Cousin Screwtape,

You pitiful fool! No, I am absolutely not merely trying to destroy the university! That will come later. First we have to set up what I call the anti-University. You’re looking much too far ahead, after any number of things could go wrong. I suppose I shall have to outline my whole strategy to you, step by insidious step.

Let's begin with the anti-University. I spoke briefly of it last time. You remember that the purpose of those annoying Christians who first started the university was for men to learn. Men, and then women came along later to do the same thing. In those days only a few people were able to become learned, and the rest spent most of their time simply working. It was a terrible thing for us when the west gradually came to a point where everyone had the opportunity. But, thanks to the notion of democracy, which is at least one thing you understand properly, we devils were able to make sure that opportunity for everyone became opportunity for no one. The circumstances were ripe; all we had to do was add the requirement. Once it became required that everyone receive an education, it was absurdly easy to make sure that education was brought down to fit the level of the lowest. And so it is today, under the leadership of Globulonze in the Department of Human Education.

This you know well, cousin Screwtape. Now, I have taken Globulonze's general strategy and made only the slightest expansions upon it to make it fit DBU just perfectly. There are so many wonderful (how I hate wonderfulness) people here, practically aching to make life enjoyable for hundreds of students. How easily it has been to turn this to our own ends! I use every chance they give me to set up the anti-University, always trying to urge them to pander as much as possible to those who are not serious about the Enemy, about education, about worship as a lifestyle, etc., etc. Not always to give the students what they want, but always to give them what the least serious and least-educated of them might want, and to keep them from becoming interested in wanting any more.

The strategy here, cousin Screwtape, is to give the people as much variety of events as possible. Give the humans everything that humans need at the university: not just the life of the mind, but the life of the body and especially the social life. I allow their leaders to make for really pretty good social activities to be available. It's always dangerous to give the Enemy ground, but you see my deeper plan, cousin Screwtape.

When the good things other than the life of the mind, knowledge and education, come from the University, when the University provides so many social activities and so many diverse events, we have a golden opportunity, to say the least. Rather, we have already accomplished our immediate purpose: the University now exists to provide all these things. From the University side, the University has become the anti-University, and both exist together in the same institution, on the same hill, like two personalities in the same head.

From the perspective of what this does to the students, our goal is to make their entire lives revolve around the university. Various useful things result from this. For one thing, the anti-University in this state contributes to our beloved mediocrity, at once a lesser servant of Heaven and Hell's best defense against Heaven's best.

And DBU ends up with a divided purpose. On the one hand the University with its professors and its education. On the other hand, the anti-University is as high a priority as the University; and remember how infantile the anti-University's theology has often become.

Of even more use is the fact that when the University provides everything a human being needs to be human, they don’t go anywhere else to seek it. At one level, it's nice to watch people live in a tiny little world, no larger than a hill, where they have everything they want to be happy. No need to go anywhere for exercising, even though some manly rugby clubs are available in Dallas. No need to go anywhere for entertainment except the occasional trip to Carrier Parkway for a movie. No need to have any social life outside of DBU. What a small world they live in! And what a pathetic one, since it doesn't really end up doing these social events very well. It still does education pretty well, but the competition of the University with the anti-University will mar that ever more as time proceeds.

But we also have plans for making most of the DBU Christian students think that it's not only acceptable, but even good, for them to spend all their lives on this little hill. If they ever leave, they’ll still think something like this:

Of course, always it remains the case that these activities we allow them to do, and sometimes even encourage, are good things in themselves. We are trying to increase the lesser good, at the expense of the greater good. These lesser goods are things we certainly hate but they remain our best defense against the long-term (and, unfortunately for us, growing) impact of the University. For now, you can hope for little else at DBU; we’re largely on the defensive here; it is Christian territory after all. What's more, this school has a longstanding tradition of inerrancy. But we're working on that. Already we see signs of our inevitable success, slowly, slowly creeping upon the unsuspecting Christians. If it weren't for the Internet, maybe none of them at all would notice it coming.

Your hideous cousin,

The Prince of a City on a Hill,

Snorglak