Being
decadent is easy. Evil is everywhere. It takes nearly nothing to succeed by
cheating, lying, stealing, or selling to the profane nature of humanity. Violence, sex, anger, hatred,
victimization, and escapism come easy to entertainers and sell easy to a crowd
of nobodies. The fastest route to
tinsel-town success, the empty kind full of fame and money and no fulfillment,
is to sell directly to the clamoring masses the poison for which their blackened
hearts crave. The Bible says,
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." Left to our own natures, we love
darkness and actually gravitate toward things that aren't good for us. I am never impressed with the angry
young faces full of rebellion and hatred that I see on the covers of
entertainment magazines. All I see
when I look at them is more young people who think they are being creative by
being bad. It's an old, old story
that is neither innovative nor impressive.
There is nothing clever or cute about evil. To court it is to play with fire.
Thomas
Mann's classic, Doctor Faustus (based on the old English legend of the same name: author unknown), tells
the famous story of a man selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for fame
and fortune as a musical composer.
In a hollow way the Devil fulfills his end of the bargain, in that the
success in this life that was so dearly purchased is a Hell-on-earth of its
own. It destroys the character
even before he dies. This Faustian Bargain is exactly what results
from success obtained the wrong way.
