PASTICHE: the fancy word for "Copycatting"
A 1980-ish author created a pastiche of "The Screwtape Letters," titled "Screwtape Writes Again." It had its good points, but it had a "forced" feel to it in my judgment--because the new author felt that Screwtape couldn't be Screwtape unless the recipient of his letters was Wormwood. This meant the author had to contrive a not-that-convincing rationale for why Wormwood was reprieved from "absorption" and sent back to work. There was no reason why he couldn't have simply given Screwtape a NEW trainee.
Here you will see a "Screwtape tribute" which I wrote without feeling that Screwtape himself even had to be the "viewpoint voice" in it:
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An Infernal Interdepartmental Memo
....intercepted by JOSEPH "COPPERFOX" RAVITTS
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Dear Gagsludge,
I applaud the excellent points you recently made in the demonic chatroom, concerning the use of moral distractors in society. Of course we wish that we could completely blind the humans to all injustices (except those that affect them directly, and thus produce resentment and self-pity); but since the Enemy Above won't allow all sense of ethics to vanish from the whole human race, it is indeed our best course to concede just a few evils which the little creatures can be allowed to notice. Then, with a bone thrown to their internal moral watchdogs, we can smuggle all other types of wrongdoing past them completely unopposed. If the distractor issue is racism or air pollution, for instance, a political agent of ours can get away with any amount of election- rigging, bribe-taking, etc.--provided he scores his brownie points by being against racism and air pollution.
All this favors us, as far as it goes. But remember: societies cannot be damned or saved eternally--only individual souls can. You should be paying more attention to using the distractor technique on individual souls. Naturally, a member of your far less organized department can't be expected to have thought things through as perfectly as I have done; but I don't mind helping you out a bit. A pair of examples may be sufficient.
What is an evil that Christian ministers ought to have no difficulty in recognizing? Greed for personal wealth and material possessions. Well, if we can get a minister to be satisfied that he is not unethically diverting church money to his own direct personal use, we can then prompt him to practice with a clear conscience what is only a more subtle form of the same greed. Make him believe that all Bible verses pertaining to tithes and giving are applicable only to filling the bank account of a denominational church--that missionary and charitable donations do not in any degree fulfill monetary obligations to the Enemy Above. Then you can get him half-hypnotized with his own endless chant of "Bring the tithe, bring the tithe, bring the tithe, tithe, tithe," till he ignores all other moral issues in his eagerness to make every member feel guilty about not giving enough. The church rakes in more money, which is used on building fancier facilities rather than on evangelism; the minister enjoys the intoxicating pride of his own success at fund-raising, but sees no sin in this because the excess money is not actually going into his pocket. These mortals are mostly too stupid to realize that there's more than one way to be foolishly laying up their treasures on Earth.
For my other example, what is an evil that Christian wives ought to have no difficulty in recognizing? Sexually flirtatious behavior, tending to provoke desire in men other than the woman's husband. Well, if we can get a good Christian wife congratulating herself for not being sinfully flirtatious, this can blind her to some other sins, even highly vicious ones. Consider this: a sexually chaste married woman, who really does not have any wish to arouse lustful desires in her male neighbors, may still have a strong wish to exert social power over other people. Now, let this woman meet some beautiful single girl, who wears her skirt an inch or two shorter than the married woman regards as proper. The single girl obviously possesses, in her physical attractiveness, a powerful weapon of social influence. The married woman does not for a minute wish to compete with this girl in sexual seductiveness, and therefore would furiously deny any suggestion that the girl made her jealous. But without letting herself be conscious of it, the married woman does resent the girl for having an advantage in social influence. Any half- trained tempter can then induce the envious patient to believe that the girl is wantonly promiscuous, although this may not be true at all. Once the girl is perceived as a tramp, all negative emotional reactions to her take on a nice, fake halo of holiness. Thus, the very fact that the older woman is morally pure in directly sexual matters, helps her to avoid admitting that, in a less sexual sense, she is guilty of gross, green-eyed, hissing alley-cat jealousy against that young girl.
The Anti-Scripture Department, slow-moving though it is with Mushvenom in charge, has in this century finally grown more alert about promoting just this kind of mental defectiveness. Most Biblical warnings against the strategy I am discussing are found in the Old Testament, as where Isaiah warns about people falling into a pit, climbing out of the pit, and then being caught in a snare. We have numerous Christians convinced that nothing in the Old Testament matters except the 23rd Psalm and the tithing references; as a result, they miss out on countless vital warnings from the Enemy. Being thus under-equipped, they fall for the distractors, think that their whole job is done when they reject the most obvious evils, and fail to understand that they must be on guard against multiple dangers.
You might be concerned that assigning more demons to exploit the moral- distractor phenomenon with individual patients will result in a neglect of efforts for the collective corruption of civilizations. If that's your worry, relax. Remember, civilizations are only as good as the mortals who make them. As long as the mass of humans are individually conditioned to self- deception and fragmented morality, this will always yield a payback in societal dishonesty and stupidity.
Your condescending colleague,
Viperspite
) Did Lewis really encourage others to write narnian stories? Where did you hear that?
