I'm two chapters into That Hideous Strength, the final chapter in C. S. Lewis' 1946 space trilogy. I'm reading through some of his work again from a post-christian perspective, as I believe I've mentioned. So far, it's been a lot of university politics, which was something Lewis dealt a lot with in his life. Having read Alan Jacob's biography on the man, it's interesting to watch some of his complaints about academic culture work itself out in his fiction.
In particular is the loathing Lewis had for the "Inner Circle," which must have been a dynamic that irked him in his dealings with people. Actually, you get the real sense that that kind of thing stuck in his craw. This is the all too human tendency to throw all principle aside in order to fit in with some exclusive social circle that fancies itself the cream of the human crop. The story starts with a small college campus being taken over by a small cabal of professors who fancy themselves the progressive element in order to sell off part of the college to the bad guys.
My favorite part so far though was the small aside about spending some time in a small wooded area kept by the college, with an ancient well at the center that has been preserved for centuries. The quiet seemed nice just to read about. I think I just need to get out into the forest more.
I don't know, the jesus talk doesn't move me much, and his views on women can be a little cringey, but there are some sensibilities C.S. Lewis had that I really resonate with: college life is nice, people are frustrating, there's magic in the forest. Check, check, check. Good stuff.
I've spent a lot of time in school. I always expected more from it. But all I found was institution very much like every other institution. It's never failed to disappoint. I always enter a new situation ready and willing to bring as much to it as I possibly can... commitment, caring, a willingness to struggle to see it through. But what I've found is that it just tends to alienate me. I end up doing all of that stuff more or less alone. I recently observed that the challenge of taking the high road is the loneliness, not the difficulty of the road itself. When it comes to all of that stuff fitting in is like hitting a target rather than clearing a hurdle. You can't be off by much in any direction or you miss – too much, too little... it's all the same.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is that I can't shake the idea that I'm not wrong (which doesn't mean I'm right). And I have an exceedingly difficult time intentionally doing wrong to fit in.
I've struggled with my anti-joiner impulses for a long time too. It's not always even about feeling like I need to do something wrong to get along, it's the idea that I have to stop having opinions of my own if I want to get along that I can't stand. Ideally, people shouldn't need other people liking their favorite thing to feel like it's validated, but so many people do seem to need that and it's frustrating. Like, it shouldn't make people feel bad that someone they know doesn't like what they like, but it does.
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem in that I can't shake the problem that I'm not entirely wrong, but that maybe my approach is wrong. I'm slowly just learning to try to embody what I want to see in the world, because I think that's really all you can do.
> Ideally, people shouldn't need other people liking their favorite thing to feel like it's validated, but so many people do seem to need that and it's frustrating.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I think we're all afraid. Technology causes a kind of crisis where we're painfully aware that the world is much larger, more diverse, and complex than we are comfortable with. It then conveniently provides the "fix" (as in drug fix) to the problem, an endless supply of people that we can readily sort through and reject anyone who challenges our world view in anyway, until we're left with a hyper-narrow niche "community" of people who are most like us and also who know the rules of the game.
Whenever we tune into to the "real world" we're more intolerant than we were before. But there are an endless selection of people offline. So we're stuck with those we have to an extent. Instead we're dismissive of them and argumentative. We don't have to try very hard because we are carrying a self-selected community in our pocket.
The mistake is thinking that our online friends (followers, whatever other term is applied) are more accepting. They're just more like us because as soon as they're not, or we're not, we reject them. If I were obsessed with unicorns and hated absolutely everyone else who didn't share my obsession, I would find a few other people like me. We would declare that we're enlightened and everyone else closed minded, when in fact we're rejecting everyone in the world who does not have an obsession with unicorns (in other words almost everyone). Intolerance begins to look like tolerance.
I know I've recommended the book The Wisest One in the Room to you before. But the psychological bias behind this is covered in that book.
> maybe my approach is wrong.
There is probably some truth to this. Though I suspect if you tried every other approach without changing the underlying understanding, the result would be much the same. The trick to it, if you only care about tricks, is to change who you are, right or wrong, to match what's popular.
> I'm slowly just learning to try to embody what I want to see in the world, because I think that's really all you can do.
That's the lonely high road.