When I first wrote this cryptic idea on my notepad, the title was "Why Evil is BECOMING Cool". That was a couple of months ago, during the throes of a Devil Shat birth. But, as with time, ideas change, thoughts develop, and life becomes more interesting. Articles are no different.

But our society is. Take with a quick, diluted look with me through our history. A long time ago, in Rome, we had coliseums where we would throw men in with the lions to fight. Move forward a bunch of years, and you will come to the medieval times where we had slayings of peasants and other unpleasant events. Move forward a couple, and you had the hanging of the witches because of their different ideologies.

And then you come to our society, a society where we look back at history and grimace over the barbaric inhabitants of that world. We are so happy that we are civilized... let us all join hands and sing songs. But the funny thing is this: Merlin looked backed at the Romans and chuckled at their immaturity, and Cotton Mathers looked back upon Merlin and shook his head just AS WE DO. There is no difference. Our perceptions are the same. Fifty years from now people are going to be looking back at this society and puking... this is the society where Evil is Cool.

You see, this is the society where:

GOTHS ABOUND: People seem to think it's cool nowadays to dress all in black and be depressed all the time. This seems to have been the next step from the coffee house junkies. Instead of drinking coffee, they now wait for their prozac prescription to go through. Instead of reciting bad poetry, they recite worse poetry. Instead of sitting in coffee houses, they sit in dark corners and look spooky. It's all about image in this society, and the image they want to portray is "leave me alone, i want to look cool, i want to look spooky, i want to look evil." And sadly, this has worked to an extent. In my town of Concord, New Hampshire, we don't have that many goths. I've seen about five or six of them. Yet, on an odd day where both Yakub and I were wearing black and walked into the State Library, this old man literally ran behind a librarian's counter to get out of the way. Ah twell.

You see, this is the society where we have:

GLORIFICATION OF THE KILLERS: This is a fun one. Our society hasn't been the first to do this... but as soon as London starting complaining about the Jack the Ripper murders and mystery, we decided it was a good idea and jumped on the bandwagon. Now Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, and all those other lovable little killers have their own T-Shirts, their own websites of worship, their own trading card series. Our TV is full of documentaries about these cuddly people, and we watch them and are amazed at the lack of control these bad, bad people had. Serial killers disgust us, but they take us to a world where we can imagine our boss being sliced from neck to groin, and our neighbor being tossed in a barrel of acid.

And, of course, the media helps us along - how could they not? They have to give us what we want, otherwise their ratings will go down. That's why the news is so full of death and despair. "Ten people died in the next town over, their houses brutally painted in their own blood. Meanwhile, the hunt still goes on for Geo Nickerson, the convicted felon who escaped from jail just days ago, and is already suspected in the raping of two Manchester females. Oh yeah, Bobby won a trophy in some sport." Great stuff, isn't it? Don't you want to be a serial killer? Lose control, get out aggression, and hell, be famous all at the same time? It almost sounds like a spam mail.

You see, this is the society where we like to:

BRING ON THE VIOLENCE: Isn't our society wonderful? I'm so glad we don't have those gladiator fights anymore. That killing was so mean! Oh, honey, would you turn on the wrestling? Sure... wrestling is fake, but it gives us a chance to root for people beating the shat out of other people. It allows us to make a connection with good and evil, and reaffirms our faith in the fact that evil will always fail in the long run, no matter how much bigger and how much tougher they look.

But that doesn't explain why our good is so infatuated with evil. How many times have you seen the Rodney King beating on the TV? It was the talk of the town for months. And what about OJ? Hell, his trial is still making the news... well, at least his golf scores are. Or why COPS is in its twenty-third season and has spurned numerous rip-offs. How about America's Most Wanted? We watch all these shows with relish... otherwise they wouldn't still be playing.

And why stop at TV? Look at computer games... Quake is still on top, and Postal is moving up there too. New games everyday are dedicated to killing others, and rarely do they cover up that fact. I just saw an advertisement the other day for a new game which went something like this: "Meet hundreds of new friends... and then kill them all." Well... okay, but my mommy always told me that was bad. Other games hide under a "stress management" label... kill representations of people you hate to relieve yourself of them. Sure... just don't give Johnny a copy of that.

And finally, this is the society where:

EVIL IS COOL: And there is but one more thing: the very name of this article is an example. Horror movies are back in nowadays, partly because of SCREAM's success. And as much as I love it, I can't help but think it is done for the wrong reasons.

Shows nowadays (The X-Files, Millennium, all of the hundred vampire shows) are about the epic battle of good versus evil. Only, most of the time, we root for evil. We see our kids watching the shows and then instead of emulating Mulder, or that old guy, they emulate the quiet evil... slinking around our house and pretending they are on the prowl. Kids don't want to be Jews, or Christians, or Waco-ians... those religions just aren't evil enough. Now, they want to be Satanists, and Occultists. They want to drink blood and think they are immortal, they want to go to s & m bars and learn to like the display of pain. And then we wonder why our kids are growing up into such fucked up little people, raping their girlfriends, beating their moms, and shooting their friends. You wanna know why? They want to be famous like the man on TV.

I'm sorry.

insane /m'sem/ adj. 1. not of sound mind; mad. 2. colloq. extremely foolish; irrational. insanely adv. insanity /-'saniti/ n. (pl. -ies). [Latin insanus(as IN-1, sanus 'healthy')]

"It makes me cold to remember them. Large dusky forms with sly and jeering faces crouched in the corners of the room, and bent over my bed at night, tempting me to madness. They told me in low whispers, that the floor of the old house in which my father's father died was stained with his own blood, shed by his own hand in raging madness. I drove my fingers into my ears, but they screamed into my head till the room rang with it..." [A Madman's Manuscript- Charles Dickens]

I don't know what madness is. I don't think anyone really knows. Except those who live it. But they can't tell anyone about it, because no one would quite understand it. To experience something referred to as madness... what exactly is it? Those who know what it's like probably won't ever discuss it with a "normal" person. Then again, what's "normality"? Dull, drab, I think. What is madness? A world only the madmen know. Perhaps, a world which if you enter it, you won't ever really come out. Where things don't need foundations? Where things happen regardless?

Schizophrenia- Any of a group of mental disorders characterized by gross distortions of reality, withdrawal from social contacts and disturbances of thought, language, perception and emotional response. There is no known cause but possibly due to a hereditary or genetic disposition with psychological, biochemical and sociological factors. [Dictionary of Medical Terms' Barrons Educational Series Inc.]

When madmen act in their own world, without logic, and barriers, no limits, no one interferes. Unless it's harmful to others. Or so I think. Wouldn't it be wonderful to become mad for a while? Escape from everything that's driving you "insane" and surrender to that moment of complete madness, breaking down. Just explode and cease to care of the consequences. No one would understand. My ideal fantasy... maybe everyone has something inside of them which would eventually lead them to the epitome of madness if it was activated. Why not just activate it because we're sick of the routine that's expected of us? Why can't we just do whatever it is we want to, and not have a hoard of parental figures stepping over to calm things down and try to make it better? Maybe it would be better to just let go, and give in to the psychotic instincts we all must have in our minds, in ourselves. Like this dormant gene that awakens if probed. As long as we didn't cause any harm, why bother being "normal" and following society in its insignificant path of dullness?

".. I'm perfectly aware I play at being mad here, and I do it quite calmly. Your trouble is, you live your madness out in a fearful panic, without realizing it or seeing it for what it is." [Henry IV-Luigi Pirandello]

Do whatever we please, think whatever extraordinary thoughts and theories devour our minds. The concept of madness has been engraved upon society and anyone who acts out of the norm is automatically labeled "mad". How does anyone know for sure who's mad or not? Maybe everyone who think they're "normal" are actually mad, and the madmen themselves are the only sane ones. How do you know? How does anyone know?

"Madmen, and good for them, do build without logic! Or with their own feather-brained logic! They're unstable, they're inconstant! Today one way, tomorrow God knows how! You stick to things, they don't. Instability! Inconstancy! You say "This can't be so"...but for them anything can be." [Henry IV- Luigi Pirandello]

Let anything be. Do anything and everything. I wonder, who was the fool who decided that stability and consistency was to be the norm? Why is it so important that we all follow it? Ok, maybe things would be somewhat out of control if everyone decided to step out of the norm, but with time people would realize that this so called normality they'd been living in is so useless and pointless, and eventually they'd be forced, in a way, to adapt to insanity. Why must insanity be seen as a disease? Why must it be seen as a bad thing?

Well, I'm not mad. Not to the extent that it could be considered a mental illness. Yet, I hope I'm not "normal". In a way I'm jealous of anyone who's lives in a happy state of madness. "Building without logic"... living in a world where instability and inconstancy reigns.

99-Jul-20
fdme@club-internet.fr

Bienvenue devant le saigneur franais de la dŽpravation !

Extazy pour vous servir ˆ bient™t en enfer

OH! The thing about glorifying killers! ok... so maybe murderers and evil-doers and wotnot get a little toomuch publicity, but yanno what? I'd rather have them talked about TOO MUCH then NOT ENOUGH. Don't you think it would be really awful for someone to commit such disgusting crimes and no one would know about it?? I think it's better to overdo it and make sure EVERYONE knows, cuz uhmm I think it's important for people to be awear of the evils of the world... does that make sense?? Cuz I just feel safer if I have as much info on people like that as possibly...

The whole Evil is Cool rant has a lot to do with why I like Johnny The Homicidal Maniac so much. It fed its readers the most brutal violence, spookiness and morbidity in the most entertaining way, and then laughed at us all and said clearly, "Hey, get a life, that isn't funny. You are, for finding it funny." Didn't put that so eloquently as I'd like. Too much caffeine running through my blood and such. I can't remember if you read the comic or not, but if you did, you'll understand, and if you didn't, you ought to run find it somewhere.

Re. Madness: Hmmmmmmmm... you know, I've been through that argument, from questioning the definitions of sanity to philosophically embracing insanity as the ultimate noncomformism... I'm sure most of your readers have. But I've also hit periods where I felt completely disconnected from the rest of the world, unable to either integrate myself with their logic and values or to communicate myself to them, and that was not cool or transcendent; that was scary. I guess I have taken that feeling as my personal definition of the brink of madness. Disconnection can be euphoric too, certainly. You can feel as though all of society's programming suddenly falls away and means nothing to you, that you are completely free and alone and that it is GOOD... I guess that is a kind of madness too, the good trip vs. the bad trip. But...

I think Cris came closest to my understanding of madness when he described it as "Perhaps, a world which if you enter it, you won't ever really come out." You know you are mad and not merely "weird" when you lose control over which world you live in. When you are capable of acting normal and choose not to, you risk being labelled mad, but when you find that you could no longer be normal even if you wanted to (when you've eaten the fruit in the faery forest and you can't find the path back out anymore) then you are truly insane. For better or for worse, of course.

Not quite related to the article, I also think something else is worth adding, just as a tidbit of trivia which I think more people should be aware of. People have done serious studies into how creativity and madness are interrelated, since the folk theory that the two are two sides of the same coin has furthered the artistic glorification of madness. The results? (And ask me for sources if you like; I will list them all.)

1 - Lunacy does not make non-creative people creative, in art or science, or anywhere else. Some creative people have also been mad, and have used their madness as a source for inspiration.

2 - Those extremely creative people who also suffered from madness wrote/painted/invented their best pieces WHEN THEY WERE FEELING QUITE SANE. Creativity has often been accredited with rescuing people from madness by allowing them to shape and contain their powerfully dichotic visions of the world into something understandable.

Now, I'm not worried that people could hurt themselves at all by embracing "insanity"; I think that anyone who can do that will be in control enough to get something great out of the experience. And I appreciate Cris' treatment. I just wanted to share with you my concept of madness, which feels powerful and real enough to demand a measure of awe from me. I dream of, I lust after, the wonders of those worlds behind the veil, and sometimes I wander in and out when I think nobody is looking. But I am terrified of losing my way back out.

It's like... have you ever been out on a beach at night, under the moon? You see this bridge of light stretching out over the water toward the moon, and you can walk on it for as long as the water is shallow, or you can swim along that road when it gets too deep. But if you TURN AROUND, there's no path behind you leading back to the shore. Nothing. Blackness. And there reaches a certain threshold after which you can't see the shore clearly enough to know which way to return. I don't often have enough courage to keep going past that point, that's all.

DAMN! I swear, if I had written transcripts of my conversations with people you would see I have said almost all the same things with the same cynisim and sarcasm as your article about Evil. I know I have written quite a few letters stating you guys think the same way I do and how refreshing it is... and here is yet another one. It's like you guys are in my brain... if I was even the slightest bit paranoid, I may find it disturbing!

Let me tell you about one club we have here in Seattle. If this doesn't make you run to the men's room - anyway. A friend of mine and I went out one night. Before we got to the club "of choice" we stopped off at some tavern for a drink. We met this "punk/goth" guy there and hung out with him. After a couple of hours, he informed us of this "great private club" all the while chugging down other's leftover drinks from various tables exclaiming how punk rock he was for doing so. That should have been my first sign but, I chose to wait it out and see what this idiot had to offer. We get to this club and GOD FORBID I wasn't wearing all black. The doorman was not going to let me in because of that but punk guy said, "it's okay Troy, she's with me" so, the high and mighty Troy so graciously looked the other way and allowed me to enter. Oh Thank you Troy... in this day and age where people judge you on your appearance... which is what you fight against (isn't it Troy?), it's a good thing you can rise above that and allow a silly little brown clothed chick in your doors.

Well, what a joke that place was. In the front the place looked pretty normal. But in the back, where the dance floor was... (gothic people dancing? I thought they were too depressed to even move) all these heavy black caped wearing... well, allright, people, were doing their little gothic dance moves... you know, slow motion, arms in the air, cursing some object that is only in their head... all for the benefit of the other gothic people who are in too much pain and therefore must sit on the sides and watch the others express their angst and such. It was such a joke. I thought I was being over cynical because my "friends" didn't share my point of view. But, the icing on the cake was when we were leaving and Troy, the ever so sparing, told us on the way out that if we wanted to come back to that club, we would have to fill out an application for membership. Ok, so some clubs do that. Then I really looked at the application. My choices were, "I am a/an: artist, photographer, dancer, actor/ress, painter, poet..." you get the idea. So, to go into this club, I have to wear all black, look really upset at some new trauma in my life cause the world just doesn't understand me and produce some kind of art to walk through this door?

I know that misery loves company or so they say but aren't these the same people that get upset when you don't "look past the appearance" and get to know them? I have discovered that this world is full of hypocrites, every interest has the word "poser" in it's vocabulary. Ever hear of a "poser cowboy"? They apparently exist! It simply amazes me how true that expression, "the more things change, the more they stay the same" really is. People do think that we are more civilized and above all those incidents that occured in the past... and I have been telling people for years that we aren't all that different... we just chose a new format. And your article - sharing the same ideas I have, is the first time I haven't been frowned upon and told what a pity it is that I look at the world so negatively. HA! I call it looking at the world realistically. It's too bad that more people can't break away from the herd.

I just finished reading your article on "Why Evil is COOL". I loved it!! You hit the nail on the head!

A little over a year ago, I had the very unfortunate task of finding my neighbor's 11 year old son dying in his bedroom of a gun shot wound to the head. To say it was an awful sight doesn't even come close to describing the scene. As I waited in the house for the ambulance to arrive, I noticed that the boy's walls were covered with posters from the movie The Crow and Mortal Combat. All the video games lined up on his shelves were death and destruction games.

It occurred to me then that the images we let our children see every day do more harm than any of us take the time to realize! Kids are taught that death isn't REAL... they see the actor on the cop show get murdered this week & they know that the same guy will be fine in next week's sitcom. The badguys that are destroyed in the video games our kids play all hop right back up to play again next time. Children learn by example... we adults are missing the big flick every time we let our kids see or participate in things that teach them that death isn't a forever event!

And they also learn from our inability to teach. Each year, as we become less and less in love with our families, kids are learning from what other people to tell them. From what the big sixth graders are doing, from what the next door neighbor is doing. How long has it been since anyone has given their youngun a birds and the bees speech? Or a drug and violence speech? It has been so very very long.

The day after my neighbor's son died, I purged our entire household of anything that my children didn't need to see. Video games went into the trash and our tv viewing habits underwent a massive change. I don't want my family to be de-sensitized to violence. I WANT them all to be completely shocked and horrified by scenes of death and destruction, should they happen upon them... it's how truly civilized people SHOULD feel by sights like that!

Perhaps... I hesitate on this course of action. Yes, it is warranted, but such utter censorship can also harm a child. They become so purebred. Perhaps, if a child were raised this way completely, they would begin to disbelieve what they see. Perhaps they have lived in such a perfect world that they don't believe in the death, or the violence... thus doing nothing to stop it. Ignorance sets in... and ignorance is often as bad is insensitivity.

Having seen such a sight in reality, I feel fully qualified to say that a confrontation with true horror isn't cool, it isn't fun... and in the real world when someone blows their brains out, they don't ever get up again afterward and go on with their happy little lives the next day. All you get from that in reality is THE END!

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Devil Shat is published by Disobey & is protected under all copyright laws.
Devil Shat Thirteen was released on 11/06/97. Last updated: 06/23/98.