{"id":2027693,"date":"2023-09-11T06:56:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doja-cats-demons-are-real-whether-she-believes-in-them-or-not\/"},"modified":"2023-09-11T07:02:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T11:02:17","slug":"doja-cats-demons-are-real-whether-she-believes-in-them-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doja-cats-demons-are-real-whether-she-believes-in-them-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Doja Cat&#8217;s &#8216;Demons&#8217; exist, regardless of her belief."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdoja-cats-demons-are-real-whether-she-believes-in-them-or-not%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2027693&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>In\u2062 C.S. Lewis\u2019 <em>The Last Battle<\/em>, the Calormene villain Rishda cynically worships and\u2063 promotes the human-sacrifice god Tash for\u2064 political\u2062 gain \u200dbut doesn\u2019t believe he is real. Eventually, \u200dto Rishda\u2019s horror and surprise, Tash shows up, seizes him, and is then banished from Narnia in the \u200bname \u2063of Aslan. \u200cAs \u2063he leaves, Tash \u200btakes with\u2064 him the suddenly\u2064 believing Rishda, who is most likely eaten.<\/p>\n<p>This\u200b is somewhat\u2062 of a recurring theme in\u2062 Lewis\u2019 fiction. Think\u2063 of the N.I.C.E. scientists in <em>That Hideous Strength<\/em>, strict materialists\u200c who think\u200d that through\u2062 their \u200btechnology they have reanimated a severed\u2062 head and created \u201cgod.\u201d They worship the thing, which\u2064 isn\u2019t actually animated by their technology but by\u2063 demonic forces, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/blue-state-blues-gets-worse\/\" title=\"Blue State Blues Gets Worse\">eventually turn<\/a> \u2062on one\u200d another in a murderous \u2063spasm when the demon commands them, \u201cGive me another head.\u201d <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1102153718\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-2c9e7e3e915fff09742bd09a2f526fba fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-2c9e7e3e915fff09742bd09a2f526fba\"><\/div>\n<p>Lewis\u2019 point is that cynically dabbling in the demonic \u2062is no shield from the danger such dabbling \u200cinevitably \u2064brings. That point came to mind Friday when I saw \u200ca\u200b post on \u2062X, formerly Twitter, about Doja Cat\u2019s music video for \u200bher latest single, \u201cDemons.\u201d The video features Christina \u200cRicci as a new homeowner who quickly discovers the place is haunted by a demonic, black-clad Doja Cat, replete \u2062with horns, sharp claws, spiked tail, and glowing\u2064 red eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Everything about the video, right down to the \u2063font of the title cards, exudes a self-consciously ironic, throwback\u200c vibe. It\u2019s not meant to be scary, exactly,\u200c more\u200d like a\u2062 tongue-in-cheek indulgence in demonry \u200dthat\u2064 mocks the \u201csatanic panic\u201d of the \u200d\u201880s and \u201890s\u2064 and \u200brevels in satanic imagery. It\u2019s not that much different \u200cthan what\u2063 a chubby, horn-clad Sam Smith did at the \u200dGrammy Awards earlier this year, or\u200d Lil Nas X did in that video where he gave Satan a \u200dlap dance before killing him and \u2063taking his\u200c throne.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a decades-long long history \u200dof \u2063this sort \u200cof thing in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ca-gender-prof-covid-revealed-the-tragedy-of-heterosexuality\/\" title=\"CA Gender Prof: COVID Revealed The \u2018Tragedy Of Heterosexuality\u2019\">pop culture<\/a>,\u2064 of which these younger artists are likely well aware. \u2063What they\u2019re \u200bdoing isn\u2019t new, and in our\u200d post-Christian society it certainly isn\u2019t \u200btransgressive \u2014 maybe it\u2019s not meant to \u200bbe.\u200c The aim here is perhaps \u200cnot to shock, but to entice.<\/p>\n<p>The comment I saw on X was from an anonymous account, @Antweegonus, who <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Antweegonus\/status\/1699816667096678900?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">noted<\/a> in reference to the Doja\u200d Cat video that \u201covert celebration of the demonic can be understood\u200d as evidence of a particular, predictable phenomenon\u200b that\u200c takes place\u2062 during late stage\u200c decline.\u201d\u200b Materialism, he says, can \u200bfor a time be \u200dused as a way to \u2064explain away and deny the reality of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/knowles-no-democrats-are-not-the-real-transphobes\/\" title=\"KNOWLES: No, Democrats Are Not \u2018The Real Transphobes\u2019\">spiritual world<\/a>, \u200dbut in the\u2064 end \u201cstrict \u200dmaterialism is inevitably found\u200d insufficient,\u200d discarded, and replaced with a sinister neospiritualism.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-4c9b1e7d1fcde67b500fc0f86f490740 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-4c9b1e7d1fcde67b500fc0f86f490740\"><\/div>\n<p>Lewis had a name for the kind of modern man who \u2064would embrace this sinister neospiritualism. He called him \u200cthe \u201cmaterialist magician.\u201d In his 1942\u200c epistolatory novel <em>The Screwtape Letters<\/em>, the demon Screwtape addresses a \u200cquestion from his nephew Wormwood about \u201cwhether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own\u200b existence.\u201d The question, Screwtape says, \u201cat least\u2063 for the present phase of the struggle, has \u200bbeen \u2064answered for us by the High Command.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Our policy,\u200d for the moment, \u200cis to conceal ourselves. Of course this \u2062has not always been so. We \u2064are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the \u200dhumans disbelieve in our existence we \u200close all the \u200cpleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the\u2064 other hand, \u200cwhen they believe in\u2062 us, we\u2064 cannot make them materialists\u200c and sceptics. \u2064At least,\u2062 not \u2062yet. I have great\u200d hopes \u2064that \u2062we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an \u2064extent that what\u200d is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under\u200b that name) will creep \u200din while the human \u200dmind\u2063 remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The \u201cLife Force,\u201d the worship of sex, and\u200d some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. \u2063If once we can produce our perfect work \u2014 the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls \u201cForces\u201d while denying the existence \u200dof \u201cspirits\u201d \u2014 then the end \u200cof the war\u2062 will be in sight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The goal here\u200b is \u200cto produce a \u200dman who is both a good materialist and also a good pagan. Lewis was of course on to something,\u200c because this precisely describes our present moment,\u200d when #WitchTok influencers hawk \u200dpotions and\u2063 spells out of one side \u2063of their mouth \u200dand spout off about \u2062the \u201cscience\u201d of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/elon-musk-i-got-a-covid-test-four-times-in-one-day-two-came-back-negative-two-came-back-positive-the-daily-wire\/\" title=\"Elon Musk: I Got A COVID Test Four Times In One Day. \u2018Two Came Back Negative, Two Came Back Positive.\u2019 | The Daily Wire\">climate change<\/a> and transgenderism out of the other. Indeed,\u200c both\u200d the transgender and climate change\u2064 movements, among other leftist causes, \u2064are largely premised on an unstable admixture of materialist and spiritualist\u2062 worldviews.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not quite right, then, to chalk\u2064 up all\u2062 of this seeming demon-worship in pop culture to mere nihilism. \u200dThe materialist magicians of our time are gradually shedding their cynical, 20th-century materialism \u200band embracing the notion of\u200c a spiritual \u200drealm that touches our physical one. As they do so, \u200cthey will\u2063 become more overt about\u200b their \u200bbelief in \u2063\u201cforce\u201d while denying the existence of \u201cspirits.\u201d You can see manifestations of this worldview not just in ironic pop culture products like Doja Cat\u2019s music\u200b video\u2062 but among AI researchers, who increasingly talk about what they\u2019re doing in theological or\u200d spiritual terms \u2014 \u201ccreating \u2064god,\u201d as former Google executive Mo Gawdat <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/can-this-man-save-the-world-from-artificial-intelligence-329dd6zvd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">put it<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The danger here is that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doja-cats-demons-are-real-whether-she-believes-in-them-or-not\/\" title=\"Doja Cat's 'Demons' exist, regardless of her belief.\">pure objective materialism\u200d eventually collapses<\/a> in on itself, and what emerges\u2063 is what we\u2019re seeing now all around us: a radical subjectivism that rejects all notions of right or wrong, good\u200b or bad, but \u2063is guided instead by mere appetite \u200cand desire. To quote Lewis (again), \u201cWhen all \u2064that\u200c says \u2018it is good\u2019 has been debunked, what says \u2018I want\u2019 remains.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6f8b9b238817bb2d24357266058ccc91 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6f8b9b238817bb2d24357266058ccc91\"><\/div>\n<p>That\u2019s\u200b not just a recipe for\u200d the\u2062 ruin of our civilization, it heralds \u200ca new pagan epoch in which an entire society of\u2064 materialist magicians, like the scientists of N.I.C.E. or the grinning pop stars of today, \u200demotionalize \u2063and mythologize science and reason, largely unaware they \u200bare\u200d actually in thrall to \u2064something much worse than their\u200c appetites \u2014 something that, like \u200cTash, will eat them in the end.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-d4cd3369d79fcc24a92419524578d89d fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-d4cd3369d79fcc24a92419524578d89d\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In C.S. Lewis&#8217; The Last Battle, Rishda, the Calormene villain, cunningly exploits the god Tash for personal gain, despite his disbelief in its existence. Unexpectedly, Tash materializes, terrifying Rishda, who is subsequently banished from Narnia by Aslan. Departing, Tash carries something valuable along with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2027694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2027693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2027693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2027694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2027693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2027693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2027693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}