Chapter 9: Love Stinks
Disclaimer: I don't own The Screwtape Letters or the characters from the Glenn Close movies.
Good morning, class.
For today's lesson, we're going to examine that insipid nonsense called love. Both the Enemy and the humans have a perverse fixation on this madness, which is made even stranger by the fact that there is no such thing as love. The whole concept is defies reason: one self caring about another as much as it cares about itself or even more so than itself. This is complete insanity. What is the first rule of Hell? One thing isn't another. The good of one cannot be the good of another for what one gains another loses. Therefore this entire concept of love falls apart.
There are several types of love, some are real, and some are illusions and fantasies of humans and the Enemy. The first is called Eros, from which we get the term erotic. This is the kind of love based on lust and appearance. This love is closely associated with "romance" and has certain advantages. In the first place, you will find that this love is the breeding ground for the insipid concept the humans call "love at first sight." This notion has served us well over the years because very few humans actually do fall in love at first sight. They usually mistake lust, excitement, and the emotional froth that is produced as real love. This is a development that can be taken advantage of. If affected by Eros, you will find your patients living in a kind of fantasy.
The rose tinted glasses of exuberant love will help you distract them from the real life difficulties that come with love. Keep them enveloped in ideas of marriage as a lifelong honeymoon, in cutesy little pet names and the enjoyment of sex. I know that being surrounded by this much happiness will be unnerving and revolting, but it will pay off. In time the bloom of Eros will wither and real life will set in. The patients will begin to notice the flaws in their partners that Eros had blinded them to. The way he laughs, the way she talks, the way he's obsessed with football, the way she's obsessed with talking about their feelings, and assorted bad habits. Once the blinders are off, direct their attention to these faults and make it the focal point of how the patient sees his or her partner. The enchantment wears off and soon the two will be disillusioned with each other. Once that happens, you will have grounds for a ruined relationship and a divorce. Eros has been one of our greatest tools in bringing the numbers up in the divorce rate and poisoning countless humans' opinions on love.
Next, we have the love called Storge. In my day, we called it "Friends First" since the humans usually started out as friends and grew closer over time. This love isn't as easily torn apart as erotic love, this kind of love usually has a strong bond built before they actually do fall in love. What's worse, they usually place a great deal of importance on commitment and trust between the partners, so your attempts at getting them to commit adultery will often be sadly ineffectual. And…
Why Boilpaste, thank you for joining us. And look, you're only five minutes late. I sincerely hope you didn't have to miss anything too important to attend my class. Well, after class you can tell me all about it while you scrub the floor, clean the desktops, wash the windows, and write, "I will not be late for class" six hundred sixty six times on the black board.
Now, where was I? Oh yes. One advantage that we can capitalize on in storgic love is that most humans have a preconceived idea of love in their minds, usually painted with Eros as we have taught them. Make them expect a whirlwind romance like they have in those cheap romance novels. Therefore, do all you can to quell passion in the couple and let familiarity breed contempt. Let them become fixed on each other's faults, until that is all they can see when they look at them. Also, since these romances start as friendships, then use the tactics that are most effective in ruining friendships. Let one of them do something stupid and make their partner angry and let a long fight start.
There are types of "love" that are tailored to suit our cause, mostly because they don't involve actual love. Mania, for starters, has given us some exquisite cases. This is not actually love, but obsession and desire. Humans afflicted with Mania usually have low opinions of themselves, and their relationships are used as reinforcement of their personal value. These patients are prone to be very possessive of their partners, and can view children or friends as competition for their partner's affection. I've known mothers and fathers who treat their children horribly because they were jealous of the amount of attention their lovers paid them. Manic lovers are deathly afraid to lose them and thus their self-esteem. This means they may not be as prone to cheat on their lovers because they fear losing them, but some will do it if they are certain they won't get caught.
They feel they need their lover and will die without them, so you can expect a great deal of obsession, jealousy, possessiveness, fear and insatiability. The pure selfishness is disguised by the manic lover's seemingly endless devotion to their partner. In reality, this devotion is largely just for show and to keep the partner from seeing their true intentions. They will try and present it as if it's all about the partner, when really they want it to be "look how devoted I am to you, look how great I am to you." You see? This is the grand diabolical unselfishness; this is a selfish person disguising their selfishness with seemingly charitable activity. This is emotional blackmail; since they appear to always think of the other, the partner will always seem to be the bad guy if he or she does not capitulate to the other's wishes. The best part about Mania is that it is the breeding ground for stalkers and serial killers. One of Cankergaunt's former patients was a manic lover. Her name was Alex Forrest. Oh, she was a very entertaining subject.
Next, there's my personal favorite, Ludus. This is love as it should be, completely about pleasure, satisfaction and none of that dismal garbage about love or commitment or affection. The humans affected by Ludus are promiscuous and playful lovers, or as the humans call them, "slutty" or "skanky" lovers. The quality of their relationships is usually low, but the quantity of relationships is through the roof. They usually go from relationship to relationship and don't take long-term issues into account. They're often just concerned with "getting laid" and having fun. To these humans, sex is an itch to be scratched, and that's exactly the way we want them to view it. If your patient turns out to be a ludic lover, keep it out of their heads that when they have sex, they are taking part in a transcendental experience made for the consecration of love, creation of life and the combining of souls, or risk leaving a foothold on their sexuality vulnerable.
Ludic lovers' views on sex can also be that it is a form of conquest. Some alpha male idiot wanting to have the most popular girl in school to help his reputation, or some conniving tramp seducing some pathetic guy to mess with him. This is exactly what sex might have been if the Enemy hadn't designed it; just another way for a strong being to prey on and exploit a weaker. The best part is these liaisons usually leave the other partner hurt and miserable while the ludic lover moves on to their next conquest. When I was in the field I saw countless hearts broken by this kind of human. In fact, I was in a double team offensive on two French aristocrats back in the 1700's. I was assigned to the Marquise de Merteuil and my partner Rancyst was assigned to the Vicomte de Valmont. Oh class, my time on that assignment was some of the most fun in my career! They may have been humans, but those two had style! So arrogant, so lustful, so cruel, so deceitful, so at ease with playing with other's emotions. They would've made fine devils. When the assignment ended, we left behind a trail of lies, fornication, betrayal, broken hearts and ruined lives and we had both ensnared our patients.
And finally, the worst love of all: the love known as Agape or Caritas. This is the kind of love most hostile to our organization. This is described as selfless love, loving kindness to others with out thought of what one may get in return. This love is supposedly unconditional and those afflicted with it are self-sacrificing and charitable. I feel so stupid just saying it. Even in the most obscene cases of this disease called love, there has to be some selfishness! The people involved have to be making profit off the other, either with sex or money or something, otherwise, what's the point? This type of love is the most confounding because this is the kind of love that the Enemy Himself is so fond of peddling. He goes so far as to say that He is this impossible love! This is an outrageous statement and an obvious lie, of course.
As unbelievable as the concept of love is, this brand of love defies reason. It's baffled the research department for millennia, and we're still no closer to determining what the Enemy's really hiding behind this smoke screen love. It's obvious that this impossible love conceals His true motive for creating the humans and going so far as to become one and die for them. We're hoping that the souls we damn will help with the research, maybe if we get enough and examine them closely enough, we'll find out what the secret He's kept from us is. But remember what the best method of deception is. As you learned in Impergarten, you must mix a little truth in with the lie to make it more convincing. It seems to me that there has to be some truth in the Enemy's claim to love the human vermin.
Naturally, I don't mean He actually means all these claptrap about really caring about them, but He might feel a certain level of affection for them. However, affection does not denote that the person cares about another to the unfeasible degree of His so-called love. I've known demons that were fond of one another, but when it came right down to it, they chose themselves above their associates. The attachment and camaraderie is fleeting, as is it with all things. The reason such feelings develop is because someone or something has an ability or property that one enjoys or can profit from and a feeling of familiarity and control. This is the only way that one can truly say they love something. When the phrase, "I love you", means, "I enjoy you", then and only then, does the statement have any merit. So when a human who enjoys chocolate says, "I love chocolate", that human is experiencing the only real kind of love. Anything else is just the Enemy's pipedream.
While working with your patients, be sure include the tactic of trying to separate sex and love in their minds. Make them think that sex is as casual an activity as a handshake. In the past we've used the opposite tactic; we made them think that sex was something sinful to be ashamed of. We still do this, but on a larger scale we've shifted to making sex too common. In the one case, we make them think a normal biological occurrence that the Enemy created is evil; in the other case, we make them see it's a normal biological occurrence but without the affections and circumstances that the Enemy wants to accompany it. We want them to see sex as an itch to be scratched, and we've so expertly sold this idea that there are humans that actually refer to it as an itch to be scratched. They've also been known to call it "shagging", "bumping uglies", "boinking", "banging", "getting laid" and "scoring".
Human vernacular, oy. Well, actually, human slang helps a lot with these cases. They view old terms like "making love" and "becoming one flesh" as Puritanical stupidity; even "having sex" seems too fancy sounding to some of these vermin. They prefer to use crude labels like "screwing" or "fucking" to make it sound like it's no big deal. Which is exactly the kind of attitude we want. It's an old technique of deception where we get them to think that changing what something is called somehow changes its condition. It's the old jargon method; as long as they use a euphemism and don't call it what it really is, they can live in denial of what they're really doing. "I'm not lying, I was embellishing." "I didn't kill anyone, I neutralized him." So, as long as you can keep humans "screwing" instead of "having sex" or, Hell forbid, "making love", you have them right where you want them.
Whenever a human is affected by love, appearance plays a big part of it. It's natural that humans are attracted to beauty, but what you must do is try to get their focus only on appearances. Blind them to whether the object of their lust is smart, stupid, funny, boring, selfish, giving or anything else besides outwardly appealing. You may have an advantage with this if the patient you're assigned to is already shallow and superficial, then all you have to do is maintain the course. For the past century, we've fed mortals on the magazines and films showing fake sex objects. From the magazines with women in bikinis to the ones with men with impossibly huge muscles, we've given them a highly erotic and unrealistic target for their affections.
The models and actors in these instances are all an illusion, just like any monster make up or fake blood in a horror movie. Before they're ever photographed they're propped up in the clothes, given make up and air brushing to hide any blemishes or imperfections and then they're put under very specific lighting, photographed in very specific angles and sometimes they even use computers to alter the photos even more. So in fact, more often than not, the humans who look at these pictures or movies aren't looking at the real thing, they're looking at a distorted image.
We've used these images on the females too, they see them and feel less attractive by comparison. This is a perfect trap because they're holding themselves up to an unrealistic and imaginary standard. Nobody actually looks like these pictures, but we get them pressured to try and be as close as possible. I've seen countless women in the field try to recreate themselves to be more attractive. They desperately resist age and hide their imperfections in a futile attempt to be like the imaginary girls in Playboy. This attack on their self-esteem has led to many women who turn to plastic surgery to try to attain this ageless fraudulent beauty. And it's led even more to anorexia. I love seeing these females slowly killing themselves to live up to the standard we've set for them.
On the flip side we've presented women with some unrealistic idealized versions of men. The females are also susceptible to physical appearance, but they usually place more importance on a man's emotional availability. One model is known as the Prince Charming, named after those stupid fairytales. Some toned, fit man who is intelligent, emotionally available, and totally devoted to her. Some noble, romantic hero who wants nothing more than to gaze into her eyes and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. He takes her exciting places and gives her expensive gifts endlessly. Stop laughing! I know it's comical but it works. Just as we delude men with visually stimulating simulations, we trick women with emotional simulations. That's the main difference between the prescribed sexual temptations to each gender. Compared to this Prince Charming, any man will always fall short. The reality of men who don't take them out every night, burp, fart, are emotionally complicated, watch too much TV will leave women searching for this ideal man and blind them from the man's decent personal qualities. It's relatively easy to reinforce the Prince Charming stereotype, just keep your patient on a steady diet of soap operas, romance novels and Disney movies.
Another very profitable male model is the Bad Boy. This figure is the male who is always in trouble. He's abrasive, rebellious, unpredictable and can be counted on for trouble. This is based on the woman's love of excitement. These subjects attract women who like the forbidden. This man is trouble and they want a taste of danger; what they don't know is that they may end up getting more than a taste. These men usually are unable to be intimate or commit to them, so what is it that keeps them together? In these relationships, the female usually is the one doing all the work, usually because of the level of the woman's self esteem. For example, if the woman has been hurt in the past, especially if they were abused as children, you can get her to repeat the same mistakes over and over because that's the only way they know how. Another reason is that they want drama in their relationships, they may be cheated on or lied to, but they'll never be bored. And there's this delusional rescue fantasy they dream up; the idea that they can reach these poor lost boys and rehabilitate them, change them into the perfect boyfriend/husband. Any of these tactics can be useful in trapping women in abusive relationships.
If you effectively applied, these tactics will yield results that will have an exquisite effect on the patient's soul. The scars left from a ruined relationship or marriage can fester for the rest of their lives and spoil their hopes for future happiness. Once impaired, their ability to love and be loved can leave the door open for bitterness, callousness, and hate. Once this is established we can keep them from connecting with other people, and eventually, if all goes well, we can keep them from connecting with the Enemy. Be vigilant in these cases, the Enemy often swoops in when the pests are emotionally vulnerable. If He shows up, keep them unsusceptible to His propaganda. Pick at the scabs of their hurting hearts, don't let them listen to Him and start to heal. Immerse them in their own pain, until they can't hear the promises of help over their own screams and tears. You don't always need to use promises of pleasure to keep them from the Enemy, sometimes all you need is to keep them in pain until they can't see anything beyond their hurt. Pain causes all beings to spontaneously become focused on themselves. If they are hurt in any way, be it a stubbed toe, a cut hand or a toothache, their attention is immediately drawn to their own pain. And a broken heart? Ooh, it is among the sweetest of all pain.
Now, you will write an essay no less than 20,000 words long explaining the logical impossibility of the Enemy's disinterested love and how you would apply the techniques to a human in the field. You will still be using my special paper so remember to use proper grammar. Oh, and there's something else I should point out. Once or twice in the past, a student has written an essay on this subject and concluded that the Enemy's claim to love the humans might in fact hold water. I trust that I don't need to worry about any of you falling into such sacrilegious madness. If you did… well, I'd hate to see your bright futures end in the cafeteria.
Class dismissed.
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