Satanic rites in prisons

Prisons and front line trenches are considered many times as places where human agony in its many layers and dimensions comes vivid and live.

When a place is lacking humanity we many times refer to lack of empathy and dehumanizing others, just as to absence of compassion meeting with indifference to suffering.  Even though it is not an absolute law it is at least a strong correlation even when evil can happen when people believe they are doing good.  A sustained lack of empathy a moral regard significantly increases the harmful and unjust behavior.  I shared cells with long term satanists and observed them do their work and talked with them about many subjects. This made me realize that most of them still weren’t evil to the core as many would imagine. Prison environments amplify tribal identity, power hierarchies and psychological survival strategies. The rituals, which I saw, even the darkest ones, somehow functioned as a way to feel control and as a bonding mechanism connected to a psychological shield just as a way to intimate others. That still doesn’t automatically mean someone is metaphysically evil.

In The Republic, of Plato he argued wrongdoing stemmed from ignorance of the good, but in the Christian theology it is often argued that humans a re fallen but redeemable. Modern psychology suggests that behavior is shaped by trauma, environment and belief systems. In prison environment I would say it is the mixture of all of these three together.  Even when one engages in violent occult practices they do love someone and seek belonging. They might have childhood traumas and want meaning in their life abandoned in the darkness.  These same men who were involved in dark rites could still be very loyal, they laughed often from joy they saw in good things. They could still feel conviction and almost all of them believed they were justified.  Lack of humanity does not automatically mean evil, but when people lose empathy, self awareness or moral reflection in a place where at least juridical laws do not operate every minute harmful behavior becomes easier. Humanity rarely disappears completely, it gets buried, distorted, weaponized and fragmented piece by piece.  Not erased. I witnessed things no one should have to see ever. But it made me understand also that no one is evil 24/7 around the clock and it made me observe even closer only the present moment and what details it carries in it. 

Evil is not a fixed state or permanent identity.  I witnessed situations where a man could participate in dark rituals at night and care, reflect or show kindness at another moment. The idea of a solid, unchanging evil self was disrupted. Heraclitus argued that everything is in constant flux, even character. We are processes, not fixed states.  Our behavior sometimes shifts depending on context and stress levels. It is attached to our identity and it might change when we feel threatened.  This in the other hand made me understand that no one is always good 24/7.

The real difference is that the ”good ones” hardly ever admits that they were doing evil.  Seeing a person as an individual and not giving in to start dehumanizing him even when there are million reasons and motives to it might just be the hardest task. What intrigues me the most is that empathy survived in those conditions and seemed to rise even higher when the situations got darker. It is very easy to label someone into a monster, and hard to try to see humanity in someone who doesn’t hide ones evilness. Just as Mr Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote after surviving the Gulag: The line between good and evil runs not between states or classes, but through every human heart.

It is completely unnecessary to explore the horrendous things in details that I saw but very necessary to remember that there is good in each one of us, just as evil. Which side will you let yourself bend?