Good morning, Geeky Stoics. This will be a quick one today, but hopefully a solid start to your week. C.S. Lewis is one of the most misquoted authors of all time. His style is so discernible and his views so well catalogued that it’s quite easy to stumble across fake Lewis quotes that might as well be real.
Here’s one I was reminded of today, passed off as a passage within The Screwtape Letters, where a demon writes to another demon about how to mislead human beings (the patients). What the fake quote looks like.
“Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration, and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. Ensure the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognizing there is a problem with himself.”
Honestly, I feel like Lewis would have agreed with this. There is, like I said, a Stoic core to his political views throughout Screwtape and Mere Christianity. He’s wary of politics as a means to salvation, and as an opponent to progressivism, thinks it is not really possible to better society by anything but internal work.
He does have some things to say about politics that are worthwhile for us to consider in our lives.
we want a man hag-ridden by the future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy’s [God’s] commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other.
In this portion, Lewis is describing a man whose relationship to the future is toxic and producing sour fruit. We all plan for the future in positive ways, such as retirement savings or changing the oil in our cars. We do things today that make tomorrow better. There is nothing wrong with this.
The difference between that and the “hag-riden” man worrying about the future is that he’s not doing anything today in his own sphere of influence that helps. Retirement savings are still a good example. The math of U.S. Social Security doesn’t add up, and at some point, there will be cuts made. You can either lie awake at night grumbling about this, or fretting about a future where you’re old, decrepit, and impoverished, or you can start eliminating personal debt today and saving your own money.
"Real happiness is...to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future." — Epictetus
Much of politics is and has always been about utopian thinking, whether people admit it or not. The pursuit is of a perfect future where no one suffers, where crime is solved, and everyone has what they need (want, actually). Stoics of history ranged from rich to poor, and they all shared a single notion of society, which was that you cannot control the actions of other people.
The popularized passage from Marcus Aurelius that suggests, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way,” is not actually about mountains or personal struggles…it’s specifically about people. The passage goes on to add that people will obstruct your goals, and we owe them our best in response to it. Aurelius, an emperor, knows that people will get in his way, and he should use it as an opportunity to be more virtuous.
“People are our proper occupation,” he says.
When Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode II starts talking about politics to Padme, he expresses the antithesis of this attitude put forward by Aurelius and suggested by Fake C.S. Lewis.
ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.
PADME: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree.
ANAKIN: Well, then they should be made to.
PADME: By who? You?
ANAKIN: Not me, someone…wise
Here are a few more thoughts of mine on this scene in Star Wars
I was going to go on longer about this, but I have to travel today and need to consider being on time to my destination. So I’ll leave it here. There are so many more thought-provoking takes on politics in Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, ones that remind us to look inward rather than trying to “fix” others using government.