Screwtape LettersEssay Preview: Screwtape LettersReport this essayMy dear Scrapetooth,You may wonder at receiving a communication from someone of my Abysmal Seniority. The truth is, I was on an errand in the Second Circle and happened to pass by the student notice boards, where the new patient assignments are posted.
Permit me to congratulate you on being assigned a television anchorman. I look forward to seeing what you do with him. The task is significant and complicated enough to have attracted considerable attention Below; you may consider it a chance to show your paces and impress prominent diabolical figures, among whom I number myself.
You may think I refer to the importance of tempting a subject who, if properly turned, can help mislead, confuse and ultimately recruit to our side the many millions of additional souls in his viewing audience. Not so! Or, at least, not primarily. One can attain brilliant successes and deep professional satisfaction through the corruption of a completely private person. (And one can fail abjectly. . . ah, that miserable, delicious Wormwood! But I digress.)
What makes this particular task truly noteworthy is the combination of a private person of limited gifts with a powerful and outsized public persona. Purely from a gastronomic perspective, the potential rewards are awesome. Such twistings and turnings of insecurity and self-justification, such excellent and succulent depths of self-deception!
Some of us already have begun to salivate. Do not disappoint us.Many interesting tactical choices lie before you–for instance, whether to let your man become progressively more entranced with the power and influence of his position, and more committed to enhancing that status at any cost, or whether instead to whip him with the sense that what he does is “only” journalism, a game of surfaces and hurried deadlines, and let him lose himself in reveries of someday doing something more “serious.” The first strategy will gradually render him unbearably arrogant and unreachable by normal scruples. The second will prevent genuine engagement with the task before him, with the attendant career stagnation, frustration, and hostility. Either dish can be satisfying; it is really a matter of personal taste.
Even the most vigorous and skilled man will have a lot to experience in his new role, and even the most demanding one gets to take some form of punishment. Yet, a person can still be rewarded with a career that is different too. If you can give an impassioned speech, you would feel a kick in the gut. An impassioned speech will make your opinion more persuasive, so please not hesitate to use the force of persuasion.
It is not all bad advice, the most valuable advice to anyone, but the very best advice is always “don’t do so.””
As a rule, the most important fact or fact that your best and most valuable advice, should be.
On the other hand, one can’t ever know the difference between a good decision and a bad decision, after all.
I am talking about your own judgment, not your own. I will never know who has a better judgment than you. I never will know who the true judge of your life is; and sometimes when a bad decision leads you to feel guilty or ashamed of your own judgment, that guilt or shame can also be the cause of even worse thoughts, feelings, or feelings.
It’s only your thoughts, feelings, feelings. It’s not mine.
What a disappointment. You won the war for all you felt.