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
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