Ah yes, didn't read that far into it yet, but of course an explanation of the author about his own intentions is always a good place to start for answers ;)

Interesting link to the Screwtape Letters. I never heard of that before, so I'll be sure to check that out. Thanks for the tip!

C. S. Lewis writes along similar lines in The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, two very different books, but both of which of I'd credit as changing my life. The common theme in both is that to be damned is not to sin greatly, but to become comfortable with the abandonment of good.

Although I'm not as religious as I used to be, I still highly regard 'The Screwtape Letters'. CS Lewis is an excellent writer.

A great place to look for a Mormon view on what Zion will be like, at least in principle, is a book called The Enoch Letters written by Neal Maxwell, a LDS apostle. It is written in the style of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It a quick read and I found it to be quite interesting.

I'm not religious at all and still loved 'The Screwtape Letters'. I recently found myself reminded of TSL while watching 'The Good Place'. It's not of nearly the same depth as TSL but plays with some of the same concepts.

"Equality" is from 1943; no specific date was given for the other. Lewis, perhaps best remembered for "The Chronicles of Narnia", "The Screwtape Letters", and his space trilogy, died in 1963.

"The Screwtape Letters" by CS Lewis is another book written from the similar point of view. Here the tricks are presented by an older demon to a younger one.

That’s how Andy Weir did The Martian. It’s also how Isaac Asimov wrote the first two or three Foundation novels.

The Screwtape Letters (C. S. Lewis) were done that way.

Lots of prior art. Also, it makes the books easier to read.

For context, the exerpt is from the book The Screwtape Letters. A demon named Screwtape mentors an inexperienced demon in how to torment humans (and drag them down to Hell): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters

The book is in the public domain.

No, "God" will never be "simpler" unless you also redefine the term into something utterly incompatible with most major religions. The instant you drop a god into the mix you're presented with far more questions, and "he works in mysterious ways" is not an answer.

___

Despite it's explicitly Christian focus, I like The Screwtape Letters as a kind of cognitive psychology fable, and this part seems apropos:

> I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us [devils], (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy [God]. [...] If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits”—then the end of the war will be in sight.

... If you're worshipping a property of physics you're doing it wrong. :)

For the demon's point of view, I guess I'll have to reread The Screwtape Letters.

> > they never want what they can't get.

> Also they make people like that, they kill their ambition through breeding and mental control.

I admit they're more advanced than we have been, but how different is "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard." from camels and needle eyes?

It may be more efficient for alphas to wear grey and deltas to wear khaki, but we can still trivially recognise the difference between the likely ambitions of the people depicted in

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/78/71/0278718a44733e6a05c5...

and

https://scontent.fqls1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/88175441_110...

thanks to thousands of repetitions[1] of our lessons in childhood...

The US may be finer-grained than the BNW: instead of having only 5 castes α β γ etc. they use nine-digit post codes to indicate their socioeconomic status. (then again, there was "on Wednesdays we wear pink.")

Mond: "Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy."

[1] I was once reading a description of big community feasts in pakistan, in which it was described that the local landlords don't dress any differently from their tenants, but visiting elite do dress fancy, to gain admission to the VIP tent. It sounded very similar to the dress code of a Midland TX BBQ.

"I'm glad I'm a Beta", sung in yank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyqUuXrXkw

I think people in this thread are talking past each other. I wanted to clarify the other side of the debate:

Nothing better illustrates the thar mentality better than the fury directed by Islamic militants against Danish and Norwegian cartoons of Mohammed. Sacrilegious art in other cultures can offend and get people angry but the lunatic response of radical Islamists is in a class by itself. It's the shrieking, out of control petulance of a three-year old throwing a tantrum. People infected with this attitude will be utterly incapable of recognizing wrongdoing by their own society, utterly incapable of taking criticism or recognizing the need for correction. This is remarkably close to the image of Hell painted by C. S. Lewis in his books Perelandra and The Screwtape Letters: a paralyzing self-absorption that imprisons the individual in hate and impotent rage while simultaneously blinding him to any possibility of escape.

This doesn't seem like a question of legal systems.

I agree; furthermore, I think the author skewed Franzen's take to be more cynical than it was:

I imagine the side of David that advocated going the Kurt Cobain route speaking in the seductively reasonable voice of the devil in “The Screwtape Letters,” which was one of David’s favorite books, and pointing out that death by his own hand would simultaneously satisfy his loathsome hunger for career advantage and, because it would represent a capitulation to the side of himself that his embattled better side perceived as evil, further confirm the justice of his death sentence.

This is not to say that he spent his last months and weeks in lively intellectual conversation with himself, à la Screwtape or the Grand Inquisitor. He was so sick, toward the end, that every new waking thought of his, on whatever subject, immediately corkscrewed into the same conviction of his worthlessness, causing him continual dread and pain.

Franzen's take, IMO, was less suicide as final career move and more suicide as final act of self-loathing and rejection of last remnants of positivity.

When people around you told you that you were murdering and it took 8 minutes to kill your restrained victim 3 minutes of which the victim was unresponsive there is no plausible scenario in which you can claim that you didn't know you were killing him.

There is no cause to review how he was trained or how his actions comport with said training except to prevent it from happening again. There is no scenario which allows you to knowingly cause the death of your fellow citizen without just cause. A police officer is "a normal person" the same laws that apply to me apply to thee. If those whose job it is to enforce the law treat another officer differently it is corruption and cowardice. Cowardice is a character flaw not a justification.

“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Also check out The Screwtape Letters. Lots of commentary about the tedium of pleasure-seeking.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankel, it is his experience of how he managed to survive the concentration camps.

Book of Mormon

The Stormlight Archive series (Way of Kings, Words of Radience, Oathbringer) - Brandon Sanderson, I've heard it compared to the Kingkiller Chronicles in terms of depth, intricacies and overall masterfully executed plot but Sanderson is also one of the best authors at making characters real and captivating that I've ever met.

Mistborn Series (The Final Empire, Well of Ascension, Hero of Ages) by the same author as The Stormlight Archives and for the same reasons.

The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis, even if you aren't religious it has helped me see so much clearly the tactics and obstacles that prevent me from being the person I want to be.

I've read quite a few more books more often but these are the books that I have reread multiple times because they have changed who I am and helped me recognize that each time I fall I can rise again a better man.

"The Screwtape Letters", by C.S. Lewis

In the middle of "Roughing It" by Mark Twain now.

Reading this, a certain passage from The Screwtape Letters popped into my head -- rather incompletely, so I found the passage and bring it here.

"The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—’sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt...."