It was in a story about the 1993 Lewis biopic Shadowlands. (I still remember something of that review after all these years – having read several of Lewis’ books, it stuck in my mind – but I never saw the movie. Has anyone here?)
Not quite total. Not even now. There are still various brands of fascists active in Europe.
Well, come to think of it, the exercise of the will is all the meaning life can ever have. Nietzsche has it all over the Christians on that point, at least.*
But, as has been discussed many times and fairly recently on this board, what Nietzsche meant by “The Will to Power” is almost certainly something very, very different from “power over others.” (What he did mean by it is far less clear.)
- But, IMO, Christians who think they are giving their will over to God are really finding free reign for exercise of their own will, which in their case happens to be a pious will. If they were all giving their own wills over to God . . . then it must be really hard for a believer to know God’s will, or different believers would not disagree so often.
It would not be accurate, because the entire point of Christianity is to get souls into Heaven and any this-worldly effects are mere froth. Lewis would have agreed emphatically.
As for Christianity as a beneficent social force – well, it is probably telling that angels, saints and agents of mercy are largely absent from Classical mythology, and that heroes like Achilles and Herakles are heroes only because they are badass warriors and/or really clever; and that, while St. Paul told slaves to obey their masters, it took Christians to first conceive of objecting to slavery on principle.
OTOH, on balance, Christianity really has no better track record than Islam or Buddhism, and only an arguably slightly better track record than Classical Greco-Roman civilization, in producing people who can handle power without corruption. Not even the Church is incorruptible: In a process which Bertrand Russell lays out plainly and dispassionately in Power, the medieval Papacy won its power-struggles with the Holy Roman Empire entirely through its superior moral authority – and then succumbed to all the temptations of power, and grew worldly and corrupt as any secular state, and proceeded to squander and lose that moral authority, provoking the Reformation.
Yes, certain cheap jokes should never be made. That is not a matter of respect for the solemnity of the matter, it is a matter of consideration for the feelings of others. “Flippant” might necessarily imply “disrespectful,” but it does not necessarily imply “insensitive” and the latter is a far, far more important consideration.
You mean “Christian,” not “religious” – and even then, some of the music is awesome! 
Nevertheless, Lewis cannot have been right about music being of God and poison to the Devil. Music is the Brandy of the Damned, sir, the Brandy of the Damned!
I do think I understand Lewis basic, essential points of sensitivity here: (1) A hymn punctuated by audible farts can be enjoyed, perhaps, but it cannot be enjoyed as a hymn. (2) Enjoying hymns as hymns is important. I think we all would agree with the first part.
I’ve seen the movie Shadowlands, and while in some ways it’s accurate, in other ways it’s not even close. Maybe one can ignore the fact that the movie just decided to forget about one of Joy Davidman’s sons and to ignore the fact that halfway through the film Lewis actually switched jobs from Oxford to Cambridge, but other things in it seriously distort Lewis’s personality. The movie decides that Lewis was a sheltered academic who knew nothing of the workings of the human heart. It starts with him lecturing on courtly love in the Middle Ages, and it does that because it tries to claim that he obviously knew nothing about love himself. The movie makes him far more introverted than he actually was. It does this because it wants to fit him and Joy into a common stereotype of a romantic couple used in various movies. In this stereotype, one member of a romantic couple is shy and lonely. He (or sometimes she) then meets the other member, an extroverted (and sometimes just wild) character and falls in love. Her (or sometimes his) wildness breaks through the shell of introversion in the other member and makes him (or sometimes her) a more complete person. This stereotype can sometimes make cute romantic comedies, but it’s not the story of Lewis and Davidman’s romance.
It appears then that you haven’t even seen the movie Shadowlands, let alone read any of the biographies of Lewis. There are a number of them, and they each have their own slant on Lewis. I wish I could recommend a single one of them, but the fact is that no one has written a definitive biography of Lewis.
I realize that you’re trying to be funny when you write this:
> Nevertheless, Lewis cannot have been right about music being of God and
> poison to the Devil. Music is the Brandy of the Damned, sir, the Brandy of the
> Damned!
In any case, this isn’t a serious argument. You don’t believe in God, the Devil, or the damned, so there isn’t anything in this consistent with your beliefs and hence no argument made.
The Weight of Glory is Lewis’ best essay, and an excellent concise introduction to his major themes. From the conclusion:
[QUOTE=C.S. Lewis]
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
[/QUOTE]
I hope George Carlin and Lenny Bruce will.
With nothing much to do with Neitzchianism.
How shall I put it? Shaw was a Nietzheian, but not all Nietzchians are Shavian. He wanted everyoen to Will something. What he forgot was that msot peoplem were pretty happy willing what as already there: it only existed because people chose it. But dress it up witht he ideal of the superman (which was an awesomely unpleasant ideal) and it went nowhere, except the feverish dreams of Shaw wanting to be the superman. And failing.
Frankly, Neitzche was a fool if he was anything, and a possibly a harmful fool at that. It is not that was really a bad man, but that he could never quite hoenstly say what he meant. What he meant might have been harmless enough, but he was stuck in the weird mindset of most German philosphers, by which they apparently must cloak the most ordinary statements in ludicrous language. To be frank, I’ve tried to read his work, and it’s utterly incomprehensible. I can’t make anything out of it. I assume his disciples got it right, but other than that I leave it alone.
Well, it is John J. Reilly, a rather conservative Catholic intellectual, reviewing [by Roger Eatwell, who sees an essential connection there. For my part I would not say Nietzsche’s philosophy necessarily implies fascism or any other political order, but it’s not hard to see how his ideas could be taken – and not entirely dishonestly – in directions he would never have imagined. Intellectual historians, including Bertrand Russell, have seen clear lineal connections between, on the one side, Voltaire, Marx and Lenin (rationalism); and, on the other, Rousseau, Neitzsche and Hitler (romanticism).
I don’t know if Shaw ever aspired or desired to be the superman. I think his fundamental mistake – one he makes at interesting length in the preface to Man and Superman, [url=Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw]“The Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley”](]Fascism: A History,[/url) – was in assuming the existence of a “Life Force” driving evolution onward and upward. In Shaw’s philosophy, the Life Force is impersonal but benign; it appears to differ from the Christian conception of God in that we can participate in it rather than serving it, as it were; a sort of pantheistic and teleological intelligent-design theory. But, it is a mistake only in that we have not the slightest reason to suppose this philosophy true; moreover, unlike many philosophies, it seems to imply that there should be some scientifically verifiable content to it, and to date no scientific evidence of anything we might call “Life Force” has yet been found. And biological evolution requires no such thing as a hypothesis, it works just as well if we think of it as a blind, accidental process like water running downhill; and, furthermore, evolution does not go onward and upward, it simply adapts. “Teleology” is a concept alien to science.
As a theological insight and world-view, on the other hand, Shaw’s form of cosmic optimism has at least as much spiritual, moral, and philosophical merit as the Nicene Creed. As for its social implications . . . I won’t defend Shaw’s eugenics, but bear in mind that humans have been subject to weak, social forms of controlled breeding throughout history, and the implications of putting it on some more scientific basis did not seem so frightening at the time; it just seemed one of many rational things to do in a modernizing age, like vaccination. And I do admire and will defend his commitment to socialism, but that’s another discussion. But the connection of either, even eugenics, to the “Life Force” philosophy is debatable; the “Life Force,” after all, should drive evolution whether humans help it or not.
Lewis’ fundamental mistake, IMO, at least the one relevant to this thread, was in ascribing an essential spiritual value to reverence, as distinct from what I will call awe. Awe is better, and can exist without reverence, and is not quite incompatible with flippancy. (I speak from Wiccan experience.)
Kant wrote some pretty opaque, jargon-laden prose, but philosophers, at any rate, are generally agreed on what he meant, because it is entirely logical prose and the jargon can be learned. Nobody is entirely sure what Nietzsche meant. It’s not from lack of “honesty,” I’m sure, he was never ashamed to shock.
You’ll find more than a bit of it in Aesop.
It sounds like he wants us all to have the kind of relationship you would hope to find within a functional family. Well and good. But no functional familial relationships are free of flippancy. A brother who is never ridiculous in your eyes is not a brother you love.
And Ham, BTW, got a really bad rap for laughing at Noah! :mad:
Flippancy, as Lewis uses the term, is not something one feels towards people one loves. It is the attitude one takes towards someone or something inferior to oneself, to a lesser being.
One cannot, by definition, be flippant towards someone you respect, mo matter how foolishly or absurdly they are behaving. You may enjoy a wholesome, healthy laugh at some stupid thing they have done, precisely because you do not think of them a stupid person in general. You can certainly be sarcastic or dismissive or mocking to him, or to anyone else who you think will understand you’re only kidding. That’s humor, not flippancy.
Flippancy (again, as Lewis uses the term) is being sarcastic or dismissive or mocking towards people who may not get the joke and doing it anyway, because you don’t care if they get upset.
BrainGlutton, I think all through this thread you’ve been taking the word “flippancy” to refer to a larger class or things than Lewis intended them to refer to. The idea of flippancy for Lewis was to avoid listening to anyone else’s arguments about anything. When someone else makes a halfway useful argument, you act flippant because you can make fun of the half of his argument that is wrong and thus you can ignore the half that makes sense. Sometimes the point of flippancy is to deliberately hurt someone and exclude them from your circle of acquaintances. By doing this you never have to listen to their claims again, some of which are a little too true to make you comfortable.
I suspect Mark Twain’s critique of James Fenimore Cooper’s writing still will be read and enjoyed long after people stop reading Cooper himself, and that’s a masterpiece of cutting, sarcastic humor. Going back a lot further, I’ve seen snark or sarcasm in the work of Plato, and even, arguably, Paul.
I think the distinction between what Screwtape calls “flippancy” vs. “the Joke Proper” is not whether the humor is sarcastic or uplifting. Rather, it’s whether there’s any humor at all. Notice that Lewis/Screwtape isn’t talking about different kinds of humor, but about different sources of laughter. As I understand it, “flippancy” as a source of laughter involves laughing when there isn’t anything inherently funny—which it has in common with Screwtape’s first source, Joy. Carlin and Aesop have sarcasm in their humor, but it’s certainly not contentless sarcasm.
I cannot stress strongly enough how completely incorrect this is. The entire point of Christianity is reconciliation with God - not in some future life, but in the here and now. When Jesus said “the Kingdom of God is at hand” he did not mean at some future point in time; he meant the Kingdom of God was literally bursting through into creation at that very moment. Christians are guilty of sometimes forgetting this, but the whole point of Christianity has nothing to do with heaven or hell. The point is being right with God and your fellow mankind. Christianity would still be the same even if our entire beings were annihilated upon death. I don’t have a moment now but I will try to find a quote from Lewis which supports his understanding of this.
Here is a quote from Lewis to back me up, from Mere Christianity: