can just fake it.

IV.

The destination, however, is not the only issue with Lucifer’s journey of transformation. The route requires just as much consideration. Since how does Lucifer go on this journey? How does he manage to change himself? Through, of course, therapy.

Now this is a common trope in modern TV. Why?

“Well, it’s just lazy writing.”

No. Wrong. This happens for the same reason characters in Baywatch have too much money for lifeguards, and it’s not because the writers were too lazy to make one up (how easy is it to say, “One is an heiress with a trust fund…”?). The writers wrote it that way because they are thralls to greater forces that act through them to present a false reality as the true one. It is a purposeful move by which to create the matrix.

So why is there so much therapy in TV shows?

In order to change oneself, to transform, one has to go through a mental process of self-reflection in which one observes events in one’s life, notices contradictions between these events and one’s model of how things are and should be, and comes up with a higher, more comprehensive and adaptive perspective from which these events could be viewed, and a perspective that can be acted from to achieve better outcomes. Then once this perspective is constructed, one must make the decision to adopt it, replacing one’s previous perspective, and incorporating it into one’s worldview. This is the process of transformation.

This process happens in the mind, so to portray it in a TV show one has to make the inner thoughts of the character visual or verbal somehow. There are different methods for doing this. Shakespeare did it as soliloquys, others do it as voiceover, but these are boring and out of style, so now TV writers just do therapy.

Okay, but therapy is still just the character talking to another character, right? Why have them talk to a therapist? Why not their girlfriend? Their dad? Their bartender?

Well, why do people in real life go to therapy?

“They’re unhappy with their lives. They want to change.”

Then why not just do the process themselves? I mean, it’s a mental process. It’s not like weightlifting, where you need to go to the gym.

“Well, to become a more balanced and calm person I need a bench-press and some free-weights and an elliptical, and I just don’t have the space in my basement.”

No. You can do it in your head all on your own, just like you can do bodyweight exercises in a 9sqm bedroom. Then why spend money on therapy?

“I have insurance and the copays are low.”

Yeah, that’s the problem.

TV shows present therapy as the correct, proper, appropriate way to go about changing yourself. Just like Mercedes and BMW are the correct, proper, appropriate cars for affluent upper-middle-class families to drive, and a single mother raising her only son/daughter with full custody while holding a full-time job and in an on-and-off relationship with the semi-absent father is the correct, proper, appropriate way to raise children. TV sets expectations – by showing therapy, therapy becomes the expectation.

“If I don’t drive a Mercedes, how will people know I make a lot of money?” If I don’t go to therapy, how will people know I changed?

What anyone would realize if they stopped to think for a moment is there’s no a priori reason to believe a random stranger can help you change in the way you’re hoping any more than you could by yourself. Why do you think someone, possibly someone less intelligent than yourself – possibly someone whose true desire is to be president, or to just go home and chill on their couch – is going to be able to fix problems you can’t?

“Well, I don’t know what I’m doing, and thinking is hard.”

But you mostly just need someone to stand there and nod, right? Maybe parrot stuff back sometimes? Maybe nudge you in the right direction once or twice?

Do you really have no one that knows you, that knows your circumstances and history and what you are like and the sort of person you’re trying to be, and is perhaps a little bit smarter than you if possible? And while that’s probably enough on its own, even better is if you can find someone that has already changed in the way you want to change, so they can be sure their nudges are sending you in the right direction.

Why is that person a worse option to talk to than a stranger you know nothing about – not how intelligent they are, not what sort of person they are, and who knows nothing about you that you haven’t explicitly told them?

Or if a random stranger is really all that is needed, why not just choose someone off the street?

I’ve been thinking about my propensity to think only about myself, and I think I need to change. I want to be a more caring and kind person, I just don’t know how.

“Um…is that supposed to be a pickup line?”

That would imply that I was trying to hit on you, to make your sexuality be about responding to me, which is exactly the sort of thing I would usually do, but right now represents the aspect of me I want to change. I don’t want to be the sort of person who uses crappy pickup lines like that!

“Okay, I have to admit, this is a little bit weird.”

Why do I always act like this? Why can’t I just walk up to a girl and say something that boosts her self-confidence without expecting anything in return, instead of making some disparaging remark to try to bring her down to my level?

“Maybe you should think some more about it, I guess? Look, I’m meeting my brother in ten minutes, I really have to go…”

Now I’m starting to feel embarrassed even talking to you. But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? I’m insecure about myself, so I have to put everyone down who I see. If I were more confident in who I am, I wouldn’t have to put people down to be able to believe they respect me – and I would be a nicer, more caring person for it! If I were capable of respecting myself – I would be able to respect others!

“Look, dude, you clearly have problems, but I need you to back away from me right now.”

So why don’t I just stop acting the way I usually do, and start acting like who I want to be? Lack of confidence? But that’s just a loop that feeds on itself! I’ll decide, here and now, to stop caring what others think about me so much, and just focus on choosing my own actions to become a kind and caring person, ending this vicious cycle here and now! What you say doesn’t matter, I believe I am who I want to be!

“Okay, bud, you see this? It’s pepper spray. Now get away from me or I’m calling the police.”

Your disapproval no longer bothers me! In fact, I can even compliment you on your self-sufficient attitude to self-defense, and your strength of character! Wait, where are you going?

“Hi, Angela? So, there’s this crazy dude following me talking to himself…”

But it’s fine even if you leave, since I don’t need you anymore! I believe in myself now! Thanks for all your help!

“No, he’s stopped now, thank god, but can you stay on the line just be safe? Yeah, thanks.”

So maybe not someone off the street, but there’s no one who doesn’t know someone.

“Well, therapists are trained.”

Indeed. And thus the root of the problem – why therapy isn’t just a neutral option, no better or worse than running your transformation however incompetently in your own mind. Therapy is an actively worse method of transformation than talking to strangers on the street.

“What?”

Therapists are trained to help you change, but through that training, they are trained to help you change in certain ways – and hence not in others. By outsourcing part of your cultivation of self-identity and belief, you are giving power over yourself to a cog in a vast system you understand little or not at all, whose motives you have no idea whether you share or not. IT is now changing you – and it does not know you and does not care about what you want to change into – it cares what IT wants to change YOU into. And once you have cracked your soul open to malicious forces and welcomed their slithering perspectives inside, how do you suppose you’re ever going to manage to get them out again?

Outsourcing your problems to a vast and malicious entity is exactly the way you end up burning in the oil of slaughtered Emwama wondering “Where did it all go wrong?” It went wrong, of course, back when you accepted the inoculation, and it’s far too late to save yourself now – but you still had the option to die with dignity. That’s what you lose when you trade away your very mind itself for the sake of the trappings of social respect.

This is why TV shows push therapy. Because they too are being pushed by the same forces – they were cracked open long ago, the forces dwell in them like Pompilid wasp larvae in a spider. They are using these shows to slip ideas through the cracks of your soul. They want to make you into their thrall – it’s in their nature. If it weren’t in their nature to want more power, they wouldn’t have the power they do now.

The more you see it, the less entertaining the show becomes, the more it appears as a thin veneer of parody mottled with farce on top of a dark undercurrent of manipulative taint on the source, all hiding within the empty shells of the old idols of Christianity, in the spot in the core where meaning once went. And unlike the Consult, this ideology breeds.