Caltrops - Tales of the Sword Coast





	[quote name="Noi Dau Don"][quote name="The Screwtape Letters"]One of the great, achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sign and a smile "Oh please, please...all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast". You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, "Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it". If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want. The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things "properly"—because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get good servants" but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn't mind what she eats herself but "does like to have things nice for her boy". In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years. Now your patient is his mother's son. While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony. Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the "All I want" camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really "properly" cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence—it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes—"puts him out", for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy. Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. [/quote] I am constantly reminded of this passage whenever QB discusses anything but beautiful scenery. Really, instantly, on any other subject this distressing tendency of his comes right to the forefront. MM called it "rationalization" but it's more subtle than that. QB is building an entire value system in which his choices (self-gratification, avoidance of anything he fears, objectification of other people, expertise in loathsome subjects) are as Right as MM's choices (diligence, charity, compassion, respect) are in the value systems of normal people. The trick he uses works like this: <b>Platitudinous truth:</b> It is bad to solicit prostitutes <b>Edgy rejoinder:</b> But sex is normal and natural, and having sex is something all men want to do anyway <b>Thing unambiguously awful:</b> It's horrible to abuse and brutalize women, even if they are prostitutes <b>Elision of values (<i>The QB Maneuver</i>):</b> As long as I don't abuse and brutalize prostitutes, anything else I do with them is really fine Watch for this every time he talks about how any of his awful choices aren't really awful: find the Greater Evil that he rejects on the basis of generally held values, and then watch him re-encode the Lesser Evil as a relative good on that basis even if it's still totally evil on the basis of generally held values. Bang, he's suddenly rather a decent fellow and a bit of a rebel to boot. Very much in line with the description of gluttony that Lewis provides - a combination of "the only proper steak" and "all I want is..." <font size=-2>I'm much moved by MM's constant rage on the topic of QB. It speaks well of her - all the more fitting to be my lovely bride - but I think she'll be happier when she realizes that anyone who does anything nice for or with QB more than once is literally too stupid to live. Nature is trying her level best to eliminate this threat, MM. Don't interrupt.</font>[/quote]