The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley

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• 
  caesar963
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  

  Prescient stuff in diagnosing the myriad problems generated by vacuous, mechanistic, educational standards.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  CaptainZero
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  

  Thanks. A good one. Glad to listen to this after reading 20 years ago. I’m interested in seeing how Lewis affects me now that I’m in my 50s. Wonderful stuff.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  Rastalon
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  “Objective values.” “Christian.”

  Pick one.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  caesar963
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  Objective values as derived from Natural Law by Thomas Aquinas. Always a reliable locus classicus for the questing soul. Or one could revert to Bill & resile to Ted. But that would be intensely bogus metaphysics.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  illodiini
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  I have problems reading now his books, esp. the Narnia series. They feel stuffy and chauvinistic.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  caesar963
  October 3rd, 2020
  

  Pallid, angst-ridden, teenage vampire fic is now where it’s at. And reality tv - where members of the public are routinely, gratuitously humiliated. For our empty edification.
  That’s why we get so hysterically frustrated at the notion of objective values.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  illodiini
  October 4th, 2020
  

  My guilty pleasure is watching Supernatural, them boys having a good chemistry, and while it is quite beyond its sell by date, it’s still entertaining enough. It has vampires. I don’t watch programs claiming to be “real”.
  Life is a dog of female persuasion, and objective values remain M.I.A.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  howlafist
  October 4th, 2020
  

  Aquinas’ natural law is rather like Sam Harris’ moral landscape: “I personally like axiom X, and Y and Z follow from X” etc. This kind of model is, at the face of it, subjectively derived.

  The closest we have to a basis for understanding something like humans’ innate morality dispassionately is in evolutionary psychology and game theoretic modelling. Such models are necessarily low-resolution, but they can be used prove mathematically the viability of heterogeneous stable states, where inconsistent value sets coexist in consistent proportions within a population, rather like populations of harem-forming mammals allowing for both massive aggressive males who fight and smaller female-resemblant males who steal. With respect to human morality, a balance of high-altruism players and empathy-lacking players might coexist, with the low-empathy exploitatives being effective in altruism-rich societies and pockets of altruism being more productive than the baseline when surrounded by squabbling exploitatives. That some people seem to be born psychopaths and others not could be taken as evidence supporting such a balancing act.

  Of course, human ethics are dependent also on memetic flow, and memeplexes like christianity can override, or at least to some extent modulate, these inherent variegated values. These memeplexes are in a constantly fluctuating balance of competitive coexistance, though, even moreso in a modern setting of hyperconnectivity.

  In humans, there is no strong basis for deriving a “universal moral truth”.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  caesar963
  October 4th, 2020
  

  @howlafist - Mathematically modelling morality is so mui marvellously mesmerising.
  That’s an interesting analysis.

  Aquinas’ method of philosophical discourse was partly based on the quaestio convention in the universities of the time. The cut & thrust in the lecture hall, whereby the strongest possible objections to a particular postulate would be considered & answered. The quaestio was a very public exchange of ideas; dialectical in the very best sense.

  I don’t think we can place Aquinas or Aristotle; Augustine or Plato, in a category with anyone currently living (we “moderns”). Merely because we would need to see which are the crucial, original thinkers, and who will last (endure).

  Religions & cultures do share essential ethical values. We can regard these as universally core to the dignity of human personhood. Among these are: courage over cowardice; the primacy & value of the family unit; loyalty to the group identity; reciprocity; respect; justice over unfairness (the Golden Rule); and property rights.

  @illodiini - I think everyone can share your ethical frustration regarding the actual observance of objective values. However, that posture only affirms their existence & significance. We’re upset at their breach & violation; which makes them universal/absolute/objective, in the first place. This is why injustice appalls us.

  That’s also one of the myriad reasons why relativism collapses under the weight of its own absurdity & contradiction (”Everything is relative? Mustn’t that therefore be an absolute, refuting the very contention itself?”)

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  howlafist
  October 4th, 2020
  

  There is a difference in degree and scope of influence, but to me they seem otherwise like in kind, working to build internally-consistent models based on values inherited from their local environments.

  As for claim to commonly-shared values among different belief systems, common, rather than universal, is the key word:

  - property rights: tend to be important to large-scale sedentary settlements, where trust is often scarce and security highly valued. In small-scale communities, however, where everyone knows everyone, a communal attitude towards property becomes common (particularly in communities not yet contacted/influenced by “modern western values” of The Market etc). This mentality was attributed to new-testament jesus, and common among the tightly-bound-minority early christian church. As a further exception, nomadic cultures, like the romani, often develop a value of ethical thievery. “It is right for us to take and benefit”, a strategy effective when the group doesn’t stay put for long enough that retaliation is likely. To me, old-testament israel somewhat fits this grouping, “take the promised land and kill / steal from everyone in our way” etc.

  - the family unit: is definitely a strategy often encountered. The exact shape of that unit, however, tends to vary quite a bit. To some, it is comprised of exactly one woman and one man. This is a strategy often applied to the lay-person class, though there are exceptions (mormons being a modern example). One might argue this encourages working-class contentment, and thus stability, by reducing the likelihood of coveting one’s neighbour’s “property” (wives). Polygamy tends to be the strategy most common to ruling classes, though the rarer polyandry also sometimes occurs as a stable strategy. In some indian settings, for example, the marriage of multiple brothers to one woman is an effective method of ensuring resources stay within-the-family, when they would otherwise be divvied up and dissipated among the sons. Primogeniture is an easier, though somewhat less efficient, means of doing the same, and frees up later-born sons to take on different strategies (#1 inherits, #2 goes-to-find-his-fortune, #3 heads to the monastery etc). Which brings up the concept of celibacy, another stable meme, with a constant flow of excess children keeping it alive by becoming fresh monks and nuns. Like the altruist/psychopath split above, these two strategies are able to coexist indefinitely alongside one another. Be fruitful and multiply vs. sex is a degradation; dedicate yourself to god / towards reaching enlightenment etc. To further muddy the family-unit idea, foster care/adoption, sometimes by same-sex couples, has of course also always played a role in familial societies where children are valued, and some communities (often those same tightly-knit communal-property types mentioned above) forego the family altogether and raise children communally (see kibbutzim for a recent example).

  These sorts of counter examples can be listed for the other elements on your list.

  - courage over cowardice: tends to be a strongly-held value among e.g. knights in feudal societies, where the person’s position depends on being seen as a will-uphold-my-word-and-fight-for-the-leader type. In low-resource free-for-all situations, though, back-stabbing becomes more viable, and valorous individuals “naive”/”suckers”, at best pitied and at worst treated with contempt.

  - loyalty to the group identity: is by-definition more difficult to characterise and pidgeon-hole, but is nevertheless a commonly contradicted value, with people holding strong ideas about “free-thinking”, “skepticism”, “independence”, etc, valuing the individual above all else, and seeing groups/factions/ideologies as a trap.

  etc, but this response is long enough as it is. The point was that, though, many discrete common trends can be recognised in the ethical systems of humanity, there is, as best i can tell, no single common thread that ties them all together into a “universal”, there always being a contradictory example or five.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  illodiini
  October 4th, 2020
  

  There are of course objective values, we just can’t seem to agree what they are, or what they mean in any given situation. But in the meantime we have subjective values a plenty.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  madhunt
  October 4th, 2020
  

  What I want to know is…why is Peter Weller as Robocop on the cover of this book? Seriously…

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  illodiini
  October 5th, 2020
  

  @madhunt - Yeah, I was wondering that, too, but got sort of sidetracked.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  illodiini
  October 6th, 2020
  

  Btw, thanks for your superior input, Howlafist!

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  wbweb
  October 7th, 2020
  

  yeah why Robocop ?

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley
• 
  InsaneCrazyMad
  October 11th, 2020
  

  

  The Abolition of Man was prophetic. Everything that’s happened since its publication seems to make its timeless principles more and more relevant as the years pass.

  Right and wrong aren’t personal opinion; they’re part of reality. Some poor unfortunate souls may be less able to realize them than others, but the fact that some people are tone deaf doesn’t banish the mathematics of musical harmony to the realm of mere personal opinion.

  The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism - Dr. Steve Turley

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