Tag: Screwtape

[The Screwtape Letters written by C. S. Lewis present the tale of a demon-tutor (named Screwtape) who serves Satan. Screwtape’s task is to instruct his student Wormwood in the ways of evil. My previous post provides background material explaining the letter reproduced below, fourth of seven in a series of posts that follow.]

So, your patient has transferred his interest away from the chat rooms toward the vast online repositories of sensual pleasure, huh? Not to worry. Your conquest may be all the easier thanks to his re-focus. You say further that his wife has kicked him out of the bedroom they shared, and I fail to see a down-side there. Grendvald is managing her case admirably, complementing your efforts.

What you need to understand here is the concept of addiction. Identifying a patient’s area of greatest weakness is the first step to establishing the addiction cycle. It seems you’ve already succeeded in this. Now, you must woo your patient toward further degradation and more intense sexual self-indulgence. From your most recent report, I understand he’s already tasted the pleasures of the garden variety girlie pictures. Remind him frequently that the human body is beautiful, and that his interest in viewing these pictures is completely natural and harmless. Who’s he hurting? No one! His wife has locked him out of her bedroom. He has a right to be bitter about that. He should feel entirely justified for seeking an alternative satisfaction for his normal, biological drives.

You mention in passing that your patient’s online surfing brought him to a couple highly provocative portals, and that he quickly retreated to tamer, more familiar sites. You should know that’s the nature of addiction:  the once unspeakable eventually becomes doable. The next time he “happens” across an enticing site, encourage him to linger awhile.

It’s always possible that these initial incursions into the virtual flesh market may create substantial guilt and dissonance for your patient. When you observe him obsessing over what he’s been taught is reproachable behavior, make sure he spends at least a couple days (maybe as much as a week) away from the computer. Of course, you’ll be reminding him that he still has control of the situation. He finds the images enjoyable, but he’s not hooked. Besides, nobody else even knows what he’s been doing in his spare time, right? And even if they did, what does it matter? No one else has a right to tell your patient how to spend his free time.

Following such time off, your patient will even convince himself that he can use the computer and simply not go online. Remember what I told you once long ago:  the formula is “an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure.”[1] At this point, it would be inaccurate to characterize your patient’s craving as a full-fledged addiction. You might even begin to conclude you’ve misdiagnosed him, pinpointing a weakness but not necessarily his point of absolute vulnerability. He may even be able to stifle his craving for some surprisingly long intervals. Rest assured, it’s an illusion he will not be able to maintain over the long haul.

Eventually — with your assistance — his resolve will abate. More often than not, these humans are dogged by an excessive amount of conscience. A guilty conscience can cause all sorts of complications for our patients. The only way to successfully deal with scruples is to handle them like the humans handle their red meat. Your patient’s guilty conscience must be seared, and only wickedness of substantial heat will produce the needed result. How to do it?

Bring him back to the online porn palaces. He’s already got the images firmly planted in his mind. (You might call it brain video, with the brain always in replay mode.) Now’s the time to hit him with what they call the “hard-core” stuff. It will seem much less flagrant than what he expected it to be … it’s only humans, after all, doing what comes naturally. And, it will satisfy — at least temporarily — the hunger that is beginning to drive his soul.

Work at it carefully. More images, more hunger, and still more images. Always more. He must and he will answer each bout of craving with another online session. You will know he has gone from craving to addiction when being online and viewing the most vulgar and salacious images no longer suppresses the appetite. As with gluttony, addiction must be fed with an increasingly more piquant spread.

Your patient’s region of the planet has provided abundant test subjects on whom to study the progression of a wide variety of addictions. Though the studies dealing specifically with online addiction have been conducted more recently, the general addiction pattern is evident. Our research department can furnish some interesting case studies that you should find quite exhilarating. If you can manage to move your patient into addiction, the patient’s enslavement will be all but assured.

[The Screwtape Letters written by C. S. Lewis present the tale of a demon-tutor (named Screwtape) who serves Satan. Screwtape’s task is to instruct his student Wormwood in the ways of evil. My previous post provides background material explaining the letter reproduced below, third of seven in a series of posts that follow.]

Your keen powers of observation are confirmed each time you write me now. You are correct in noting that the ever-present media to which I referred now includes that veritable devil’s playground They call the Internet. Within this format, the possibilities are endless for firming up your patient’s solid roots into the soil of our Camp. You say his young wife resents the time he’s spending online and away from her. Excellent! The seeds of marital discord are there for your able exploitation. You should coordinate your strategy with Grendvald to be certain he works on the woman with the same approach you direct at your man. Their mutual discontent will multiply devilishly well with this kind of two-pronged assault.

You would do well to remember your early lessons with me. I refer to that particular assignment that led to your disgrace and nearly to your end. (I know. I promised I wouldn’t bring up that matter again, but I’m a devil — I never claimed to be honest!)

My recollection is that your patient was living with his mother, a situation not dissimilar to living with a wife. I outlined four guidelines to warrant domestic turbulence. While the same methods would apply here, I would suggest you focus most on the latter two:  the seemingly insignificant things she does that cause him great annoyance, and the off-handed comments they each utter that fall on the ears and penetrate their hearts like poisoned barbs. This can work. If the woman is like most of her kind whom I’ve observed, she’s already operating in a hypersensitive emotional mode. Make him smack his lips at the dining table, and belch in public without apology. Rock musicians are prone to grasping their crotches onstage, but wives are not generally enthusiastic about such behavior. Once his misconduct becomes ingrained, your patient needs only to throw in a sarcastic verbal zinger here and there to cool whatever esteem or passion his wife once had for him. And Grendvald can use the same technique as he works on the woman.

As to your man’s online activity, chat rooms offer much on which you can capitalize. Remind him that his chat room acquaintances “understand” him in a way his wife cannot. He can forge anonymous relationships in those chat rooms that feed his vanity and provide counterfeit satisfaction for his loneliness. The phony intimacy he can enjoy online will prove even more appealing to him than getting naked under the bedsheets with his wife. The anonymity of chat rooms heightens the allure. Your patient can be whoever he chooses to be, and he can fantasize wildly about his chat partners. It’s that element of mystery that draws him back time after time.

One of the Enemy’s own — I refuse to use his name — once said, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make everyday are of such infinite importance.”[1] (Frightening, isn’t it? A few of Them have figured out how significant the little decisions can be … but I won’t concern myself here with those few.) I only mention this quotation because it emphasizes that we must exploit those little decisions for evil in order to produce the greatest pain. Your man must be driven to the point where he hungers for the chat room. Sure, he might get fired if his boss finds him online chatting when he should be hard at his work. It doesn’t matter. If you can move him past distraction where his every thought is consumed by these computerized rendezvous, we can anticipate all manner of wickedness in his future. Little evil decisions multiply themselves to equal iniquity squared. That, Nephew, is the magic of what They call compound interest!

I think your patient’s chat room escapades are something we need to evaluate further. So, a couple questions before I close. Is there a particular chat room he prefers? With whom is he chatting? Given some additional information, this compound interest thing could become very interesting indeed.

[The Screwtape Letters written by C. S. Lewis present the tale of a demon-tutor (named Screwtape) who serves Satan. Screwtape’s task is to instruct his student Wormwood in the ways of evil. My previous post provides background material explaining the letter reproduced below, second of seven in a series of posts that follow.]

We’re winning, you know. Yes, I say! On almost every front I’ve been monitoring lately, the Enemy and his mongrels are losing ground daily. They haven’t panicked yet that I can tell, but there is much less hope reflected in their beady little eyes. We are winning!

I wouldn’t have even mentioned the obvious except that you are just now beginning to read the movements and attitudes of your new patient. While you study him, perhaps you’ll observe in him some of the ready evidences that support my assertion.

Think, if you will, about the ubiquitous nature of the media in the everyday lives of these earthlings, most especially for the region in which your latest charge lives his life. Years ago, they huddled like swarms of beetles ‘round a radio, enthralled by noise and static-laced “entertainment.” It was a demon’s worst nightmare! Families were drawn together. Whether it was a fireside chat or the antics of comedy partners, these wretches listened … together! The familial environment softened hearts, eased tensions and cemented relationships. I shudder at the thought of all that wholesomeness! Yuck!

But no more, my young fiend. The marvel of miniaturization brought headphones to your patient’s world, and we are the beneficiaries of this invention. When a mother wishes to speak to her teenager, she must first command greater attention from him than the Marilyn Manson cacophony piercing his eardrums. An individual walking through a neighborhood may meet dozens of neighbors, all of whom have no desire for discourse other than the sounds emanating from their headphones. They may live in the same neighborhood, but they exist alone. They long for some deluded notion of community, but they keep their doors locked and shades down. Do you see the delicious irony of it? We are winning!

You might recognize that the advent of television had a similar evolution. (Ah, I savor that word every bit as much as a morsel of human sweetbread … but any discussion of Darwin must be reserved for another letter.) I abhorred television at first. It brought Them together — in the same room. They laughed together, cried together, and they created family bonds of togetherness that might have proven thoroughly indestructible. I despised that blue screen! That was before Triptweeze helped me appreciate the longer view, and his observations have proven quite accurate.

Our statistics department has profiled the average patient in your locale and has determined certain common characteristics. The average patient household there possesses three to five television sets, making it completely unnecessary for families to watch together. What’s more, the statistics on viewer habits offer significant confirmation of my belief that we are winning. When televisions first gained wide acceptance, the sappy programming was almost enough to make this demon regurgitate yesterday’s soul-booty. This, too, has evolved exponentially. I can’t begin to list the numerous human followers of Our Father who have made it their unwitting mission to assist us in conquering the airwaves — for Him! They’re everywhere, day and night, spreading the news and nature of Bad.

I once told you “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one.”[1] Television is a model of exactly what I meant. Perversion, decadence and greed aren’t all that’s included in television programming, but there’s a little more of it every single day. We’ve managed to divert this medium away from Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet toward Jackass and Howard Stern. We’ve achieved our goal incrementally, one vice at a time.

So now, Nephew, be at your work studying your new patient, knowing the war is not yet won, but it is well within our hands. Yes, we are winning. Perhaps the next banquet we consume will be that most peerless event for the supreme devouring of souls. Using some words of another (and I admit, turning the phrase a bit), I long to take a little blood for my stomach’s sake. I crave it even now.

[The Screwtape Letters written by C. S. Lewis present the tale of a demon-tutor (named Screwtape) who serves Satan. Screwtape’s task is to instruct his student Wormwood in the ways of evil. See previous post for background material explaining the letter reproduced below, one of seven in a series of posts that follow.]

I admit I had my doubts about you following your bungling performance on that long-ago assignment. The ways in which you completely mishandled that patient forced me to entertain scant optimism that you’d be of any further use to our Cause. Apart from your personal contribution to what I expected to be a singularly tasteless main dish for those of us who have proven our mettle in numerous battles with the Enemy, I could see little use for you and your myriad excuses!

Given your dismal efforts, the stew-pot is where you rightly belonged. My colleagues and I even prepared for your Devouring, but something made me change my mind. Don’t think of it as a merciful gesture — it was anything but that. My investment in your training convinced me you should have a second chance to make bad, really Bad, else all my labor would be for naught — a reality that was abhorrent and unacceptable to me.

Hence my suggestion that you be reassigned to another part of the cosmos where your unprofessional reputation might not so easily precede you. That infernal region of barbarians who populate the so-called Bible Belt (where do they get these obnoxious terms?) seemed the appropriate do-or-be-consumed challenge. If you could not deliver at least some souls to Our Father Below from this mile-wide, inch-deep Christian wasteland, you would give me no choice but to relinquish your destiny to pottage.

And you, Nephew — thanks in large part to my stroke of genius — have delivered your own redemption! (Dare I use that ignominious word?) Your superior performance amongst these backward bipeds confirms how grossly I may have underestimated your ability to adapt and modify the techniques for sowing perfidy and vice you learned under my tutelage. In fact, to demonstrate that you’ve regained my good will, I vow to never again mention the matter of your past humiliation.

I’m almost giddy when I remember the unbridled success with which you delivered your first human on that other continent into Our Father’s domain. It may have been the luck of the draw that he was your assignment, but your performance all along the way was nearly flawless. I won’t belabor the point by replaying the details of his life and your able assistance at each turn. But I must remark at your skill for seizing the upper hand when he agonized over joining the military. “It’s the patriotic thing to do,” you told him. “Those camel jockeys are begging for a fight.” So he joined, becoming an excellent marksman but (more importantly for our Cause) a disillusioned soldier. At that point, you had him in the palm of your hand, Nephew.

To me, it’s of minor consequence how many men he dispatched on the battlefield. It can’t compare to his crowning achievement (and yours) borne within a nondescript yellow truck. Such pain and grief! So many of the little vermin wiped from the earthen slate and captured into our World! With one impeccable stroke, your man freed a horde of our toilers for new assignments, earning you significant additional points, I might add. And so many of the Enemy’s hapless followers brought to the brink of despair and beyond. Knowing my own enjoyment of that moment, I can only imagine how delicious it was for you.

Still, you didn’t rest on your prickly laurels, and I credit you for remembering my warning about the Law of Undulation. Having done this marvelously wicked thing, your patient might have been easily lost to you. The peaks of unrestrained passion and power are all too often followed by the valleys of regret and remorse. And that despicable road to repentance (ah! it pains me to write the word) is within shouting distance once the pangs of conscience have set in.

So you, Nephew, hung in there, reminding your man of his own considerable grievance against the state. The Enemy’s faithful opposed you day and night, pleading, begging with your patient to seek forgiveness and to make some sort of tangible atonement for his actions. “Just tell us why you did it,” those worthless humans implored. “Say you’re sorry and we’ll forgive you.”

With demonic brilliance, you assisted your charge in withstanding their attacks. And I must say, you certainly deserved the premier place of dishonor at that banquet. While we gorged ourselves on what remained of your patient’s soul, the humans who had watched his final breath were pondering over his final words, anguishing at your man’s contempt. He had no need for their pity and he demonstrated it, choosing as his last words that exquisite manifesto Invictus. (It’s worth noting that Henley was an early patient of Dr. Slubgob. Perhaps you can now understand why Slubgob was quickly promoted to assume responsibility at the Training College.) If there is a better description of the unconquerable soul, I don’t know where you’d find it. “My head is bloody, but unbowed … I am the master of my fate … the captain of my soul.” Henley’s words are hideously beautiful, don’t you agree?

Nephew, you have outdone yourself. I’ve advised your immediate superior to release you temporarily from active duty. You’ve earned some unsupervised D&M (disaster and mayhem, in case you’ve forgotten Our Father’s dynamic reward system), and I’m confident you won’t disappoint us. Your next patient assignment will follow soon.