Why We Need The Evil Demon

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” 

― Albert Camus

In René Descartes’ first Meditation in Meditations on First Philosophy, he introduces the ‘method of doubt’. He says that if we wish to find out anything about the world which is constant and enduring we need to start from the foundations and disregard any ordinary opinions. Rarely does anyone restart their machine of thought from scratch for any reason, and it makes you think, if we thrashed in pursuit of this perfect lack of judgment, would we be able to function as people?

All of us have readymade foundations to make judgements, and these foundations are ultimately peripheral to the existence of both sense and experience. We cannot deny the obvious proof of our senses – you see these words, you feel the material of your apparel against your skin, you hear, you taste and you smell. You would have to be irrational to deny your senses, and as Descartes eloquently puts, those that deny their senses are madmen “who imagine they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass” – they are utterly disillusioned with reality.

Descartes uses dreams to devalue the reliability of our senses. When you dream, you represent things to yourself just as convincingly as your senses do, do you not? Have you ever woken up from a dream which felt unbelievably lifelike? Have you ever confused a real memory for a dream you once had? Most people have, and here’s the vital idea: we as humans are able to form senses which bear no relation to reality – so, really, we have no ability to distinguish a dream experience from a waking experience. Just as much evidence exists to indicate that the act of you reading this is reality, as there is to demonstrate the opposite. Our senses can deceive us and, according to Descartes, it is “wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived.”

On the contrary, there is a counter to this line of reasoning if we think of dreams as paintings. Imagine a painter and a painting. The painting is your dream, and you are the painter. You can rearrange scenes on the canvas as the painter, and absolutely whatever you imagine will always be a depiction derived from real things. We can equate this line of reasoning to another, saying that even if familiar things (your ears, your nose, your eyes etcetera) were thought to be imaginary, they must depend on things which are inherently real.

But what are these real things? Descartes says our senses can trick us and tell the truth at the same time. If all your beliefs of the world are based on your sensory experiences and your senses are deceiving, is it not that everything you believe about the world uncertain? To remove this doubt, one would have to remove himself resolutely from believing any falsehoods, but these falsehoods indelibly exist.

If everything can be doubted, Descartes reaches the conclusion:

“I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity … I may at least do what is in my power [suspend judgement], and with firm purpose avoid giving credence to any false thing, or being imposed upon by this arch deceiver, however powerful and deceptive he may be.”

This arch deceiver is The Evil Demon – the conspiring entity which keeps us from neutrally witnessing the world around us. It is interesting that Descartes refers to this entity as evil, and that he says he must do whatever he can to free himself from the grasps of this demon. In my opinion, this demon is absolutely necessary.

There are two types of people in this world, those who know they are living a delusion and those who do not. Most of us do not realise that our lives are cloaked with a constant obligation to adhere to lies. We are within confines, and the limiting factor on our freedom is the compulsion to acquiesce to the persuasion of The Evil Demon.

Descartes’ idea of ceaseless deception within our lives is what I consider to be the major theme of the way in which we all function. I have constructed a vague structure to briefly explain what we do, why we deceive ourselves in doing that, and why this deception is necessary.

What You Do	Why You Are Deceiving Yourself	Why This Deception Is Necessary
Feel as if you might be important relative to others	None of us are really important individually. It is a universal lie everyone’s subconsciously complicit in. You may feel relative importance at times, but this is a temporary notion.	As social beings that thrive on interaction, we need to feel recognised within our societies. Possessing the faculty for emotion has rendered this of utmost importance. We are able to feel elation and depression and an array of complex emotions such as jealousy, love and abhorrence – so the mental state of the human is so epically integral to our health that we need to nourish it with lies.
Take pleasure in escaping	The weight of obligation rests on our shoulders. Tasks need to be completed and life is so extensive that simply taking in everything at once is too wearisome. What we need is a way out – and so we use escapism. You watch television shows for hours on end, you go on vacation, you listen to music before you sleep… or perhaps, like me, you write needless essays on arbitrary topics.	If we did not free ourselves from the mundanities and stresses of everyday life the weight of the world on our shoulders would crush us into flaccid imprints of a once-spirited being.
Fear failure	When we fear the possibility of something happening we are in touch with an abstract concept of risk which does not exist in real life. Therefore, we attach ourselves to a fantasy – a fantasy that failure will happen. This is a careful construct in your mind, and only your delusional mind makes you believe this failure is inevitable.	The capability of thinking rationally is possibly one of the most remarkable traits we possess. The ability of risk assessment is integral to our survival and to our development. If we did not fear failure, the decisions we would make would have calamitous consequences.
Become frustrated as a result of someone else’s actions	If a person does something to cause you annoyance, grievance or anger, this is because you do not believe they are acting ‘correctly’… but this ‘correctly’, is not reality but an ideal instilled in you. The emotion you feel stems not from their actions themselves, but from how their actions differ from your fantasies.	If we did not have a set of virtuous ideals that we believed was convention for others to follow in respect to us, we would be condoning all kinds of awful behaviour.
Create idealistic aims	When we start a new habit, the basis for our motivations is the fantasy of what our life will be whilst or after we are engaging in the habit. Except, this is not real. The idealised and deceptive dream of the habit and outcome rarely ever match up with 'reality'.	Aspiring to objectives out of our reach ensures we can reach our maximum potential as people. Of course, we are tricking ourselves into believing it is achievable, and with that comes the unavoidable pang of disappointment when we do not achieve reach our expectations. Ultimately, though, it is necessary for us to improve.

What does this tell us? We are disillusioned creatures, more than often out of touch with reality, more than often acting like those who have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass. As much as we would like to believe we are not the madmen, and that we are the ones that understand ourselves and our atmosphere, it is not the case. We are being deceived all the time. The crazy thing is that we need to be! We need The Evil Demon because our lives are built on deception.

It is not necessarily a bad thing that we are delusional. If it is what helps us operate efficiently then so be it – admire it and allow it. Maybe The Evil Demon is not evil at all. If it is our faults and inabilities of perfection that make us human then maybe this demon is not a demon, but an angel, helping our humanity blossom. We can refute and accept many things – whether The Evil Demon is a wicked master of trickery, or some horned benefactor – but in the end it is just us with our ideas and our theories which give any meaning to the world around us. So Descartes acknowledged in his meditation the supreme nature of doubt, and he encouraged us to doubt all things, for if we do not doubt, then the world is full of perfect and fantastical absolutes – absolutes engendered by warped and disillusioned minds.

So do not be perturbed or fearful… because for all of us, it is more comfortable to live with the lies and ignore the truth, than it is to live with the truth and ignore the lies.