The Human Owners Manual

The Deceiver

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Imagine that you were a tribal leader in the time of primitive man, and you were a good leader and always did what was best for your people, both meeting their short-term needs and exercising foresight and predicting and preparing for future difficulties. It would be reasonable to expect that those in your care would thrive and be generally happy and succeed. But what if, unbeknownst to you, there existing someone who - for whatever reason: misunderstanding, unfortunate events, unavoidable conflict - hated you and your tribe and cared about nothing more than to see all of you fail miserably. And imagine that this enemy was insanely clever. How much damage could that enemy do to you and your tribe? How easy would it be for him to poison your water or food supplies? To subtly compromise the structural integrity of your shelters? To attain and reveal secrets to your sworn enemies? Think about how much damage just one person could do to a whole group of people IF no one knew he existed, especially if he was aware of this advantage and took care to always stay hidden. He could literally, with a modicum of reasonable planning, destroy your entire tribe.

But look how simple it is to counteract this tragedy. By changing one small detail, the outcome is drastically effected - namely, that the tribe doesn’t know about his existence. It cannot be understated how important it is to his plans that he remain undetected. For once the tribe becomes aware of him and his goals, then spotting and counteracting his plans becomes almost trivial, or at worst, an annoyance to be borne.

This is the nature of the person/entity that I refer to as the Deceiver. Others may have referred to him as Satan or the Devil, or Beelzebub, or a hundred other names in other cultures and mythoi. I’m not particularly stuck on a name, and I avoid these other names mostly so that other people’s claims of the Deceiver’s characteristics (physical characteristics, history, nature) are not endorsed here. All I am willing to say confidently about this entity is that 1) He exists as an intelligent, sentient being. 2) For reasons I cannot explain or defend, he seems to have enmity toward every human being, and his ultimate goal appears to be their physical and emotional destruction. Even that may sound like some religious superstition. I grant you. But these are conclusions I’ve reached from my own observation and experimentation following a thorough expulsion of my biases and preconceived ideas. Without daring to speak to or speculate on why or how he came to be, I can confidently say that he exists, at least insomuch as he has been defined here. And most importantly, he is supremely effective at what he does. Once you understand the clues to look for, you can see his work plain as day in every one of your friends’ and family’s lives. Every one of the greatest hardships and human pain you have ever experienced or witnessed had his heavy hand involved in it. And, if you are sufficiently self-aware, you will see his influence in your own life as well.

The single most powerful tool in combatting this enemy is being aware of him. Just like the hidden enemy in the story of the tribal people above, once his existence and objectives are openly recognized, it becomes simple to learn his methods, recognize his attempts, and counteract his efforts. That’s not to say that a perfect defense is attainable, but certainly with knowledge and sufficient awareness, it instead becomes a battle of maintenance vs attrition, with each minor failure a poignant reminder to be more vigilant. And that is a much more bearable way to live.

Side Note: It is interesting to me how much time and effort is spent discussing and debating the existence of God, and yet the existence of the Deceiver, by whatever name, is always just tacked on as a sub-discussion, to be undertaken only by those who already believe in God. That seems incongruous to me. Why is the existence of one tied to the existence of the other? Why can’t we consider the existence of this malevolence on its own terms, irrespective of the question of God’s existence or nature? I contend that we can, and I posit that we should.

Givens

Here’s what I request as accepted premises for this argument:

The pattern

It is difficult to describe, in a general sense, the pattern that I wish to use as my primary evidence of this entity, primarily because there is no single concrete element that you can point to as a tell-tale litmus test of the Deceiver’s involvement, beyond the evident intent and possibly a few favorite tricks that you see repeated now and again. That is to say, each individual attack, while decidedly visible to observers, is nonetheless customized to its victim, and as such may differ wildly from one example to the next. And yet, the pattern is rampant, if not universal, among human beings. Once you start to see it, the prevalence of it is undeniable.

If you take any person who is going through any sort of emotional torture, regardless of the specific circumstances or the type of scenario, or even the cultural context in which they reside - if you could flash-freeze their entire life, lay it out on a table and investigate it at your leisure with full knowledge of every detail of their history, thoughts, intentions, and perceptions - you would find in 100% of the cases that the reasons why they are stuck inside anything more severe than a minor mental inconvenience2 is due to a highly sophisticated network of incorrect beliefs or perspectives that conspire to make them feel trapped inside their pain. This is true even if those people who are nearest to them can see a very clear and easy way out. If you can take the time to truly dive into their situation, without snap judgments or summary dismissals, you would find without exception that they believe not only one or two things that aren’t true about their situation, but dozens if not hundreds of these incorrect perceptions of reality. And if you had infinite time and resources to map out all these beliefs and how they interact, intersect, and buttress one another, you would find firstly that the construction is incredibly delicate such that almost every single one of the lies this person believes is integrally critical to the structure of the mental and emotional trap they find themselves in; if any one of the lies was exposed and the truth known, the entire construct would come crashing down, and they would see the way out of their pain2. Secondly you would find that the lies that this person believes that led them to this seeming dead-end, could often only be inserted into their belief system in a very detailed and specific order, or the victim would never have swallowed them and accepted them as (seeming) truth. These networks often take years or decades to construct and bear the mark of a very cleverly and intentionally designed system that leads inexorably toward misery and death, never in the upward direction. Most of these lies enter the belief system seemingly innocuously. You may one day experience the thought, “I’m not very good at math,” (even though you are). And maybe your natural talents end up leading you to a career where math isn’t a focus, and that incorrect belief about yourself might seem to have no serious detriment, until one day you also read a poorly written article that implies that intelligent people are good at math. Now, maybe you reach the conclusion that you must not be intelligent. And perhaps that leads to you taking a job that is unsatisfying to you, because you also unknowingly swallowed the lie that only smart people can get good jobs. This is a nearly trivial and overly simplistic example. But hopefully you can run with your imagination, and see how each of these seemingly harmless mistruths may not have much harm in them on their own, but in aggregate, can start to have some very significant effect on one’s happiness. Now take this example of three lies, and imagine it expanded to 40 or 50 lies (extremely doable for anyone over the age of 30), and I hope you can start to see the pattern I’m talking about. The most insidious aspect of these constructs, is that each lie added to the mix compounds the effect, rather than just supplementing it. The amount of emotional pain felt in any given situation is an exponential factor of how many untruths you’ve accepted about yourself or your situation on your way to that particular point in time.

If you haven’t seen this pattern before, it can sound somewhat obtuse, but the more you start diving into the how and why of people’s long-standing emotional pain, and the more you start (gently) disabusing them of their misperceptions and showing them the truth and watching the feeling of despair and agony just fall off them like a piss-stained robe, the more you start to pick up this pattern or just how amazingly intricate and forward-thinking and extremely well-engineered these traps had to be for them to ever have a chance of ensnaring the victim so malevolently.

Example

One example could never be enough to demonstrate a pattern, and the highly complex and customized nature of these traps do not lend themselves to giving you an exhaustive series of examples. You will have to investigate this for yourself with situations you can see with your own eyes, past or present. But hopefully one example will be enough to spark the recognition when you do start to see it.

I knew a man named Ben (not really, names changed and all that). Ben was a good man, raised in the church to always be loving to others, to put their needs above his own, to accept all people from different walks of life, different experiences, and different beliefs, equally. He also believed in putting on a brave face to help inspire those around him, even when he himself didn’t feel confident. He had a strong work ethic that helped him in his career of choice, and was an extremely affable fellow that made genuine and lasting friends with almost everyone who knew him. Ben and his wife Linda raised their two naturally born children, mostly successfully, and enjoyed a good relationship with their adult children. Then one day, Ben and Linda decided that they would adopt some children from the foster care system - children who through no fault of their own had had a rough go of life and were often in dangerous or negligent homes. Ben was successful as a local businessman, and could reasonably expect to be able to financially support another group of children, and Linda had always been mostly a stay-at-home Mom and homemaker, and with her empty nest, felt that she had more love to give in her heart. So they went through the (abbreviated for the sake of the story) process to adopt an additional three children: a boy and his biological sister, ages 5 and 3, and another girl of 18 months from another family entirely. Ben and Linda gave their all to this new clutch of kids, gave them all the benefits of an upper middle class lifestyle, and loved these new children as their own - if with slightly less energy, due to themselves being 25 years older than the first go round.

But the outcome was not the same.

You see, starting around age twelve, the oldest of the three, Dusty, began to act out. To be fair, Linda had always been more effective at parenting girls than boys. She simply never truly understood the effects of testosterone on an adolescent boy, and inadvisably attempted to oscillate between ignoring and controlling this bad behavior with harsher and harsher punishments rather than recognizing that there was an underlying need that was being neglected and addressing that. Ben was always better with the teenage boys anyway, and with the first two had been very active in the parenting during their adolescence. But unfortunately, now his business was starting to decline despite his best efforts, and rather than pulling out more and more as he approached retirement age, he found himself having to put in more hours of harder physical labor than in previous years. He did this willingly, sacrificing himself for his family, but it took a toll on him, and he would often return home tired and stressed, worried about how he would pay the next bill or avoid the next penalty. But true to his beliefs, he put on a brave face and did not share his difficulties with his family. As such, to their knowledge, all was fine. When he returned home to a house full of conflict and angst between Dusty and Linda, Ben would do his best to dig down for more energy and serve as neutral and just arbiter, trying to get each side to see the other. But the frustration was mounting. Frustration with Dusty, because it wasn’t as simple or easy as it was the first time he was a Dad (whether this was true or not, it was how he perceived it.) and frustration with Linda that no matter how many times he tried to explain, she just couldn’t seem to parent the same way Ben would have, compounded with the frustration of his declining business (once a source of pride), and the difficulties of an aging body that maybe wasn’t as well taken care of as it should have been in his youth.

It’s reductionist to say that this continued for 5 years. In reality, that 5 years did see these issues continue to get steadily worse, but of course, life also didn’t stop throwing its typical curveballs or crises that needed to be handled in addition to the growing problems. At times, every member of the family felt they were just barely keeping their head above water. One day, it hit a breaking point. Dusty had had his fill of being abused, unappreciated, lied about and to (all his perspective), and in his adolescence-fueled mind, justice must be meted. An older, better trained man would surely have seen this as an overreaction, but to Dusty, a limit had been reached. In a fit of anger, he stormed out of the house and ran away to live with some (disreputable) friends at the age of 17. He never came back.

This was an agonizing blow to Ben. Part of his purpose in adopting another group of kids was grounded in his belief that he and Linda were good parents, and that they could save these unfortunate children from the future of a broken life. And yet, here he was faced with the unassailable evidence that he had failed Dusty. That all those years that he took satisfaction in the good he was doing for these kids was washed away in the fact that Dusty was doomed to a lifestyle little better than if he had stayed in the foster system (Understand, these are Ben’s thoughts, not truth). And just as this wave of despair finished breaking over his head, he was hit with another wave of grief over losing his son and the pain of that relationship breaking. This was closely followed by the fear of what would happen to Dusty trying to make his way in a harsh world before he was fully prepared, followed by (he would be ashamed to admit) some worry of how he would be perceived at the church or among his friends (this, again was unwarranted, but in such times, not all thoughts are rational). And as soon as his head cleared from that, the first wave came crashing over him again.

It was in this state that Cindy, Dusty’s biological sister (the two of which had been inseparable ever since the adoption), came into the room, having heard the commotion, but not knowing what happened. She began to question Ben, who, as you can imagine, was not in the best frame of mind to answer her calmly or without bitterness. And the more he talked, the more Cindy defended Dusty or asked pointed questions about why things had been handled a certain way. Make no mistake: all parties here were human, and no one was without blame for being at least a little snotty or less than perfectly understanding. After things began to heat up again for the second time in an hour, Ben lashed out: “Is that what you think? Huh? Are you gonna leave too?! Fine!. If you’re gonna leave me too, just go!” Cindy had never even considered the idea of running away, at least not with any seriousness. But she had been a victim of a (truly awfully) negligent biological mother, had seen her family dismantled and reassembled with other people without her consent or input, and as such had always struggled with feeling safe and secure with her new family. She had always had a secret fear that Ben and Linda would some day abandon her. And she had just lost her brother. Her oldest, most stable link to family. The one - the only one - who was always there, right from the beginning, through all the craziness, and was her stability through the process of acclimating to her new life. Gone. In the middle of that, Ben’s words were a stinging slap to the face that left her senseless. In that split second, she made the decision to follow her brother, and left that night, too.

Now understand, while it is far from ideal for a 17-year-old boy to strike out on his own - with a bit of luck and some help from friends here and there, it is still possible for him to make it, struggle his way through life, and eventually find some stability and be able to make something of himself. The same cannot truly be said for a 15-year-old girl. Dusty had a high school friend whose parents allowed him to crash on a couch for a time, but as you might expect, there was no room for Cindy too. To be honest, I’m not sure where Cindy ended up going that night or those first few nights. She might have stayed at friends too, or she might have been literally on the street. Maybe she stayed with her biological mother (who you’ll remember was no treat). What I do know is that within a few months, she had moved in with a “boyfriend” who was several years older than she was, and to this day, that has been how she takes care of herself, by attaching herself to whatever man who could pay for her and the children that came soon after. To this day, Cindy is stuck in a loop that is nearly impossible to escape. Attached to men who do not treat her well. Becoming a bitter, nasty shrew of a person (somewhat understandably) that has little chance of finding better. Constantly pregnant or with small children that makes financial independence nearly impossible, given her skills or lack thereof. Surrounded by manipulative people who fill their lives with so much drama they can’t see 3 days into the future, much less enact a plan to get themselves out of poverty or take an intentional direction in their life. Don’t take this as criticism on my part. Each of these people have their own stories just like this one that lead to a (seemingly) inescapable trap of emotional pain and misery, orchestrated by the same enemy.

Dusty didn’t have a fun time of it either. He ended up spending time with some unsavory characters, and through his own repeated actions, ended up spending time in jail before he was finally shocked into some self-reliance. He did eventually turn his life around, find himself a good girl, and is working on making his life better one month at a time like the rest of us, if with some emotional and physical scars that the rest of us don’t have to deal with.

Two weeks after Cindy left, I had the occasion to sit down with Ben, and I told him “You need to take back what you said. Cindy is scared, she wants to come home, but she thinks she’s unwelcome. You need to do whatever it takes to counteract what you said to her and get her to come back, because she’s never going to make it on her own.” His response: “I can’t. If I fold now, she’ll know she can just threaten me with leaving, and I’ll cave. I’ll have no ability to parent or discipline her. She has to decide to come back on her own.”

She never did.

Ben died some 7 years later, having mostly reconciled with Dusty as an adult, but never with Cindy.

I apologize that this story didn’t have a happy ending. In real life, a lot of them don’t. I didn’t promise that it would end well. I only promised that it could have, had the Deceiver’s lies been recognized and countered with the truth. Here’s an incomplete list of lies that the Deceiver told members of this drama that helped bring about the eventual misery and collapse not only of a family unit, but untold misery, heartache, and ongoing emotional entrapment of most of the members. And every single one of these lies was integral to the eventuality. Any one, had they been realized and disbelieved, would have negated the whole nasty mess:

The real mind bender, once you realize it, is that each of these above lies is actually just the tip of an iceberg of a whole network of other, smaller lies that all add up to the lie listed here. None of these lies just popped into the players’ brains unbidden. They were lies that were softly suggested, built upon a logical (or logical-sounding) argument based on lies that had already been accepted as truth. And those lies in turn were built on other lies, which were built on others, which were built on others, some of which were planted 50 years earlier in childhood. In total there were hundreds of carefully constructed lies that were inserted carefully, intentionally, and with great patience and clever engineering, all for the express purposes of leading to this exact moment. Note: I’m not suggesting that the Deceiver has clairvoyance or could see this exact moment playing out 50 years in the future. It’s certainly possible that he plants lies, knowing the general effect they will have, and continues to shape them like a bonsai tree until his creation reaches its pinnacle of human suffering. The greater point is that, once seen, the malevolence and highly coordinated cooperation of mistruths bears out a pattern that for all the world bears the look of intent. A random sampling of all possible thoughts that could enter a human being’s mind during the day, would never lead to this much coordinated effort toward the goal of human suffering.

Conclusion

It seems then, that one could make such an argument: That if such a complex, well-organized, and well-coordinated attack could not only take place, but be commonplace throughout the scope of human endeavor, then there must necessarily be a (or multiple coordinated) sentient intellect to design and enact the attack.3 It stands to reason also that this entity cannot be human, or any other creature that we are familiar with on this planet. This is because he appears to have two abilities for which we have no scientific explanation. 1) To some unknown extent, he appears to be able to observe us without us being able to observe him directly. Whether that’s just observing physical things like where we are and understanding our language, or whether he has the ability to see either emotions or thoughts in our own mind (though this option seems less likely), or some other means of sensing our movements and actions, he seems to have enough knowledge of both what we are doing, what we are attempting to do, and what the likely outcome of each possible action will be to be able to fashion the path of destiny most likely to cause human suffering. 2) He in some aspect, also seems to be able to introduce lies into the human thought process. My current prevailing theory is that he does not have true mind control, but can introduce thoughts into our mind’s anteroom, or the “mind’s ear” as it were, where the thought occurs to us, but we still have the opportunity to either accept it or reject it outright. Still, even the ability to inject even a possible thought is not something we currently have an explanation for. So it seems a reasonable conclusion that there exists some other entity of a type we have yet to define who is able to both observe and interact with us via methods we don’t understand. But the end result of which is consistently moving toward the goal of human suffering.

Certainly one example does not an incontrovertible proof make. And there’s enough conjecture and supposition in this article that it’s not too difficult to dismiss if that makes you feel more comfortable or better aligns with your current world view. If you were pre-inclined, you could no doubt take my story and find alternative explanations for every aspect, write it off as unfortunate coincidence, point to the mistakes made by the players and consider the outcome “just deserts” for their errors, or even dismiss the whole story as a fabrication or selectively edited exaggeration. That’s all perfectly legitimate way of viewing things, irrespective of its veracity. Those that don’t want to see this pattern will be able to convince themselves that it doesn’t exist. It’s not even difficult to do. But I think if you take an honest, objective look at the stories from your own life and from those of your loved ones, you’ll be able to see this same pattern played out again and again, wherever human suffering is strongest. In all cases, a complex, well-designed network of lies was central for the events to have played out the way they did. You may dismiss it or rationalize it all as coincidence.

To me, I see the Sistine Chapel, painted in pain.

1 I recognize that this premise is an axiom of the Intelligent Design theory of the Universe, and as such, some may be put off by it by association. If you fall in this camp, I would ask that you recognize that Intelligent Design is not the topic of this discussion; that accepting this premise does not mean you accept Intelligent Design as a valid theory; and recognize that, on its own merit outside that larger discussion, this premise is awfully strong.

2 To be clear here, I am speaking of emotional or possibly mental pain. Obviously, there are circumstance which exist that can cause physical pain or even death. I’m not suggesting that understanding the truth about your cancer will cure the cancer or prevent our death. But, using a terminal case of cancer as an example, there are those who do come to understand the truth of their situation, and find peace and acceptance of their death. Even though the cancer may take their life, there is no emotional torture when the full truth is understood.

3 I allow that if there are other locking factors that could be shown, with the same approximate level of probability to result in the same outcome of this level of conspiratorial levels of pain, without the need for intentional design, that in that case this argument fails, at least as the only likely explanation. But as of now, I can’t imagine any such factors.


Created
Last Updated