Wumpick and the Abovitists

My dear Wumpick,

I do wish you would stick to your time table. The fact is that none of my advice will do you any good if you do not send in your reports promptly. You complain in your most recent report that my advice on the Slews "didn't apply" to your patient, because your patient was "an intellectual"!

My dear, dear, dear Wumpick. An intellectual? In the first place, if she thinks that, you had better have told me so right at the beginning. For any human being, male or female, to claim to be "an intellectual" is usually the sign of a very healthy kind of vanity that ought by all means to be encouraged. But somehow I doubt that that is what you mean; vanity of that obvious sort would but out of keeping with the rest of your patient's dossier—or with as much of it as you have made me familiar. So I suppose that when you call your patient "an intellectual" what you mean is that you think she is one. Don't you know that the very term "intellectual" is something that we invented? and like all words that we invent, at best a distortion of meaning and at worst a lie?

I suppose that what you really mean is that your patient is either more intelligent or better educated than most young women of her age and time; possibly she is both. That is very nice for her, but it can't be doing us any good unless you have been using as a temptation. Of course, you haven't done that; you only bring it up now as an excuse to dodge the fact that you have failed to take ANY of the excellent advice that I have given you so far. And don't think that you can shift the blame for your failure to make progress onto me. You are a young tempter, but even in the few short eons of your foolish existence you must have learned that you cannot get away with games like that.

There is no denying that your patient's intellectualism can present difficulties if you are trying to make her into some version of a Slew; and of course, it spoils your chances of keeping the wool so over her eyes that she does not recognize the difference between a Slew and an MFM. However, it does put her in an awkward position. Both the Slew and the MFM are exaggerations of what a woman really should be. The MFM exaggerates the strength and resiliency that are (or were, before Our Father Below's first victory) natural to the female sex; the Slew exaggerates the sweetness and submissiveness. Now your woman, being an intelligent woman, may very well recognize that both those models, being exaggerations, are quite frankly caricatures unworthy of her interest, much less of her imitation. Do not by any means suggest such a thought, but if it arises then by all means seize the moment! As soon any human realizes that he or she is above this or that human quarrel, we have a marvelous opportunity to encourage pride. We tried this, you may remember, with the human whose critique of sectarianism led to the infamous phrase "Mere Christianity;" he regrettably slipped through our fingers, but legions of his followers, less cautious and less humble, are even now treading the gentle path to hell, heads held high on the assumption that their indifferentism makes them better than their fellow men who CARE about this or that vestment, fast, or method of prayer. We have also had great success among Christian humans who are quite rightly dismayed by their own political infighting, and have resorted to making it seem unchristian to champion the ideology or even, sometimes, the policies of either Right or Left! It is of course, possible that at any given time both political movements may be equally unchristian; but any human who considers the matter carefully will realize the inherent improbability of there always being a COMPLETE parity between them. Our job, as usual, is to keep them from considering the matter at all.

The game works like this. When a man is young, we set him on fire with a love for one ideology—it may be his parents', or it may be one chosen in rebellion against his parents; it matters little for our long-term purposes (though of course, filial rebellion is a minor sin, and pleasurable to us in its own way). It also matters very little how "true"—that is, how close to the Enemy's will and intentions—the ideology is; what matters is to get the patient passionately attached to it. If we can, we so enmesh him in his favorite ideology that he never looks back; and if he experiences a spiritual renewal of any kind, we see that he immediately either ties it to his ideology, or—just as good—jumps to the opposing ideology at once, and embraces it as the correct political and/or social application of his new-found faith.

This is a common pattern, and it worked well for us until that Mere Christian found it out and publicized it. Now, however, the renewed patient, rather than attending to his ideology of choice or sacrificing it sanctimoniously, is quite as likely to throw up his hands and raise his eyes to heaven and confess humbly that all ideologies are shameful things and should be eschewed by men of good will. He becomes an Abovitist. You will notice, of course, that this is not what the original Mere Christian did; he was, if anything, rather inordinately attached to his own preferences in terms of form of religious worship, and considered that humans should only be careful about insisting on their (non-doctrinal) positions out of humility, charity, and a respect for truth. But it is not difficult to get his readers to overlook this fact, and to use the stick of Christianity as a way of beating out all opposition to particular ideas. This has excellent results: it makes the men who are being beaten less willing to debate on undecided matters, which means humans in general are less likely to find out the truth about things (since most of them learn by a process of dialectic anyway, when they are not being indoctrinated); and it makes the men who are doing the beating Proud. It is all the more delicious when we can get a Proud Abovitist to be hypocritical as well: when we can get him, that is, to use his Abovitism to criticize only or mostly those whose ideologies he secretly (unbeknownst even to himself) dislikes. He is then not only a Proud Abovitist, but also a Fake and False Abovitist.

What application has all this to your patient? Just this: the very same technique that we use in general for ideologies can be applied here. If she is too clever to adopt some form of MFMism or Slewism, then try to get her to delight in her Abovitism. Especially make her delight in it if she has a secret hankering after either Girlishness or Tomboyism. If you cannot make her join the fight, make sure than she despises both sides.

Your affectionate uncle,

Slangrine