Letter #248: The Worst and the Brightest
The Dangers of Elite Corruption
Spench.
In the recent HBO miniseries White Lotus, the mother of a wealthy family tells her daughter, “We’re lucky, it’s true. No one in the history of the world has lived better than we have, even the old kings and queens. The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don’t, it’s offensive.”
It is true. It’s offensive not to enjoy our freedom and prosperity in general. Because the fact is: a wealthy society like ours is less prone to the dramatic upsurges of cruelty and bloodshed that frequently bedevil much of the world.
But what has come home to me over the last few years is just how ubiquitous, even here, even now, is that corruption of mind which lays the groundwork for greater evil.
The other day, I glanced at a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel, The House of the Seven Gables. I came upon a description of the puritan witch hunts, which haunted Hawthorne, himself the descendant of puritans. He describes the witch hunts as…
“that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.”
Over these last several years, the “influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people,” have tried to bully us into accepting the idea that sexual mutilation might change a child’s gender. They have looked on complacently while government colluded with social media to silence dissent. They’ve averted their gazes while the FBI persecuted concerned parents and conservative Catholics. They made excuses for riots and demonized the police who are forced to clean up the detritus of their idiot policies. And now they write articles wondering at the people’s rebellion against experts and the loss of credibility of the media. Go figure!
Our situation is not Hitlerian or Stalinesque. Nothing so dramatic. But these delusions of the best and the brightest are a reminder that the corrupt human heart is always fertile ground for atrocity.
I recently reread C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, in which an elder demon tries to instruct a trainee demon how to go about the corruption of souls. I was struck with the pettiness of the demon’s devices. How he wants to encourage men not to rape and kill but to be impolite to their cranky mothers, or overly picky about what food they’ll eat, or too willing to follow fashionable friends into fashionable errors. In his riveting horror novel, That Hideous Strength, Lewis dramatizes how these little sins of uncaring and intellectual dishonesty can lead to apocalyptic disaster.
This, I think, is why, whenever we are tempted to pass judgements on one another, we should seriously consider keeping our fat, flapping faces shut. There’s too much work for each of us to do to waste time with such distractions.
Love, Dad
Two of my favorite Lewis writings! I have frequently listened to John Cleese’s reading of Screwtape on long car rides, and my kids claimed to get sick of it, but they learned. If you want to divide a log, you don’t hit a log with a hammer, you use a wedge, and the finer the edge on it, the better it works. Often, you only have to begin the division, and it will persist.
Lewis also pointed out that salvation is also in little acts. Remember the fellow who was saved from attraction to unsavory situations by his stronger appetite for tripe and onions? Also, his new girl who found Screwtape funny, or the two genuine pleasures that Wormwood allowed his client to enjoy? The whole indicates that we must focus on theoretical or abstract when we should be focusing on the real and down to earth, and focusing on mere realities when the soul is called upon (“All that REALLY happened is that you saw some pretty windows and heard some music”). Utterly brilliant.
Lest we all become Karens (unfortunate term, as I know some perfectly lovely women named Karen), I would agree that we should keep our damn mouths shut more of the time. However, in my former life (physician), I was called upon to not only “judge” but to inform those judged about their wrongdoings and attempts at remediation. I doubt I told any patient what they wanted to hear. This is probably not what Klavan the Elder is referring to, and in his brilliant commentaries, he often passes judgement on actions of the absurd and malignant. I would love to see a disquisition on judgement and what precisely it means to him. For me, I cannot send anyone to Heaven or Hell (Hamlet deciding not to kill his uncle while his uncle is praying, and therefore may die in God’s good graces, and opting to dispatch him in his iniquity is an interesting take). I can decide whether someone broke a rule, and should suffer consequences for it. A club I am a member of is facing such an issue right now, in which cad-like behavior is causing the board to ban the person from any further functions. We can do this, but cannot say and cause “Go to Hell”. I would not want such power, as the one thing I have learned is how often I am wrong (don’t tell my kids, but my wife clearly knows, as she informs me regularly).
"In his riveting horror novel, That Hideous Strength, Lewis dramatizes how these little sins of uncaring and intellectual dishonesty can lead to apocalyptic disaster."
Ugh...I think we are seeing evidence of that everywhere currently! However, it always surprises me somewhat that we haven't completely fallen apart yet as a society, and the reason has to be that the opposite of the above is also true. I immediately thought of this quote from the "not hot" Gandalf:
“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay… small acts of kindness and love.”