On Sin, Part 1

Greetings Toadies.

Today I am going to be talking about a topic which I know is dear to each and every one of your hearts. I will be talking about sin. And could I choose a more exciting topic? Have you first tastes and nibbles at the sins of your patients not been exquisite these past weeks? Is there anything quite so profoundly gratifying as the sight of their disgusting souls shriveling and devoloving as they move from one sin to another? If you really want a treat, try seeking a glance at the enemies camp just as you patient let's himself wallow in gluttony or pride in direct rebellion. Watch as they throw his warning back in his face and slice off another sliver of their own essence. Gloat over them as time and time again they choose misery and destruction over the joy, peace and wholeness he offers them. It is indeed a delight to the miserific palate. Once you really learn to savor it, nothing will give you quite the same thrill as watching the self-mutilation your patient inflicts on himself in sinning.

 Clearly, the topic of sin is far to great to be treated in a single lecture. I will not even make the attempt. In this lecture I will be focusing on the perception of and best usages for the concept of sin in modern american culture. And in fact, even that is a rather broad topic (I see two clear divisions which each ought to be addressed in addition on one, growing trend which I find especially worrisome) so, depending on how this works out, I may end up splitting this lecture into two parts.

 I begin by discussing the modern american secular perception of sin (as opposed to the modern american religious view) and already I had better warn you that there is considerable seepage between the secular and religious. There are almost no committed christians, jews or muslims in modern america who are not, at least a little, influenced by the secular perception; neither are there many atheists who are not influenced by the religious. Now clearly, neither of these views bears much resemblance to your own understanding of the subject. Keep that in mind! Over estimating your patient's understanding can be as disastrous as underestimating it.

 Once, we had our hands full trying to keep people from thinking about sin at all. For nearly 1900 years the mere mention of the word was a disaster. Back then, americans identified "sin" with shame, with guilt and finding themselves guilty of "sin" was something they genuinely wanted to avoid. Thus, if we wanted them to sin, the last thing we wanted was for them to attach the label to the particular act. Those americans would be abusive until someone convinced them that abuse was sin. They would cheat and have grand affairs, but all the while they would be trying to justify the behavior os "OK". "This isn't sin" they would tell themselves "these are special circumstance".

 Not that no one ever purposefully sinned. It happened all the time. But when they did, they always felt at least nervous about it. You could say they felt they were doing something they "ought not do". That is no longer the case. This history is important so that you understand what your patients attitude is reacting against (in most cases). In fact, neither the secular or the religious american still subscribe to the old perception but both are descended from it.

 If you consider it for a moment (it will probably take some of you considerably longer) you will see that some of our best fun was had in making men into pharisees. Convincing them that some perfectly innocuous or (even better) actually beneficial behavior was "a sin" had several worthwhile results: it caused them to expend all sorts of effort and time trying and even praying for the strength not to do things the enemy thought they out to do. He does not spend much effort assisting them in resisting his own blessings - keep that in mind. Thus, these neo-pharisees tended to become judgmental and proud when they succeeded and despairing when they failed. Additionally, pharisaic tendencies usually managed to push the humans at least a little off course of the center by confusing them about the direction. Best of all, it built on one of our long-standing, lies: the lie that some code of conduct, some "law" rather than our enemy himself is at the centre. The value of this lie cannot be overemphasized. Our enemy wants the humans coming to him to find their life, freedom and joy. Confusing them, convincing them to head towards some law, however like the enemy's will that law may be, is always to our advantage. Don't you see that in orienting themselves around a law they are orienting themselves around their own ability to keep that law, that is around themselves! The old conception was invaluable to this project. With it we built fences along the "way to keep the law"; walls which served admirably to keep their feet firmly on our highway to self-obsessed destruction.

 But now we have moved on. Of course this took some discussion in the lowrarchy. Feuerkrote's methodology is ascendant in our current american battle tactics (really I know he is mind numbingly self-agrandising in it but you really had better read his Overwhelming Advantages of a truth-ignorant Culture it takes 4-5 thousand pages more than are strictly necessary to explain the development of our current doctrine; and several of his anecdotes on the lives of Nietzsche and Sartre are decidedly entertaining). As a result, modern americans (I will not submit to foolish progressonymns by calling them post-modern) think of "sin" as something of an archaic term. Telling a truly modern american that her behavior is sinful would produce nothing but a curious glance and an assertion that she isn't really very religious anyway and besides, it's rude of you to judge her. She very much associates "sin" with antiquated and intolerant, fundamentalists and generally regards is as referring to "fun things religious people don't want you to do; usually some form of sex". Her reaction to the word itself will nearly always be in our favor. In the mouth of a Christian, it will distance her from them by verifying that they are callous, intolerant blowhards. In the mouth of an authority figue is will serve as a challenge to display her autonomy (what a delightful word) and carry out the proscribed action. All to our advantage.

 So don't encourage your patient to sin. Play the reverse psychology game; whisper to her "you know some people call that sin, are you sure you want to?" she'll buy it every time. There has never been a more contrarian creature than the modern american young person; not since our Father announced the Grand Repudiation anyway. So long as your patient thinks of sin as a list of rules the enemy has arbitrarily (never let them suggest that He had their good in mind) set up to keep humans from having too much fun, they will remain eager to discover the "tainted glee" of freedom from such arbitrary lists. If these humans believed any of that genesis story, they would celebrate eve for casting of the shackles of arbitrary theistic morality and discovering for herself the secret knowledge of good and evil. And don't worry that she might notice how her conception denies the very knowledge she exalts. She won't.

 Now, as with all of our tactics, this one, admirable and effective as it is, does create a vulnerability you will have to be on guard against. These secular americans are, by our own methods, unfortunately tough to turn to pharisaism. Oh Duckaltoad and some others make claims that they can work legalism into their worship of tolerance but I think his case is overstated. In some few instances it may be worth the attempt but generally you will find you efforts better rewarded by other approaches.

 The real danger is that without a concept of sin defining a "false way", these americans are vulnerable to certain elements from the church who have begun talking, not about christianity, but about the enemy himself as the "way". Instead of the old method, telling people how bad they are and then offering them a sort of cosmic forgiveness if only they will accept christianity to whatever degree the preacher feels necessary, these infuriating milksops just talk about how thrilled they are to know and follow the enemy and then invite the hapless initiate to join them. Predictably, our enemy is delighted to pour himself out in entirely immoderate portions to any creature who so much as glances towards him for help. His book is full of the most wheedling, undignified promises to delight those who will just taste him.

 Once we had defenses against this sort of thing. We had the humans pretty well convinced that a "relationship" with the enemy meant "committing to become a person who doesn't sin" (sin in the old sense of the word). There is a remnant of this floating around popular culture which you mat still be able to use. If your patient is approached by one of these weak-willed toadies do you best to point out that the evangelist is a christian. Fill your patient's mind with words like "fundamentalist" and "sin". Try to make the invitation look like a disguised attempt to convert your patient to a religion. You must not let your patient see an open invitation to explore an exciting new way of life! Even if you succeed thought, the situation is desperate. These people keep coming back and they are so damnably earnest.

 Regarding these twits I can offer only two pieces of encouragement on this topic at the present time. They are still a relatively small group (mostly on the east and west coasts) and they haven't really worked out a firm doctrine on much of anything yet. As to this second point, it has it's own dangers but I will address them in some future lecture. What you need to understand is that they are only beginning to see sin as the enemies list of poison labels.

 You must have thought it very unfair (we all did), when you first read the enemy's book, that he gave them such a clear list of what sorts of things would damage them. It looked as though he wandered through the entire cosmos pasting "sharp edge" and "poisonous compound" labels on everything remotely dangerous to his precious beasts. And if that weren't enough he gave them the "guiding principle" of, well,of love for one another to help them judge when and how the labels make a difference. From this, it was clear to you that what the enemy meant by "sin" was "actions, in-actions and directions of mind and spirit which damage a human self and force them to separate from the wholeness he represents" (never forget that he has created them dependent on him for their fulfillment). You saw this, but only a few of them really ever do. Since eden, we have been busy convincing them that "sin" means "irritating god" and "righteousness" means "doing the things that make god like you". Of course he is forever letting the secret out to troublesome people like Socrates and Lao Tzu but thanks to the historical point of view (see Screwtape for a full treatment of this device) we usually only have to deal with one or two per generation. In this generation, for reasons you can well see, it is possibly less well know than ever before. In the past, people misunderstood sin and loved their own desire to follow a law; today people don't even know what sin is but hate any mention of it. All praise to Our Father Below that so few have ever seen sin as warnings against our aims and have loved the enemy for giving them such clear protection.

 Ah, well we have certainly dragged on for some time with this lecture. Next week I will give you a full explication of part 2: the american religious conception of sin and how you can use it to push your patient away from the centre. In the meantime, I want 6000 words on your own patient's understanding of and reaction to the term "sin" concluding with your plan for using that understanding to draw them away from the enemy.

On Popular Music

Greetings Toadies.

  Our topic for this lecture will be popular music in modern America. Most of your patients will think of this as pop music though a few may refer to it as “rock ‘n roll”, “that awful stuff the kids listen to these days”, or even (especially in the south) “the devil’s music”. You will all have heard the stuff by now; it plays non-stop on American radios, sound systems and their myriad portable listening devices.

  The first thing I want you to be clear on is that this stuff really is music. Whatever the opinion of some of the elder humans and however little most of it may resemble the truly noxious miasmas Bach and his ilk used to produce, it does remain… music. As such it bears all the… unpleasantness that entails. Music fundamentally creates order and beauty out of sound. It speaks to that part of a human which still, subconsciously remembers and yearns for their maker. Whenever a human creates music (or nearly any of their so called “arts”) they are reenacting on their own miniscule level what the enemy did when he… created their material world. He took what was perfectly, dynamically formless and dark and he made order and… and beauty out of it. Were it possible, our Father would not suffer a moment of it on the earth. It is entirely disgusting, it flies in the face of all the dignity of our miserific anarchy.

     Why any of the spirits were willing to tolerate such a degradation of the spiritual world to communicate beauty to the material, I shall never know.  It is just so very like him to infect everything he touches with his power and nature. It is unnatural and entirely undignified. Music can, if you are not careful, take your patients quite out of themselves all together; a catastrophe to any tempters whose desire is always to see the patient focusing more and more on himself. Music directs their attention outward, we want to direct it inward. More than that, by turning noise into patterns, rhythms, melodies and harmonies which are at once beyond the full apprehension of and at the same time reflected within their little bastard souls. There is something of joy in all music, from the tinniest children’s show theme to the truly painful works of Beethoven.

  Once, quite recently, we thought we might have a foot in the door toward eradicating music from, at least, the western world. We began to put it about among the “artistic” and “philosophical” humans that beauty in art, music and even literature is essentially trite, bland, or uninspired – we taught them to use words like “saccharine” and “formulaic” – and at first the project seemed to be working. (I call it a project but really it was a mere side experiment off of Feuerkrote’s ongoing attack on truth) One of their elite composers began tossing sticks and swinging stings in an effort to “compose” his stuff; their painters and sculptors came close to abandoning beauty altogether. That marvelous fellow Duchamp insisted that the most vulgar things ought to qualify as art. But in the end the public would not buy our cacophonous substitution for music (we have had a little more success with their visual arts). Your patients are great fools, true enough, but we have not get got them so foolish as to regularly prefer ugliness and chaos over beauty and order…. not yet anyway.

  We did have some small success and if you ask Feuerkrote (something none of you will ever get the chance to do) he, of course, will claim that the insipidity of modern art and music are the result of his experiments diluting the human interest in beauty… and I suppose there is something to that. They don’t take it so seriously any more. Certainly if you had been tempting in the old days you would have found yourselves in regular agony being forced to experience the stuff they made and listened to back then. Be grateful that few of you will be forced to listen to some of the really virulent old stuff.

  Still, what the humans may have lost in quality they have made up for in quantity. Where music was once a rare treat for them now they immerse their lives in it. Count yourselves fortunate if you manage to carve out a single 24 hour period without music. The stuff is everywhere and their technology now allows them to pump the stuff out of nearly anything. You might think this very bad, but I prefer to see cause for hope.

  I see this on two fronts. First, weak music in sufficient quantities can produce an anaesthetic effect which may yield highly beneficial effects in some patients. Secondly, increased quantities combined with decreased quality combine to leave humans feeling simultaneously overfed and underfed in terms of beauty.

  As far as the anaesthetic qualities of pop music are concerned, I should think the process and it’s benefits are obvious. By overwhelming the humans with music which doesn’t really speak to their souls much beyond a brief tickling of some emotion or other or (even better) arouses a bit of lust, we are contriving to dull their senses to any real beauty they might run across. If you take this approach, your goal will be to get you patient to the state he is always “plugged in” to some musical source and yet never spends a moment “outside himself” or “caught up on ecstatic beauty”. You don’t want him to hear anything poignant or truly moving; you want him to satisfy himself with “pretty”, “exciting” or even “clever” music.  Of course this is a tricky game. Even the most insipid lullaby has the potential, if they listen in the wrong way, to move them. But the good news here is that even if you do slip up occasionally and let them listen to something really good, they will probably not make a habit out of it and with the right techniques (nearly any of Polsterheim’s 48 Methods  ought to do the trick) it will be a simple matter to misdirect any momentary yearnings.

  And now we come to that aspect of the lecture which I know most of you have been anticipating. You want to know how much good we can accomplish with the delicious lyrics in many of these pieces. Quite a bit. The particularly delightful thing about pop music is that it is quintessentially of its own age. Thus these “artists” are singing about the exact sins we have managed to insert most strongly into this particular culture.  Even more usefully, the humans (never forget that at least one part of your patient is on your side, part of the wants to sin) are mostly likely to enjoy those very songs which celebrate the sins they themselves are most prone to. Men who tend to beat their wives, are more likely to listen to our favorite rap songs. Hormone riddled teenagers are more likely to have pop-hits celebrating unattached coupling on their music devices.

  Now, I have said that music tends to take the humans out of themselves. This is true, and generally it is one of the more unfortunate aspects of music. But we have means of turning even this misfortune to our advantage. If the creatures must be taken out of themselves, let us see to it that they are taken to something which will only damage their souls. I know that certain members of our order have claimed that some musical themes themselves can be used to this purpose but I mistrust that – pure music is, for you far too dangerous a tool, leave it’s use to wiser heads. But the lyrics, the lyrics will be your bread and butter. It is your job to see to it that your patient lives on a diet of unhealthy lyrics. If your patient objects, that is if you are using a song to tempt rather than to merely reinforce an existent sin habit, use the old line “I don’t really care about the words, I just like the beat/music/melody/sound etc…”.  The creatures can’t really ignore the lyrics, no matter how they try and ignore them the message will sink into their souls; desensitizing some bits, corroding others and building up (if you know your work) all the parts we want to see grown.

  You see that you will have to monitor your patients listening carefully.  Work hard to shape their tastes in the directions most harmful to them. Have your jingoistic patients listen to country music (but be on your guard In this genre, it speaks far more than I would like about simple living and… family), have your lustful teenagers feed on a simple diet of the sex song of the week. Patients prone to depression will find excellent listening in some of the harder stuff of the later 90’s. Violet and misogynistic patients ought to listen to nothing but hard core rap (I have seen excellent results from using this genre on certain girls with already low self-esteem; see if you can’t use it to convince them that their only chance at love comes from allowing themselves to be degraded and abused – you will find it very entertaining).

    So you see? Music qua music is never beneficial to our cause. But music as a means of thought and emotion delivery is one of our strongest tools in this era for steeping humans in some of our most exciting, degrading and destroying lies. It jumps right over their conscious thought filters and gets them accepting and feeding on some truly decadent filth.

   For next week, I expect a brief description of your patient’s musical tastes, the areas in which they are already weakest and on which you plan to press your attack; together with an action plan consisting of at least ten pop music songs you will use and how you intend to use them. Remember you are to submit all assignments to professorslubgob@hotmail.com

Where I Have Been

Greetings Toadies.


  There is a reason you have not heard from me recently: I have been engaged in projects far more important than your pitiful careers. Those of you who resent having to take this course at all will have been pleased not to have had to read the last two week's lectures. But now your holiday is at an end and we are back; hooves, horns and snouts to the grindstone. You should expect your next full lecture within the week but, rather than conflate lecture with news, I have decided to relate the most recent lowrarchical goings on to you in a brief update today.


  Given my especially elevated status in the lowrarchy, it was only natural that I should be invited to participate in this years planning committee for america's next election season. The fact that my invitation came only hours before the opening speeches can only be attributed to abysmal political intrigue and certain unfortunate machinations on the part of certain cowardly factions in the league. Nevertheless, I arrived in time to set things straight and I am pleased to relate that the conference was as successful as the rest of my endeavors. Of course the greater American strategem has not changed (though an updating memorandum of some 473 pages ought to be on its way to your inboxes at this very moment - be sure to study every page as there will be an quiz). Still it is always exiting to plan the perversions, dissensions and hatreds of an upcoming political event. Let me tell you, this whole democratic project may have started out painfully but there is nothing quite so delicious as a truly venomous election cycle in the united states. If all goes according to plan, this next year ought to be the best yet; look for severe political enmity within the american Church, you won't be disappointed.


  Of course all the usual tedious officials were there as well. Moloch sent a delegate who, for the eleventh straight year, insisted that certain court decisions stay in place, maintaining the americans right to sacrifice to him. I think he worries about starving to death if we ever decide to bring back some sort of religious government. Of course Feuerkrote wants a democrat and Wurmkrank wants a republican, that debate lasted as long as it ever does. But enough of that, you can (and ought) to obtain a full transcript of the unclassified portions of the conference at any local bureaucracy depot. Simply fill out form 47886-5-NA-EL2012 and put this course number in the eighth, fourteenth and one hundred forty second boxes and you should get copies within a week or two. You will be.... impressed with your professors contribution to our cause.

On Christianity

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.

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.

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.

Update: You will find an audio recording of this lecture here.