Mere Christianity - C S Lewis and our Dystopian Future

Christian Behaviour

The Three Parts of Morality

For many who are wondering how the world has become so warped in such a short period of time, such that people can blatantly ignore the collateral damage of lockdown policies around the world and continue to express their belief in the goodness of mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, reduced health care with a confident belief that they are on the right side of the morality question. For those people, and I include myself in the number, Book Three of Mere Christianity may help us, as C S Lewis turns his attention to the question of morality.

First of all he tackles the fallacy that to have morals is to have high ideals. It is not that ideals can not be the same as morals it is just that talk of ideals has a tendency to result in a kind of personal vanity which is counter-productive.

…it would be even more dangerous to think of oneself as a person ‘of high ideals’ because one is trying to tell no lies at all (instead of only a few lies) or never to commit adultery (instead of committing it only seldom) or not to be a bully (instead of being only a moderate bully). It might lead you to become a prig and to think you were rather a special person who deserved to be congratulated on his ‘idealism’. (MC p.70)

It is difficult at first to understand what Lewis is getting at here, but I think it is the sense that setting up moral behaviour as an ideal to be strained towards, is in a way giving permission for that ideal behaviour to never actually be attained: “In reality you might just as well expect to be congratulated because, whenever you do a sum, you try to get it quite right”. Lewis suggests that it is more useful to think of moral behaviour as rules which should not be broken, in the same way as mistakes in a calculation should not be allowed to slide, as “every mistake is going to cause you trouble later on.”.

So, now that morality is viewed, properly, as rules that should be followed, it is possible to consider how humans may go wrong in their morality. This can be in their relations to each other: they might “drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage”. Or a person may “go wrong inside…when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another.”.

Both these ways in which morality may go wrong are consequential for society. He pictures human beings in society as a flotilla of ships. They must move in the same direction, harmoniously and without causing damage to each other. A ship which is not functioning well individually may well lose control and cause damage to others. Conversely if ships keep colliding with each other they will cause damage to the individual ships causing more destruction.

This works well as a metaphor for the way in which immoral people have a detrimental affect on society, and also the way in which initially quite moral and apparently emotionally healthy people may become less upstanding and more psychologically damaged by the hard-knocks delivered by the immoral members of society, or by a society as a whole which is in the large part immoral.

This metaphor also illuminates the relationship between a person’s inner morality and their outer, social relations, and also provides another idea for consideration, which is the destination towards which all the ships are travelling.

Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. (MC p. 72)

So, just the small stuff then! This view of the 'flocking' of humanity, could perhaps lead to a belief that what is most important in Lewis' opinion and in a Christian society as a whole is that people conform to the collective. However Lewis makes it clear that these ships must be travelling in the Christian direction of what is considered to be human purpose. This is where the Marxist notion of the 'collective' can become treacherous as it can be subsumed into an idea of what is good for society as a whole. But for Marx and technocrats and trans humanists we are contending with right now, what is good for society is chosen by other human beings, them, not by God and laid out for humans to discover in the Bible and Jesus' teachings.

Lewis points out that most of the time, in everyday life, people are concerned with just the first one of these: with fairness between individuals, nations, and classes. That often when a person considers the morality of a particular behaviour in which they want to engage in, or an act they want to perform, they only consider its moral aspect as it affects other people.

This first aspect of morality, the way in which people behave towards each other, is also relatively simple to define. Most people agree they want other people to behave in an honest, kind, and helpful way towards them and they are prepared to return the courtesy. However, “if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on to the second thing – the tidying up inside each human being – we are only deceiving ourselves.”.

What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? (MC p. 73)

Here his argument becomes particularly relevant to the place many western societies find themselves in today. Over the last year and a half we have watched people in positions of power, politicians and leaders, medics and academics, media companies and pundits, behave in dishonest and underhand ways: terrifying ordinary citizens, removing rights and freedoms, preventing the gathering for religious worship, blocking the loving support of children for elderly parents, misrepresenting science, misrepresenting reality, to put it bluntly, lying for their own reasons. These could variously be to cover up their own incompetence, or to facilitate a great wealth-redistribution from the middle-classes to governments, large corporations, and the elites, or to hasten in a new age of digital slavery for all but the most privileged. We don’t as yet understand why people at the top of our governments and organisations have behaved so immorally but we might be able to explain why such immoral people have risen to positions of power.

…as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. (MC p.73)

This is a disturbing but truthful observation and one that I think goes some way to explain why we are where we are. Not that I am saying our political and corporate systems are perfectly moral, just to say that it is not possible to legislate away corruption, lying, and cheating, nor cruelty or disregard for other human beings.

It is more than likely we are cursed at this time with a bad system, which encourages the rise of bad people. It may even turn people who are good, but not strong in their goodness, bad. However it could be argued that if people were truly, strongly moral, even in a bad system, they would be able to keep their courage, honesty, and moral principles as they rose. There are a few people that do, but they are woefully, tragically small in number and unfortunately a couple of small boats chugging in the right direction is not enough to guide the whole flotilla in the right course. In fact it is more than likely the other captains will look at those few and mock them for going in the wrong direction.

Things look grim enough without bringing our immortal soul into it, but, if we are Christians, we must. If we are jealous and we never really conquer it, in a life-time of seventy years it may not matter, but if we take that jealousy into an immortal life “it might be absolute hell in a million years.” If our immortal soul is at risk from adopting the psychopathic traits that are needed to rise to the top in a flawed, immoral society then we should not seek to rise in that way but should strive to live in a Christian way and accept that we may not achieve wealth or high status.

Of course this does not do much for society, the flotilla of boats that is heading the wrong way. Perhaps we could encourage the captains we encounter to attend to their own interior and emotional life. Not in the sense of developing the confidence to lead a board-meeting or doing power-stances in front of the mirror every morning, but in the sense of being more Christian, attending to the individuality of human beings, their uniqueness and turning away from a technocratic view of society in which individualism is subordinated to the collective.

As more people become attuned to the Christian virtues, I would argue, the ships of the flotilla, will gradually turn onto the right course, other captains may see this and seek to follow, and at a point with such a change in society, it becomes possible for a Christian, virtuous person to become a Christian Prime Minister, or a Christian CEO in a genuine sense, not just as a gimmick, and then the individuals of society would, we could reasonably hope, be happier and more fulfilled. Morality must be thought of in terms of: “relations between man and man: things inside each man: and relations between man and the power that made him.”.

The ‘Cardinal Virtues’

So to considering how to look after the individual ships and keep them in good emotional and spiritual working order. A consideration of the virtues may help with this, both the Cardinal and the Theological. The Cardinal virtues are ones on which all civilised people can agree, and they are not peculiar to Christianity. They are ‘cardinal’ because they are ‘pivotal’. These virtues are prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude.

Prudence is not necessarily brilliant intelligence, but common sense and a willingness to use the intelligence we do possess. Temperance is exercising control so that we do not become addicted to excessive drinking, nor obsessive about other, trivial things like exercise, or even playing chess. Balance is everything. Justice requires honesty, a sense of fairness, and keeping promises. Finally fortitude is the courage to face danger as well as to endure suffering. Fortitude is also required to keep us at the three other Cardinal virtues.

Lewis points out that these actions and behaviours should in fact be a state-of-mind. It is tempting to use the old-fashioned word character. Practising these virtues assiduously will produce character.

Social Morality

The virtues Lewis discusses are, he acknowledges, nothing new:

The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what every one, at bottom, had always know to be right. (MC. 82)

This discussion is interesting especially in the light of how some Christian leaders have behaved in some countries. There has been great disappointment from some priests and many members of the congregation about the compliance of The Church, meaning the authority figures of the Church, arch-bishops and bishops, to draconian measures such as closing churches, and to the wider oppressions and miseries of restrictions and authoritarian new laws. There have been a few heroic priests who have opened churches despite prohibitions, but they have been few in number and easily targeted by the authorities. However, Lewis gives me pause for thought when it comes to looking to the Church to lead us:

People say, ‘The Church ought to give us a lead.’ That is true if they mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christians – those who happen to have the right talents – should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting ‘Do as you would be done by’ into action. (MC p.83)

This is unexpected. Those of us who pay attention to Christian issues have been fulminating against the lack of leadership from the Church, the willingness to go along with every pettifogging rule governments could come up with for worship or to stop worship. Yet here Lewis turns this back upon us. We can not expect the Church to lead in anything other than teaching us how make our souls ready for heaven.

There are precious few openly practising Christians among, for example, UK MPs, although there are many more in the US. In one dishonourable example, professed Christianity has not kept one UK MP from supporting illiberal and cruel restrictions on freedoms that have resulted in much suffering of a physical, emotional, and psychological nature. Some Christian governors have stood up against oppression in America, some have not.

Perhaps to these people panicked by exaggerating scientists and fear-mongering media, virtue has seemed to lie with these oppressive measures, although a thoughtful examination of evidence from reputable sources would make it clear that this is not the case. Surely it was incumbent upon Christian leaders to take the time to do the necessary research and perhaps take advice from people more qualified in the relevant fields than they. Instead many seemed to take the view that ‘virtue’ or goodness lay with doing as the government told them to do. Given the fallible nature of human institutions this is certainly not admirable and probably not excusable either.

History has taught us that often the right and moral thing to do, is to not follow the instructions of our government. So, although Lewis has a point and gave me pause for thought I disagree with him on this, whilst it might be best for Church leaders not to give their opinions on economic policy unless they are qualified I think on political policy, that is policies that affect society and individuals, they should have something, and perhaps a lot, to say.

Church leaders should have opinions on laws that persecute some members of society, or degrade us as human-beings, such as excluding us from certain settings because we have not had a particular vaccine. Preventing us from seeing our elderly or accompanying a relative into hospital, can and should be criticised from a religious perspective. It should be clear to anybody with a humane and loving approach to humanity, let alone a Christian, that wearing masks in public reduces us almost to robots. We make less eye contact, we talk less because it is hard to hear and to be heard, we interact less altogether because there is something humiliating about being masked: it is the scold’s bridle, the slave’s ‘iron muzzle’.

So, the Church should have a lot to say about the measures, oppressions and manipulations of the last eighteen months. Perhaps Lewis would not agree with me on that point, still his next theme is surprising and appropriate to events over the last year-and-a-half. He considers whether the wrong road we have gone down might be investment capitalism.

There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest; and lending money at interest – what we call investment – is the basis of our whole system. (MC p.85)

Clearly this is a problem for our society. We are capitalists, and capitalism has brought improvements in quality of life and therefore health and well-being. It has allowed people to buy their own homes, run their own businesses and accumulate a moderate amount of wealth to provide security for a rainy-day, and something to hand on to children and grandchildren. These things, I think, it is hard to see as evils. However since the industrial revolution there have always been people who accumulated vast amounts of personal wealth: Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Astor, and Doheny are some of the richest men of the nineteenth century. Their modern-day equivalents are Warren Buffet, Zuckerberg, Gates, George Soros, Musk, and Bezos.

Forced sterilisation programmes of the American Bowman Gray (Wake Forest) School of Medicine were funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Rockefeller Foundation, also were funders of the eugenics movement. In all, twenty-seven states in America had forced sterilisation legislation and there are estimated to be about 60,000 victims of this policy.

This is just one example of the way vast amounts of money, whether held personally or placed in foundations which fund causes close to the billionaire’s heart, result in far too much influence being placed in the hands of that individual.

…I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. This is where we want the Christian economist.(MC p. 85)

I would speculate that one of the main problems with the huge corporations such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the millionaires such as Bill Gates, is that a small number of companies, ostensibly operating in a free market, have in truth become monopolies in their sector. As such it is easy for them to fall under the control of, or engage in a mutually beneficial relationship with governments. Clearly when public/private partnerships are mentioned by people like Klaus Schwab of the WEF, such partnerships are easier to forge and develop if they are between a small number of powerful companies and the government. It could even be seen that the reluctance of governments to interfere in these companies, by applying anti-trust laws, or interfering in their accumulation of the smaller companies that constituted their competition in the market, was a choice not to interfere with this accumulation of wealth on the understanding that these huge companies, with vast reach into our lives through technology and their monopoly of the technology sector, would aid the government in the achievement of any goal they chose.

Investment funds such as Blackrock and Vanguard are as powerful as governments:

Bloomberg calls BlackRock “The fourth branch of government”, because it’s the only private agency that closely works with the central banks. BlackRock lends money to the central bank but it’s also the advisor. It also develops the software the central bank uses. Many BlackRock employees were in the White House with Bush and Obama. Its CEO. Larry Fink can count on a warm welcome from leaders and politicians. ('Who Runs the World? Blackrock and Vanguard, Bill Sardi)

Capitalism got us into this mess, but capitalism is needed to get us out. That is, the kind of petit-bourgeois capitalism which allows individuals to accumulate moderate amounts of wealth so that ordinary people can own land and property and thus possess the power that comes with that ownership. It is a daunting thought that, according to Oxfam, 82% of all money earned in 2017 went to the 1% of richest people.

Lewis does not give us any ideas on how to tackle this state of affairs, but he does consider that charity should “pinch or hamper us”. The foundations set up by the likes of Zuckerberg and Gates do not reduce their wealth at all. They are a means of tax avoidance, a means of funnelling money into causes they support and gaining undue influence over society. These charitable foundations in fact increase the wealth of their founders as, in combination with their trusts which invest in the companies and products supported by the foundations, wealth goes out one door, accumulates, and then comes back in the other door in the form of returns on investments. If these billionaires truly give away their money until they felt ‘pinched’, perhaps by having to sell their private jet, we may be getting some way to setting the world right and preserving people from the horrific hobby-horses of some of these deeply weird individuals. Of course it is hard to know what would incentivise them to do such a thing, apart from genuine Christianity.

It may be that I am missing the point: “A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christians.”. To suggest that we should keep on with capitalism but just give it a radical overhaul may not be sufficiently Christian, but I think at this point in time with the super-wealthy ‘one percent’ apparently attempting a coup on society in order to bring in the New World Order, we may have to do what we can now to save our lives, and that seems to be reducing the wealth and power of these few and increasing our own wealth and therefore our power to defend ourselves.

The Great Sin

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. (MC pp. 121-2)

The greatest sin of the spirit is pride. Pride is the worst sin because it makes people compete with others. It is not enough to be rich, the proud person wants to be richer than everybody else. Similarly, it is not enough to be powerful, the proud person wants to be the most powerful. This may be relevant to the place in which we find ourselves.

This pride can, of course, turn people against God, for God is the most powerful of all. It might also lead people to believe that through science they can conquer nature, illness, or even death itself. Now it becomes clear that pride can be a very dangerous sin indeed. Pride might also lead somebody into thinking that they know best for other people, perhaps even a whole nation. That to allow them to make their own decisions, to allow them to vote, would be a mistake because they would make mistakes and not vote in the right way.

Pride is clearly a trait of dictators and tyrants. What we would nowadays call narcissism, that kind of extreme self-love that is a component of psychopathy along with a lack of empathy which means the narcissist has no concern for how others suffer in order for him or her to get what he or she wants.

It has been acknowledged for some time that traits which allow people to become successful in business and politics, narcissism, machiavellianism, manipulativeness and lack of sensitivity to other’s emotions, are congruent with the psychological traits of psychopaths. Needless to say practising Christians should not possess these traits, and in today’s world would therefore probably not be highly successful business people. This places something of a question mark over the true Christianity of extremely wealthy Christian television personalities, I suppose, and also whether those people at the top in politics and business professing Christian values do truly possess them or whether they just see Christianity merely as a Unique Selling Point.

Whether you are a Christian or not, it is hard to argue that people who nurtured the cardinal virtues, temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence, would not make good leaders. If they also have a grip on their pride that would solve all the problems. If leaders were not afraid to be seen as unsure of themselves and cautious in a time of crisis many problems could be avoided. Of course, it's just possible that some of the apparently rash and hazardous decisions that have been made by leaders, that seem like irrational mistakes, were in fact part of a plan we just could not see. But then perhaps our political leaders would not make secret plans, and lie to the public in order to bring them to fruition, if they were not brimming with hubris, dishonesty, greed, and vacillating weakness.