Ideas

A satire based on C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters"

Dear Muckworth,

I have been pleased to read of the progress you are making with your patient. Increasing the stress in her life was a good call. The way you speak of her running around frantically one step away from disaster had me cheering with delight. These are some of the most precious days, so do take some time to rest and enjoy them if you can. If you notice her beginning to slow down, her spirits lift, or thoughts deepen—that’s your queue to ramp up the pressure. The frailty of her constitution lies in stark contrast to the way she carries and projects herself. You would think humans were Übermensch from all outward appearances. We know better. A stoplight can topple them from their delusional perch. A well-intentioned, though semantically ambiguous, kind word can spark a lovely inferno. Such frailty makes your job easier and helps ensure that you will meet your progress quota by the end of the year.

This letter contains, I must warn you, arguably the most difficult, yet valuable, material in your training. You should come back to it until you have mastered it, though don’t be surprised if that takes longer than you might expect. I, myself, am still working on many of these techniques after nearly a century of practice; for the changes of time, culture, and people demand that we continually refine our craft.

Communication – the bridge all ideas must traverse from one mind to another – takes various forms, which includes writing and speech, as well as nonverbal mediums like art and body language. It might be helpful to think of each transaction across this bridge as having five parts: - Intent of the communicator, for nothing is produced without a reason. This is one of the trickier elements to grasp as it might not even be known to the initiator. - Intended semantics – what the communicator wishes to communicate; - Produced syntax – the vehicle chosen to carry the ideas; - Variables (distraction, noise, mumbling, intonation, accents, etc.) Almost like wind on the bridge. How one is feeling from one day to the next can affect the reception of a message. Whereas a statement one day could mean one thing to the receiver, with a slight change in circumstance, feeling, or health, it can mean something entirely different on the next. (This whole area of communication is a very personal business, indeed.) - Perceived meaning – the meaning that takes shape in the mind of the receiver from the combined elements aforementioned. These elements present information to the perceiver. This information packet is rushed through billions of stubborn neurons, in a fraction of a second, which have been carefully programmed through the patient’s choices over time. [On neurons: they are malleable but not immediately so. They possess the capacity of neuroplasticity, allowing paths to be formed and unformed, but only through consistent realignment. These paths can be formed purposefully, or without the patient’s knowledge; the latter is highly favored as we can program paths without their knowledge and against their desire. A rather sophisticated operation with a high return on investment, I might add.] A transportation system with a thousand helpful off-ramps to our realm. The “devil’s playground”, as it is referred to on page six in your primer. You cannot enjoy the twists, turns, and contortions of this mental landscape too much. If it doesn’t align with your purposes, simply arrange it to suit your fancy.

That ideas will cross the bridge is given. What your patient sends to others, and how your patient receives what crosses from others is where you have jurisdiction. You can’t control which ideas cross the bridge to your patient, in all cases, but you can influence what happens to them on the way, how, or if, those ideas are received at all, and which ideas your patient sends back in return. A dangerous idea can be derailed in any of the areas mentioned above. -If another’s intent is wrong, make sure your patient knows it. If someone has bad intent, convince her their intent is good. If someone has good intent, convince her it is bad. -If the intent is good, but the syntax wrong – rejoice, for the probability of transmission is reduced. A good idea travels poorly on improper syntax. One can even be distracted by syntax to the point of forgetting the original idea, a personal favorite of mine. -Good intent and proper syntax accomplish nothing if the semantics are muddy with overlapping senses, or are loaded. Don’t get discouraged if all the other factors are present, we can still win with a simple yet loaded semantic. Our Agent Collaboration Program has produced remarkable results in the area of “loaded semantics” over the last few centuries – a fact unknown to most. You must guard this secret closely and not let your patient question the meaning of words. -Proper intent, syntax, and semantics can all be thwarted by something as simple as indigestion, so use variables often. -For self’s sake, we can still win with all factors present, provided the proper depth-avoiding, façade-wearing, appearance-keeping, rushed-response conditioning is in place. For no matter what is given to the receiver, it will be skewed by their processor. I nearly got into an intense altercation with an enemy agent on this very subject over my last patient, may he rest in misery. The enemy agent kept slamming him with what we both knew would guide him to the enemy’s side. Yet, all I had to do was stand back and watch as decade's worth of conditioned responses did the thwarting for me. A terribly naïve agent that one was on the art of war. He had yet to learn that the answers are not in themselves sufficient to effect change, when the complex by which they are processed is averse. He should’ve spent more time encouraging his patient to take an honest look inward, thus preparing him to receive the next step, though vile it was in this case. Allow your creativity to blossom when it comes to using variables to hinder communication. If you sense an enemy agent is close to communicating a dangerous idea, cause a phone call, make noise, grab her attention with a commercial, cause a catchy song to get stuck in her head, or point out a unique feature of the agent’s appearance – the possibilities are endless. However, don’t simply rely on variables, as they can only do so much. Work to lay an impenetrable defensive barrier to thwart enemy attacks by encouraging the idea that she is an adult and not only has “heard it all before”, but owns it all. Solidify her mind by leading her into the steephead valley of ‘adulthood’ to kill her wonder and the lure of adventure, whatever that might be. If you don’t, he could tempt her past the frontier to his country, which, I’ve been told, though never visited myself, is an odious land of ever-increasing light and discovery. Don’t misunderstand me. I expect you to lure her with the same promise of adventure and growth, just don’t let on that we know nothing of the sort or that the only things we really have to offer are dead-ends, sink holes, and slime pits. It’s unfair really. As if the plane of reality is tilted in his favor. Not enough to force them in his direction, mind you, but enough to be perceptible to those who take an honest look at their own slant and the lay of the land in light of the sun at its zenith. This simple and ancient sextant’s perceived complexity (for which my uncle deserves some credit), among other things, arrests one’s reasonable aspiration for safe passage through life. Remember, we haven’t a game to play other than: use any means necessary to keep patients from playing his. At times, the prospect of eternally not playing the game weighs heavily. But persist anyway. The council holds that if we play our “anti-game” long enough, it will become a game in its own right. Though, the council has been wrong before.

Regarding perception, you must understand that your patient’s processor has been programmed from a young age. In your case, the programming favors your intent for her. She also has not been introduced to such harmful ideas as: giving up produces peace (in a similar vein: down is up; surrender is victory, giving is receiving, etc); it is possible to fill one’s heart in a way that appeases the rigors of the mind; and, to seek small accomplishments over big ones. On the former, I am ashamed to say that the reports are true. We can’t explain it, nor would I care if we could, but we suspect he uses a sort of brainwashing-torture-ritual that fries their faculties to the point of obeisance, resulting in a state of calm which our council is convinced must mean they are dead. How they continue to move and act in such a state, sometimes more than previously, I hate to admit, must be—we can only speculate as there is to date no supporting evidence—from an implanted chip or processor of some kind.

On the heart and mind, the enemy uses a “divide and conquer” approach. He seeks to renovate their heart (don’t forget that the earthlings have two) while simultaneously destroying their mind with logic, reasonable explanations, and ideas that expose what we are up to. We too have a similar dual strategy. While we don’t actually have anything that could fill a human heart per se, rather, we turn their heart towards anything we can manage to convince them will fill it, anything but him. (It’s too disgustingly intimate, but it seems that hearts need hearts.) At the same time, direct her mind toward anything other than him. Lies, deception, apathy, confusion – there is no convention for what is permissible. We don’t own logic, reason, or facts. We don’t really own anything. Heaven, I wish we were in a better predicament. I must cut this topic short before my uncontrolled anger gets the best of me. Just....do anything. Anything. Just keep her from him.

On the last point, contrary to one of the most successful campaigns in our school’s history, he plants that horrible seed in a patient’s mind to seek small accomplishments, as opposed to our strategy of convincing them to change the world. This idea nearly always leads them on to a bridge-and-processor renovation project, allowing traffic to flow back-and-forth with ease. All is not lost once the seed has been planted, however, as the fortification process between two minds can still be thwarted. But, if the seed has been planted and repair begun, the difficulty of your work would increase exponentially.

If your patient were to accept that reality is comprised of little things, she might be led to think that time is better spent on little things or that life ought to make sense. Most humans would heartily agree with the last sentiment if you asked, though with a laugh that betrays they think otherwise. They enthusiastically explore terrestrial and inter-terrestrial frontiers, but few dare traverse the chasms of their own heart and mind. Thankfully. Letting her take an honest look at her inner life could cause some serious complications to your plan for her. Not that she would find the answer within, as I've already mentioned, but rather the chasm. A void so great that the only possible options from then on are death or an answer – an answer we don’t have. The first is the quick path to your victory. The second – the scenic route to the first; provided, of course, that your suggestions for what would fill that void are accepted before he places the industrial-like dust-walls around her heart, the kind used to hide commercial renovation. It is quiet the appalling appearance and too noisy for any of your messages to get through. The best you can do at that point, though you won’t let her get that far, is to lob things over the wall and hope they stick. Don’t get me wrong, we love walls and use them more often than our counterpart. But whereas we build walls to manipulate and control our victims....ehhr patients, he builds with the mind to renovate and heal. He does eventually take the walls down, however. Though I have only ever lost two to such a sad condition, I must warn you that it is then that all heaven breaks loose. You would be wise at such a time to make a hasty retreat.

You’ve heard it said that “the devil is in the details”. Certainly, we are, but merely as unwelcomed guests. To my deep dismay and chagrin, and with a rare dose of transparency, I must inform you of the full saying, which reads:

Easy yoke, burden light, Life surrendered, future bright. Trouble sure—the devil is in. The details—His. We cannot win.

Curse if you will. I simply wish you to know what you are up against. Details comprise a spectrum of depth and quantity. Keep your patient away entirely, and we win. Keep her bouncing around from idea to idea frantically in the middle ground, and we also win. Let her plumb the depths, and you might as well escort her to heaven yourself. You see, Muckworth, we own no detail of reality; we can only hide and twist what is rightfully his. “What’s the point?” you might ask. To get back at him is what. If we can’t have anything, we'll do everything in our power to keep as much from him as possible.

Keep your patient away from anything ‘deep’ and ‘intellectual’. Just think of the ramifications if she were to find the path to his camp. To keep her from finding or stumbling onto his path, a basic roundabout strategy would work best. Find the most miserable old codger around (best if he has a chip on his shoulder and must force his sullen face to smile) and convince him that he is deep, virtuous, and righteous. Impress such an image upon him till he accepts it and spreads it all around. This ought to be enough to scare the willies out your honest, albeit shallow, onlooker and render the path to the enemy camp dead and barren. If you can manage to convince virtue’s antithetical embodiment of their virtue and righteousness, you will reap a bountiful harvest. The simple would have the faintest hope of rescue decapitated, for they will never venture close enough to anything deep to discover the blabbering codger wasn’t. You don’t always have to convince your patient of something. It works just as well to convince a repulsive creature they epitomize the very thing you want your patient to avoid. Then, see that their paths cross.

One final thought before I must depart. You will find that your work is more likely to succeed when you collaborate with other agents. Coordinated attacks have a much higher success rate and make our work that much easier. It brings me our equivalent of joy to hear of the work you are doing. I have arranged a rendezvous for you with an agent who is a linguistic deception specialist. He has been around for a long time and even helped train my uncle Screwtape during his internship. Pay attention, take notes, and ask questions. There will be a test at the end.

Your Affectionate Uncle, Wormwood