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screwtape love

screwtape

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To mess things up, to corrupt, to be devilish.
  • verb slang, Internet To bump a particularly old topic thread on the internet or in an electronic forum, by posting an ironic or humorous reply to a previous message.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See the C. S. Lewis book, The Screwtape Letters, from the compound of screw +‎ tape. The internet sense is thought to have originated on the internet Flintstones forum, Pebblescrap.

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  • whichbe commented on the word screwtape

    "We produce a sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun–-the finely graded differences that run from 'my boots' through 'my dog', 'my servant', 'my wife', 'my father', 'my master', and 'my country' to 'my God'. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of 'my boots', the 'my' of ownership."

    -----

    "I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism, and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. 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 (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the enemy. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful.

    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. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you."

    The Screwtape Letters

    January 1, 2009