Automysopobia

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

What fascinates us about Satan is the way he expresses qualities that go beyond what we ordinarily recognize as human. Satan evokes more than the greed, envy, lust and anger we identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to animals. Evil, then, at its worst, seems to involve the supernatural- what we recognize with a shudder, as the diabolic inverse of God as "wholly other".

The construction of the "social" other as cannibal- savage, sorcerer, vampire, demon, or an amalgam of them all, draw upon a consistent repertoire of symbols of inversion. The stories we tell about people out on the periphery play with their savagery, libertine customs, and monstrosity. At the same time, the combined horror and pleasure we derive from contemplating this otherness- sentiments that influenced the brutality of colonists, missionaries and armies entering the lands of those others- certainly affect us at the level of individual fantasy, as well.

The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make such decisions having major consequences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions. Their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater significance than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are centered the effective means of power and the wealth and celebrity which they enjoy.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.