Corkscrew and the Art of Sloth

My dear Slimemold:

I note with pleasure the High Command is proceeding apace in its inducement of profound spiritual torpor in the American humans. The humans themselves, though made for union with the Enemy and therefore always in search of Him, are still half ready to embrace such torpor, especially under the justification that they are "hard workers" and therefore deserve to be let off from "thinking too much" about issues of life, death, truth, falsehood and such. They can be headed off from Him by pleasures and gifts which, precisely because they are gifts of His goodness, can be palmed off by us as "good enough" and sufficient to satisfy the craving of their hearts. In teaching them to settle for such lesser goods, we can also foster in them a dim resentment at having to look further and deeper. This spiritual laziness, which their ancestors called "sloth", can now, thanks to our Propaganda Arm, be handily covered up with racing "economic indicators" which give the humans the illusion they are going somewhere at enormous velocity, even as they sag onto their couches for yet another evening of flickering video ennui. Our goal is to ensure that they do, in the end, go somewhere-just not exactly where they imagined.

This means, Slimemold, that you should indeed encourage in your patient a sense of "diligence" provided it is "diligent" in the correct way. Teach the human creature to value not good work but lucrative work. Teach it to mistake frenetic activity for real creativity and charity. Teach it, in short, to numb its lack of peace and happiness with a narcotic of hubbub about acquiring various trinkets.

This sort of thing is exhausting to humans and they find themselves in the delightful predicament of never getting enough of what they do not really want. Under the yoke of such mental exhaustion, the humans willingly confuse whatever they heard on television last night for "what I think". They pliantly succumb to that diffuse resentment against "imposing religion" we spray into the air when the Enemy sends one of his so-called "prophets" to shake them out of their slumber. And all the while they applaud their own "courage" for demanding "freedom" from some phantom political tyranny, and the "right to choose" they know not what. Our goal is a creature that simultaneously holds its "freedom of choice" as sacred and inviolate while demanding its choices never have consequences. Such careful engineering produces splendidly plump specimens for the Annual Banquet, creatures fattened on a sense of self-important Imperial Autonomy, yet incapable of an independent thought or of burning a single calorie in a single actual act on behalf of the Good.

The beauty of sloth is that it naturally gives birth to despair, the very flower of Hell. The trick to helping this flower bloom is that it does so in the dark. Hence, all choices for despair should occur where they cannot upset the creatures or make them contemplate what they are, in fact, choosing. So, for instance, abortion is, as we have carefully insisted, a consequence-free "choice" to "prevent suffering." If we let the human creatures rest long enough to think, they might begin to wonder why they should not therefore gas famine victims in Somalia or shoot Alzheimer's patients, or decapitate multiple sclerosis victims, since all these are suffering too. But, thanks to the techniques mentioned above, we have largely prevented the humans from realizing that the only real distinction between abortion and other killing is an aesthetic one: With abortion, you cannot see the victim's face.

Happily, we are laboring to spread the compassion of despair even further. For the moment, with the wonderful strides the American humans have made in privatizing violence, only a few well-trained professionals need look upon the faces of aging and disabled patients under the tender ministrations of the Medicide professionals such as Special Agent Kevorkian heroically struggled to legalize. But more exciting than this, we work toward the day when what is currently private will again be a public spectacle. To that end, a human communication network called CBS has, under our careful inspiration, broadcast an actual murder-and for the sake of making more money! These forward-thinking humans are, with our help, laboring hard to make it possible for a wider segment of the population to watch and (one fervently hopes) come to enjoy the vicarious frisson of putting weaker humans to death. Ah! It's a great day, Slimemold, when what was once forbidden as repulsive is hailed as "daring." Such a thrill is just what Our Father Below wants in humans: the itching, carnivorous hunger to fill the emptiness of sloth with the knowledge of good and evil. Especially evil.

Your affectionate Uncle,

Corkscrew