Lewis the Social Prophet
There is a crowd of busybodies. . . whose life is devoted to destroying solitude wherever solitude still exists. They call it “taking the young people out of themselves,” or “waking them up,” or “overcoming their apathy.” If an Augustine, a Vaughan, a Traherne, or a Wordsworth should be born in the modern world, the leaders of a youth organization would soon cure him. If a really good home, such as the home of Alcinous and Arete in The Odyssey or the Rostovs in War and Peace or any of Charlotte M. Yonge’s families, existed today, it would be denounced as bourgeois and every engine of destruction would be levelled against it. And even where the planners fail and someone is left physically by himself, the wireless has seen to it that he will be. . . never less alone than when alone. We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for true friendship.
“Membership” by C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory
C.S. Lewis could be placed in several categories: Medievalist, children’s novelist, adult novelist, and popular Christian apologist. But lately I’ve found myself placing him in another category: prophet. I’ve seen this in his Ransom trilogy (especially That Hideous Strength), The Abolition of Man, and various other writings including the sermon quoted above.
The terms need to be modernized: the “wireless” is a relic now, but the Internet or the iphone could easily replace it; and a non-scholarly audience might choose different examples of exceptional talent or exceptional family. But the process of crowding out solitude and depth of relationship in favor of inferior substitutes, and the directing of this process by “busybodies” who inflict their will on society, is all too apparent.
We can thank the technocrats for filling our lives with noise. Social media has put us “in touch” with acquaintances we might never have reconnected with otherwise, but the connection is a shallow one. Plenty of accomplished minds, including Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Carr and Neil Postman, have written about the tendency of technological aids to weaken intellectual activity, deep thought, human relationships and social intelligence. But it has happened without much resistance. The addictiveness and pervasiveness of digital means for conducting so many of our lives’ tasks, and the increasing din of much of our “journalism,” ensures that “solitude, silence, and privacy” are rare commodities, leaving us impoverished in ways still not fully measured or understood.
The “social planners” who form “youth organizations,” “denounce families,” and bring “engines of destruction” against them are not hard to recognize. So many of the policies and educational priorities of the current regime wage an assault on basic human well-being. Every institution is under attack, from the family outward to the classroom, the healthcare industry, the university, the rule of law, the integrity of the border and procedures in gaining citizenship, and election security.
So much of it represents a full flowering of what Lewis describes in the 1940s. Yet perhaps much of it could be remedied by pondering what we really need and want. We hear much about “the battle for the soul of the nation.” It’s a battle that’s ours to fight, and it begins by turning away from the abysmal options presented to us by those in power, perhaps tuning out the seductions of technology, and rediscovering the true relationships Lewis describes. Out of real friendships untainted by the lust for power and control, maybe we can reject the increasingly totalitarian stink of present conditions, and regain the quality of life we want for ourselves and our children.
