Friday, February 15, 2019

Social Justice & Screwtape V


My Dear Wormwood.

In your last letter you speak of nothing but enjoying the fruits of your work. Fool! Do not let your guard down yet! How many souls have slipped through the fingers of young tempters because they had not kept their head after an initial promising success? Have you already forgotten your training on human pleasure and pain at the college? You must see to it he experiences neither.

In the first place we don’t want the vermin to be happy, as this is what the Enemy desires. He has a bourgeois mind Wormwood, He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least—sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working, Everything has to be twisted before it's any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.

In the second place suffering has a way of bringing clarity to a human mind, which means under no circumstances are you to let your patient experience real suffering. The safest road to our father’s house is the one without milestones or markers, the gradual, broad road of assurance—and there is no greater alarm bell than suffering. If your patient believes he is struggling on behalf of those who are oppressed by society and sharing their burden, while at the same time living a life of indulgence and sloth, then he will count his false suffering as genuine and you will win your man. If at any point however he has to endure real suffering that cannot be cured with medicine he may repent and we will lose him.

Neither pain nor pleasure Wormwood. It is difficult, but thanks to decades of materialism we have taught the humans who have never suffered to fear suffering as the greatest evil, and at the same time ignore others who are very near to them and suffering deeply, so it is possible. And when combined with the fashion of intersectionality we can induce immorality unimagined 80 years ago. We make parents sacrifice to give their children luxury and privilege, then make the children viciously denounce them to the watching world since growing up without privilege gives them credibility and popularity. Thus they betray the love and devotion of their family for strangers, while still taking their parents money and affection for granted. And why does this work? Because the pleasure of having affirmation online is no real pleasure at all, and the pain of betraying parents is muted by the child not having to pay the price of alienation.

Do you see how this works? Your patients pleasure should come from performing the habits we’ve trained into him—since that gives no real pleasure at all—and his pain should come from his imagined suffering he identifies with. Every moment you keep that up is a moment he grows closer to us without realizing it.

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape

Next: Part VI


No comments:

The Heretical Religion of Wokeism

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served tha...