Khari’s Reviews > The Screwtape Letters > Status Update

In the age of filters and ai, this is even truer and scarier.

"We are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist-making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible."

"We have engineered a great increase in the...representation of the...nude in art...It is all a fake, of course; the figures in ...are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be...As a result we are directing the desires of men to something which does not exist."

"We now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing to and less able to bear children."

The point that got me was the idea of we think that any reason for getting married other than 'being in love' is somehow cynical. The idea of sticking together for children is cynical. That looking for an economical, intellectual, and sexual partner is somehow mercenary, instead of just going with the one that you 'love'.

It struck me because it's true. Love marriages are treated as 'better' than arranged ones.

The discussion of marriage and its associated beliefs was rather depressing, we have this view that it was 'different' back then 'easier' or 'more wholesome'.
Nope. They had the same issues we do. This book was written 80 years ago, but it talks about how we can be made to think that 'being in love' is most important, if after 20 years of marriage, we are no longer 'in love' then it must be time to end the marriage.

Well, reading this makes me realize that there really isn't anything new under the sun.

In the prior chapter, Screwtape gave an excellent precis of the idea that all people interact only through competition and through the use of other people in order to gain something for themselves. While he never used the word 'power' it was an excellent summary of Foucault...12 years before he started publishing.

Screwtape: "Fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by [God], and...experienced in [the] present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward."

Screwtape: "Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased."

{God] would rather the man though himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one.