We Are All Prisoners Here Of Our Own Device

Writing earlier about deleting Facebook accounts, I used a line from the the Eagles song, Hotel California, as the title.

As I researched the song and listened to it a few times, I became fascinated by the words, and what the writers were getting at.

Many argue that the song is satanic, and that it has to do with the satanic church in California.

I remember hearing that years ago, and when it is explained with that angle, the words can be made to sound like that.

Then again, you could make any message from the words if you really tried hard enough.

Co writer of the song, Don Henley said in 1995 that the song was about the times in which it was written, and the music culture of the West Coast.

More about the song’s origins from Wikipediea and Snopes!

I had originally included the lyrics of the song below, along with a video clip of the band playing Hotel California. Due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group against YouTube I have removed them!

‘We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.’

What a great line, I think that it speaks volumes about the predicaments that we humans can place ourselves in from time to time.

Would another way of saying it be “we’re the result of all the decisions that we’ve made?”

Being a survivor of the seventies, I can identify with the question. I did a lot of living back then, and made a few choices..

I haven’t found the phrase “we are all just prisoners here, of our own device” anywhere else as yet, but would love to know if it was a quote from somewhere else before the writers of the song got hold of it.

This post was published on: Feb 27, 2008

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