Oh, You.

Every time someone tries to Win A War before it starts,

 innocent people die. 

Every time.

— Rogers

“Here's The Rest of The Story: So there's The Snake, right, and you’re some tree-dwelling primate. The snake eats primates, and that sucks, so let’s watch out for the damn snakes. Then your brain grows, and you think, “Wait a minute. There’s not just snakes — there's where snake live. Why don't we just get the hell out of the tree, hunt down The Snakes, and get rid of them?” Those are sort of like potential snakes, and so the snake becomes potential snake. It’s the same circuit that you're using to do this thinking. You get rid of the damn snakes. It’s like Saint Patrick chasing them out of Ireland. No more snakes. Everything is paradise. It’s like, no, no, no. 

That’s not how it works, at all. 

You’ve got Human Snakes. You’re a tribe, you’ve got tribal enemies, and you’ve got to defend yourself against the human snakes, right? Maybe your empire expands, and you get rid of all the human snakes. Then what happens? They start to grow and develop inside. You get rid of all the external enemies and make a big city, and all of a sudden there's enemies that pop up inside. 

The Snake isn’t just the snake in the garden, and The Snake isn’t just the possible snake, and The Snake isn’t just The Snake that's Your Enemy. The Snake is Your Friend, because Your Friend can betray you. 

And then it’s even worse than that, 

because YOU can Betray You.

So even if you get rid of all the Outside Snakes, you’ve got an Inside Snake, and God only knows what it’s up to. 

That's why the bloody Christians associated The Snake in The Garden of Eden with Satan. It’s unbelievably brilliant, because you gotta think, What's The Enemy? 

Well, it’s The Snake, and fair enough. But, you know, that's good if you're a tree-dwelling primate.

If you're a sophisticated human being with six million years of additional evolution, and you're really trying to solve The Problem of what it is that's The Great Enemy of Mankind…

Well, it’s the human propensity for evil, right? That’s the figure of Satan. That’s what that figure means — just like there's a Logos that’s The Truth That Speaks Order out of Chaos at The Beginning of Time, there’s an antithetical spirit — The Hostile Brother. 

That’s Cain to Abel, which we’ll talk about next week—that's doing exactly the opposite. It’s motivated by absolutely nothing but malevolence and the willingness to destroy, and it has every reason for doing so. 

That’s what’s revealed in the next story, in Cain and Abel: the first glimmerings of the antithetical spirit outside of this strange insistence by the Christian mystics, let’s say, on the identity between the snake in the garden of Eden and the author of all evil himself.”