Greetings Toadies.
Today I will be discussing the benefits and dangers of Christianity for your patient. I will outline the strategic role Christianity plays in america today, I will lay out a few rules of thumb, give a few examples and then talk a bit about at least one specific circumstance where the rules of thumb might be broken.
Christianity is not our enemy. Don't be surprised. Christianity is nothing but a set of propositions your patients may or may not assent to. Granted, any of you who's patients become christians will incur rather harsh ...penalties. The reasons for this will become clear over the course of the lecture. Our enemy, you know. We know him all too well; our fight began long before the little bipeds were created.
Here, I want you to make a distinction between christians and christianity. As a rule (though our semantics department has been doing some admirable work breaking this down) a christian in america is a human who claims, at least in theory, to have become a citizen of our enemy's camp (he has taught them to call it a kingdom); christianity is merely the set of beliefs they hold in common and which generally show them how his citizens are to behave.
"Why is this important?". You ask, "surely if these christians are our enemies in the world, it is their shared belief that makes them so." You see that, he sees that, but they don't and in this we have a great opportunity. You will recall that your success with your patients involves turning them away from the enemy's burning light and towards out Outer Darkness. The enemy would like to see your patients accept christianity as true, and follow the path it sets for them since that path leads right towards him; and for quite a while, this strategy of his worked. It is only because of our involvement that many humans have come to think of the path as a goal.
You see that as soon as the humans stop treating their religion as a sign leading them to him and begin thinking of it as an end in itself, the sign will point in on itself and, unless you are exceptionally incompetent, they will never look "beyond" it to him. Here you see how the principle of misapplied priorities can be brought to bear with profound effect. But then, many of you had professor Beezletoff for Principles of Tempting 101, that demon couldn't teach a whore to fornicate; I suppose I had better give you refresher. The principle of misapplied priorities is derived from the law of first and second things: when any spirit (human half-breeds in particular) put first things first and second things second, they will get both first and second things, if any spirit puts second things first, they will get neither.
Son now you see how this law comes into play even between our Father and the enemy? The enemy claims that he is the first thing, he is so infatuated with the idea that he cheats by becoming three persons so that he might spend eternity putting the other two "persons" of himself ahead of himself. Our Father seeks to make himself first and has devised the miserific vision wherein he brings everything under himself. Through conquest, pollution and destruction we plan to subjugate the enemy's "firsts" to our own "seconds". Nothing will do but a total transvaluation of values. Some of the human animals have even glimpsed the plan. That german buffoon with the walrus mustache integrated some of it in his "will to power". But where was I...
Ah, yes, the law of first and second things. From it, we derive the principle of misplaced priority. If is always a triumph to get your patient to value a second thing over a first thing, this is nearly always valid. No matter how troublesome to our cause something might be, we can always de-fang it and often turn it to our own purposes if we can get the humans to value it over and above something the enemy thinks is more important. Thus romantic love is very dangerous to us, till we get them to value it over family fidelity. Then before you know it, they are off having splendid, heart wrenching affairs, destroying families, wounding and scarring their children and generally doing much of our job for us. A full commitment to truth terrifies out tempters, seeming to armor the mortals against our hottest darts; then we get them to value it over charity and the next thing you know they are all off on a crusade or inquisition. Even christianity. The enemy has given them his religion as a good thing, if they take it for the path it is, it will always lead them beyond itself to him. You see how this follows the laws of first and second things? Using the principle of misapplied priority, we get them to do everything including, in the final stages, even their worship and relationship with the enemy.
Those of you whose patients are or become christians will have this task: you must bring the patient to value their christianity for it's own sake and then, gradually, you coax them into making all other things subservient to it. That is our current stratagem. If possible keep your patient from christianity entirely, where this fails, work on making them despise it. if you cannot even accomplish that much then you must encourage them to think of it as, one more nice thing which benefits society (you see the principle at work even here? Christianity for the sake of good society...). If you fail and you patient does become a christian, you may get him to turn away from it, but if not, then get him to make it his god.
Of course these are all general strategies; how you ought to go about the specific tasks with you specific patients is to be left to you. Of course I will take all relevant questions by e-mail, but in order to get you thinking along the right lines, let me offer an example of when the rule of thumb ought to be ignored.
In america there is a growing group of humans who grew up attending church and generally surrounded by christianity. In future lectures I will discuss the great successes Mammon has had with simony and fear in the american church but for the time being let it suffice to say that many of these "churched" humans have become dissatisfied with their religion. You may think this a good thing, the lowerarchy does not. These worms, by and large, are not leaving christianity because it is to close to the enemy, they are leaving because it is too far away. They are leaving to get closer to him.
There is great danger here for us. Remember the law of first and second things; if they leave their religion (a second thing) to grow closer to him (a first thing), they will nearly always get the religion back all new and shining, blooming with truth, wisdom and beauty. Yes, there is great danger in them, but there is also an opportunity. When they leave their "faith" it is your job to slip in behind and make associations between the actual truths within christianity and all of the accidental practices and opinions their particular sect associated with it. Once you have made these connections hard and fast, you will have formed an excellent foundation for an attack on his relationship with the enemy.
Of course the exact nature of these linkages will have to take different forms as you patients and their sects differ. Is you patient very upset that his group "talks the talk" but doesn't give fig the poor? Tell him that the talk must all be false, else the poor would be fed by now. Does you patient think the worship music in his sect abysmally shallow or archaic? Tell him it is because the teaching is a lie.
The gimmick here is to bring about a state of affairs where your patient, having left his religion for faults real or imagined, also abandons the truth his religion pointed to. If you can manage this then having gotten him off the path, you will have a patient who is willing to look anywhere for answers except for where the path leads. He will be willing to consider every answer but the truth.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Our North American Strategem
Greetings Toadies
Welcome to this, our first official lecture of the term. Today I intend to lay out our general strategem for temptation and destruction in North America. I expect you to give me your full attention as this is the foundation on which you will be expected to build your attack. Any deviation from, or actions in conflict with this strategem will be dealt with in the firmest and most... unpleasant manner the department for incompetent tempters can devise.
Our overall goals are clear: if we picture the enemy as a sort of appalling point in space, and all your patients as debris floating about at various distances and trajectories from it, your goal is to move your patients away from the point. If you were all...heh... lower counselors I might say we are trying to get them out into our burning darkness by any means possible. But you aren't, you don't get to use "any means possible", you little toadies will be given specific stratagems and methods. You will follow the guidelines laid out for you by darker minds.
The great difficulty in this task is the fact that the animals are positively drawn towards the point. He exerts a sort of gravity on them and if we are not vigilant they will be forever drifting towards him. The reason for this ought to be obvious; he made the creatures and he made them to interlock with him. Of course you will have heard that he goes on and on about respecting the vermin and I admit he does seem determined to spill glory all over them every chance he gets. Indeed his refusal to overwhelm their pathetic wills has shown itself to be one of his more fortunate weaknesses, though he is infuriatingly stubborn about not letting us consume their tiny wills without their consent either. No matter! So far as you are concerned direct manipulation of your patient's will is out of bounds. If you are so fortunate as to have your own patient invite you into them you will need to fill out a formal request for possession and submit a written application to my office in quadruplicate before you take any action.
Now where was I... Ah! Yes, their spiritual gravity. Yes the enemy, quite unfairly made them for himself. Never mind that when they are joined with him they find pleasures and gladness beyond their pitiful dreams. The whole thing is one ghastly ignomy of dependence. It is only thanks to our fathers first great victory, that the humans begin life with any degree of separation from our enemy at all. And despite his success, they all harbor a sort of thirst for completion (our enemy calls it "joy"). So long as they are not drinking his "living water, they are forever thirsty and it is your job to make sure that they never realize were they might find a satisfying drink. Indeed some of our best fun comes in getting them to drink all sorts of things that only leave them more and more thirsty.
So, your business is to point them away from the centre, but how is this to be accomplished in America? In answer, let me offer you two words: mammon and pride. Americans can be roughly divided into two corresponding categories: those who will try to sate or benumb their thirst with things (we have taught them to call this "the american dream"); and those who try to quench it or distract themselves by being "the right sort of person."
Speaking, again generally, those of you whose patients have grown up with relatively few emotional and spritual discomforts or wounds will most likely find that your subjects fit into the first category. They assume that their easy lives are "normal" and, with just a little encouragement from you, can be easily convinced that any discomforts or any emptiness they feel can be remedied by obtaining the things other people have. You see what we are doing here. Instead of allowing them to center on the point and achieve "fulfillment" we get them to focus their lives around successive objects which never satisfy. The trick to this approach is making sure the patient never thinks "If the last 20 goals didn't make me feel any better why should this next one fill my emptiness? Maybe I should look for satisfaction in a completely different place". For this reason, it is sometimes desirable to work and see that the patient never achieves his desire, thus we can keep the hope alive that if he only could get it once everything would be wonderful. With some this is a fine approach, with others there is a danger that after enough failures they will give up and then they may glimpse the enemy (he is disturbingly eager to reveal himself to desperate, suffering humans).
In light of all this, I recommend the middle road. Keep your patient from all out success just long enough that he begins to despair, then just before all hope seems lost, throw him a bone. He will be so thrilled to have accomplished something that the possession high should last a while. Make him conflate this high with real joy and then show him the next desirable thing and you have a pretty cycle going.
On the other hand, those of you whose patients have actually experienced some pains or troubles in life, are more likely to find that your patients have discovered an unfortunate sense of satisfaction humans nearly always recieve after helping one another. Remember the problem of spiritual gravity. We do not fight on level ground. If you do not perpetually throw up obstacles and distractions, any little thing is likely to swing your patient back towards the enemy. He has made them to enjoy being good. And, while we have been able to conflate any number of pleasures with evil, it is always an unnatural state of affairs. His good, always leads, in the end, to their happiness; our evil ulitimately leads to our miserific vision. The humans, if we did not confuse them, would want happiness and this is what makes it so difficult. This second group has to be led from eperiencing the joys of generosity, mercy, hospitality and so forth, to the much lower state of seeking the mere feeling of satisfaction, and ultimately to point where they admire themselves for producing such wonderfull feelings in themselves.
You see the exersize? We want them so turned in on themselves that they cannot look outward towards the point. Afterall, inward is the one place we can be sure not to find...him. In this respect, though this second class begins in a more dangerous position, practicing virtues towards their fellow vermin, when handled properly, it yeilds the safer result. There is always a danger with the first class that they will "wake up" some morning and realize that they are mizerable and that they have been foolish to expect different results from the same failed experiment they have been trying all these years. We have been pushing them towards things and away from the point. But the second class, once they are well in hand, will be so inwardly focused that they are incredibly unlikely to ever look out and towards the point.
For your first assignments I want a detailed analysis of your patient, concluding with which class you think they belong to. Is your patient the type who is likely to achieve material success, or at least to keep trying for it. Are they just optimistic enough that you will be able to convince them that the rainbow's end is just over the next ridge? Or are they of the more pesimistic sort. Has your patient seen where "capitalism" has lead their parents generation? Are they looking for "answers" of some sort? Consider these questions as you prepre your reports.
Update: you can listen to an audio recording of this lecture my clicking on the flaming microphone.
Welcome to this, our first official lecture of the term. Today I intend to lay out our general strategem for temptation and destruction in North America. I expect you to give me your full attention as this is the foundation on which you will be expected to build your attack. Any deviation from, or actions in conflict with this strategem will be dealt with in the firmest and most... unpleasant manner the department for incompetent tempters can devise.
Our overall goals are clear: if we picture the enemy as a sort of appalling point in space, and all your patients as debris floating about at various distances and trajectories from it, your goal is to move your patients away from the point. If you were all...heh... lower counselors I might say we are trying to get them out into our burning darkness by any means possible. But you aren't, you don't get to use "any means possible", you little toadies will be given specific stratagems and methods. You will follow the guidelines laid out for you by darker minds.
The great difficulty in this task is the fact that the animals are positively drawn towards the point. He exerts a sort of gravity on them and if we are not vigilant they will be forever drifting towards him. The reason for this ought to be obvious; he made the creatures and he made them to interlock with him. Of course you will have heard that he goes on and on about respecting the vermin and I admit he does seem determined to spill glory all over them every chance he gets. Indeed his refusal to overwhelm their pathetic wills has shown itself to be one of his more fortunate weaknesses, though he is infuriatingly stubborn about not letting us consume their tiny wills without their consent either. No matter! So far as you are concerned direct manipulation of your patient's will is out of bounds. If you are so fortunate as to have your own patient invite you into them you will need to fill out a formal request for possession and submit a written application to my office in quadruplicate before you take any action.
Now where was I... Ah! Yes, their spiritual gravity. Yes the enemy, quite unfairly made them for himself. Never mind that when they are joined with him they find pleasures and gladness beyond their pitiful dreams. The whole thing is one ghastly ignomy of dependence. It is only thanks to our fathers first great victory, that the humans begin life with any degree of separation from our enemy at all. And despite his success, they all harbor a sort of thirst for completion (our enemy calls it "joy"). So long as they are not drinking his "living water, they are forever thirsty and it is your job to make sure that they never realize were they might find a satisfying drink. Indeed some of our best fun comes in getting them to drink all sorts of things that only leave them more and more thirsty.
So, your business is to point them away from the centre, but how is this to be accomplished in America? In answer, let me offer you two words: mammon and pride. Americans can be roughly divided into two corresponding categories: those who will try to sate or benumb their thirst with things (we have taught them to call this "the american dream"); and those who try to quench it or distract themselves by being "the right sort of person."
Speaking, again generally, those of you whose patients have grown up with relatively few emotional and spritual discomforts or wounds will most likely find that your subjects fit into the first category. They assume that their easy lives are "normal" and, with just a little encouragement from you, can be easily convinced that any discomforts or any emptiness they feel can be remedied by obtaining the things other people have. You see what we are doing here. Instead of allowing them to center on the point and achieve "fulfillment" we get them to focus their lives around successive objects which never satisfy. The trick to this approach is making sure the patient never thinks "If the last 20 goals didn't make me feel any better why should this next one fill my emptiness? Maybe I should look for satisfaction in a completely different place". For this reason, it is sometimes desirable to work and see that the patient never achieves his desire, thus we can keep the hope alive that if he only could get it once everything would be wonderful. With some this is a fine approach, with others there is a danger that after enough failures they will give up and then they may glimpse the enemy (he is disturbingly eager to reveal himself to desperate, suffering humans).
In light of all this, I recommend the middle road. Keep your patient from all out success just long enough that he begins to despair, then just before all hope seems lost, throw him a bone. He will be so thrilled to have accomplished something that the possession high should last a while. Make him conflate this high with real joy and then show him the next desirable thing and you have a pretty cycle going.
On the other hand, those of you whose patients have actually experienced some pains or troubles in life, are more likely to find that your patients have discovered an unfortunate sense of satisfaction humans nearly always recieve after helping one another. Remember the problem of spiritual gravity. We do not fight on level ground. If you do not perpetually throw up obstacles and distractions, any little thing is likely to swing your patient back towards the enemy. He has made them to enjoy being good. And, while we have been able to conflate any number of pleasures with evil, it is always an unnatural state of affairs. His good, always leads, in the end, to their happiness; our evil ulitimately leads to our miserific vision. The humans, if we did not confuse them, would want happiness and this is what makes it so difficult. This second group has to be led from eperiencing the joys of generosity, mercy, hospitality and so forth, to the much lower state of seeking the mere feeling of satisfaction, and ultimately to point where they admire themselves for producing such wonderfull feelings in themselves.
You see the exersize? We want them so turned in on themselves that they cannot look outward towards the point. Afterall, inward is the one place we can be sure not to find...him. In this respect, though this second class begins in a more dangerous position, practicing virtues towards their fellow vermin, when handled properly, it yeilds the safer result. There is always a danger with the first class that they will "wake up" some morning and realize that they are mizerable and that they have been foolish to expect different results from the same failed experiment they have been trying all these years. We have been pushing them towards things and away from the point. But the second class, once they are well in hand, will be so inwardly focused that they are incredibly unlikely to ever look out and towards the point.
For your first assignments I want a detailed analysis of your patient, concluding with which class you think they belong to. Is your patient the type who is likely to achieve material success, or at least to keep trying for it. Are they just optimistic enough that you will be able to convince them that the rainbow's end is just over the next ridge? Or are they of the more pesimistic sort. Has your patient seen where "capitalism" has lead their parents generation? Are they looking for "answers" of some sort? Consider these questions as you prepre your reports.
Update: you can listen to an audio recording of this lecture my clicking on the flaming microphone.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Introduction
Greetings Toadies.
This will be your first semester of North American Practicum 5211. I am Principal Slubgob PTD CDOIE TFO. This will be the first class many of you have taken with me although some of you did work your slimy ways through my sexual temptations and sensuous degradation 3420 elective. To both groups, let me extend an... eager welcome to this, your final course. My career both in the field and in the classroom has been one of unparalleled success and I expect that trend to continue both for my benefit and your's.
You will have just had your first patients introduced to you and are, I am sure, eager to begin the exciting process of twisting, bending, warping, perverting and in all ways degrading and ultimately consuming their little souls. I am aware that any number of you might resent this requirement; having successfully passed all your theory courses you feel you ought to be trusted to begin on your own. Well you aren't. This course is intended to provide one final level of supervision and direction on your first assignments which we of the greater pedagogical lowerarchy feel to be necessary to ensure that you bring back more food. After all, trust is our enemy's virtue. While he mucks about with his relational uncertainties trying to "build up" his servants,we will be certain to achieve our goals by direct supervision of our inferior slaves (that would be you).
Come to think of it, trust has, in itself, the alarming property of increasing the confidence, personhood and responsibility of it's object as well as building up a sort of mutually respectful relationship between it's subject and object. Of course, with your patients, you may be able to use it to some effect if you can induce them to place some trust in an unworthy object but even you had better be careful to be certain that the object will not become somehow worthy. If one human places even a little trust in another and that other, through it's own strength or through circumstances or (Hell forbid) by the enemy's strength, actually manages to come through it is always disastrous to our cause. Even when the second human fails and lets your patient down, you will find yourself forced to spend hours or days coaxing resentment and bitterness in the patient lest the enemy use the event to build forgiveness and charity into the little worm. Things are far better objects for your patient's trust. They will always fail in the end and there is no danger of a deepening "relationship" between them and your patient. Indeed, if your patient can be induced (an increasingly easy project for some in American society) to place enough of their trust in things, Mammon is only too happy to accept new worshipers.
You, are not to be trusted. We will use you and you will bring us food. Someday you may grow in power enough to get your own little brood of imps and then you can extend you puny wills a little more. Till then you will serve our purposes and do as I say under my supervision. Never forget that Hell is built on our thirst for power. Results will bring you recognition, failure will bring only destruction.
But let me return from my tangent. In this course I will be drawing primarily on my own experience and on the profound works of some of our more infernal field directors. My own "practical principals for the modern tempter" will make a superb beginning for your background reading (STS 3420 students will already have a copy of course); also Twistwattle's "Western Media as a Road to Hell", Bulmoth's "American Politics - Right, Left and Down", Screwtape's "Letters to a Failed Tempter" and of course Professor Pinth's "Schisms and Denominationalism" each contain valuable advice to a first time tempter.
Now! What do we expect from you in this course? You will, of course be expected to put into practice all that you have learned at the tempter's college. I will not be focusing specifically on theory in these lectures but on practice. Theory may come in as review or background in some instances but we will spend most of our time applying what you have learned to specific events, types, thoughts and trends you will encounter in the field.
You will submit weekly reports and I may assign additional readings if and as I feel that they are helpful to our efforts. Of course you are expected to keep abreast of the American's popular cultures (both religious and secular) and from time to time you can expect to write up an analysis of some trend or other which might serve a useful purpose for our cause.
A few words about the format of this course. I will post my lectures on this site an a roughly weekly basis although I may post more or less often as political and cultural opportunities and crises determine. You will send your work to my e-mail account (professorslubgob@hotmail.com) but you may post any remarks or questions in the "comments" section of each lecture. You will remember to post using your patients name so that your classmates will get used to associating you with your assigned prey. This may be helpful to any collaborative projects you undertake. I will make an effort to tag each lecture with it's relevant topics which ought to make an searching somewhat easier for you. You are encouraged to comment on one another's posts as well and I will, of course, answer any questions I deem worthy of a response. If you have any specific questions regarding you patients you may e-mail those to me along with your weekly reports. I may answer them directly or, if I think the issues broad enough, I may address my answer to the entire class in the form of a lecture on the relevant topic.
Regarding the structure of my lectures: I will begin most lectures by identifying and clarifying the topic. I will then sketch out some general "rules of thumb" for those of you with different sorts of patients, concluding. I will then provide some in-depth advice for when the "rule of thumb" ought to be violated; under what circumstances, in what way, to what effect and so forth. I will end each lecture with a summary appraisal of the topic as generally beneficial, harmful or effectively neutral to our cause.
Finally, allow me to address one concern which regularly frustrates new tempters on their first assignments. You will have noticed that your patients are diverse: some poor, others "middle class"; some are educated while others are functional illiterates; some are christians, some neo-buddists, a few muslims and others are pseudo-atheists. And perhaps you feel that this is unfair; that some of you will have a harder time of it than others. Well of course that is true. It is unfair and the assignment will be easier for some than for others. Let me be clear. No effort whatever was put into making this fair. You are in the field for our advancement not your own. The fact that some of you will increase your power is an unfortunate fact which we would avoid if we could. Since we cannot you will each be best served by serving us.
In our next, and first proper lecture I will lay out our general stratagem for North American temptation.
This will be your first semester of North American Practicum 5211. I am Principal Slubgob PTD CDOIE TFO. This will be the first class many of you have taken with me although some of you did work your slimy ways through my sexual temptations and sensuous degradation 3420 elective. To both groups, let me extend an... eager welcome to this, your final course. My career both in the field and in the classroom has been one of unparalleled success and I expect that trend to continue both for my benefit and your's.
You will have just had your first patients introduced to you and are, I am sure, eager to begin the exciting process of twisting, bending, warping, perverting and in all ways degrading and ultimately consuming their little souls. I am aware that any number of you might resent this requirement; having successfully passed all your theory courses you feel you ought to be trusted to begin on your own. Well you aren't. This course is intended to provide one final level of supervision and direction on your first assignments which we of the greater pedagogical lowerarchy feel to be necessary to ensure that you bring back more food. After all, trust is our enemy's virtue. While he mucks about with his relational uncertainties trying to "build up" his servants,we will be certain to achieve our goals by direct supervision of our inferior slaves (that would be you).
Come to think of it, trust has, in itself, the alarming property of increasing the confidence, personhood and responsibility of it's object as well as building up a sort of mutually respectful relationship between it's subject and object. Of course, with your patients, you may be able to use it to some effect if you can induce them to place some trust in an unworthy object but even you had better be careful to be certain that the object will not become somehow worthy. If one human places even a little trust in another and that other, through it's own strength or through circumstances or (Hell forbid) by the enemy's strength, actually manages to come through it is always disastrous to our cause. Even when the second human fails and lets your patient down, you will find yourself forced to spend hours or days coaxing resentment and bitterness in the patient lest the enemy use the event to build forgiveness and charity into the little worm. Things are far better objects for your patient's trust. They will always fail in the end and there is no danger of a deepening "relationship" between them and your patient. Indeed, if your patient can be induced (an increasingly easy project for some in American society) to place enough of their trust in things, Mammon is only too happy to accept new worshipers.
You, are not to be trusted. We will use you and you will bring us food. Someday you may grow in power enough to get your own little brood of imps and then you can extend you puny wills a little more. Till then you will serve our purposes and do as I say under my supervision. Never forget that Hell is built on our thirst for power. Results will bring you recognition, failure will bring only destruction.
But let me return from my tangent. In this course I will be drawing primarily on my own experience and on the profound works of some of our more infernal field directors. My own "practical principals for the modern tempter" will make a superb beginning for your background reading (STS 3420 students will already have a copy of course); also Twistwattle's "Western Media as a Road to Hell", Bulmoth's "American Politics - Right, Left and Down", Screwtape's "Letters to a Failed Tempter" and of course Professor Pinth's "Schisms and Denominationalism" each contain valuable advice to a first time tempter.
Now! What do we expect from you in this course? You will, of course be expected to put into practice all that you have learned at the tempter's college. I will not be focusing specifically on theory in these lectures but on practice. Theory may come in as review or background in some instances but we will spend most of our time applying what you have learned to specific events, types, thoughts and trends you will encounter in the field.
You will submit weekly reports and I may assign additional readings if and as I feel that they are helpful to our efforts. Of course you are expected to keep abreast of the American's popular cultures (both religious and secular) and from time to time you can expect to write up an analysis of some trend or other which might serve a useful purpose for our cause.
A few words about the format of this course. I will post my lectures on this site an a roughly weekly basis although I may post more or less often as political and cultural opportunities and crises determine. You will send your work to my e-mail account (professorslubgob@hotmail.com) but you may post any remarks or questions in the "comments" section of each lecture. You will remember to post using your patients name so that your classmates will get used to associating you with your assigned prey. This may be helpful to any collaborative projects you undertake. I will make an effort to tag each lecture with it's relevant topics which ought to make an searching somewhat easier for you. You are encouraged to comment on one another's posts as well and I will, of course, answer any questions I deem worthy of a response. If you have any specific questions regarding you patients you may e-mail those to me along with your weekly reports. I may answer them directly or, if I think the issues broad enough, I may address my answer to the entire class in the form of a lecture on the relevant topic.
Regarding the structure of my lectures: I will begin most lectures by identifying and clarifying the topic. I will then sketch out some general "rules of thumb" for those of you with different sorts of patients, concluding. I will then provide some in-depth advice for when the "rule of thumb" ought to be violated; under what circumstances, in what way, to what effect and so forth. I will end each lecture with a summary appraisal of the topic as generally beneficial, harmful or effectively neutral to our cause.
Finally, allow me to address one concern which regularly frustrates new tempters on their first assignments. You will have noticed that your patients are diverse: some poor, others "middle class"; some are educated while others are functional illiterates; some are christians, some neo-buddists, a few muslims and others are pseudo-atheists. And perhaps you feel that this is unfair; that some of you will have a harder time of it than others. Well of course that is true. It is unfair and the assignment will be easier for some than for others. Let me be clear. No effort whatever was put into making this fair. You are in the field for our advancement not your own. The fact that some of you will increase your power is an unfortunate fact which we would avoid if we could. Since we cannot you will each be best served by serving us.
In our next, and first proper lecture I will lay out our general stratagem for North American temptation.
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