Snakelips #6

Dearest Snakelips,
I need not express to you the great disappointment I had on hearing that your happily nominal 'Christian' patient is now evaluating her faith. You know yourself what awaits you if this is allowed to continue.
Now, how to correct this? Your first tactic must be to distract her from the faith and especially from the Thing the faith is in. This can be done in many ways, and their changeable natures almost does our job for us, though the Enemy will often compensate for their short attention spans when they get on this track. When this happens we are in great danger, but we still have our first and last line of defence. Draw their attention inward. Bring up how clever they are for thinking about the supernatural. Have her ask herself if this will make her a "better person", and then get her caught up in what a "better person" does. The Enemy seems to want all their attention on Himself and none on themselves. Trusting Him in everything even when that means distrusting themselves. This is our greatest opportunity for attack because since the Garden Victory we have been training humankind to trust themselves supremely and indiscriminately. In spite of all the evidence of their wills and instincts being wrong, they continue to make this mistake. O the euphoria of it! The continual disappointment, verging on insanity. Ask her things like, what does she want? Will this make her happy? Will it make her more likeable? Will it change her life too much?
Encourage her to try all by herself to be nicer, call it a "trial run". As she fails over and over in this (it's impossible without the Enemy, and indeed, beside the point) offer the experiment as proof of the Enemy's falsity, or double nature, or betrayal. Slander Him as best you can. The Enemy wants to help her every step of the way, wants to make her a new creature who desires others' good above her own, and doesn't resent it. You must make her think she is alone and struggling uphill. As long as she thinks that, she will be. Point out every failure and mock it. In the end she will be happy to go back to the natural life she was living, and you can use her foray into 'Christianity' to needle her whenever she needs reminding.

Screwtape

snakelips #5

Dear Snakelips,
I would like to again draw your attention to some Philological triumphs. Right now that Department is focusing on acronyms. For example: YOLO (You Only Live Once), might seem to mean take caution and care with their frail mortal shells, but what it actually connotes is "Live fast and die young", which was embraced in the last generation. It is always beneficial to put new names to old things, it brings a sense of novelty that humans always stumble into. On the heels of this we've introduced FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) which is treated simultaneously as something to be guilty and proud of. It is wonderful that they are able to see the folly of their behaviour, put a name to it, and then wear it like a badge of honour.
The underlying Goal is that every reckless and dangerous inclination of their silly hearts would be embraced and pursued. We have put a lot of work in the last centuries into condemning repression. That work is now bearing fruit in this generation so that they condemn any sort of restraint at all. Every desire is pursued, every experience tested, and we reap a harvest ripe with bitterness and betrayal and chaos. This is of course a direct attack on the Enemy's Joy of patience. The concept of putting something off until the right time cannot even be raised by his servants without mass rejection based on the "dangers of repression". In a few hundred years we may reverse it and encourage abstention from everything good and bad, but for now this is serving well.
What we want is for them to consume themselves with experiencing everything and then die unexpectedly because of it.
They only die once,
Screwtape

Snakelips #4

Why are you despairing in your patient's condition of nominal Christian? This indeed can be harmful but it also allows for uniquely diabolical manipulation. Being raised in the church, (especially those being run to Our Father's satisfaction) means that she has a cursory and vague overview of the bible. With that seed already sown your job is to make her embarrassed of her knowledge and shameful of what that book says. This is difficult if they know it well, but those who know only parts can be goaded into shame. And as you know Shame is one of our most powerful weapons. It makes the humans cowardly which makes them more shameful and so on. They can almost be eaten alive!
Another great thing about those who left the church with this base knowledge is that they think themselves wise while knowing very little. Then you can get them to speak with great rhetoric on why they rejected something quite other than true Enemy-worship. And as long as their hearers are slightly more ignorant than they, we will have great success.
Remember Snakelips, it's all about getting them to have a bad first taste so that they dread ever taking another bite.
Affectionately,
Screwtape

Snakelips #3

Dear Snakelips,

Yes, in fact conversation can be greatly rendered to our advantage. There are several techniques that allow for hours of conversation and very little being said. The first is the universal agreement technique. Train your patient to think people will only like her if she constantly repeats and rephrases her fellows thoughts. This is marketed as a communication technique, and indeed it can be, but when we twist it and enhance it the conversation descends into a series of agreements. It is best when this is used on frivolous themes, even mindless over-agreement can be damaging if it is on something the Enemy loves. On those topics I would recommend the "intellectual approach". This should look like a bunch of people trying to understand each others opinions solely in order to disagree. The smaller the nuance of disagreement the better (it is easier to misunderstand small details).
Ahh, Snakelips I love this art. I wrote previously to Wormwood about types of humour, the most effective being flippancy. This is another good tactic to employ once you have the disagreements broiling. When everyone is on edge have your patient mock or brush off someone's comment by repeating it derisively. Many a valuable servant of the Enemy has been ruined by this very technique (whether being used by or against them!). We are at war my dear Snakelips. And although the Enemy's propaganda says that He has already won it, that is fal... I cannot seem to finish that word. Suffice it to say that Our Father Below is still confident in his chances.
There are so many tactics that are simply useful to alienate and irritate. Such as promoting condescension in your patient, or mundane nervous tics and peculiarities. We can't always stop them from saying dangerous things but we can hopefully make it harder for people to listen. Never underestimate the power of cultivating personal dislike. These humans love to take offence.

Yours in the superlative Hatred,
Screwtape

Snakelips #2

Dear Snakelips,
 So she is arrogant about not having any of these online personalities? So much the better. Make sure she is reminded to smirk and feel condescending to her friends who do have them. If she can be made to utter a snide remark here and there you will find that quite a treat.
What are her relations with males? Does she have any idolized? The humans should always have a few idols to worship. If they don't they begin to wonder what that capacity of worship was created for. Dungtongue has some patients in her area that would make great idols. He is a connoisseur of hypocrisy, and there is no better idol than a deceptive one.
If she already has an idol encourage her to always be "improving" him. Make her take great pride in "educating" and bettering him. Guard her from realizing that this only makes him resent her. It is great fun to balance this tightrope of criticism in love that builds up mountains of hate and enmity between them. Experienced tempters who don't get over-eager and tip their hand can keep this going for years, even a lifetime! Always appreciate the nicety of subtle sins. We are devoting an ever greater number of sins to the Tolerance category, no one condemns others that they be not condemned themselves. Don't let them ever remember that human condemnation is a real thing, albeit one they have no say in.
             Affectionately, Screwtape

The Death of Communication

When I read 1984 my favourite part was the appendix, "Principles of Newspeak". I believe I've described elsewhere the concepts of reducing vocabulary significantly, eliminating shades of meaning and creating words that are easy to say without paying attention to what you are saying and meaning. The purpose of all the modifications was to make any unorthodox thoughts (from the perspective of Big Brother) unutterable. Or if uttered to be nonsense words and sentences to an orthodox hearer. Orwell believed the government would cripple language to subdue the proletariat. Interestingly the exact reversal is happening. The masses are using glutted language to cripple the government.
I read an article on a lawyer who is working on creating legislation so that people can have short-term marriage contracts. I understand the perspective, some 70,000 divorces are sought each year in Canada. What I don't understand is why what she is describing has need of legislation or filing under "marriage". Doesn't it already exist as "common-law" or "dating"? So now gay people who have managed to get the legal right to marry can say, "I just got married." To which someone will reply, "cool, how long of a contract though?"
The over saturation of definitions in a single word create words without meaning. If a word can mean multiple things in the same context you might as well use a different word. Unless the purpose is simply to obfuscate or to outright confuse the hearers.
The same issue is present in pronoun use and gender identification. If gender is something that can be objectively defined then it should remain a classification and be seen on licenses and birth certificates. If it is not objective but is subjective and ineffable then it should not be used to classify and should be done away with. If my thinking that I am a girl is just my opinion and not based in my chromosomes and sex organs then how do I know that is what I am? What I perceive as "feeling like a girl" might actually be what a rabbit "feels like". But a rabbit can't tell me what it "feels like" and neither can another girl. Either gender is objective and should remain a physical distinction or it is subjective and should be removed altogether.
(I'm trying to form my thesis on the basis of language alone and not on moral or political grounds. If I have failed to remain impartial perhaps it is that it tends to be moral and political vocabulary that are most affected by what I describe.)
Do we want words to mean less as in Orwell's satire, or more as in contemporary English? Either extreme is equally devoid of meaning, and either extreme, when it reaches completion, is irreversible.

Snakelips #1

Dear Snakelips,

Since it has been so long since Wormwood's Consumption I deem it time to again take an apprentice. Though it has been very few human years since the time of Wormwood's tempting, it seems long to them, and indeed much has changed. Our Philological Arm continues to make advancements, in English alone we add thousands of words each year, effectively diminishing their ability to understand and relate to each other. Yes! Even though it was the Enemy that gave them this ability to communicate in spoken language it has ever been conducive to our aims. Let me explain to you some of the current strategies, firstly, the use of generalizations. We have the humans always focus on things that are too great for their temporally-challenged perspective. Because it is impossible for them to understand how even one other human thinks the use of generalities completely frustrates (which is good) and confuses (which is better). You see, confusion is an extremely uncomfortable state for their befuddled minds to be in (especially if we have been effective with Inflation of the Pride) and the human always seeks to get out as quickly as possible from it, without admitting a limit to their faculties. So the moment they get close to actual insights, we confuse them and they step back to view the general picture again. Perhaps you understand how this is useful to us already? We get them thinking about things they can't possibly solve and then their natural limitations drag them into endless digressions of how to define the generalities, and if we are efficient we spin them around with words like "Dehumanizing, Objectifying, Offensive, etc." Thereby we have them attacking the cinemas and Culture for issues like the over-sexualization of females (it is a great victory that they have yet to notice the over-sexualization of the males, or the fact that it, too, is a problem), instead of changing their everyday interactions with each other.
  Another helpful and amusing development is the creation of what they call "social media". With the invention of the internet our Father Below has seen a great opportunity to encourage the natural narcissism and get each human competing with total strangers for fame and attention. The number of meaningless words being bandied about is a great credit to His ingenuity and resourcefulness. And with diabolic irony they call these spouts of drivel by a word that previously referred to the musical sounds the Enemy created for one of his creatures.
  In application, try to get your patient entangled in a cause. Not a real and effective cause (our Father forbid that they pay attention to those), but a vague and transient one. We want them ever attacking the symptoms and never looking for the diagnosis. Have her sign up for one of these on-line personal sharing sites - or, better yet, all of them. Make sure she spends little time in thinking of useful things to say and more worrying about how many humans are reading it. Tell me, is she the type who might write dangerous things, or the type who simply wants to be heard? If the first we should keep people from reading it, but inflame in her a sense of injury based on her neglected intellect. If the latter we will ensure her popularity but rub raw the insecurity by having her mocked by those who read it.

                                                                                  Affectionately, Screwtape

Rain... (but not the depressing Somerset Maugham version)

I searched relentlessly until verily I was footsore, but before despair swallowed me, behold: I found an end to my quest, though not the end I sought. Thus laden with my bounty beyond price, I turned my eyes and feet homeward. I considered as I grew close to the outer darkness that perhaps my dearly bought treasure might serve better out of the bag than in it, but loathe was I to remove the tags and garb myself in that den of thieves.
Alas, bane was I unto myself, for under the dimming sky I stood and Lo! a drop of rain, and soon I was cowering and flying as if the very Balrog of Moria pursued. And so I reached home safely, though damper than had I listened to wisdom and put on my new raincoat.

Freedom

We all seem to want this, even think we have a right to it. We have "free will", but it is only a narrow freedom between available choices. We are not free to be millionaires unless circumstances offer it, which they rarely do. We are not free to love those we want to love, thought every movie tells us differently. We are not free to have a skill we don't possess. If we are hurt we cannot choose healing. If we are enslaved we cannot choose freedom.
This seems like such an obvious fallacy in the thinking of secular culture that I don't understand why they don't see it. I heard a commercial last week that started with this quote, "being young and beautiful is lucky, being old and beautiful is art." I thought, sure, okay, then it's followed up with, "come get plastic surgery." As if anyone on earth believes plastic surgery makes people look beautiful, except maybe the fools who get it. Nature tends towards entropy, always the ordered towards disorder. We have no control.

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?* This is such simplicity you'd think it wouldn't need to be said. It is countered by the idea of "Luck"; bad luck or good luck is what prevents or enables us to get what we want. It's funny how pretty much everyone believes in luck, an intangible force that orders their lives without anyone's consent. I wonder why that is so easy to believe? There clearly is an intangible force at work, and yet perhaps not as intangible as some think. Perhaps it, or He wants to interact with those under his dominion.
It's nice to be free of decisions and circumstances, knowing that one's desires are heard and then focusing solely on obedience. There are worse options than obedience to God, in fact, there are none better.

*Romans 6:16

Clearly and Obviously

I can't believe it was so easy.
It's as if after months of talking about setting up my friend with a man I know, months of describing him to her and saying how much I love him and how great he is, it finally occurs to me to say, "by the way, he's in love with you." You'd think that would have been a good starting point.
But then again, maybe it's better to hear all the traits and think, "he would never want me," and then be told, "no, you are precisely who he wants and I was sent to get you."

Return of the Raspberry Sherbet

I've been doing some more thinking on this, and when I did a field test I realized my initial theory needed editing.
I don't think we know what our raspberry sherbet is until someone tells us.
There is a theory in philosophy and psychology, that we don't know our thoughts until we find the nomenclature and syntax to describe them (or we know them but can't deal with them until they are formed into sentences). This rings true to me. Especially in terms of abstract things like feelings. We have not the distance from ourselves to be objective judges.
Ideally we want a spouse to love us better than we love ourselves; have a more thorough knowledge of our person-hood and stronger belief in our capacity to be sanctified. This is what Jesus does for us with perfection, but ideally a spouse is acting like Jesus, right?

I had no idea that raspberry sherbet was going to complete me until I discovered it serendipitously in my mother's freezer. I never knew that it was what I was looking for, or I would have been frequenting the frozen food sections of grocery stores much earlier.
Brand of Awesome is clearly more complicated to define than I thought, and also more difficult to recognize in life.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...

I heard a really terrible story today. It was about a fight a couple had. I was in tears from the terrible things x said to y. This was bad enough, but in retaliation y satisfied herself with saying a bunch of terrible things about x. The problem with relationships is that both people in them aren't perfect but expect some vision of perfection from the other person or from the relationship. And instead of realizing that nothing works they stay in the toxic pit of depression so long as the other person is dragged down with them. The saddest part is after hearing this story from my nightmares I thought, okay finally now she will realize this needs to end. But the more y talked the more I saw she was going to keep the relationship going if she had any possible chance. Because people are that afraid of being alone. And that is what made me sicker than anything. 

Thank God for being single.

thank God for people who confess their sin. 

thank God for redemption. 

thank God for sanctification.

thank God for forgiveness. 

"He had heard that women often fell in love with unattractive and quite ordinary men, but he did not believe it because he judged by himself and he could fall in love only with beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women." Anna Karenina, page 30

Worth it's "wait" in Gold

Sometimes I think I'm really arrogant and that's why I read really long, old books. And that would be correct. But that's not the only reason. I am in the last hundred pages of the 1000 page tome that is War and Peace. I find myself laughing aloud on almost every page at Tolstoy's ironic sense of humour and subtle wording. I want to quote lines from it but then I realize that giving context would mean the whole book. I am so affectionate towards characters that I remember fiercely hating 2 months ago. My mind is blown by the fact that each character has a unique journey and totally different personality and level of intelligence and ambition. Each marriage functions in a different way and is good or bad for different reasons. And each death is poignant and devastating or jubilantly satisfying in its own way. All the characters change in the 14 years the book covers, but each remains themselves. I am completely convinced of Tolstoy's opinion on wars and history, which I'll never write about because I would have to rewrite that already written book to explain.
So I don't just read it so I can say I did. Although that's what I was doing for the first 68%. To form an allegory in the Tolstoyan way: [I worked on this for a long time but his allegories are really inimitable.]

Every page was worth it. I'm glad of every page I have left.

Brand of Awesome

Elisa came up with this concept and I think it meshes nicely with Sup Theory.

The idea is that each person has their Brand of Awesome and everyone's is unique. To explain this I came up with an analogy:
My favourite thing for a treat is PC brand raspberry sherbet. I could eat a whole litre but I try to spread it out because it's hard to find in stores. So imagine that I bought a different brand because it was cheaper but not as good. I wouldn't be enjoying it that much, and in that case what's the point? On the other hand, say I have some sacred sherbet in the freezer and I come home from work and find my lactose-intolerant-room-mate eating it (would never happen). I would be incensed.
In the same way human beings are like products of differing values that one can possess.
Just kidding. In a somewhat similar way people have a host of traits and proclivities that make up who they are. Some they like, some they dislike, but there are normally a few characteristics that we hold in the centre of ourselves as our identifiers - when we think of ourselves the first things that come to mind. One would hope to meet a person who immediately saw through one's superficial qualities right down to one's raspberry sherbet core. And if they see the sherbet and decide, 'I prefer chocolate ice cream', respecting the Brand means passing that person by because they deserve to be eaten by me.
It's not about liking every single thing about the person, it is just seeing who they are and saying "that's awesome!" or maybe you don't think it is, so do us both a favour and don't waste their time.

I'm just upset because I ate the last of my PC raspberry sherbet just now.

What's the difference between elopement and kidnapping?

A study in disgust, by rachael

Russian culture in the 19 century has again repulsed me. I can read for pages and chapters, but then suddenly in about two sentences Tolstoy destroys a character. I speak of war and peace, which I've been struggling through for the past couple months. The characters are absurdly simple minded and throw out the most amazing opportunities in exchange for an obvious sham.
What has sparked this most recent bout of vehemence is a ridiculous plot twist involving one of my favourite characters. She decides instantly to refuse her incredible fiancé and "elope" with a well known philandering party boy whom she thinks is the bees's knees. We then look at an excerpt from the text:
"'I have heard what elopements are like,' continued Dolokhov with a wink. 'Why, she'll run out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if you delay at all, there will be tears and "papa" and "mama", and she's frozen in a minute and must go back - but you must wrap the fur cloak around her first thing and carry her to the sledge.'"

And thus I found myself asking the question which titles this post.