A Commentary in the Spirit of "The Screwtape Letters": Part Three

And thus we proceed to the final installment of the Public Proponent's commentary on "The Inherent Danger of Rationality in Society":

 I must, I fear, admit that I can offer no one-size-fits-all cure for your particular brainiac. I do, however, have a few pointers that may be helpful in eradicating such breeds as the garden-variety philosopher and the questioning undergraduate (more persistent strains such as the John Paul II Complex types may require a special remedy):  

Suggestion One: Induce them to panic.  Panic is an excellent tool for clouding Thinking and inducing faulty Reasoning.  It can stop a man who has begun to think dead in his tracks and slows those in whose rotting minds this disease is more deeply implanted.

Suggestion Two: Help them ask the wrong question.  If nothing else, it will at least cause them to get the wrong answer.  If you use this as a follow up to Suggestion One, make certain that once you have got them in the thick of their panic, on the brink of crisis, you must be sure that the only question that enters their heads – should any need enter their heads at all – is “What can I do?”  (What they don’t realize, you see, and where the great danger lies, is when they ask “What can’t I do?”)  See that they repeat this like parrots until they believe, as, thankfully, a good many already do, that there exists no positive answer.

Suggestion Three: Make them feel overworked.  And then show them how Thinking causes them to do so much more work than is really necessary.  Show them how blissfully happy the Ignorant are.  Most of all, show them that Knowledge is the poison apple from the tree of Right Thought; an apple that traps them in the worst moral, social, and spiritual dilemmas and assure them that if they were only to go without this bitter fruit they, too, could be at their ease and wipe the sweat of Responsibility from their beaten brows.

I am sorry to have no more suggestions to offer at present, but I plead my two-fold excuse thusly: that I have not had sufficient time to establish a short, safe and complete path to the Destruction of all “Thoughtful” types and would be loath to give you advice I later came to believe not good.  Also, though I do have a good bit more where this came from, it is partially conjecture and I would that it were presented in another form and labeled more clearly as such.  Until the release of my upcoming book then (Sabotaging those with Sense & Sensibility), I leave you with this Food for Thoughtlessness and remind you that, as a well-known German Fhürer once indicated, governments should count it a blessing when their citizens don’t think[1]. 

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[1] Paraphrased; Adolf Hitler. 

A Commentary in the Spirit of "The Screwtape Letters": Part Two

The following is a continuation of His Smugness the Public Proponent's commentary begun in the preceding post.  It will be concluded next week in Part Three. 

Those who have thought themselves even ankle-deep into this accursed pool also believe, by and large, in something called Conscience, which subject would require a whole ‘nother essay alone.  The point remains, however, that these Thinkers have become a disease that knows no cure.  They refuse to be pacified into submission or talked back into the proper state of uninquisitiveness.  The hateful whirrings of their mental machine, once started, do not suffer themselves to be impeded.  Let us be thankful there are so few and, since we cannot treat them, instead turn our efforts to stifling their recent growth. 

Some of my followers, and even a select number of my friends, have recommended that the best course of action is to ignore them.  Let the fools be, they say; the opiate character of their pursuits will render them harmless in time.  But the problem, I contend, is not such a simple one.  These thinkers have all too often proved their resilient nature.  “For Zion’s sake,” they declare that they “will not be silent,” and “for Jerusalem’s sake” they “will not be quiet.”  They declare this and things of similar sentiment with their deeds as well, right up through the last snap of malcontent muscles pulled tight across the rack.  Very well then, some say – if the brutes cannot be ignored, let us crush them!  But herein we of steady and unmoving mind too often take an equally false step.

Though we hate their clamor and their unceasing attempts to rouse the nation, we cannot attack and finish them head-on as we would surely like.  By too open a persecution we risk making them Martyrs and drawing still more men down the hazardous path of their cause.  No, we cannot disregard or dismember them.  Hemlock and lions only get one so far.  The course we take must become subtle, insidious, almost meek in appearance.  It must seek the Public Good, and a very general one at that, for under such guise we may even take in a good number of their side, quite unawares.  Better to hide the fangs beneath the wool and then fleece them when the opportunity presents itself, as I’m sure my good friend Screwtape would agree.  But I get on too quickly.  

A Commentary in the Spirit of "The Screwtape Letters": Part One

Note: this work is by Caitlin M. Clancy and is the first part of a serial post.  The fictional persons of the Moralist - who may appear in later posts - and the Public Proponent, though certainly her creations, do not necessarily represent her views or opinions despite their proximity to her cranial faculties. (Though the discerning reader may quickly tell whose ideas, of the two, are closer if not occasionally identical to her own. That said, let us begin.)

“The Inherent Danger of Rationality in Society, Or:

Why Men Who Think are Bad for Us

And Why We Ought to Quash Their Kind

And be Content With Mediocrity”

Cultural Commentary offered by His Smugness The Public Proponent

            Ah, the average!  Have you ever heard such a beautiful word?  It encompasses the universe of meanings enclosed in the terms “the usual,” “the normal,” or “the typical;” it is, in a word, the mediocre.  And is this not the very Golden Mean itself?  But we have seen, in recent days, a dangerous resurgence of a sort of human being who threatens the existence of this mean and the very foundations, the broad but shallow hyphae, of our precious society.  I mean, of course, the Man who Thinks.  

            You may have had the misfortune in school to learn that man is a rational animal.  This assertion, though absurd, is in one sense right: man is indeed born with rational faculties much as he is with arms or hair or organs.  The difference, though, and where most teachers fall through the cracks, comes in determining what kind of faculties our rationality is.  Most suppose it to be like the arms – useful, necessary, healthful things to have.  What they do not suppose, and what stands much closer to the truth, is that rational faculties most nearly resemble the human appendix.  Such faculties are, therefore, unavoidably present in natural man, but though they may cause no harm if steadfastly ignored, heaven forbid they should be used.  Use, you see, leads to a terrible inflammation – to that mental appendicitis called thinking.  And if you think those two conditions very unlike, take a closer look at their similarities: both cause pain, both impair normal functions, and both can become so persistent as to move one to visit a doctor (or, as the case may be, to seek Knowledge).  But I have rambled enough now to give you a right idea of rationality’s true substance, and must turn instead to my chief subject: those individuals who presently threaten our peace and security.

             These men, these Thinkers, these Philosophers – call ‘em what you will – are dangerous precisely because they retain this natural rational state and aggravate it to alarming levels. (And what man of sense does not know that Nature is defective, not to mention old-fashioned?  It is by no means to be heeded.) They deliberately and consciously seek out means of furthering their Understanding; they inquire into matters of importance to obtain Truth, regardless of the fact that they know (they know!) that what they find may not be to their liking.  Not only do they persist in these low and deplorable activities, they also seek to educate other men to do the same[1], and in this characteristic lies their greatest danger to us.  By Education they disturb society from the inside out.  They put questions into your head – some very simple, like why is that ‘right’? – and disturb the peaceful certainty you had before.   In fact, what questions they ask are almost (almost mind you) immaterial.  The act of questioning is bad enough to excite the beginnings of cogitation (or should I say contagion?).  But questions alone do not comprise their sole ammunition.  They also stir up our tranquil mental waters by feeding us pretty lines like “seek and ye shall find,” by asserting that “all men by nature desire to know,” and by convincing us that “our hearts are restless till they rest” in a being they call God.   Their presumption is truly intolerable!

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[1] Let the reader note: learning is one thing, Education quite another.  The former should be permitted – nay, encouraged – to distract men and keep them from the latter, but care must be taken that the reverse does not become the case (see my recent article on “Schooling Sense out of the Masses”).