Yes, I know that the creators of Hazbin Hotel are trolling for attention. I also know that civilization will not stand or fall based on a stupid R-rated animated series about Hell.

But geez, man. What does it say about our society that one of the largest corporations in the world with millions of subscribers to its video service is heavily promoting a series in which Heaven’s Angels are the bad guys and Satan is the good guy?

Heaven and hell like you’ve never seen them before. Here is the opening scene of #HazbinHotel, premiering Friday on Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/MRkiaCu3bm

— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) January 16, 2024

Watch the trailer for the series–and it’s hard to walk away with anything but the impression that God is an oppressor and Satan the liberator.

As a student of philosophy, I understand that there is a case to be made for this portrayal, and it has echoes of the Greek myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gifted it to man.

What makes the story of Satan different is that in Greek mythology, both the gods and man are driven by appetites and their universe really has no moral order. The story of Satan and Hell is about destroying a preexisting moral order and replacing it with appetites as the highest good.

It is important for Leftists to redeem Hell because it is important to replace the natural moral order as ordained by God with human will. Prometheus giving fire to mankind allowed human beings to climb the ladder from being mere animals to more godlike beings–the goal was to become civilized. Redeeming Satan and sinners is about elevating the animal appetites and putting them at the top of the moral ladder.

God’s moral order must be replaced by human will, or all the transhumanism is not only incoherent but a rebellion against the Good. Drag queens, pedophilia, licentiousness, and hubris are based on a rejection of God’s strictures, and we can’t have that.

Humanism was an attempt to replace God with a rational moral order that mostly maintained Christian morality; transhumanism is based on the principle of “screw it, I will do what I feel like.”

I am not interested in banning shows like this, but I sure as hell am interested in convincing people that our society is going down a very dark and dangerous path. It’s one thing to debate the moral contours of the universe, what exactly God or nature demands of us, and quite another to celebrate embracing the appetites and transitory desires as the highest good.

Philosophers such as Nietzsche have grappled with the fact that the waning influence of Christianity could very easily lead mankind down one of two paths–either striving for Promethean achievement and self-perfection or something very much like what we are seeing today, which he called the “last man”–a version of mankind in which we descend into the worship of appetite and comfort.

Nietzsche–no fan of Christianity–hoped that the self-discipline or what he called “ascetic values” that Christian morality could be built upon to inspire a new form of morality–or perhaps you could call it “aspiration”–that would drive human beings to aspire to greatness and creativity. He also worried that the opposite would happen–without Christianity to reign in the appetites, men are left to aspire to smallness and trivial desires.

We are barrelling down the second path, where the greatest desire is for one’s most carnal desires to be embraced and affirmed.

Shows like this are an artistic expression of this latter path–“You be you.”

And not the best version of you.