The Books Most Responsible - Issue #27
Wonder no further! I'll include links to where you can buy them if you so choose. I won't make any money if you do buy them. My motives are entirely altruistic. Just read them whether you buy, beg or borrow them. Here they are, in no particular order of importance.
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Some people, I'm convinced, are put here on earth by God to observe the times, and from their observations, give us warnings for the future. Probably all of the authors of these books fit that description. But I began re-reading The Abolition of Man this year, and it was startling how accurately C. S. Lewis saw the things that are happening today...as I write. He predicted the insanity of social engineering.
“The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientist in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany: 'Traditional values are to be debunked' and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people in one lucky generation which has learned how to do it.”
Currently, our United States politicians at the state and federal level, both Democrat and Republican, have written and continue to write legislation which attempts to direct young people into certain careers based on the needs of corporations lured to the state with the promises of tax cuts and special perks. Gotta make sure there are plenty of worker bees! Is it good for the individual young people? It doesn't matter. It's for the greater good--or a few people in the government's notion of the greater good. Our own SC Speaker of the House was pushing this just a few years ago. And that is a fairly benign example of central planning/social engineering. On the extreme end of the same spectrum you have the gender-bending, age-inappropriate sex education in schools.
“You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
When Neil Postman refers to "amusement," you'll quickly discover when you read the book that he is referring to the news cycle. It is primarily because of this book that I do not watch the news. I mean it. I do not own a television and I do not watch the news online. Of any kind. No Fox. No CNN. No nothing. If there is a topic or event of particular interest, I may try to look up info and read a few articles about it. I might watch a news segment once or twice a month, but I do not keep abreast of the 24-hour news cycle. I do not devote any particular time out of my day to watching, listening, or reading the news. Unfortunately, I still stay informed. Because there is no way to be free of the long, serpentine arm of information at this time in history. Unless you flee to the wilderness to live in a cave, it will find you. "News" reaches me whether I want it to or not. But as a rule, I avoid the news because I do not want to become trivial, insipid, weak-minded, easily molded, and easily spooked.
“[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)”
It is much, much more worthwhile to binge on a favorite television drama or to watch a good action movie than it is to tune in to the news every day. When you are watching a movie, you know you're watching a fantasy for fun. When you're watching the news, you can't tell fantasy from fact. What's worse, you become addicted to dire events because of the way they are presented to you. You become silly, shallow, and weak-minded. Stop watching the news. Of course, reading a book on real paper with pages that you must turn, is better than both movies and the news.
“The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one's intellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.”
It was Postman that convinced me to read the next two books on the list.
“What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.”
However, this newsletter is getting ponderously long. So, I'll get to those books next week. What say you? Have you read either of these?
Until next time, folks...
