Hell Promises Pleasure
But false promises are obvious
Pop culture promises you endless amusement. Social media promises you a fabulous life. Pornography promises the fulfillment of all your fantasies. Politicians promise to give you everything you want, and someone else will pay for it. But to quote singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, “If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?” Mental health, especially with youth, women, and people on the left, is worse than ever.
The cultural elite promote hedonism and seek to recreate nature in their image, as we saw at the bacchanal at the Paris Olympics. Supporters claim this celebration of a drunken orgy was a celebration of diversity. But being gay or transgender isn’t the same as debauchery, nor does heterosexuality exempt you from debauchery. In other words, the Olympic bacchanalia wasn’t really about supporting LGBTQ individuals—they were the patsies for the cultural elites’ agenda.
Only a rare individual would want to be at a bender where a motley crew vampirically uses his body for their personal pleasure, even though they care nothing for his soul. They probably don’t even believe he has a soul. The attraction is for those who want to be the vampire.
However, the would-be vampire will discover too late that he is the feast. He’s the bear who finds a jelly donut in the woods and then gets stuck in a trap with nothing else to do but wait for the hunter to come along and shoot him between the eyes. Kinda like hell. Christians who call this for what it is cannot expect the establishment’s approval.
Today’s cultural establishment is left-wing. The left controls universities, legacy media, social media, Hollywood, and is dominant in the vast American federal bureaucracy—an unelected, de facto fourth branch of government. This creates cognitive dissonance for those of us who were born in the twentieth century. We grew up thinking of the establishment as conservative and the resistance as liberal. But the old school establishment has been waning since the 1960s while the left’s slow march through the institutions reached critical mass in the 2010s.
However, former president Donald Trump—a billionaire Manhattan real estate mogul and reality TV star—is not anti-establishment. Instead, Trump represents a last ditch effort by the old establishment to reassert itself. He’s approaching his 80s, though, while the new leftwing establishment is much younger and dominant with GenZ. And GenZ may create a new counterculture, rediscovering the values and norms that help the human soul flourish.
The decadence of the bacchanalian elite will help this new counterculture. A century ago, eugenics was popular in progressive circles. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. But progressive support for eugenics was memory-holed after Hitler showed up. Progressive hopes for the Soviet experiment collapsed when communist authoritarianism proved as murderous as the Nazis (more so, in fact). But they held on to Karl Marx’s claim that society is a zero-sum power struggle between oppressor and oppressed, adding a shot of post-truth postmodernism. Today, we are told that Western society is oppressive and must be dismantled. This is often pursued by transgressing social norms.
The Communist Manifesto also declares support for “abolition of the family” and decries the disgusting “bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child.” These ideas were echoed by radical feminists starting in the 1970s and more recently by Black Lives Matter. BLM organizer Patrisse Cullors is a self-declared “trained Marxist.” BLM’s official website describes their aim (since edited) to, “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”
After the dismantling of Western society, however, we are offered only vague ideas of “liberation” and “equity.” In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a totalitarian government maintains control by drugging the masses. Today’s cultural elite offers pleasure and self-invention, but they've discovered that they don’t even need to deliver. The false promise is enough to persuade people.
Catholic writer Rod Dreher quotes a comment on his blog observing that, “To the post-Christian anti-cultural nihilist not even hedonism is left.” Dreher agrees, asking,
[W]ho actually looked upon that pageant on the Seine and thought, “That’s life and how to live it”? They are rebelling against a standard that doesn’t exist anymore. They destroyed it. There’s nothing to do but further degrade themselves in a desperate attempt to avoid having to gaze into the abyss of their own lives.
Pleasure is fleeting. We all know that. But bacchanalian self-abasement is long-lasting. A nihilistic abyss awaits—hell. Countercultural GenZers who move past postmodernism and toward the truth Christ reveals will be left standing if they can wait out the self-destruction of their peers who choose false promises.
Isn't it the same pattern? The Garden, the desert, the exodus, the cross and the resurrection. That's the pattern of man. Opposites as the pendulum swings. Thank God we are saved in the end. Thank you. Well written piece. Lord have mercy on us.
I am very happy you are writing here at Missio Dei. This was a very good topic and historical reflection. As a former teacher I saw the liberal influence unfortunately rule the educational side of our schools. Sometimes even Catholic schools have fallen for this agenda which confuses our is counter to our Catholic morals. Now It is shocking to me that some Catholics will vote for a candidate and party which pushes abortion. But as you stated our left dominated media and educational systems have done quite the psy-op on the American psyche.