My Dear Wormwood,
It seems as though you are doing a marginal job with the patient lately. I was much pleased to hear of his newly acquired “Facebook” habit. Much good has been accomplished by our Father Below in this newly developing area. Not only do the little animals not realize that they are wasting what short time they have, but they actually believe that they enjoy it! Be very careful though my dear Wormwood. You must remember that every temptation is a gloriously perverted tool originally created by the Enemy to bring the humans foul happiness. Hours of self-centered entertainment can easily be converted into a retched social discovery if not monitored carefully.
Never before have these animals been able to communicate with such ease. The cooperation and cohesiveness that is attainable in this the digital age is enough to make even the most senior tempters uneasy. Your patient must never realize that his hours of useless meandering, if slightly altered, could bring him untold satisfaction.
Complacency is the greatest tool in our Father’s arsenal. The same principle applies here my young nephew. Think back to my advice concerning prayer. The best thing to do when the patient is an adult, recently reconverted to the Enemy’s party, is to remind him of his parrot-like prayers from his childhood. Otherwise, “he may be persuaded to aim at something spontaneous, inward, informal, and un-regularized” (Lewis, 15). These prayers result in answers from the Enemy and retched happiness and satisfaction to the patient.
The same principle can be utilized in your current situation. Never let the human see the opportunities that lie before him. Remind him that he is comfortable with the amount of interaction he has with his cyber peers. Foster in him an attitude of fear (another formidable arrow in our quiver) towards publicizing his information. Work to convince him that cooperation is dangerous and inferior to other forms of research and production.
Hornswallow and Greenfleck have spent considerable effort convincing a very aristocratic group of academia that social media is a somehow lesser form of communication and research. Brilliant, isn’t it? Their most influential voices in literary circles believe that this treasure trove of information is worthless because it is informal. Remember, Nephew, to instill a feeling that difficulty to access information equates value, as opposed to the veracity of the content.
We have won many battles in this war on free thought. Firstly, one of our greatest victories is that there are volumes upon volumes of disgustingly brilliant ideas created by these little monsters hidden safely behind restricted access databases, unsearchable to all but a few; with even fewer who know how to find the information they seek. Secondly, we have convinced humans that the idea behemoth called the blogosphere is “unreliable” and “a passing trend.” The fools! Even one of their authors - a Mr. Nicholas Carr - has written that the internet is making humans stupid. He is correct to a point. But only because we, through temptation and this ruling academic class have taught them to use their tools to their own destruction.
I’m also quite worried about the types of entertainment that you have been allowing the patient to indulge in lately. Remember not all entertainment in this digital age has the gloriously sickening effect that we desire. I am much unnerved of your failure to persuade him against consuming audio books. Good literature is often irreversibly destructive regardless is what format your patient may digest it.
Let us recall one of your earlier mishaps when you “allowed him to read something that he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends.” In short you allowed your patient to feel something real. Your motto as must be facade, smoke, and misdirection. When one of the dirty humans see reality it brings a putrid sense of enlightenment and clarity. I hope that you are beginning to perceive your fault in relation to audio Nephew.
When your patient listens to a work of literature it is much more difficult to distract him from his feelings of reality. At least when a patient is reading a physical book we can contain the problem to that world and those characters in the authors fabricated world, thereby not letting those ideas seep into the patient’s actual life. Yet, as he listens his world becomes the foul story in which he engrossed and before long the patient begins to draw parallels to his own life, and before you even have the chance to think of a distracting temptation the patient has already planned changes in his life. My dear Nephew do not by distracted by the amounts of time he must invest. This is one investment that has a disgustingly large return on investment.
I must close for now Wormwood. Remember if these little monsters ever realize the true worth of these aids given to them by the Enemy our job will be much more difficult. If we are to be successful in this our endeavors we must be conscious of two of our greatest tools in this digital age, complacency and unreality. I await your next letter with much anticipation in hopes that you will correct the error of your ways.
Un-affectionately,
Screwtape
It seems as though you are doing a marginal job with the patient lately. I was much pleased to hear of his newly acquired “Facebook” habit. Much good has been accomplished by our Father Below in this newly developing area. Not only do the little animals not realize that they are wasting what short time they have, but they actually believe that they enjoy it! Be very careful though my dear Wormwood. You must remember that every temptation is a gloriously perverted tool originally created by the Enemy to bring the humans foul happiness. Hours of self-centered entertainment can easily be converted into a retched social discovery if not monitored carefully.
Never before have these animals been able to communicate with such ease. The cooperation and cohesiveness that is attainable in this the digital age is enough to make even the most senior tempters uneasy. Your patient must never realize that his hours of useless meandering, if slightly altered, could bring him untold satisfaction.
Complacency is the greatest tool in our Father’s arsenal. The same principle applies here my young nephew. Think back to my advice concerning prayer. The best thing to do when the patient is an adult, recently reconverted to the Enemy’s party, is to remind him of his parrot-like prayers from his childhood. Otherwise, “he may be persuaded to aim at something spontaneous, inward, informal, and un-regularized” (Lewis, 15). These prayers result in answers from the Enemy and retched happiness and satisfaction to the patient.
The same principle can be utilized in your current situation. Never let the human see the opportunities that lie before him. Remind him that he is comfortable with the amount of interaction he has with his cyber peers. Foster in him an attitude of fear (another formidable arrow in our quiver) towards publicizing his information. Work to convince him that cooperation is dangerous and inferior to other forms of research and production.
Hornswallow and Greenfleck have spent considerable effort convincing a very aristocratic group of academia that social media is a somehow lesser form of communication and research. Brilliant, isn’t it? Their most influential voices in literary circles believe that this treasure trove of information is worthless because it is informal. Remember, Nephew, to instill a feeling that difficulty to access information equates value, as opposed to the veracity of the content.
We have won many battles in this war on free thought. Firstly, one of our greatest victories is that there are volumes upon volumes of disgustingly brilliant ideas created by these little monsters hidden safely behind restricted access databases, unsearchable to all but a few; with even fewer who know how to find the information they seek. Secondly, we have convinced humans that the idea behemoth called the blogosphere is “unreliable” and “a passing trend.” The fools! Even one of their authors - a Mr. Nicholas Carr - has written that the internet is making humans stupid. He is correct to a point. But only because we, through temptation and this ruling academic class have taught them to use their tools to their own destruction.
I’m also quite worried about the types of entertainment that you have been allowing the patient to indulge in lately. Remember not all entertainment in this digital age has the gloriously sickening effect that we desire. I am much unnerved of your failure to persuade him against consuming audio books. Good literature is often irreversibly destructive regardless is what format your patient may digest it.
Let us recall one of your earlier mishaps when you “allowed him to read something that he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends.” In short you allowed your patient to feel something real. Your motto as must be facade, smoke, and misdirection. When one of the dirty humans see reality it brings a putrid sense of enlightenment and clarity. I hope that you are beginning to perceive your fault in relation to audio Nephew.
When your patient listens to a work of literature it is much more difficult to distract him from his feelings of reality. At least when a patient is reading a physical book we can contain the problem to that world and those characters in the authors fabricated world, thereby not letting those ideas seep into the patient’s actual life. Yet, as he listens his world becomes the foul story in which he engrossed and before long the patient begins to draw parallels to his own life, and before you even have the chance to think of a distracting temptation the patient has already planned changes in his life. My dear Nephew do not by distracted by the amounts of time he must invest. This is one investment that has a disgustingly large return on investment.
I must close for now Wormwood. Remember if these little monsters ever realize the true worth of these aids given to them by the Enemy our job will be much more difficult. If we are to be successful in this our endeavors we must be conscious of two of our greatest tools in this digital age, complacency and unreality. I await your next letter with much anticipation in hopes that you will correct the error of your ways.
Un-affectionately,
Screwtape
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows what the Internet is Doing to our Brains. 1st ed. ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. 1st HarperCollins pbk. ed. ed. New York: HarperOne, 2001. Print.
Vann, Dwayne. “Stop Praying And Pray (part 1 of 3).” Living Inheritance. Blogger.com. 23 May 2011. Web. 24 May 2011.
Watch Nicholas G. Carr (aka Nick), the author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, elaborating on the relevance of Government intervention to make the next big move in Cloud Computing. HCL Technologies' VP - Marketing Anubhav Saxena gets involved in a conversation with Nick to get his views as an 'economist' on the creative potential of Cloud.
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