(A) What sort of information are they canvassing for?

(B) What are they doing with that sort of information?

And, btw, I use Privacy Badger instead of Disconnect.

No, it won't be revolutionary when AirBnB starts accepting cryptocurrency. In fact, it'll fold immediately.

Indeed, there's an innate Libertarian core that resides within us all but Milton sought to, like GRRM in the Games of Throne books, expose how morally bankrupt some of us are for admiring an individual such as Satan merely because of his desire to be 'free'.

We thus conveniently forget all of the evil that Satan commits because we see something in him that resides within us: an innate desire to, as Rousseau refers to extensively, to be freed of the shackles of tyranny from above.

In the canon and even much conventional theology, it's not clear, and not even clear that Satan is a moral agent capable of doing good or evil. Plus, he doesn't show up much in the canon; there's the bet with God over Job, the test/temptation of Christ, some stuff in Revelation, and the fact that the snake in the Garden of Eden is popularly (though not canonically) identified with Satan.

Milton's work is an artistic take on a popular old non-canonical story that both is influential on shaping images of Satan in Christianity and hard to reconcile some mainstream theology (Christian theology and Christian popular mythology often have a problematic relationship.)

> not even clear that Satan is a moral agent capable of doing good or evil

This was what got me - as I understand it, the special thing about humans was free will, which kind of emancipates any of the Heavenly Host from wrongdoing (at least in the sense of personal moral responsibility).

If on a spectrum of God <--> !God, humans were supposed to turn their interest toward god. But, rather than having God and Void apposed, there is a personified force there that is "the adversary".

Almost like a divine unit testing framework: if there are critical weaknesses, please help me uncover them ASAP. Hence God's willingness to let Satan make Job's life miserable.

Acceptance testing, surely.

Essentially, his hubris in seeking to overcome the nature of things. While Satan's sin, in the personified tale of the story, boils down to not doing what god says, "going against the will of god" essentially means being foolish enough to think you can live out of harmony with the natural order of the universe just because you're intelligent and have the desire.

The entire god/adam/eve/satan/christ narrative is essentially a parable to illustrate how the wise, to live calm, harmonious, fulfilling lives, live acording to the Dao, as some in the East would say.

Killing a buffalo to feed and clothe yourself isn't evil, but slaughtering an entire herd to sell the horn powder to Eastern mystics might be. And you'll be punished by suddenly having no buffalo to eat.

Not the greatest example though. :P

"Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;" (Moses 4:3) [emphasis mine]

"And thus he goeth up and down, to and fro in the earth, seeking to destroy the souls of men." (D&C 10:27)

At least, that's one take.

It’s been a couple months since I read Paradise Lost though.

Are we talking about the bible or Milton? I agree it's not clear in the bible, but feel Milton makes it quite clear.

It might have been harmful to humanity to have been kicked out of the garden

I'm not even really sure that's the point. 'Humanity' is a third party in that fight. God had built this new, fragile creature, the 'best' thing he'd ever made. He realized they where fragile and put them in the garden to protect them. Satan is pissed off at God for casting him out and decided to fuck with God by breaking his new toy that he knows God is very proud of. None of them seem to care too much about the long term fate of humanity.

If a child destroys a poorly-built house by kicking it, do we blame the child?

If a child destroys an extremely fragile work of art, do we blame the artist for not making his art more robust.

I agree and that's what I have always been feeling a bit puzzled about, as in 17th century England, religious correctness is still not a trivial thing.

But in a certain sense, Satan is not absolutely evil and not having no good characters at all. For instance, as the example mentioned in the article, Satan is quite empathetic towards his fellow fallen angels -- and this empathy, would often invoke reader's empathy to a certain extent.

So perhaps Milton hopes to create a Satan that has some subtle and mixed characters, with depth, with a spectrum of shades. I feel this method is similarly employed in many Shakespeare's plays (such as Angelo in Measure for Measure), which were written even earlier than Paradise Lost.

Angelo's defining characteristic is his hypocrisy, which at times is really vile, but his fall does at least humanize him to the audience by contrast to his earlier presentation as an ice-blooded robot "begot between two stock-fishes".

And there's a lot of that in Milton's Satan too. He's undeniably colourful, but seriously, complaining to his companions how crappy it is to reigned over while at the same time declaring his own ambition to reign over them? That doesn't strike me as a libertarian sentiment, more of a narcissistic rational-egoist one.

  When I would pray and think, I think and pray
  To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words;
  Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
  Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
  As if I did but only chew his name;
  And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
  Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied
  Is like a good thing, being often read,
  Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity,
  Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride,
  Could I with boot change for an idle plume,
  Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
  How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
  Wrench awe from fools and tie the wiser souls
  To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:
  Let's write good angel on the devil's horn:
  'Tis not the devil's crest.

  And there's a lot of that in Milton's Satan too. He's   
  undeniably colourful, but seriously, complaining to his
  companions how crappy it is to reigned over while at the 
  same time declaring his own ambition to reign over them.

And also, he is having a conference with his comrades in Pandæmonium, right? In this sense, his power over his comrades -- if he is superior -- is not absolute, as at least he consults them, unlike that in heaven...

Oh, no, I certainly wasn't suggesting that. If you squint a bit you can almost see Angelo as a tragic hero undone by his own virtues; piety and self-restraint have always come so naturally to him that he's never had to build up the moral muscle required to resist temptation. So when he does fall, he falls hard.

> I am not that sure to what extent this reign is over them; and who those "them" are?

A good point.

Or he has the charisma of a sociopath.

From the OP:

>>> The point of all this mirroring is to show how closely evil resembles good. Poole writes in Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost that Milton “regards evil as disarmingly close in appearance to the good,” and it is only by careful moral reasoning that the two can be separated. Shortly after Milton returned from Italy in 1639, where he met Galileo and spent several months participating in various Florentine literary salons, he wrote in his commonplace book, “In moral evil much good may be mixed, and that with singular craft.”

>>> ....

>>> In short, Satan says all the rightly compassionate things only to the “right” people, who are, of course, his people, and only when his own interests are at stake. He is unflappable only in front of a crowd, courageous only when it is personally advantageous. He acts like a good leader, father, and husband—and even argues with nearly perfect reasoning that he is more morally upright than God himself—all while serving only himself. He is a god of unchecked liberty, and, therefore, in Milton’s view, a god of chaos and destruction.