What If The Devil COULD Make You Do It (But you could never tell)

In this setting, there is a confirmed Satanic figure, a corrupter capable of secretly influencing minds towards evil. In fact, it goes about doing this with some frequency, and has no sense of proportion, but it doesn't have its greasy fingers in everything.

Despite knowing how it's "generally" around, there is no way to prove its involvement in most cases and if then how much. It's known to outright twist people, just amplify certain traits or leave a stray though laying around, with no evidence to any of it.

What happens then?

Figure out a way to block it. If there's a way into a mind, there's a way to block that way in.

Alternatively, figure out a way to repress it or literally forget it. Like quarantining a computer virus or deleting it completely off a machine. Difficult, but theoretically possible.

Well, dang, I wasn't actually expecting a solution to the problem, especially since I was sparse on the mechanics.

I was actually trying to tackle the ethical, moral, legal and social impact.

...all of which is immediately turned towards finding a solution.

I had wanted philosophers and I got engineers.

edited 5th May '17 10:26:51 PM by God_of_Awesome

The philosophers are more receptive to outside ideas. The engineers come up with their own. Or something like that.

If you can't quarantine the attack, you can quarantine yourself.

Find some public land as far away from civilization as you can and live off of it. It's possible to live quite confortably if you know what you're doing and have a strong back.

Ideally, if the devil takes control of yourself it'll take days to get close enough to hurt another human being and you'll have time to stop it.

Alternatively, you can check yourself into a mental asylum. Hell, lots of people voluntarily and the excuse "I'm easily mind controlled" is actually quite valid.

What would happen?

Nothing would happen. It's impossible for this outside influence to be confirmed if it leaves no evidence. Even if the people really firmly believed this outside influence was around, with no evidence for its actual involvement, it might as well not exist at all.

We know this, because that basically describes exactly the approach to morality that people had under medieval Christianity. In the sense that people really firmly believed, to the point that they considered it proven, because the Bible said so (which, actually, it doesn't), that all evils, great and small, were the result of the devil whispering in people's ears, but it was still the 'perpetrators' themselves who were held responsible and punished.

...because the devil sudden entered them and refused to leave. Or some entity that wasn't part of some grand celestial plan, etc. etc.

Nowadays, cut a few brains up post-mortem, and you start to see that there is or isn't a physiological explanation for someone's actions. Follow their social media postings, and you can get to know a person better. Talk to the people they knew, and you can chart how they did or didn't live like a normal human being. And if enough of these disproportionate outbreaks happen, with an otherwise ordinary and mild-mannered person at the epicenter, process of elimination will eventually get you to an outside influence of some malevolent sort.

That's the setup I'd use, anyway, to explain in-story why a group might suspect the Devil at work. Or whatever boogeyman suits the story best, religiously-colored or otherwise.

Likely, the legal system would just choose to ignore it, given that it couldn't be proven. If you committed some criminal act while under diabolical influence, tough luck for you. That wouldn't be fair, but really, what else could be done, under the circumstances you described?

Possibly there's some kind of horrific exorcism reserved for folks "under the influence,'' which would make people leery of using that as a defense if it wasn't the case. Perhaps, for instance, the death penalty was reserved only for people so possessed, because the greater population considered such people tainted or corrupted. Make being possessed the worst crime imaginable, and people wouldn't use it as an excuse for other crimes.