"You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word 'real.' They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, 'All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building'; here 'real' means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say, 'It's all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it's really like": here 'real' is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they know already while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness.
Either application of the word could be defended; but our business is to keep the two going at once so that the emotional value of the word 'real' can be placed now on one side of the account, now on the other, as it happens to suit us. The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are 'real' while the spiritual elements are 'subjective'; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist. Thus in birth the blood and pain are 'real', the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death 'really means.'
The hatefulness of a hated person is 'real'—in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a 'real' core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are 'really' horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments.
The creatures are always accusing one another of wanting 'to eat the cake and have it'; but thanks to our labours they are more often in the predicament of paying for the cake and not eating it. Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of Reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment." - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
In other words, goodness is completely ostracized. Likable things do not possess something we could call, "likability," rather we simply invent sentimentalities and attach them to it. On the other hand, disagreeable things do not possess anything, "likable" as obviously observed by the fact that we don't like them. In one sense, we do not trust our senses and in the other, we scoff at anything other than our senses.
We assume badness is conspicuous and that goodness is supercilious. We say that sex seems good, but it's only because it feels really good, a mere product of good vibrations. Conversely, we say that whatever good could come of something difficult, like a problem, is only making lemonade out of lemons and that the sips are only a painful reminder of the reality of lemons being given in the first place.
We pay for the cake and then refuse to eat it. We go to great lengths to create value out of thin air and then refuse to value it. We spend all day in the heat of the kitchen and then spend your night neglecting to eat the cake we made. We know enough to know that something should mean something, so we create the meanings we prefer and then pretend that we're too good to believe in them; because, after all, we know who made them and where they came from. In one way, this makes perfect sense, but in another it only reveals how we've been gamed. By substituting God's preferred pronouns and sentiments with our own, we've given ourselves an 'out', but we have yet to create an 'in'. God's design draws us in; ours erases everything out.
Basically, we believe that bad sentiments are real and that good sentiments are imaginary while insisting that bad actions are imaginary and that good actions are sentimental. In other words, when you remember that a particular difficulty ended up producing some good, you discount it as merely sugar-coated sentimentality, but when you remember that a particular good situation ended up producing negative feelings, you conclude that the feelings are more accurately recalling the anecdote.
No comments:
Post a Comment