My patient is intelligent (for a human, anyway) and, on the advice of my brother, I attempted to develop him into an arrogant, spiteful intellectual. The patient is now a middle-aged scientist, and the results so far have been mixed. On the one hand, I have taught him to feel and express a biting contempt for anyone that he determines to be less intelligent, less learned, or have less sophisticated hobbies than him, with the result that he has alienated himself from countless friends and family. I have even gotten him to the point where, when the Enemy suggests that his actions are cruel and petty, he justifies his vicious insults on the grounds that it would ‘violate his integrity’ to let an error pass uncorrected or a foolish comment unanswered. But on the other hand, when he does think of religion and I try to divert him, he directs that same hostility-towards-stupidity at any diversion or irrational argument I offer. As such I find it is nearly impossible for me to forestall his trains of thought, even when they draw him nearer the Enemy. Is there any way for me to stop him from thinking while also maintaining his contempt for the thoughtless?

Best,

Asmodeus in Academia

 

Dear Asmodeus (incidentally, you’d better hope Asmodeus doesn’t find out you’re using his name as a pseudonym),

Good Lord Below, you’re not trying to use irrational arguments against a proud intellectual, are you? You’re practically shoving your patient into the arms of the Enemy. The longer you try that tactic, the more you run the risk that he will catalogue all the irrationalities, add them up and find that the balance favors the Enemy. But this is basic, and was handled far better by Screwtape in his unfortunately published correspondence that the humans got hold of. If you haven’t read it, you’d better do so immediately.

Diverting him is by far the safer course, but you say that doesn’t work either. Well, then the best course would be that which works on that mindtrap humans call the Internet. Use his pride to draw him down the same, trammeled arguments that have always worked in the past. Show him that he has already disproven all the wild claims about the Enemy. Draw him into admiring his own clarity of thought, his brilliance. Let him come to believe that he alone sees the elegance of these arguments, when they are in fact the same arguments that he absorbed in his college days, in the first flowering of rebellion against any form of authority. In this way, he will no longer be thinking: he will merely be thinking he is thinking, when instead he will be mired in self-congratulation.

In this, you will find that you have the assistance of his ego. Very few humans have the will or the confidence to truly take a fresh look at old problems when new evidence arises.  The consistency of their outlook is a great comfort to them, as it reassures them that they saw early a truth that their fellows come to late, or not at all. This sets them firmly, in their minds, among the ranks of the elite of their wretched race. Therefore, the opposite view, that they have come late to an old truth acknowledged even by the common folk, is almost insupportable. They will grasp at almost anything to avoid that humiliation.

Stabby