Sunday, August 26, 2012

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]. 





[1] Paraphrased; Adolf Hitler. 

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