1: Temptation
A letter from a devil on the perils of politics
My dear Junior,
As you know, our goal is to get humans into Our Father’s house by whatever means necessary. To accomplish this, we tailor our efforts to individual humans because different humans respond best to different arguments and incentives. All devils are familiar with these, and the use of such stratagems becomes downright predictable once we are familiar with our patient’s particular weaknesses. Our work here follows in the footsteps of Our Father’s first contact with humans, a devious example that continues to serve as the blueprint for this kind of work to the present day.
Broadly speaking, we first seek to influence their actions by targeting their heart and desires. Truly corrupting a human heart is a wonderful thing and an especially satisfying method of success for us when it leads to a patient’s self-destruction. But targeting desires is essentially a method of brute force, rarely enough to bypass a patient's defenses on its own. To bypass these, we must target the patient’s mind and way of thinking. Like Our Father’s work in Eden, we must convince the patient first of what they should want and second that wanting it is good. And this is where we can dream big, for cleverly devised arguments can have a great reach.
Properly spread, such arguments can poison many minds, normalize methods of bad thinking, obfuscate morality, and even weaponize ideas and beliefs within the minds of those whose hearts have been lost to the enemy. For even when their hearts are lost, we hold significant power in their minds. This power is made all the more potent by their tendency to trust themselves and those ideas and authorities that they deem safe. Once we worm our way past these firewalls and defenses, we can find great success in molding them and guiding their thinking and beliefs (and ultimately even their actions and heart). As an aside, I do sometimes wonder why the Enemy allowed this design defect. Perhaps He was afraid of giving humans too much knowledge. Perhaps He thought this weakness would contribute to their faith (at least for the ones He chooses). In any case, by it we have a foothold in the mind of our patients that Our Father has taught us how to exploit. Let us make the most of every opportunity.
The temptation of earthly power is a prime example of what is possible. It is an archetypical temptation, repeatedly warned against in the Book. Convincing humans to desire power rarely requires much effort because it appears to offer solutions to a wide range of problems. It is like money in that it is a kind of currency, a means to an end. It is easy for us to make power desirable precisely because through it we can offer promises of whatever our patient wants—whether that be security, justice, furtherance of the Enemy’s plan, or something else that they believe to be good. Don't worry if their desired goal is good or that your efforts may lead them to achieve something good. As I will discuss later, the payments we extract in return more than compensate for any good they achieve, and especially so considering that our payments apply across all humans who seek earthly power. All I will say for now is that we offer only intangible promises in exchange for insidious changes in our patients’ thinking and beliefs over time. But the central conceit, the indispensable mechanism in this lopsided and inherently deceptive deal is the notion that our patients can use earthly power for good. For by this fiction, we launder morality. Truly convince a human that they should seek earthly power to achieve good, and you will be able to convince them not only of the necessity of innumerable attendant sins but also ultimately of the goodness of such sins. Indeed, many humans will practically convince themselves.
In the name of Our Father below,
Ixodida Legion
