Friday, February 15, 2019

Social Justice & Screwtape IV


My Dear Wormwood.

So, a great number of your patient’s online friends has abandoned him because he has become intolerable to them have they? Excellent. Encourage him to believe they have left because he is righteous and they are wicked, rather than because he often behaves in a way the Enemy disapproves of—this is your chance to make him upset at the indifference and hard heartedness of his fellow Christians. But take care not to let him get angry or bitter at himself, for he must be angry against society on behalf of those who have no voice. He must conceive of himself as both a noble advocate and a selfless guardian, without which the helpless will suffer.

This calls for a deft touch Wormwood. Normally men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury, or by feeling that a legitimate claim had been denied to them. The more claims on life, therefore, they could be induced to make, the more often they would feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. But though our efforts we have now produced a class of men who are perpetually aggravated on behalf of those who are not outraged in the least. The poorest member of your patient’s society possess comfort and wealth unimagined by earlier generations, (as does your patient) and yet he is more agitated and miserable than ever.

Because we have made anger fashionable your patient will of his own volition announce his anger to appear virtuous to his remaining friends, and I cannot overstate what a useful behavior this is for us. Fashions distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere "understanding". Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritansm; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make freedom the prime bogey. In your case your patient must fear the apathy of his age. He must blame poverty for its immorality and regard hard work and tenacity as its chief virtues.

Do your best to conform your patient’s thinking to the fashionable outrage of the age Wormwood. It is one of our most useful tools.

Your affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape

Next: Part V


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