I've been watching the show Lucifer on Netflix that depicts the Prince of Darkness (no, not Ozzy, though interestingly Sharon Osbourne makes a cameo in an episode) as having gotten bored of ruling Hell, coming up to Earth in the modern era and living as a nightclub owner in LA while helping the LAPD solve crimes. With that I have been considering how it would embody the principles of Satanism as it was codified by Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan, seeing as the series is about Satan and I would be of that classification. In a way beyond the basic explanation of the plot just given, it's a series about agency that beings with a certain cognitive capacity hold, be it human or celestial or— to a bit of a lesser extent within the context of the show— demonic; all having the power to make their own choices and forge the outcomes in their individual existence. To put it more concisely and as plainly put by the Devil himself in the first episode of the fifth season, given each episode serves as a vehicle of sorts for further exploration of his and those in Lucifer's orbit of their self-perception as it continuously develops: "The self-centered simplicity of you humans never ceases to amaze..." and this sentiment goes vice versa and all-around.
This statement reminds me of something from another piece of popular media. The sentiment expressed by Optimus Prime in the second of the Transformers movies made by Michael Bay, where the leader of the Autobots remarks to a US military official regarding the human tendency toward petty violence; which is ironic, as if the machine beings in the films are so terribly dissimilar in such an instinctive drift towards these trivial yet simultaneously grandiose disputes.
Lust, love, stupidity, vapidity, jealousy, disdain, and everything plain and sweet— it's all there in this take on the King of Hell. From the minuscule misunderstandings to consistent abandonments, betrayals, formed bonds and dirty deeds done dirt cheep, solved and slate reset for further self-discovery. Study through firsthand initiation into life triumphing over counterproductive pride and lacking perspective solipsism; responsibility to those responsible without concern for the psychic vampires and retributive punishment dished out accordingly.... All this in a world of nuanced circumstantial (vital) existence.
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