I intend to post an excerpt of The Screwtape Letters on this thread and then comment on them. It should take about a month and all comments would be welcome.

Some background
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read by John Cleese

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This opening chapter really sets a lot of the tone straight away: obfuscation, misdirection and distraction are the methods of these demons. Logic and pure sciences actually risk the discovery of spiritual matters.

What they promote is propoganda and the political sciences. Buzzwords and fashion. Categorsing argumets into "-isms" and "trends" rather than discussing whether things are right or wrong. (Sound familiar?)

Hard analysis and serious reflection, contrary to what many anti-theists might tell you, are an essential part of spirituality and Screwtape (ever a politician and propogandaist) would keep you from them.

You have renewed my interest MM...I may have to dust off my copy and re-read. Ta. It must have last been read at least ten years ago and I find it fascinating how interpretations can alter over the years when you go back to something.

Ab Origine wrote:
I am very glad indeed. Thank you very much.

There are a handful of books that I go back to because they seem increasingly relevant (1984 is another).It seems more relvant than ever.


Whether or not one sees this book in a generally spiritual or even from a purely metaphorical interpretation about human nature, I think it is a real masterpiece.

It is a book often referred to but rarely found on sale in my experience.

I intend to post something every day for a month before I go back to work.

Kind of a project and and a trial for something that might be a model for threads later.

Cheers Ab, that was really encouraging.

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Despite the clear Apologetics for Christianity, this chapter addresses a much wider aspect of the human condition.

Here he points to a habit that I am certainly guilty of: that is allowing myself to be easily discouraged from pursuing my goals and sticking by my convictions in the face of adversity or even inconvenience. I see this regularly in my Engish students and my violin students. How many people say "I'd love to play the violin" and they seem to mean it, but when faced with learning to play it, they soon discover that hard work is involved.

Of course, the hard work that you put into it is of enourmous value later but in this world of instant gratification this is increasingly hard to get through.

Screwtape also advises employing the fallacy of association: we see this daily on forums. It is the "argument" that the truth movement cannot be true becasue there so-and-so on such-and-such a forum who has a unicorn for an avatar and likes to talk about reptiles, chemtrails and healing crystals *snigger".

Finally he also relies on our aspirations to dissapoint us. The more we are led to believe that something or somebody holds all the answers to all of our questions, the more disappointment we feel when we inevitably find that this is not so. The coup de gras comes with the non-sequitor (another fallacy) which suggests (erronously) that because one thing is wrong or unknown then everything a source or school of thought must be wrong or unkown or even unknowable also.

If this book seems to be dwelling upon the weaknesses of our condition, we must remember that Screwtape is the Ultimate Misanthrope. In the introduction that I skipped (perhaps to be posted later) we are warned by the narrator that we should not take what Screwtape says is necessarily true even on his own terms.

For the moment, Screwtape does indeed dwell on our ignorance, vanity, laziness and fear and takes his own form of delight form them. I assure any new reader that humanity's better nature in examined later, much to Screwtapes anger and disgust.

All comments very welcome.

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Screwtape in this letter provides four methods to cause strife between us and our loved ones. Although the area of our life he focuses on is rather mundane, everyday and even petty, the weakness in our nature that he takes advantage of is one of the most dangerous to us: spiritual pride; by which I mean thinking yourself morally or spiritually superior.

Spiritual pride is something which modern society refers to very little but we see it conspicuously in people like bible thumpers, holier-than-thou types and politicians: The types of people that are always con­cerned with the state of our soul and never with our daily welfare. Amongst Christians there are individuals who object to some that have found faith because they feel that they may be "get­ting in on very easy terms" and would rather that the Prodidal Son (or Daughter) should be punished instead of welcomed. "What's she doing in Church?" they mutter or "Why should they get help?" This very dark side of "the righteous" makes them spiteful and bitter towards others even while they claim to care.Parralels exist in our era of other self-righteous types that "care": PC police, the Moral Majority, and people who object to calling the homeless "tramps" but at the same time hail the new policies that put people on the street.

Screwtape also employs our pettines to make blistering sores out minor prickels. Again pride and vanity blind us to our own annoying habits and focus on the manners of others until you suspect your own family or partner of "doing it just to annoy us".Then this paranoid delusion becomes reality when we begin to niggle each other and then act (or even feel) outraged when others take the bait. I have seen this very thing on this forum and I am not blameless either. Screwtape chuckles at us when he writes about "the delight­ful sit­u­a­tion of a human say­ing things with the express pur­pose of offend­ing and yet hav­ing a griev­ance when offence is taken."

It is both ridiculous and yet deadly serious. And this is Screwtape using our loved ones against us. He hasn't even started on using our feelings about our genuine enemies yet...

This thread looks interesting, Mikey. I haven't got my reading head on at present, but I look forward to coming back to it soon.

Gilly wrote:
Many thanks for the encouragement.

I put this in the spirituality section but I believe this book really gets to the heart of human nature and needn't be read as a spiritual work.

My brother, who is an atheist, is keen on quoting ol' Screwtape. The literary figure is almost bigger than his existence in the book. he's like a meme.

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The subject of prayer is not painful to me as it is for Screwtape, but I admit to being uncomfortable talking about it. This is partly because many Christians that enthusiastically talk about their praying habits are very often the sort of holier-than-thou types who inflict their religious practice on everybody unfortunate to have contact with them. However, it is also because it is such a private matter, that I feel rather naked about talking about it.

Prayers are said for different reasons: as a plea or call for help, to give thanks, to gain insight, to calm oneself and find peace etcetera. What it isn't is "talking to a bearded man in the sky" and while funny, these quips, if taken literally, only serve to reinforce misconceptions about an activity common to religions from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism .

Certainly prayer is a form of meditation as much as it is worship. I find it very beneficial and it seems studies have shown that it does have tangible effects. TThe neurologist Andrew Newberg's brain scans reveal that monks, priests, nuns and gurus alike have exceptionally focused attention and compassion sites.

It is interesting that Screwtape wants to direct us away from prayers which are reg­u­lar­ized. This might come as a surprise because most criticism of bad prayers are "lip service" to "formulaic" prayers. Oddly, for Screwtape, hollow prayers are more easily achieved by manipulating, once again, our pride.

Kneeling and repeating phrases might appear to us banal, embarressing or silly. We might feel that we are pretending to be something we are not (which is ironically exactly what we are doing- and the point) or we might feel that it is elementary as if we are anything other than amateurs at prayer.

He wishes to exploit our vanity by encourage us to think of ourselves as devout and experienced at prayer as a monk or sister who spends every day for years in prayer and made it their raison d'etre. This is equally absurd when a newly coverted Buddhist in Hollywood thinks that they can skipe the lotus position and the mantra and get straight to the business of transcendence.

Screwtape also suggests directing the prayers to a physical object: i.e. idolatory. Note that this does not have to be a golden calf or even a crucifix but merely "the cor­ner of the bed­room ceil­ing" or inside his our head. Screwtape, rightly or wrongly, considers it almost impossible for us to know God while mortal but warns of the loophole of humility: “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou know­est thy­self to be”,

In fact Screwtape talks about our lack of humility being his opportunity: that we forget that we a physical as well as mental and spiritual creatures and that our physical actions do indeed affect our mental and spiritual aspects.

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In this chapter Screwtape reveals his motives: "the anguish and bewil­der­ment of a human soul" . He is very clear that physical suffering and death are only the means to that end. This flies in the face of modern interpretations of the demonic in the "horror" genre. Usually the demon or evil supernatural entity is concerned with their victims torture and death. Wormwood, the junior and inferior devil, resembles this somewhat. Screwtape admonishes this as immature, undisciplined and short-sighted. It appears almost as a temptation to the diabolic.

What Screwtape aims for is not death and destruction of the body (although he admits to finding it "entertaining") but corruption of the spirit. I believe this is much more terrifying and is rarely captured in horror films: however there are occasionally scenes when one protagonist comes to the horrific conclusion that there loved one has "gone over to the other side" or, worse still, that they themselves are the monster. (Session 9, The Machinist) Would you rather a member of your family die or find that person is a serial killer? Would you rather die or find out that you were a paranoid schizophrenic that tortures people?
(as in the movie Identity).

Unlike other less sophisticated demons, according to Screwtape, war is rather over-estimated. If during a war people to come together as communities, put others before themsleves, display courage and keep in mind their own mortality then for Screwtape war is counter-productive. Conversly, Screwtape believes peace-time to be under-exploited. This, of course, does not mean that war is good for our spirit by any means. Screwtape is, quite appropriately, playing Devil's advocate.

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Screwtape addresses two opportunities for bringing about our demise: Fear and hatred.

Fear

Fear can be natural and healthy in that it is part of our survival instinct and helps us avoid danger. It may even provide occasions for great courage and selflessness. Under Screwtape’s influence however, it becomes a weapon against our very character by having us dwell on what will happen to us, rather than considering what we do . In this way fear may make us us cowardly, self pitying, selfish, violent, cruel or dangerous.

Screwtape converts natural fear into anxiety and panic: he encourages us to entertain all the possible disastrous outcomes and live them out in our mind, even though such a multiple future is impossibe. This is done to prevent us from accepting that future events may often be beyond our control and concluding thet there is no point in worrying. Once we realise that fear itself is what we need to confront in the here and now, it is becomes much easier to deal with. Screwtape wishes to prevent this because he is seeking “the anguish and bewilderment of a human soul” .

To that end, Screwtape introduces the importance of diverting attention away from the internal world and out to the external world when any negative emotions, such as fear, occur. In so doing, we do not fully take into account our state of mind or mood at the time. We may overlook or disregard the fact that we are being angry or bitter or lazy only to regret it later when the mood has passed. Conversely when we are filled with a positive emotion our attention is to be directed inwards to our own kindness and patience so that we congratulate ourselves and fail to notice or fully appreciate the kindness and patience of our neighbours, family and friends. This is referred to in later letters and becomes one of the central rules of the infernal practice.

Hatred

Surprisingly Screwtape considers hatred unreliable and over-rated. He sees little opportunity in humans hating abstract notions of people that they have never met. For him such prejudice and antipathy is unreliable because, on contact, it often fails to translate into hatred of a real person. A UK or US soldier in Afghanistan may have all sorts of hatred for “the enemy” until he or she arrives in the war zone and is confronted with the reality of a human being as an object of his or her malice.

Instead, Screwtape directs our malice towards people we live with, work with and meet every day: Hate thy neighbour, so to speak. This hatred of a real person is of real use to Screwtape and in later letters he explains in detail how it is achieved.

Conversely, he encourages our kindness and charity away from the real people around us and on to imaginary causes that we have heard about but rarely encounter. In other words: loving and kind in theory, hateful and cruel in practice. Such is the irony of Hell.

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In this chapter the reader learns just why demons usually remain inconspicuous: that is, in order to make us materialists and sceptics. After all, isn’t proof of infernal creatures, also proof of divine ones? Moreover, an enemy one is unaware of is much more of a danger. One of the techniques employed to obfuscate notions of their existence is to promote silly or comical images of demons that cannot be taken seriously. In this he relies the non-sequitor that ridiculous images of demons make their existence equally ridiculous.

Screwtape also provides the infernal reasoning behind revealing themselves: the obvious being to torture and terrorise us; something they have taught us to do for them. The other more esoteric is that of “making magicians” by which he means diabolists.

Rather curiously for a book about demons, this is the only mention Satanism receives. Even though he refers to this as past practice, it seems Hell has not altogether given up on the notion. Indeed the plan explained to us is to somehow create a belief in the practice of diabolism without the corresponding belief in God. It appears to be an allusion to some occult practices of the modern variety, a good example of which would be the Ouija board.

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Thank you for this thread Mikey, I had never even heard of this book before, you also raise my awareness on many things, and speaking for myself you are much appreciated.