William Golding wrote:Fancy thinking the Bieber is something you can hunt and kill!
With these words, Golding lays bare the concept at the heart of his classic work
The Lord of the Flies. It shares something in common with the concept of the
Eternal Recurrence, and with Campbell's conception of the Monomyth; the notion that some things, some stories and narrative patterns and concepts and events, are so natural and innate (to the world or to humanity or reality) that they cannot but be part of an ever-repeating cycle, albeit with variations and deviations in detail.
The Bieber is far more important as a concept than as a specific entity within the work, and we find that, as a concept, it is inescapable; had it not come about in the way that it did, it would have evolved through a different means, because the things the concept addresses, such as the need to externalize an antagonist to fear and hate--and, yes, in certain ways and for certain people, even to venerate and worship--are part of the human condition, the human conception of reality.
Whether or not a Bieber actually exists as a discrete entity, and whether or not such an entity is actually
literally the Christian Satan, is entirely irrelevant; if the Bieber did not exist, it would have been necessary to create him, because
he is part of us; he answers a deep need within human nature, and we can never fully be rid of him, not even if we leave all of civilization and all pre-existing embodiments and understandings of the Bieber behind. Think of
all the uses of a concept similar to the Bieber society has made even within your own time.
Because it appeals to some base human instincts within the dark hearts of so many, the Bieber is a matter of Eternal Recurrence; so long as humanity exists, so too will the Bieber. Whatever happens to the current form, the current embodiment, or even the current
specific concept is irrelevant; to divest ourselves of the current civilized and controlled construct of society's current Bieber may simply loose a more primordial, more direct, and even more terrible Bieber upon us all, because society exists at least in part to control the power of this eternal idea.
The Lord of the Flies wrote:You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close!