Ask Thugfang... Or maybe not?

Well! This is a bit of development.It appears that the Obfuscator replied to Thugfang's advice column on confession. After doing a little digging, it appears that Thugfang actually replied to the Obfuscator's comment. Of course he would. Someone that arrogant couldn't resist. Naturally he wouldn't reply in his regular column, but I managed to get my hands on the correspondence and am sharing it with you, because I think the question was quite good and really did see something the old devil missed. Might have been wiser not to point it out, though. So here it is, the correspondence of the unfortunate Obfuscator.


Dear Master Thugfang, Your well thought out tricks and traps will definitely be reread over the next while. There is much there to be applied with my Catholic patient, and I am beginning immediately. I am also looking forward to your additional column on post-confesson attacks.

However, through analyzing my patient before and after he goes to confession I have begun to realize why I have been having difficulty. It is due to the one question that you touched on briefly at the beginning of you letter, "How does confession work?" As you said, it is total nonsense to us, completely irrational. Yet, this man believes that it is powerful! So, would it not be better to show him how ineffective confession actually is? Why could we not attack the sacrament itself? I realize that the confessional is a no fly zone we cannot access. However, we could attack his faith in confession indirectly, by playing on his fears that he is revealing himself in a way that makes him vulnerable! Pride is the downfall of many men, as you yourself mentioned, so why don't we help him to realize that he is telling his sins to a mere man... one who might use that information for his own benefit. His pride would then guide him away from saying anything that would make him appear lesser or weak, for no man wishes to be judged by another. I will be considering all these issues critically as I continue to seriously practice your advice.

Sincerely, the Obfuscator



My Dearest, Darling Obfuscator,

So wise we are, suddenly! So perspicacious! You grasp things so quickly and even come to conclusions the master had not reached! Well, a gold star for the star pupil.

Certainly, if you can attack the patient's awareness of the priest's humanity, by all means do so. I have known it to work, but not, usually, in a patient with a well established habit of confessing. That sort of thing is better suited to the lapsed Catholic who is half-considering going back to the Church. That's when you want to trot out a parade of priest scandal stories and bad jokes about altar boys and confessions. Better still if he knew a priest who was an alcoholic, or a glutton, or even simply a bore. Anything to render ludicrous (in his mind as it is in ours) the idea that the Enemy could possibly use such a weak, pathetic sinner to affect His work. Even a cursory reading of the gospels would convince the dullest human that not only is that not unusual, it is precisely the Enemy's usual mode of operation, but most humans don't read the gospels. That is where you make mileage on the priest's sins.

In the case of a patient who has been confessing regularly for years, particularly if he confesses to several priests, his faith is in the sacrament, not the priest. As you pointed out, he believes the sacrament is powerful, and that is why he goes. He probably doesn't seriously attach that power to the priest himself.

On the other claw, if you do know anything about the priest, it wouldn't hurt to ensure the patient becomes aware of it. The juicier the better. What if the priest doesn't have any serious faults? Well, you're a demon, aren't you? Gossip, suspicion and lies are as good as a conviction in your patient's culture. Maybe he will stop going to confession altogether, or maybe he will simply decide to quit going to that priest. Either way, the distrust is certainly worth it, if you can make it happen.

Another thought. I once got a patient to stop going to confession to her regular confessor, who was a very wise and holy man, because I convinced her that every time he preached a homily on gossip he was thinking about her latest confession. I had forgotten that little anecdote. One of my more humorous escapades, if I do say so. In fact, the truth of the matter was that that abominable little prig spent so many hours in the confessional per week he was guaranteed to hear every sin in the book by four-o-clock wednesday afternoon. Make fun of her? Ha! He couldn't for the life of him remember which parishoner had told him what sins, except for one or two of the more colorful local characters. I strongly suspect he had heard a murder confessed once or twice (a few of my colleagues were assigned to local gang members) but given the fate of the priest's handler, I doubt he ever broke the seal of the confessional.

Which reminds me, I really ought to look you up some time. I have taken a special interest in your career, and we might be meeting far sooner than you ever expected.

Cheers!

Thugfang

Ask Thugfang: The Games

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

Dear Master Thugfang, My patient is a single worker in his early twenties. I had been handling him nicely with the World category of temptations. He was quite the party animal, strip clubs, alcohol, casual drug use, fornication, social lying, gossip, everything, a really textbook case. Things were going along nicely until he suddenly stopped all of that. One of his friends introduced him to online gaming and now that’s all he does every waking minute he’s not at work. Should I be worried about this new development? Or is it just a phase? Yours Truly, Worldly Wise.

My Dear Worldly Wise,

This is a new development, of course, not only in terms of your patient’s personal history, but also in terms of our campaign in general. The computer game, as such, is a new weapon, but that is still no excuse for your ignorance. Do you have any idea how much research we’ve invested in this subject? Have you read even a single one of the scholarly articles written about it recently, or have you been wasting our time writing overly wordy and transparently self-congratulatory letters to diabolical periodicals? And in what possible way is this in my area of expertise? I am a Master of Defense Against the White Arts. Petty questions like this are so far beneath my notice, they are insulting.

Worried? Why in the name of Hell should you be worried? You, and all those devils like you, think so shallowly. So he isn’t committing all those sins you had been spoon feeding him for so long? No more lustful glances at that stripper up on her pole? No more boastful lies to his buddies about that girl he wanted to sleep with? No more weekend benders? Instead he is wasting his time with some harmless entertainment. The fact that you even ask if it is “just a phase” tells me that you are hoping it will pass so you can get back to the real business of shoving the world down his throat. My dear, poor, ignorant befuddled demon, never shove a temptation down a patient’s throat. They only end up throwing it up in the end. Let the darling creatures choose their own temptations. This patient has, for now, left the world. Never fear, the habits are still there, and you can call on them if the occasion ever arises. Your thought should now be absorbed in deciding how this new development is to be used.

The problem I have always had with the World, as a main line of attack, is that it is too human. That is, there is always human interaction. Of course our business in the World is to poison, twist, and stunt human interaction so that it takes place only on the shallowest levels, and is limited to exploitation and abuse. When that process is firmly established, I grant you the results are quite gratifying. However, I have seen some sad cases (not mine, but unfortunate acquaintances I used to have). You see, in the World there is constant interaction with people, and people are always other. It requires constant vigilance to ensure that the patient never sees them as people because if he did he would look for something deeper. The Enemy has a teaching that persons should give of themselves to each other and that somehow this will make them more full, instead of more empty. He calls it “relationship.” According to their doctrine, Heaven is Relationship. (You will, of course, recognize the twist on my beloved acolyte, Jean Paul’s famous saying that “Hell is other people”.)  To the Enemy and His agents, Heaven is the fulfillment of all relationships.

That dogma is, of course, heresy to us, but we use the word as shorthand for whatever-it-is-that-is-really-going-on-there. In any event “relationship” is purely the enemy’s territory. The last thing we want our human to have is a relationship. In my mind, the perverted shallow relationships of the World are really only a concession. In the end, in Hell, there will be no such thing as even the tiniest vestige of relationship. All will be turned in upon self in an eternal, crippling self-adulation and hatred. We want to begin the work as soon as possible since The Enemy created the little vermin and His calls are deep inside them and hard to eradicate. The human interactions which we must allow them for now are our concessions to this weakness in them, which we slowly wean them away from over time.

If you’ve been able to comprehend what I have so clearly explained above, then you should be able to see why I am so frustrated by your short-sighted ignorance. Don’t wait for this “phase to pass.” Use it.

Let us first establish what we do not want to have happen. Male humans will often gather together in one of their homes to play video games, often combined with beer and pizza. This we absolutely do not want. Of course we have ways of exploiting even this, but the combination of human interaction, food and drink, harmless high spirits, and the phenomenon of “fun” renders the event, on the whole, less than favorable to us. At least they aren’t coming together for virtuous pursuits, you say? True, and if that’s all I could get I would take it, but on the whole I say, when the games draw humans together at all it rather defeats their whole purpose.

Some experts on the subject advocate sex and violence in video games, and we have made great advances on those fronts. I am dubious about how much harm they really do to adult humans, but as an indicator of what the human’s real longings are they are invaluable. After all, he wouldn’t be playing at buying prostitutes and then killing them if that idea didn’t have a certain attraction in his heart. And as a part of our overall flooding of society with those two themes, it is of course only natural.

But to me the real genius of the games is isolation. Let him sit in his house alone, to play them. If he plays with people he knows online, so be it. Sometimes a little dose of interaction is better than nothing. It makes them feel like they are in relationship so it is a vaccination against the real thing. Let him spend all those longings for adventure and accomplishment on a series of ones and zeros in a computer program somewhere.

Does he use them to escape human interaction, that is the question? When the moment of truth comes, which does he choose, his game or the other person? To this end, you want to keep that moment of truth as fleeting and as low key as possible. He should not even know that it is a test with eternal repercussions when it happens. The moment of truth does not look like a messenger from the enemy with a flaming sword. Far more often it looks like a snot-nosed little human brat asking Daddy to read a book. It might look like a text message from a friend inviting him out. You, of course, can see the weight of consequence hanging on each of these choices. (At least you should be able to. From the letter you sent, however, I have my doubts.) He, almost certainly, cannot, and your business is to blind him more and more until all he can see is the image on his screen.

 Can you take the games from being part of his real world, and make them the whole world? If you can, then you have successfully illusioned him. It is excellent preparation for when they arrive down below, where never again through all eternity will any reality ever intrude itself upon their shrinking souls. The human who voluntarily chooses that while still alive is already half-way to hell. He just doesn’t know it.

The question is, my dear Worldly Wise, can you teach him that his fantasy world is more important than The Enemy’s real world? If not, then do let me know, and I will be happy to arrange for a more intimate refresher.

Cheers,

Thugfang.

Ask Thugfang: Vocational Uncertainty

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

“Dear Master Thugfang, my patient is currently discerning a vocation to the priesthood, and I fear he is tipping the wrong way. What do I do? Sincerely, Fearful in Seattle.”

My Dear Fearful,

No need for pseudonyms here, I have enough friends in the offices of the Lowerarchy to find out your number if I want to. That you are a miserable blunderer, in very great danger of the usual punishments for incompetence and carelessness, I already know. Even the fact that you use the phrase “discerning a vocation” shows you have gathered most of your information about this from your patient. I suppose you never took my lectures on Vocational Uncertainty? Or perhaps you were one of those disgusting, arrogant insects who always simpered and smirked in the back, thinking you knew better than I. Now where are you? In imminent danger of letting a soul slip into a very dangerous and poisonous position, and of course, of being appropriately re-educated.

Never fear, though, all is not lost. The very tone of your question tells me that what you really need is a new point of view on the matter of “vocations” (so called). You need the principle of “vocational uncertainty,” a humble contribution of yours truly to the vast science on the subject. Put simply, it states that we do not know whether or not any particular human has or does not have a vocation, or if he does what it might be. We know there have been cases of Him calling individual humans. The singularly unfortunate and otherwise inexplicable case of our dear old boy Saul is one such example. But by and large we simply have no evidence to suggest that The Enemy “calls” the average human. If you take what He says at face value then it follows that He does, but we know better than to listen to anything He says, don’t we? Another important point is that the humans don’t know either. The patient doesn’t know. If he did he wouldn’t be “discerning” he would be struggling to accept or running away. The patient’s priest doesn’t know, his parents don’t know, no matter what kind of “advice” they give him.

On the whole it doesn’t matter to us at all. Of course if we could find out for certain what The Enemy’s game was, we would certainly try to discourage that vocation, but we can’t so it makes no sense worrying about it. Maybe your patient is being called, maybe he isn’t. You will be the last to know.

Now that I have shown that you really know nothing, it’s obvious from your question that you regard his becoming a priest as the most undesirable outcome. Such a shallow view of things is sure to get you re-educated sooner or later. Never let the facts dominate your view of reality. Let what you want be the way you see things and with practice you can get others to see it that way also.

In reality, neither outcome is good or bad for us. Let me impress upon you the spiritual maxim you should have learned as a lowly parasite: humans are raw material. Their thoughts, their feelings, their choices, their very bodies and souls, all of these are nothing more than raw material. We can get a priest to damn himself just as easily as anyone else, and they are tastier when they get here. Really, the disturbing thing is not that he is leaning towards becoming a priest, but that he is leaning in any direction at all. Do we want him to be a priest? Do we want him to be a lay person? To us, it truly doesn’t matter. We want him to be nothing. If I could I would make sure that every one of those obscene half-breed vermin lived their entire lives as nothing, doing nothing, desiring nothing, choosing nothing. I would see all of them waste every talent, opportunity and dream fleeing endless fears, living a bland, soulless existence and finding out when all is said and done, that nothing meaningful was said, nothing worthwhile was done, and all their choices were made by us, as we shall continue to make their choices for all eternity. I would like to see all of them torn with vocational scruples, bouncing back and forth in endless, self-defeating uncertainty between what they truly want, and what their dear Aunt Tilly has so helpfully half-convinced them The Enemy wants them to do.

If he could be made to engage in a spectacular act of willful defiance that would be one thing, but since we don’t know what we are making him defy, and since the more spectacular it is, the riskier it is to us, we just want to delay. Never let him see that no choice is really a choice, but we are the ones making it. Dawdle. Muddle. Confuse. Obfuscate. Guilt, fear, hope, desire, all of these are in our favor so long as none of them lead to what we fear most; i.e. a free, whole hearted, open commitment. The Enemy wants the patient to do one of two things: either to embrace every natural desire of his heart, all those deep longings for “goodness” and “truth” and “beauty” (pardon my French, but this is no job for the squeamish!) that The Enemy has placed there. If he does this, following those images with thankfulness and the knowledge that they are images, he is really choosing The Enemy behind those images, and that suits The Enemy just fine. Or, on the other hand, he could reject all of those images and choose to search for The Enemy Himself, face to face as it were (I know, the idea fills us with disgust, but some of these humans have tried it and they are unbelievably damaging to us.) I say again, the Enemy wants the human to do one of these two things. Which one, we don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We want him to do neither. Whether he is a priest or a publican is of no concern to us, so long as he is not happy or holy as either. Whether it matters to The Enemy, we can’t say for sure, but I suspect it is not His ultimate concern.

In summary, the road he takes in the end is of less interest to us than the choice, or rather the lack of choice. Keep him stalling as long as possible. When he does make it, see that he does not make it fully or freely, if you can. A choice made through fear is far better for us in the long run than a choice made from honest desire. And finally, once he does make his choice, (or drifts into it, if you do your job right,) you can use it to maintain that same spiritual stranglehold on him. Keep nagging at him with guilt, regrets, what-ifs and doubts. Encourage him to hang around with pious friends (our kind of pious, not real piety) who will say things like, “You know, I always thought you should have been a priest.” Or “Hey, at least you never have to deal with a nagging wife or whiny kids.” The ignorance of that statement is a veritable feast.

This should be enough to get you started. If you can’t manage to make it work even with this excellent advice, well, we shall just replace you with someone who can.

Cheers,

Thugfang