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.
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