Let The Reader Understand

The following is an extract from That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. Having received a quote from the book in my inbox, and written about it, I decided to give the whole book a read, since it has been a long time since I read it. As I came across the following section I gasped. I could not believe it. I read it aloud to my wife and nor could she. The protagonist, Mark Studdock has found out that his colleagues at N.I.C.E are creating disturbances in the little town of Edgestow and are aiming at a serious disturbance in the next week. Over to C.S. Lewis.

Excerpt from That Hideous Strength

“You mean you’ve engineered the disturbances?” said Mark. To do him justice, his mind was reeling from this new revelation. Nor was he aware of any decision to conceal his state of mind: in the snugness and intimacy of that circle he found his facial muscles and his voice, without any conscious volition, taking on the tone of his colleagues.

“That’s a crude way of putting it,” said Feverstone.

“It makes no difference,” said Filostrato. “This is how things have to be managed.”

“Quite,” said Miss Hardcastle. “It’s always done. Anyone who knows police work will tell you. And as I say, the real thing—the big riot—must take place within the next forty-eight hours.”

“It’s nice to get the tip straight from the horse’s mouth!” said Mark. “I wish I’d got my wife out of the town, though.”

“Where does she live?” said the Fairy.

“Up at Sandown.”

“Ah. It’ll hardly affect her. In the meantime, you and I have got to get busy about the account of the riot.”

“But—what’s it all for?”

“Emergency regulations,” said Feverstone. “You’ll never get the powers we want at Edgestow until the Government declares that a state of emergency exists there.”

“Exactly,” said Filostrato. “It is folly to talk of peaceful revolutions. Not that the canaglia would always resist—often they have to be prodded into it—but until there is the disturbance, the firing, the barricades—no one gets powers to act effectively. There is not enough what you call weigh on the boat to steer him.”

“And the stuff must be all ready to appear in the papers the very day after the riot,” said Miss Hardcastle. “That means it must be handed in to the D.D. by six to-morrow morning at latest.”

“But how are we to write it to-night if the thing doesn’t even happen till to-morrow at the earliest?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“You’ll never manage publicity that way, Mark,” said Feverstone. “You surely don’t need to wait for a thing to happen before you tell the story of it!”

“Well, I admit,” said Mark, and his face also was full of laughter, “I had a faint prejudice for doing so, not living in Mr. Dunne’s sort of time nor in looking-glass land.”

“No good, sonny,” said Miss Hardcastle. “We’ve got to get on with it at once. Time for one more drink and you and I’d better go upstairs and begin. We’ll get them to give us devilled bones and coffee at two.”

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

They’ll Believe Anything

A quote from That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis arrived in my inbox yesterday. If you haven’t read it or the rest of the trilogy, I highly recommend you get a hold of them. But back to the quote. One of the protagonists, Mark Studdock is being asked to write propaganda pieces for N.I.C.E (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments). He suggests that the people who read the educated newspapers will not fall for the deception. Here’s the reply he gets from the butch Miss Hardcastle.

Why, you fool, it’s the educated readers who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem: we have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.

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The Tyranny of Moral Busybodies

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

C.S. Lewis

Masculine and Feminine Approaches to Loving Neighbour

I think it was C.S. Lewis who once compared masculine and feminine approaches to love. Men tend to think of it as leaving your neighbour alone and letting him get on with his life, whereas a more feminine approach seeks to do neighbour active good. There does seem to be an element of truth to this generalisation. My wife is more likely to think of making Christmas cookies for the neighbours than I am!

Lewis, I think (and I can’t remember the exact place he makes this point), argues that the woman’s approach to loving neighbour is better. In general, I am inclined to agree. Love is not a lack of action toward someone, but a positive action.

However, the feminine approach to love of neighbour is a dangerous thing when taken into government, and as our government becomes more feminised, a live and let live approach is replaced by the tyranny of moral busybodies. There’s a reason we call it a Nanny State.

Who can forget Prime Minister Ardern’s daily television appearances during the COVID pandemic? We were talked down to as if we were children. We were restricted from normal activities so we could be kept safe, and we were told to ‘be kind’. It was like being seven years old again.

Then we had Siouxsie Wiles of the fluro pink hair who ended up becoming New Zealander of the Year. She berated Aucklanders who left the city before the 2021 lockdown. “Hey, all you Aucklanders leaving the city during the night to spend the week at your bach… you better bloody well take Level 3 with you,” and “You do realise this is a s****y thing to do? If you are incubating the virus you run the risk of spreading it outside Auckland #COVID19nz.”

It makes one wonder whether there is something about a woman’s nature that suits her more to governing the domestic sphere and looking after children rather than governing adults.

Rationality and Belief

If the intellectual climate is such that, when a man comes to the crisis at which he must accept or reject Christ, his reason and imagination are not on the wrong side, then his conflict will be fought out under favourable conditions. Those who help to produce and spread such a climate are therefore doing useful work.

C.S. Lewis

Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.

Austin Farrer