Satanism and Personal Responsibility

Satanic Statement Number 6: Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires! (Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, 1969).

For as long as I can remember, personal responsibility has been one of my biggest personal philosophies.  Society loves to find some kind of scapegoat rather than clamor for the individual to own up to their actions.

But let's talk about this from a religious perspective.  Christians, as well as others who are a part of some sort of spiritual religion, tend to look up to some sort of divine being in the sky or some other fictional character for guidance and to have their desires fulfilled.  They don't want to put in the work themselves.  They also rely on these divine beings because they lack something in their personal lives.  They pray and pray and wait for something to happen.  And when something does happen, good or bad, they blame either their God or Satan or some other being of their choice.

One of the things I've always hated is that when a Christian does something bad, they say "the devil made me do it."  Well, devils or other demonic anthropomorphic beings don't exist so no one made them do anything.  They blame something that doesn't exist in order to avoid taking responsibility for what they've done.  Satan is always the easy target to blame for one's failures and for the bad things that happen in the world.

Now for the societal aspect of this subject.  Today's society has also loved to find a scapegoat for criminals rather than focusing on getting justice for the victim and making sure that the criminal owns up for what they've done.  They wanna say that some flaw in society (blaming capitalism or liberalism or some other sociological, economic, historical, or political thing) is to blame or the person has a mental health issue or had some kind of issue growing up.  I personally believe that's a bunch of crap.  Many people who commit criminal acts know very well what they've done.  Whatever happened to the perpetrator in their personal past or what happened in history should not excuse the fact that they made a choice to commit a criminal act.  Society will sometimes go so far as to say that the real victim is the person who broke the law in the first place.

To me, that's no different than the Christians who say that some devil made the person do the bad thing they did.

All of this is confirmed further in The Satanic Scriptures where Magus Gilmore states that "the Judeo-Christian tradition, which exists secularly under the guise of 'liberal humanism,' has too often exalted the criminal over the victim, taking responsibility away from the wrong-doer with their doctrine of forgiveness" (p. 36-37).  This kind of disgusting scapegoating and lack of personal responsibility exists both in Abrahamic religions and general society.  This sort of thing is hated by Satanists.

Magus Gilmore also states that "only you can take credit for your successes, and only you must be at fault for your failures...it is high time to put an end to the perpetual whining, finger pointing, and begging for special dispensations" (p. 156).  It's pretty simple: you're responsible for the things you do and it's time we stop making excuses for ourselves and it's time we stop making excuses for criminals who commit heinous acts. 

And finally, I'd like to quote Magus Gilmore further where he says that "individuals must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, and not be allowed to scapegoat society, history, or other supposed 'outside' influences" (p. 37).  It's pretty straight-forward to me.  This is what we Satanists would like to see happen in society.  You can’t scapegoat a fictional character and you can’t scapegoat anything else for your actions.

Hail Satan!

-Manny

References

Gilmore, P. H. (2016). The Satanic Scriptures. Baltimore, MD: Underworld Amusements.

LaVey, A. S. (1969).  The Satanic Bible.  Avon Books.