I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Screwtape a la Charlotte
Have you read C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters? Here’s my rendition:
My Dear Wormwood,
You’ve read the old manual and are stuck in the old ways. We must constantly come up with new ways to guide our patients to their best end, and away from the designs of the Enemy. New times demand new ploys. I realize this idea is painful, reminding us too clearly that ‘newness’ is the one area in which we actually have no power, but hear me out. In the absence of that creativity-from-nothing trick of the Enemy’s, we still have tricks up our sleeves. Human beings are easily convinced that change itself, or novelty is ‘newness’. Our ace in the hole is that we can keep twisting things back and forth ad nauseum and they keep thinking every shift in what they see is some new thing! Probably they hate to suspend disbelief in magic because they don’t fully believe in the possibility reality could be more delightfully surprising. Whatever their problem, it’s to our advantage.
Simply go back through all the catalog of things from their book of ‘truth’ (the idiots made everything that is real so ridiculously apparent, it’s a snap to find it all out and turn it this way and that for our purposes!). Take something real like a baby, for instance. You can go two ways: make him adore babies to the point of craving them (this is the best approach if he’s been unfruitful, for it leads him to any number of deliciously abominable ways of getting a baby), or make him hate and fear them (especially if he’s got a few – your movie makers and novelists could help him gradually grow to despise his own flesh and blood, fear they’ll cost him more than they’re worth, etc…).
Need something new? The one who has no children can be made to worship them and spend time conniving against those less worthy to have them to raise and influence. How we love it when anyone spins idealizations and then crushes others to see them realized! The one who has ‘em can adore them, too, for a creative twist. There’s nothing nicer than wrenching parental love into contortions of idolatry. Pretty soon you’ll have the kids as demi-gods, propitiated with offerings only Mammon can provide by their parents who fear their displeasure as much as they might have feared the displeasure of Zeus in a different day.
Twist, twist, twist – that’s our motto! We’re only bored by it because we’ve been doing it so long. Humans will eat this stuff up. Take whatever is, and whatever they think or feel about it, and get them spinning the other way on it. We’ve got humans down there on our side, proving scientifically and philosophically that everything is true for somebody and everything real is an illusion and everything only spins, without a center that holds. Just try to keep them away from remembering what people, or they themselves, used to think. Memory is the Enemy’s weapon, in this case, and that’s why we’ve got legions working on getting rid of old books and old people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.