Saturday, September 6

Read old books!

A clever admonition from CS Lewis to some students was to make sure you read old books and not to discard them for the clever new ones.  I dunno that Lewis would ever have considered his books "old" to a future generation, but here they are.  

I pulled down "God in the Dock" and started reading at a random spot ("Is Progress Possible?)  when I came across a bit of his political theory, also found in the masterpiece The Abolition of Man:
"... classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, and the rights fo man), has died.  The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do good or make us good - anyway, to do something to us or make us something.  ... Let us not be deceived by phrases about 'Man taking charge of his own destiny'.  All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others.  They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest.  The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be.  Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?"

As both candidates look to harness the voters by calling out for change, to what end is their mind going?  Is it going to what Lewis calls for as the "freeborn mind", or is it more control and reliance on specialists, who control us not outright, but by the rights of the educated mind?  Our education system has become a den of specialists who are trying to make the right decisions for our kids instead of really allowing them to make that decision for themselves. Is the education system as it is a microcosm for the larger political scheme?  Which political party is really in control of the education system? 

The larger questions of change are great, I do think there needs to be a lot done about many thins, but what is their vision for the end result?  Are we talking about creating a society that is self-sufficient and able to make well thought out decisions, whose decisions actually matter and have worth, or is the goal a society whose major decisions have really been decided for them and now they just have to keep the system going?

They both want change, but to whose end?  

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