Another Side of the Mirror

Video: it starts with the ideas of the Christian philosopher --

Me: DON'T SAY IT DON'T FUCKING SAY IT

Video: -- John Calvin

Me:

In short: John Calvin was a French theologian during the Protestant Reformation. He was a philosopher in the same way that ebola is a living thing, or the same way that C4 on a bridge revitalizes a riverfront. If you're familiar with the way that many people say that Reagan is to blame for everything shitty about modern American politics, well, they're half right.

Anglicanism's major tenets were formed largely by Thomas Cranmer attempting to negotiate a "middle way" between Lutheranism & Calvinism. Many aspects of Calvinism were adopted into the Reformed traditions central to Anglican theology & the via media, or middle way, is unfortunately basically just two shitty people playing tug-of-war over the exact way in which Anglicanism would be terrible. This is so foundational to the Church of England that it is addressed in the 3rd paragraph of the opening section of the Wikipedia page on Anglicanism.

Free will isn't real. God makes literally everything happen, and if you complain about it you're complaining about God.

Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Fuck you, that's why. Are you questioning God?

God already decided if you're going to Heaven or Hell, probably before you were born. There's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't matter if you try to be a good person, or if you accept Jesus, or if you go to confession, or if you saved five thousand orphans from a burning building. If God ~mysteriously~ decides "fuck you, burn forever", that's your fate.

However, God likes to show little signs of who he likes. Say, having lots of money, or being hot, or not having horrible illnesses. Good things happen to "the elect", who are people God likes. Bad things happen to everyone else.

Rich people are probably going to Heaven, and they're just better than you, because that's God's secret sign that he likes them more than you. Why? Because fuck you.

If bad things happen to you, it's probably because you deserve it and you're going to Hell. Likewise, if you're poor, ugly, or disabled, you're probably going to Hell.

All of this bullshit has of course had a heavy influence on:

Capitalism, because having money isn't a sign that you're exploiting people, it's a sign that God mysteriously wants you to have nice things. Nothing you can do about it, free will isn't real!

Imperialism, because if you succeed in taking over a place and stealing all their stuff, that's a sign that God likes you. If God liked them, it wouldn't have happened, so you're really following God's plan. And torturing people who are already going to Hell barely even counts, they probably deserve it!

American exceptionalism specifically. Consider the above, and mysteriously, all the native people start dying, leaving vast tracts of land for your people to settle. Well, gosh! God genocided a continent to show that it was secretly always ours! He must really like us!

Witch trials, debtors prisons, insane asylums, &c. They aren't hot or rich, so by definition, they're probably evil and deserve for bad things to happen to them!

... and half of the other shitty things that happen in our society, basically. Calvinism is horrific and it underlies a lot - especially in the US and UK, because the Puritans and Roundheads were mostly Calvinists.

Hobbes in a nutshell: "People are inherently brutal and animalistic and hungry for power and lazy, and it is only through Civilization (read: submitting to the will of Leaders) that we can suppress the violence of human nature and have Order. Our natural state of being is 'a war of all against all'" (Like, you know the Purge? That's what Hobbes thinks is the real way that humans would behave without Rules and Laws and Civilization keeping them in line. Or you know how journalists love to wring their hands about "oooh after this natural disaster everyone just went wild and started murdering each other and LOOTING everything" -- that's the Hobbesian perspective, and it is so pervasive that people are CONVINCED that's what really happens after a natural disaster. But in actuality people in disasters tend to show their best selves and start helping each other out and banding together and showing amazing solidarity.

Lestat has the capacity for this massive amount of compassion and feeling for the people who have wronged him the most. he sees the souls of the evil doers he drains and kills, and he learns to love them in their final moments. in the same way that he grieves for Magnus, feels for him even after Magnus has done nothing but torture him, he loves his family. or at least he feels for them. he can hate them and pity them and still feel bound to them, which is part of what makes him so interesting and frustrating and sad.

and I don’t find him and Gabrielle killing them cathartic either. it’s so much effort and grotesque cruelty wasted on people that they have only ever wanted to be away from. Gabrielle, maybe I could see her wanting to do this, but even then, in the book she is literally the one who diverts Lestat from his messed up fantasy of going from room to room and slaughtering his father and brothers. she gives him the means of escaping Auvergne and going with Nicki to Paris because she doesn’t want to see him take on the burden of the madness of their family. he doesn’t need to become a cabbage! 😭

I don’t see killing them as cathartic. it’s kind of pathetic and sad, to bother going all the way back to Auvergne to torment these miserable people who are ultimately going to suffer and die in the French Revolution anyway 😭 and maybe that is potentially the point? I could see them exploring the weird tragedy of this decision, because there is something so grotesque about Lestat taking revenge on his blind, dying father, who is so old and ill that he can’t even fully understand why this is happening to him, and leaving the aftermath of that for his innocent nieces and nephews to come home to.

it’s disturbing in a similar way to Lestat taunting and berating his father on his death bed. it’s justified, considering what his father has done to Lestat, but it’s also so so sad. like the opposite of cathartic. this elderly, demented, blind man tormented in his last moments by the son he abused and beat all his life, pleading for forgiveness and denied the resolution that honestly neither of them fully deserve. it’s ugly and tragic and unresolved, not some triumphant revenge fantasy.