Conduct of the enemy

Catholicism posits that Satan is real and that a life of faith involves real combat against his evil spiritual army. This idea has tremendous power and so much historical baggage in the form of warfare and mass murder that one naturally is inclined to deny it. And Buddhism at face value seems to offer a compelling alternative in which ignorance rather than malevolence is the root of evil.

All the same the air is so thick with demons these days that some kind of modern demonology seems to required, and the central question is whether a psychological account is sufficient. IFS, which deals extensively with inner stakeholders, says no, and has been forced to reckon with what that modality calls “unattached burdens,” or more colloquially, critters (Robert Falconer’s The Others Within Us is the authoritative source here). Unlike other inner parts like firefighters, managers and exiles, the wishes of critters and unattached burdens are fundamentally unworkable; when interviewed, they may not respond, or keep repeating that they want you to die. In its characteristically gentle way, the TL;DR of the IFS approach to dealing with critters is to guide them toward a divine light that will absorb them, not unlike the vacuum from Ghostbusters.

The Catholic tradition is more hands-on in its approach, and war is the fundamental paradigm here. In his Spiritual Exercises (325-327), Ignatius describes the conduct of the enemy in three ways. First:

“The enemy conducts himself as a woman. He is a weakling before a show of strength, and a tyrant if he has his will. It is characteristic of a woman in a quarrel with a man to lose courage and take to flight if the man shows that he is determined and fearless. However, if the man loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the woman surge up and know no bounds. In the same way, the enemy becomes weak, loses courage, and turns to flight with his seductions as soon as one leading a spiritual life faces his temptations boldly, and does exactly the opposite of what he suggests. However, if one begins to be afraid and to lose courage in temptations, no wild animal on earth can be more fierce than the enemy of our human nature. He will carry out his perverse intentions with consummate malice.

Second:

“Our enemy may also be compared in his manner of acting to a false lover. He seeks to remain hidden and does not want to be discovered. If such a lover speaks with evil intention to the daughter of a good father, or to the wife of a good husband, and seeks to seduce them, he wants his words and solicitations kept secret. He is greatly displeased if his evil suggestions and depraved intentions are revealed by the daughter to her father, or by the wife to her husband. Then he readily sees he will not succeed in what he has begun. In the same way, when the enemy of our human nature tempts a just soul with his wiles and seductions, he earnestly desires that they be received secretly and kept secret. But if one manifests them to a confessor, or to some other spiritual person who understands his deceits and malicious designs, the evil one is very much vexed. For he knows that he cannot succeed in his evil undertaking, once his evident deceits have been revealed.”

Finally:

“The conduct of our enemy may also be compared to the tactics of a leader intent upon seizing and plundering a position he desires. A commander and leader of an army will encamp, explore the fortifications and defenses of the stronghold, and attack at the weakest point. In the same way, the enemy of our human nature investigates from every side all our virtues, theological, cardinal, and moral. Where he finds the defenses of eternal salvation weakest and most deficient, there he attacks and tries to take us by storm.”

In some ways, this is all familiar turf. From Genesis, evil is known to be indirect, secretive, and cunning. All the same it’s interesting to see the misogyny rendered so clearly. Woman’s weaknesses get reversed here into an evil strength beyond man’s ability to combat alone.

Catholicism’s central claim here is that evil spirits are beyond human reckoning; they outflank us, outsmart us, out-everything us, and our only recourse is to call in the good spirits for “consolation” (as opposed to the “desolation” of evil).

Clearly there are options here for us other than to claim that Satan is real. There may truly be supernatural evil forces flying around. Or there may be a kind of mind vaster then our own, something like a collective consciousness, from which minds that feel profoundly “other” than our own may all the same arise in our personal consciousness. We might choose to use the language of hyperobjects, Timothy Morton’s word to describe hyper-dimensional objects like capitalism and climate change and COVID. Or we may just be satisfied to talk about energy in a handwavy way.

Whatever the case, it seems like we have to account for the cunning of evil. How is that evil knows more about our own minds than we do? What is this intelligence that can exploit our weaknesses so effectively? Is it a real intelligence or simply a kind of golem, a clever contraption with no spirit inside? How do we answer these questions?