The Abolition of Man

[rusmeister]

Fr Thomas Hopko has put up a podcast about Lewis's book "The Abolition of Man".
ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_abolition_of_man

It's a short book:
www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm

with 2 more parts following if you can grasp the first part, but I think Fr Tom's podcast a good intro to the book.

I saw a lot of those things confirmed in my own experience (if you can find my dead thread in Doriendor Corishev and revive it, you'd also find the link to my personal history and experience).

[Holsety]

I find the title of the book interesting, as the question in my mind is always, is there something greater than man out there with which we can be replaced, besides that which governs us? And I do believe that out there something is indeed governing us, or at least me, if not perfectly.

I think I'm going to go ahead and just read the book and give my comments given its shortness! Rather than listening to the commentary. I believe I owe this to Rus as a sort of replacement for our long overdue discussion of Chesterton, whom I will order at some point but haven't read.

The Master said, He who sets to work on a different strand destroys the whole fabric

(This is a confucius quote)
And begins a new fabric. But, naturally, needs others to take part!

Confucius did not even consider himself worthy of emulation, IIRC, in that I remember several passages of the Analects in which he criticizes himself harshly. He also mourns that the best follower of his teachings, better than himself, is dead.

Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration.

If I follow this correctly, Lewis is saying that emotions and thoughts are correlated following an event (such as sighting the waterfall), that the gap between them is not clear. I would certainly like to know what the strongest established theories from science today regarding which actually comes first would have to say. I would suspect that emotions tend to come first among infants and children and before thoughts, but as for full grown adults I would say that thoughts can easily come before an emotion can come. So Lewis might be saying a questionable point here, but I suppose it is not his real issue here so why should it be mine?

It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible.

This is, in fact, a trap many of us fall into quite often in every day life - it is, I think, a common occurrence for many of us who suffer anger to then turn the anger inwards and be angry at ourselves for striking out at another who may well not deserve the anger at all.

The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake.

Very well. However, it is quite destructive for Lewis to analyze the statement to the level where ANYONE can read it, for him to BECOME a popular author of children's literature and works of thought generally, and to actually PUBLISH on the subject. In other words, we are dealing with a hypocrite if Lewis has any sort of problem whatsoever with the assertions thus made. I myself have made the sort of mistake Lewis has made, but only on facebook - on notes I have been told nobody reads - and here on kevin's watch, among adults who should be intelligent enough to handle the conversation. I held fast, the whole time, to morality, but I seem to remember a post from you admitting your selfishness in a manner not exactly congruent with your generally "harsh for the sake of others" demeanor. I'm not going to go looking, I'm not going to go searching, I'm just saying that I remember something like that coming out of you. A ferocious Id, we might say.

"Weight and power, Power growing under weight"

Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

From this passage the schoolboy will learn about literature precisely nothing. What he will learn quickly enough, and perhaps indelibly, is the belief that all emotions aroused by local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible.

I disagree strongly. Simply because he "learns" it in the abstract does not mean it will overcome the practical, everyday evidence he faces that they are not, presuming a good upraising thus far. We are humans on a journey, and we will not be neutered so easily by an abstract lesson.

Much less do they learn of the two classes of men who are, respectively, above and below the danger of such writing—the man who really knows horses and really loves them, not with anthropomorphic illusions, but with ordinate love, and the irredeemable urban blockhead to whom a horse is merely an old-fashioned means of transport.

Maybe the urban blockhead has more to worry about than the horse, depending on his income? To whom is first loyalty owed? To what? But I agree with the sentiment - the one who cares for other living things, even if he does not treat them as they deserve to be treated, is the better.

By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.

And indeed, when the pupil finally believes nothing at all, in the words of David Zindell as I remember them,

Beware of the man who believes in nothing, for he is then ready to believe in anything.

(More accurately, one might say to beware of the man who quite consciously simultaneously believes in everything and nothing and knows not the difference)

believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.

I am not entirely sure of the difference here. Is this to say that objects can "deserve" on account of their own action approval or disapproval? I would say this can surely be the case for two reasons. One, I do believe that the word "sentience" to describe a thing is questionable, two, I believe that if god made those objects, they surely deserve praise.
(This is a tenet of the Jewish faith I do not follow, but we do praise god for making objects; since I see god IN the object, as a pantheist of sorts, I see praising the object itself as one and the same).

When Shelley, having compared the human sensibility to an Aeolian lyre, goes on to add that it differs from a lyre in having a power of 'internal adjustment' whereby it can 'accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them',9 he is assuming the same belief. 'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'

But what if one is unable to comprehend a self-adjustment which would be fully accommodating to oneself, what if one spends forever tuning that lyre? What if the instrument has so many strings that the mere thought of tuning each one brings despair, when one is not even particularly tonal?

and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.

I do not see how blaming and hating the ugly will make a man of gentle heart.

The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself.

In a Chinese history book I read recently, it claimed that the "Creator" was not even written of in Chinese texts until sometime quite a bit after writing was first introduced. A much stronger image than the creator in chinese mythology is Nu Wa, a creator goddess and her spouse/brother Fu Xi who was an emperor and innovator for the early peoples (yes, an association with technology!) Of course, I suppose that in the modern day, Taoism is probably a much stronger image in Chinese culture than Nu Wa and Fu Xi.

because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself

Using the Tao, I believe that to even speak of defect within oneself would be a defect were a defect possible. It is in fact Lewis's way to be as he is and do as he is, and to have this attitude aboutu his own self would be flawed.

It is irrational not as a paralogism is irrational

Frankly, I believe there is no such thing as a paralogism in terms of the idea that any argument can be logical given sufficient weight - only Occam's Razor can ultimately judge which side of things is best, I would think, and what if there is a strong suspicion on the side of the more complex that the complex is in fact the truth, given uncanny events?

On this view, the world of facts, without one trace of value, and the world of feelings, without one trace of truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, confront one another, and no rapprochement is possible.

It is interesting that in the symbol of Taoism, while both sides of a binary have captured a small piece of the other, there is no intermixture between white and black. Similarly, the strong and weak nuclear forces serve to pull together but never unify atoms, IIRC.

I will not read or think upon the last few paragraphs, for I believe my thoughts are being read and to complete the thoughts on them would be to betray that I believe, without a strong argument one way or the other, that the rough distinction between propaganda and whatever the other word was that Lewis used are in fact the same thing, semantically, and outside of my own mind I cannot be sure what side other human beings are on. While this kind of deconstruction into being/nothingness is very very important, there is something about THIS precise argument which I fear very much. I sense a trap for my soul, and do not wish to spring it even if I am not caught by it.

I will think about reading more of this book later, depending in part on the answers given by Rus.

[Holsety]

A response to the radio part, since I don't feel like reading the book right now, and don't have much else to do. Didn't bother to timestamp.

-I did not particularly found my breath taken away. It is more of an "oh, someone else - as though this would surprise me - came to realizations I did in an earlier time, at an earlier place, and decided to go forth in dialogue about them with a book."
-What caused the situation we face today? Forget the bible for a second, and delight in an elaboration of the words of SRD with me. The Creator created the land, and loved it so much that he sealed his negativity towards it within the land as a being known as Lord Foul. Instead of battling lord foul forever, he tired of the battle and cast evil and illness into his most beloved creation. And perhaps made the Earth as well. As you might say it, god created satan and then cast him down when satan though to rebel. The rest logically follows.
(Note that in the hebrew bible, where he appears Satan is "the adversary" and is not an evil figure and he is meant to test humanity without necessarily being judged by god for the test, or so I was told.)
-I would want in some part to be a christian, because I admire at least the concept that jesus in his divinity died for our sins and gave us the ability to repent and go to heaven.
-As for how surprised he is as to how the world has changed, I have yet to see a change in the world in the past few weeks that really surprised me - it all seems to make sense dependent on my own internal condition.
-All good books are works of art! LITERATURE IS AN ART, as is literary criticism, lectures, etc!
-The part/vs whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, consider Liebniz's argument that each part reflects the whole: if you perfectly understand the part (impossible) than you understand the whole. Second, if works of art defy singular or even multiple interpretations, it is even harder to understand the whole. Finally, for a part - as in US, WE ARE PARTS - to understand the whole is even more ridiculous.
-I always stumble to interpret sermons, stories etc, so I at least am honest when I approach the attempt.
-I'm kind of annoyed by how much he tries and tell us how stupid we are. If you ask me what the book is saying, I would say, "we screwed ourselves" and "I'm screwing myself" and that there's not anything we can do to avoid it, though the screwing can go faster or slower than one would expect.
-I would agree that what Lewis is talking about might be the end of humanity period.
-He's beginning to synopsize/summarize/quote even though he said he wouldn't. Is this wise Christian a liar too?!
-Sublime VS humble is not something the speaker attempts to elaborate on at all or justify. He just takes it for granted, even though this would be one of the first points I would stop, examine and criticize.
-As for the MY/YOUR feelings thing, this does condemn psychology, which I have been experiencing the teachings of, quite harshly, because psychology tries and tells us how it is that we think in a formalized, brainwashing way.
-I agree that humans should have certain proper feelings, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't trust any other humans to have the proper, appropriate reactions and I believe they are all out to get me, support me, or something like that.
-I am now having the experience of essentially liking Lewis's work, if finding some room for disagreement with it, but not liking this guy's dialogue very much at all.
-I know that I have felt a warm feeling in my heart, so it's all good. The guy who is critiquing the book is a moron and I am right, humanity lives in my body at least, I'm not living by mind or belly. It's too bad that THIS guy has no hope. I wish I could give him the few minutes of happiness I had as I felt that feeling.
-WHAT. A destruction of nature? The thing is, the brain which allows them to change their gender is part of their naturee, as is their heart if their heart is into a gender change. You cannot go against nature.
-The ideologies discussed by this guy, fragments of the Tao, are useful for constructing a person into one we would not hate if we do believe that schoolchildren need to be educated.
-Righto about managers being slaves to the power people who determine what really happens. Just not sure that I could become/be trusted to be power people.
-The Tao as discussed regarding men who are beyond good and bad...so reminiscent of Vishnu, the protector, the only god of Hinduism who incarnates within humans in myth IIRC, who tries to protect meaning.
-I do not believe that his analysis regarding the dating of the philosophy is anything more than a fiction. I believe that even in the time of the ancient greeks, the seeds of all this that he speaks of was born.