Temptation 101

My Dear Dissonance,

I see from reports that your patient has given up literature. She tells herself it is because her job is so filled with reading and writing that she needs a break at home. Excellent! In college she shunned celebrity magazines but now she grabs them in the checkout line. One in particular she justifies because of the intellectual writers and artistic photographs.

I would suggest you also get her hooked on what has come to be called house porn. I know from previous patients of my own that women, even unmarried women like your patient, fantasize about Bergere chairs, sofas, hardwood floors and proper paint colors in the same way men lose themselves in exposed female body parts. They will wake up in the middle of the night obsessed about finding the perfect tufted ottoman or the “it” shade of white and waste time at work trolling for sales online so that her home is an allegedly perfect reflection of the inner self, filled with an eclectic mix of ‘authentic’ pieces. Rising home value always help this vice, but it can be exploited regardless of economic situation. Note the proliferation of ‘cheap and chic’ publications.

You may also want to try a type of publication known by its founder being on every cover. Each issue purports to show women how to become their best selves, but its effect is the opposite. It has been quite useful in making millions of women obsessed with buying only certain brands of food and clothes and reading only certain books because they are the ‘best.’ If you haven’t already found out, groupthink is immeasurably helpful to Our Father.

I am very pleased you have stopped trying to make your patient study other religions. Even though her research may enamor her of many useful ideas and rituals  – fatalism, self-redemption, odd diet and exercise regimens and various social justice causes, they will make her think about meaning, and ultimately, truth.

We want her to think about trivia. That means filling her brain with noise. Let her think she is just relaxing when in reality reading each day’s gossip columns or watching the latest reality TV show sucks her ability to choose between right and wrong.

Let her become obsessed with lists and trends. And let her judge people not by their selves, but by their conformity to current ideals. Good and bad should be banned from her vocabulary.  They need to be replaced with malleable adjectives: modern, progressive, historical, powerful, witty, smart, rich and sincere are a few that come to mind.

Reading – or at least quiet reflective reading of long form literature — undermines our work. We do not want her reflecting on human nature, but to be overwhelmed in NOW. Your task is to focus her attention on the stream of updates on her social networks, the beeping of her inbox and the bad behavior of people she will never meet. Let her think that is life.

You have to remember that humans are not fully celestial beings. They are terrestrial and get caught up in the most ordinary things. Your patient, for example, could probably be pushed to spend 45 minutes in the drugstore just choosing a face wash.

I once had an agnostic patient, a successful Fortune 500 corporate head and Ayn Rand devotee, who was in the airport waiting for a plane when she started thinking about how there were no children in “Atlas Shrugged.” She admired the novel – one the most consistently top selling books of all time since it was published in 1957– because the heroine achieved success solely because of her own work ethic and willpower – traits she prized in herself. The lack of children made her think about her own childhood and how her mother must have sacrificed hours changing diapers and feeding her and how it’s impossible to rise completely on one’s own abilities. The Enemy immediately unearthed memories of her mother cooking, reading to her, cleaning, and driving her to early morning piano lessons. She was about to call her mother when I intervened and suggested she would have just enough time to write and send a memo to her work team before boarding. She hadn’t talked to her mother in quite a long time and thought that she would save the call for when she really had time to talk. Of course, that never happened. Her mother died before they ever had a chance to “catch up for real.”

Do you understand? Thanks to skills developed and handed down over the centuries, we have been able to successfully intervene to stop humans from thinking about what is real by putting what is immediate before them.

Keep forcing the day to day on them and never bring up art or science – at least real sciences — as a guard against Christianity. They will only make her think about human potential and the meaning of life. Social sciences like economics, psychology and political science, on the other hand, are actually very helpful in diverting their attention from the Enemy. They immediately distract humans from thinking about what is real into mulling what is fashionable. Take climate change, for example. Environmentalism has become a religion unto itself – much to our benefit, as being a good steward, something we despise, is now much less important than branding oneself as “green” by shopping at certain stores, buying certain products and voting a certain way. Green believers are so strident that even mentioning science that contradicts established beliefs about the role humans play in affecting the atmosphere is cause for excommunication among the intelligentsia. Of course, people like former Vice President Al Gore who made hundreds of millions selling his business to Big Oil do nothing to help our cause as hypocrisy at such a grand scale can shock humans into thinking for themselves. But it is in our best interest to promote a worldview where humans control everything and can fix everything, as it puts them above God and, as you know, pride is one of the best sins from our point of view.

Depending on your patient’s weaknesses, you could forever keep her trying to keep up with the latest theories to fit in the crowd she admires.

Don’t get overwhelmed. You exist only to confuse, not to guide.

Your affectionate aunt,

Pandemonium