PWJ: S4E72 – SPAT 3 – “The Kids Are Alright”
Andrew and Matt pick up from where David and Brenton left off last week in Screwtape Proposes A Toast, in the section of the address where Screwtape talks about liberty and democracy.
S4E72: Screwtape Proposes A Toast (Part 3 – “The Kids Are Alright”) (Download)
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Timestamps
00:09 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:13 – Welcome
04:32 – Song-of-the-week
05:43 – Quote-of-the-week
08:03 – Drink-of-the-week
10:32 – Patreon Toast
11:37 – Chapter Summary
12:17 – Discussion
56:39 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts
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After Show Skype Session
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Show Notes
Song Of The Week
Quote Of The Week
Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Drink Of The Week
- Andrew was drinking Lagavulin 16 and Matt was drinking Lagavulin 8.
Patreon Toast
We pray that your glasses, your plates and the seats around your table are always full, both of laughter and good fellowship, but also the presence of the Holy Spirit, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we gather today.
Toast for Patreon supporter Fr. Paul Porter.
Chapter Summary
Screwtape walks us through how they turned the human race into little ciphers – non entities .
We walk through the 19th century, progressing toward liberty and equality, which on the surface seem beautiful traits, but with Screwtape’s usual twist, democracy can become a tool for eliminating all individuality and human excellence under the disguise of equality.
The result is we no longer have great sinners or saints but humans reduced to nothingness; great for Screwtape, terrible for the kingdom.
Summary of Part 3 of Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Discussion
Recap
- In the previous episode with Brenton and David, Screwtape spoke about the shift from quantity to quantity when it comes to souls. There are fewer great sinners, but many more of them, as well as far fewer saints.
Serious Challenge
- Screwtape explains what they have managed to do to mankind in recent generations, turning many people into “ciphers” (non-entities):
But do you realize how we have succeeded in reducing so many of the human race to the level of ciphers? This has not come about by accident. It has been our answer — and a magnificent answer it is — to one of the most serious challenges we ever had to face.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Andrew mentioned his rosary which he received from The Catholic Woodworker.
19th Century Situation
- Screwtape recaps the developments in the 19th Century:
The great movement toward liberty and equality among men had by then borne solid fruits and grown mature. Slavery had been abolished. The American War of Independence had been won. The French Revolution had succeeded. In that movement there had originally been many elements which were in our favour. Much Atheism, much Anticlericalism, much envy and thirst for revenge, even some (rather absurd) attempts to revive Paganism, were mixed in it. It was not easy to determine what our own attitude should be.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
There are some things here which Screwtape disapproves of. There was one worrying trend among the rich…
The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant…The rich were increasingly giving up their powers, not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
…and another worrying trend among the poor.
As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties — as we reasonably hoped and expected — for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Hell’s Response
Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel… we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Regarding the characters mentioned:
- Rousseau was the 18th Century philosopher and composer. He moved from Geneva to Paris in 1742. He influenced the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
- Hegel was an 18th/19th Century German Idealism philosopher.
- The reference to planks alludes to the restrictions in British law concerning cutting down trees and building structures on one’s own property.
- Andrew spoke about the recent work from Arend Smilde and Norbert Feinendegen, who have published Lewis‘ philosophy notes.
Democracy
The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Notes:
- Philology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages.
- Aristotle was a famous Greek philosopher from the 4th Century BC.
- Andrew quoted The Four Loves and the need to define our terms:
The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)
- Screwtape claims that nobody who says “I’m as good as you” believes it:
…that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie…No man who says I’m as good as you believes it…The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Regarding democracy, Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory:
I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the full, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows… That I believe to be the true ground of democracy.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
- Andrew alluded to St. Paul’s theology of Christ’s Body:
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
1 Corinthians 12:14-16
Consequences
- Screwtape unpacks the beneficial results of developing this thinking in humans:
…that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie…
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- This can be used to shame people:
I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being Like Folks; that people who would really wish to be — and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be — honest, chaste, or temperate refuse it.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships… Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
I have said that to secure the damnation of these little souls, these creatures that have almost ceased to be individual, is a laborious and tricky work. But if proper pains and skill are expended, you can be fairly confident of the result. The great sinners seem easier to catch. But then they are incalculable. After you have played them for seventy years, the Enemy may snatch them from your claws in the seventy-first. They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast