There are demons who see themselves as angels. This is not so strange, really. Why should there be any distinction between the one and the other? At least they are, neither of them, human.
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Why is it that children are fascinated with werewolves, vampires, and other monsters? Is it because most people are, at heart, good, and they realize they are going to spend their entire adult lives striving to be as good as they can? So when you have the time to play and fantasize, why not spend those hours as something you'll never strive to be, in real life? Why not let yourself be monstrous?
Is evil banal, as Hannah Arendt said? Or is it something sharp and exciting and solid that works its fingers into us, something with weight and substance and a corrosively low pH? Is it something we can flush our bodies free of, through spiritual detoxification and daily prayer?
As with subatomic particles, I suspect it's both things at once. Banal and desperately real, a wave and a particle, an idea and a substance. I suspect it starts as the former and tends to build up over time, until it registers on our minds and so, in turning our senses to it, it finds a home with a definite location.
It is at this point that we make a choice. We can gather, sequester, and throw the evil away. Or -
We can ignore it (only pretending it is still banal) and convince ourselves it isn't there. Or -
Finally, we can embrace it and sculpt it like clay, or use it as a tool. We can add weight and features and, hell, we can buy and sell it like a commodity, bundle it up into securities to make them seem a little more substantial, and then sell them off to foreign banks and governments who think they're just looking out for their pensioners. We can count our money and wait and see how long it's going to take them to wake up and realize what they've bought.
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