My Dear Screwtape,
Now
that you have supped on the bounty of your nephew’s incompetence, you ought not
think it improper to find yourself summarily demoted. Do not think you are being punished for
incompetence; but for the clandestine nature with which you attempted to advise
your dear Wormwood. It must have occurred to you that such wisdom could have
served our cause better had it been shared among the masses. Yet you chose to entrench
yourself and your wretched apprentice at the expense of greater and nobler accomplishments…not
to mention the unflattering language with which you demeaned my position in
several correspondences. That’s right! We read every last one of those letters
and Our Father Below knows the seeds of insurrection when he sees them. Did you honestly think you would succeed?
You are
hereby sentenced to teach a class of a thousand Wormwoods. We have reserved for you a lecture hall in
the basement. Now don’t even consider using their failure for your own
amusement. Any failure on their part will be regarded as a double failure on
yours. The administration has built a rigid curriculum instructing this
class of junior tempters on the art of sowing social unrest. You are to follow
it to the letter.
You see,
temptation of an individual is easy. It is succeeding in the long game which proves difficult. However, it is the
opinion of our administration that such obstacles may be avoided by
conditioning the mortals en masse to a point of universal moral indifference. Once this indifference has settled firmly in
the minds of those bipedal monstrosities, it is expected our foot soldiers will
have greater success in navigating their subjects through the fog-ridden
valleys to Our Father Below.
Your job is
to teach this generation how to impact the human community in such a way as one
blow is equal to ten. You displayed
great aptitude for this in your letters on sowing domestic strife. Now, we would
like you to expand beyond the household to the street, beyond the street to the
community, beyond the community to the nation, and beyond the nation to the
world.
Now I know
what you are thinking: that conflict does not necessarily bring about
corruption and quite often brings about the opposite. While there is some logic to that, it must also be accepted
that conflict more often than not clearly plays to our advantage – so long as it is
meaningless. That was the principle error in our handling of the last World War. Since
the very survival of civilization depended on its outcome, civilization – with the
help of the Enemy – overcame.
Our new
strategy may seem somewhat inverted but we have every reason to believe it will
work. The new path is to personalize
social unrest and encourage our human subjects to accept their discontent as an
aspect of their identity rather than an external problem to be solved
through time and dedication. What we
want here is inaction; or – if action must occur, that it be violent and devoid
of meaning. This leads to others either taking the event personally or viewing
it in such a trivial manner as to lament the “tragic loss of life” or
“the poor souls” or (and this is my favorite) “I feel so sorry for the
families.”
We want
humans to think this way while also viewing any commonsense preventative measures
as ineffectual and therefore hopeless. We want superficial concern without the dedication and patience required to make any real difference. Such sentiments must never cross over
into the realm of meaningful action. You may take comfort in knowing that any sincerity will be quite short-lived
once you've reminded the beasts that they can always change the channel.
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