A slideshow accompanying a presentation given by Amanda at the School of the Prophets on November 14, 2013. Link to the website: schooloftheprophets.weebly.com
2. DESIRABLE NEW ACQUAINTANCES
o I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we
want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the
world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of
belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely
fashionable and literary communism
o He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first
only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not
really his… the first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new
pleasure as a temptation
3. DESIRABLE NEW ACQUAINTANCES
o Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him.. If he is a big
enough fool you can get him to realise the character of the friends only while they are absent; their
presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have
known many humans to live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but
actually be a different man in each of the circles he frequents.
o Failing this, there is a subtler and more entertaining method. He can be made to take a positive
pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. He can be taught to enjoy
kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possible
understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise,
to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because
he is aware of a ‘deeper’, ‘spiritual’ world within him which they cannot understand… He is the
complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all
4. GREAT LAUGHERS
• Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, Flippancy
• Joy: “You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the
eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is
usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms
producec laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real
cause. What the real cause is we do not know.
• Fun: “a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct.. It can
sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else
which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it
has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage,
contentment, and many other evils
5. GREAT LAUGHERS
• The Joke Proper: turns on sudden perception of incongruity. Humour is
for them the all-consoling and the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is
invaluable as a means of destroying shame… A thousand bawdy, or even
blasphemous jokes do not help twards a man’s damnation so much as
his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only
without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it
can get itself treated as a Joke
• Flippancy: “the best of all”. “Among flippant people the Joke is always
assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every
serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they ahvae
already found a ridiculous side to it… it deadens, instead of sharpening
the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it”
