day no. 16,955: darwinism is atheism

“What is Darwinism? It is atheism.” — Charles Hodge

Darwinism does not begin with a single-celled organism, but with a singular hatred of God the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth.You will not find the evidence of evolution in any prehistoric goo, but you can find it bubbling in the brackish hearts of all who hate the Lord.

Proverbs 8:36

All they that hate Me love death

Evolution is the doctrine of atheism and death is its sacrament. Progress, by its estimation, is a product of passing away and advancement is merely the ability to boast over one's ancestors.

Psalm 14:1

The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God."

Darwinism is foolish. It is a willingness to accept anything that claims to circumvent Christ. More to the point, it is the belief that Christ can be circumvented.

It always has been and always will be a simple matter of Christ or chaos, but in this case, the Darwinists embrace the chaos and call it "good," because "god" would be a bit too on the nose for their taste.

day no. 16,737: prison culture

"If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalist community, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison will become an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be a cruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for the present purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience. The conditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane. But the prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more of humanity... We no longer lock a man up for doing something; we lock him up in the hope of his doing nothing. Given this principle, it is evidently possible to make the mere conditions of punishment more moderate, or—(more probably) more secret." — G.K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers

When we equate prison with inhumane conditions, we allow ourselves to be imprisoned by luxuries. If we think prison unpleasant simply because of its ambiance, we will think it suitable if someone lights a candle. 

In short, the State has made slavery more humane in order to enslave more of humanity.

Free room and board, internet access, education, exercise, etc... all have become the standard accommodations of convicts and all of them are now being offered by the State to citizens. These, however, are the razor wire fences going up all around us. A bill passes, an amenity is added or upgraded, a check point is installed. We have watched the walls go up around us like a frog in a warming pot. The prison is under construction and the watchtowers are being installed. Snipers are now climbing the stairs. And we are enjoying movie night in the yard.

When we take the warden's coin we become the warden's men.

Free stuff does not produce free men. Freedom is the ability to fend for yourself. The fact that these words conjure up an image of scrounging only goes to show how catechized by our wardens we have been. The freedom to fend for yourself is the same as the freedom to prosper. Yes, it could fail. But it might not. Prison may guarantee that you never go without a roof over your head or a meal on your plate, but it does so at the price of guaranteeing the roof will never be yours and the menu will never be up for discussion.

day no. 16,543: aiming to miss

Genesis 1:26-27

And God said, "Let us make man in Our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female.

God is the source of all gender. Male and female are made in the image of God. Man was made the glory of God and woman was made the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:3). These find their expression by His definition. They were made separately, but for each other. They are unique, but also uniquely fitted for each other: key and lock, bow and string, wax and seal.

The Effeminatti is a force conspiring against Biblical masculinity. It often attempts to convince men to make feminine ideals the universal ideals while doing away with or asking men to apologize for their masculine instincts and ideals.

The Sisterhood of the Sophisticatti is a force at work against Biblical femininity. It is the attempt to convince women to believe that masculine ideals are the only ideals while doing away with or asking women to apologize for their feminine instincts and ideals.

In our twisted world of egalitarian androgyny, men are being made to feel inferior for having a proclivity for punchiness while women are being made to feel inferior for having a desire for domesticity. So, both ideals are being run down, but from different directions. Both ideals are idealized only in their respective improper and inadequate manifestations.

The aim, overall, appears to be androgyny, a meeting in the middle with complete erasure of both genders by forcing each one to lean into the opposite. By convincing women to be men and men to be women, you make a mess of gender because everyone, in the end, is bad at what they're doing. Everyone is aiming at someone else's target, so, no one is hitting their own... or the other.

If falling short is a cipher for sin, and it is, e.g. Romans 3:23, how much more so when the aim is to miss?

Women are better at being women than men are. 

Men are better at being men than women are.

day no. 16,542: men are not metric

"Of all the homestead laws, Almanzo thought that the most foolish was the law about a settler's age. Anybody knew that no two men were alike. You could measure clothe with a yardstick, or distance by miles, but you could not lump men together and measure them by any rule. Brains and character did not depend on anything but the man himself. Some men did not have the sense at sixty that some had at sixteen." — Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

Egalitarianism expects men to measure out the same. According to it, an ounce of one should equal on ounce of another. But we all know men whose hour of help on a Saturday would prove more helpful than others. Yet, egalitarianism labors to limit the exceptionally advanced and to promote the exceptionally incapable for the sake of making men like meters. But men are not metric. That said, they are also not like miles in that a mile must always be a certain, predictable, regulated distance in order to be a mile. Men can be measured that way with respect to Y chromosomes, but cannot be measured that way with respect to masculinity.

Judges 8:21

As the man is, so is his strength.

All men are male, but not all males are manly. All men are strong, but some are stronger than others. Some are smarter than others, taller than others, more assertive than others, more timid than others, etc... The measure of a man is like a lump of gold. Some have more dross to burn off than others and the refined amount weighs less than the one mined out. The fire tells you more about the man than the pick axe, but both tell you something about him.

All men share something or else we could not refer to them as "all men." All men must be similar in some respects just as much as they must be different in others. They are all men at the same time in the same way in ways that they are not all masculine at the same time in the same ways.

day no. 16,383: feminism is not the success of women, but the surrender

"In this corner called England, at this end of the century, there has happened a strange and startling thing. Openly and to all appearance, this ancestral conflict has silently and abruptly ended; one of the two sexes has suddenly surrendered to the other... the woman has in public surrendered to the man. She has seriously and officially owned that the man has been right all along; that the public house is really more important than the private house." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

Feminism is not a win for the feminine. It is a forfeiture. Feminism is not a victory for women, it is a defeat. It does not justify femininity, it surrenders it. Feminism is not the final triumph of women, it is their final defeat. It is women rejecting womanhood. It is the feminine forsaking femininity. It is the concession speech of the feminine agreeing that all the former fuss was uncalled for.

Feminism is an apology and a repentance. It offers femininity as a burnt offering to masculinity in order to say, "I'm sorry," and promises never to pursue girly things ever again. It does an about face and abandons domesticity (husband, home, and children) in order to embrace promiscuity.

Feminism abandons the feminine ideal. Few things are more chauvinistic than Feminism. It is bad enough when men get together to throw shade at the things in which women delight, but how much more so when women do?

Masculinity never suffocated the flame of the feminine so successfully as the feminists have. Nothing has been more hostile to domesticity than vixens in the city.

Feminism is not a procession of feminine virtue, but a concession. Feminism is not the imperialization of femininity, but the capitulation of it. It is the weaker vessel forsaking all weakness. It is fine china conceding that plastic is supreme. It is rose petals arguing for fake flowers and lace making a case for burlap.

What the sister soldiers assumed to be advances turned out merely to be the strategic retreats of chauvinism. The feminists then have this in common with the chauvinists — they both hate what women have traditionally loved.

Feminism is the final concession that masculinity is the ideal. It joins forces with the men by agreeing that their domain was the only one that ever mattered. Nothing has done more damage to domesticity than women teaching other women to despise it.

Titus 2:3-5

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

Where women forsake the Word of God, womanhood is forsaken and the world taunts the Word.

day no. 16,382: private omnipotence and small scale universality

"The female holds up with two strong arms these two pillars of civilization (thrift and dignity); we say also that she could do neither, but for her position; her curious position of private omnipotence, universality on a small scale." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

A woman is given a kingdom to call her very own. She is the be all end all of her domain. She has domestic omnipotence. She is universal in a given place. The smallness of its scale provides the largeness of its responsibility. She is given full reign to rule as she sees fit: from the color of the sheets on the beds to the portions of meat on the plate, she rules the roost.

The man is often striving simply to acquire secular competence. Far from being sovereign, he is subject to the whims of his masters. The man works hard to develop skills that will keep him employed and out of trouble. If he works well, he may be promoted to another level of competence under another master. The man must aim for public competence. He must be a specialist because the largeness of the work demands it.

The man strives to be something at work so that woman can be everything at home. He needs to be someone to everyone while she gets to be everyone to a few people.

A wife is a queen of a whole world. A husband is often a servant in part of someone else's. A mother is a sovereign under her roof. A father is often under obligation under someone else's.

The woman is free to rule her own domain; the man is often enslaved inside another's. The woman in her home is her own boss. The man at the office must answer to multiple.

Feminism encourages women to enslave themselves for the sake of saying that they are as free as men to submit themselves to many masters. Feminism calls women to forsake their sovereignty in order to serve someone else's for the sake of being just as enslaved as men. Feminism calls slavery "freedom," and servitude "emancipation" It has convinced women to freely submit to the chains of the office in order to abandon the oppressiveness of being unbound at home.

"Feminism is a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands." — G.K. Chesterton

day no. 16,378: the hope of the better half

"Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World: III. The New Hypocrite

Compromise used to mean getting only some of what you wanted instead of getting all of what you wanted. The word means com = with + promittere = send forth, let go. The word promittere itself meaning pro = before + mittere = going. We get the word "mission" from mittere. So, a promise is something that takes place being the going. The words go before the handshake. The vow proceeds the marriage. Put all together, a compromise then is a departure from one thing in order to obtain some other thing. One gives up singleness to gain a spouse. One surrenders the hope of a whole loaf for the sake of guaranteeing a half of one. This is what a compromise used to mean. 

Socialism, however, is not rooted in giving up, but taking over. Therefore, the compromise they promote is not the getting of less bread, but the getting over wanting more. It doesn't want to rob the person of half a loaf, but the hope of a whole one. It employs envy to do the work of keeping consumption low in order to keep back more for itself. Socialism always deprives the people of its resources. The people, according to Socialist, are everyone except the one speaking. The people should be content with half a loaf of broad and be upset with anyone who wants more. This frees the socialist to have his half of everyone else's loaves and the whole portion of those who buy into their rhetoric entirely by giving up their bread altogether.

The goal of Socialism is the same as that of the whore who stood before Solomon heartlessly demanding her bloody half of a dead baby if only to keep anyone else from the hope of having a whole, living one.

day no. 16,046: tyrants lop the tops

"A tyrant lops off those ears which grow higher than the rest of the corn, especially where virtue makes them most conspicuously eminent." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

Tyrants like things level.They call it as "equality," but it amounts to leveling. It isn't aimed at raising everyone to the highest goals, but lowering everyone to the lowest denominator. Tyrants hate exceptional men. Tyrants thrive in a kingdom of sycophants and thus create the kind of pecking order they can manage. Since they are utterly outmatched in every capacity other than their willingness to indulge themselves, they can only accomplish this by eliminating those who excel or, where possible, the ambition of excellence altogether.

This observation in Vindiciae immediately called to mind a similar sentiment expressed by C. S. Lewis in Screwtape...

“What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence—moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them ‘tyrants’ then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of corn, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy’ can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Screwtape Proposes a Toast

In order to equalize God’s creative diversity you must neutralize His diverse creativity. So, while it may appear to be "working" at times, it cannot ultimately work. More to the point, that's biting off a bit more than they can chew.

day no. 15,906: the new nuns... from convent to corporate

"Unless women are willing to sacrifice their sexuality in the pursuit of their career and become nuns in devout service to the corporation, they have to deal with the fact that they will get pregnant." -- Rebekah Merkle, Eve in Exile

Corporations and colleges have replaced convents.

Once upon a time, a woman could make a vow of celibacy for the sake of pursuing a life of service in the house of God in lieu of a life of serving a husband and children in a household of God. Today, women take vows of sterility for the sake of an advanced degree and upward mobility in the marketplace. These modern acolytes are no less devoted than their sister ancestors. They are equally as committed as the nuns of days gone by. However, the nuns of yesteryear at least knew full well that they were religious, whereas the modern sisters of sophisticatti do not. These new nuns are devoted to worshiping their gods and devoting themselves to their demands without realizing the sacrifices they are making. The offerings are so ubiquitous they are rarely noticed. They have so flooded the market that one rarely notices how damp everything is.

day no. 15,905: entitled egalitarianism

Deuteronomy 25:14–15
You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Equality is a virtue, except for when it isn't. It, like avocados, can go bad pretty quickly. Equality left on the counter spoils. Entitled Egalitarianism, as Doug Wilson calls it, is simply *Screwtape's "democracy" re-purposed for a post-Christian society.

Egalitarianism desires more than mere equality of access, it requires equality of outcome. It wants everything to end up equal -- not just guaranteeing a fair fight, but a draw.

By doing so, however, it is itself an unfair measure. It weighs a matter based entirely on its outcome. And because it is easier to cut a few inches off the tall than it is to produce a few inches in the short, those at the privileged end of any stick are the objects of their fair-mindedness. The tall throw the level off. The rich make the bell curve move. The handsome remind the ugly of their ugliness by the disparity. So, they all simply need to be taken down a few notches. It's easier  and more efficient to cut some people down than to lift everything else up.

As Margaret Thatcher once observed, "(they) would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich."

As long as everything ends up equal. Even if that means equally bad. Egalitarianism prefers equally bad to unequally good. Equal is the goal. That is what becomes of pursuing equality as a virtue without considering it in the world that God has made. This is what comes of failing to measure equality by any other standard. When equality is the only standard you have, you have nothing to judge your equality. It makes equality untouchable and subject to nothing else. But equality is only good when in submission to God. Outside of His rule, it is merely a fashionable tyrant.

Egalitarianism isn't concerned with everyone being at the starting line at the same time. It isn't mainly concerned with a fair start. That is the fair and square kind of equality God gets behind. Egalitarianism is concerned with engineering and ensuring that everyone crosses the finish line at the exact same time. In order to accomplish this, the race must be rigged. In other words, egalitarianism embraces unfairness as a means of achieving what it calls "fair." Fair and square for them is not measured at the starting line, but at the finish.

God commands equality of standard, not of outcome. An ounce should be the same regardless of whose ounce it is. An inch should be the same regardless of what part of town its measuring. But the scale should not read 12 oz. regardless of what is placed upon it. A scale should not say ten pounds regardless of what is placed upon it. That is simply unfairness in another direction. It is equal, but it is wicked. Equality not always a virtue because lying never is. Equality is like the little girl that Longfellow knew who had the little curl right in the middle of her forehead... when it is good, it is very good indeed, but when it is bad, it is horrid.

*C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, postlude to The Screwtape Letters

day no. 15,607: faux-vid 19? that's prediculous!

***the following was originally drafted circa April 2020 back when "flatten the curve" was still a trending topic

Celebrating the global pandemic that wasn't with 2.2 million cheers for the prediculous.

My take on COVID-19 is similar to what my take on eschatology used to be. I used to be pan-millennial. I wasn't premillennial, amillennial or postmillennial. I just knew enough to know it was all going to pan out in the end.

Now, I'm a postmillennialist, but to be more precise, I'm an optimillennialist. I still have the hope of a panmillennial, but no longer the indifference to apocalyptic verses.

So with respect to COVID-19, am I pre-demic, a-demic or post-demic? I'm Pandemic. It will all pan out in the end. Only that makes it sound like COVID-19 was a legit pandemic. Which it wasn't. The shamdemic, as Doug Wilson, put it, was the run of the mill with much better marketing.

By the by, has there ever been a more egalitarian, communistic mantra paraded before us in broad daylight than, "Flatten the curve"? Sounds like a slogan hot off the pen of Uncle Screwtape.

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships... For 'democracy”' or the 'democratic spirit' (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be." --- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

day no. 15,239: trigger warning

"We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that 'democracy' in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.

For 'democracy' or the 'democratic spirit' (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible.

The democracies were surprised lately when they found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness! If the whole tendency of their society is opposed to every sort of excellence, why did they expect their scientists to excel?" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Peoples who embrace the world the way that God made it will always excel over those who attempt to remake the world in their own image. Countries that pass laws against gravity can expect to be overtaken in time by those who use the force of gravity like a hammer to smash them into pieces. While it is possible to abuse the way God made the world by wielding it for ungodly gain, it is impossible for those who refuse the way God made the world to shield themselves with theirs from ungodly advance.

day no. 15,238: democracies do not want great men

"In that promising land (England) the spirit of 'I’m as good as you' has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – 'parity of esteem.' An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I’m as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says 'I’m as good as you.' This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, 'A democracy does not want great men.'” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

C.S. Lewis published these words on December 19, 1959.  He foresaw the state of state education. "I'm as good as you" reduces the goal of education from setting minds free (liberal arts) to enslaving whole persons (indentured servitude).

While God would use education to help His people appreciate their freedom (Galatians 5:1), Satan would twist it to help people despise the freedom they're rejecting. Education energized by "I'm as good as you" produces disciples oriented in egalitarian nothingness. Egalitarianism seeks to remake the world in its own image -- without form and void, shapeless and substance-free. Rather than affirming the value of different shapes, they force everyone into one shape. The trick of diversity training is its insistence on sameness. God loves diversity and made two sexes, Satan hates diversity and seeks to eliminate their distinctions by insisting "one is as good as the other."

But this is obviously untrue. Men are better than women... at being men and women are better than men... at being women. It's always as if they were born with an advantage of sorts. Call it gender privilege. And that, as we all know and have been relentlessly told in our time, this unacceptable and intolerable. We are told that if were more tolerant, we would not be so insistent. But therein lies the snooker. In order to be considered tolerant by their standard, we must stop tolerating such insistent distinction and get with the uniformity program. Because if we don't, we're narrow-minded.

Poppycock!!!

day no. 15,237: on par excellence

"You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them 'tyrants' then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, 'democracy.' But now 'democracy' can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks". - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Egalitarianism hates excellence. There is enmity between them as there is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. They are diametrically opposed to one another. They each have wills which they desire to impose upon the other.

Egalitarianism resents the implication of the differences. Inequality always sniffs of injustice in their eyes as though all nuggets of gold must weigh the same or that pellets of gold and plastic of equal weight should be equally valued.

Excellence, however, is not plagued by envy. It does not resent smallness. It does not hesitate to be great. It aims high and does not apologize. It doesn't need the smallness to recognize how much bigger it is. It's aim is not downward. Yet, it refuses to aim low. That is why small things stay so small. They are always looking down on things. Excellence grows upward towards the sun from where it receives its energy. It isn't hamstrung by looking down to ensure everything else is looking up to it.

Lewis foresaw the participation award, self-esteem culture coming down the pike, The spirit of "I'm as good as you" can only slide and tumble one direction. A dead fish can only swim downstream and as long as you know where the current is going, you can predict where the fish will end up. God is great and His Spirit in a man compels him to greatness. He desires to achieve in keeping with His calling in order to honor His Creator. He does not do so in order to be considered great by others, but because he considers his God worthy of the effort. He doesn't need to be noticed by anyone as long as he is noticed by His God. He can be great in secret knowing the greatness of His God allows Him to see him in secret. But whatever he does, he does not seek to be insignificant. He does not try to go unnoticed across the board. In fact, he desires all the more to be noticed by his primary audience. He doesn't dance as though no one is watching, but as though only One were watching - One who loves dancing.

day no. 15,235: I'm as good as you

"The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say, 'I’m as good as you.' The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the center of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says 'I’m as good as you' believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: 'Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"I'm as good as you" is envy with mascara. It is cosmetically concealed smallness. It boasts of integrity, but is fueled by disingenuinity. It is meretricious. "I'm as good as you" recognizes its own inferiority by asserting its equality. Equality in this sense of the word is the essence of the egalitarian leveling agent that seeks to devour any and every difference by reducing all peoples to the lowest common denominator imaginable in order to eliminate that nagging feeling of inferiority. It is like leaven working its way through the lump only with the end in mind of leaving no lump. The problem is not the superiority of the neighbor, but the way one's own inferiority makes the man feel. Being inferior is not inherently problematic. It's only problematic if one refuses to accept it or the feelings associated with it. If, instead, those feelings are fanned into the flame and weaponized with words like, "justice" and "equality," well then, that is now a problem and not one which will long we tolerated. In this spirit, one will soon be subject to the picket line chants of "What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now! How do we want it? By any means necessary!"