From "Nine Nonobvious Ways to Have Deeper Conversations/The art of making connection even in a time of dislocation" by David Brooks (NYT).
November 20, 2020
"C.S. Lewis once wrote that if you’d never met a human and suddenly encountered one, you’d be inclined to worship this creature."
"Every human being is a miracle, and your superior in some way. The people who have great conversations walk into the room expecting to be delighted by you and make you feel the beam of their affection and respect. Lady Randolph Churchill once said that when sitting next to the statesman William Gladstone she thought him the cleverest person in England, but when she sat next to Benjamin Disraeli she thought she was the cleverest person in England."
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69 comments:
You're reading BS from the the Obama pants' crease guy?
Every human being is a miracle, and your superior in some way.
False.
The art of making connection even in a time of dislocation
Apparently the art consists of unctuous flattery.
C. S. Lewis never met Hillary Clinton.
I always used to put in a good word for Brooks, thinking that somebody so hated by both the right and the left really couldn't be all that bad.
I don't do that any more. The guy who dumped his wife for his research assistant probably shouldn't be telling the rest of us how to live.
Lurker21--we hear that a lot from journalists--if they are hated by both sides, then they must be doing something right. But maybe they're hated by both sides because they suck.
Except deplorables, of course. But are they even human?
Meaningful connection in a time of dislocation?
When assholes are empowered meaningful people want to disconnect.
I knew an elderly businessman who used the methods of Dale Carnegie to great effect. The firstconversation I ever had with him began with asking where I was from,followed by, "Tell me, what was it like growing up there. It must have been fascinating!" And it was, suddenly.
Lady Randolph had to have been pretty clever to produce Winston.
There are places where good conversation is going on. I think the IDW is one of those places. It starts with not dismissing the other person out of hand. Some would dismiss Lewis just for the fact he was a Christian. I have strong beliefs, but like them to be challenged. This blog used to be a great space where there were some on the left who had good arguments that made me examine my beliefs. It was totally enjoyable. Now, there are very few here. Our hostess is good in that way as long as the conversation isn't about abortion or gay marriage. She has blind spots there.
Why do I think Fernaninande has very few--if any--friends? ;-)
I'm not flattered by personal questions and find them annoying. But if someone were to ask me what I thought of Brexit or the AZ Cardinals' defense, I'd warm to the topic--and to them.
Why do I think Fernaninande has very few--if any--friends? ;-)
Because you're a miracle and the cleverest person in England.
I stopped reading Brooks awhile ago, but this a useful observation of his. Don't make it political. People are interesting and usually enjoy making a human connection.
Never been much of a conversationalist. Kind of a Joe Friday type of guy. I've been told I'm a good listener though.
gee! it's ALMOST LIKE; we were Created, in GOD'S Image!
The PM who wanted to impress her with his cleverness was the Liberal and the one who made her feel clever was the Conservative PM.
Others have touched on it, but no matter what truth may reside in David Brooks article; I don't buy that he believes in it himself. But then, Althouse already made the ultimate comment with her tag; "lightweight religion".
I'll be honest. When I watch a Congressional committee hearing, I invariably think I'm smarter and better qualified than them. And I don't think that's arrogance. Most of our leadership class are superficial idiots, who think way too highly of themselves. Listen to the questions asked of Amy Barrett, and how she answered them, and then listen to their responses. The people on the committee were too stupid or too ideological to realize that she was running circles around them without even trying.
Mary Beth, that has been my observation, too, regarding Gladstone vs. Disraeli. Gladstone was the prototypical moralist Liberal with no real interest in people as individuals. As the song, Easy to be Hard laments, some only care about 'evil and social injustice' but not about a friend's needs.
"Every human being is a miracle, and your superior in some way"
Correct. For example, Joe Biden is a miracle in having become president while losing faculties most of us take for granted. He is far superior to me in his ability to lie.
In Trollope's Phineas Redux, the PM character based on Disraeli flips his stance on a major issue and drags his party with him to stay in power. There's a funny description of his "probably not temporary insanity."
I don't have exhaustive knowledge of C. S. Lewis, and it's possible that he did say/write something like what Brooks says here (though I doubt it). But my guess is that Brooks is mangling this Lewis quote:
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."
Which is definitely not lightweight religion.
Beaneater, I believe you are correct. But C.S. Lewis is too deep for the likes of David Brooks.
Every time something from the NYTimes is up, it makes me glad I don't get that rag.
I trust nothing from the NYT, and David Brooks, too.
Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn, was quite a looker, so one can imagine a PM wanting to chat her up at the dinner table.
Do you suppose he reads his best lines to his new, young wife, as he types them into his word processor? Does she laugh at his jokes, marvel at his insights? Or maybe not so much these days?
Aww.
Of course the NYT staff needs to heal from the 4 years of spitting vitriol at half the country. Charter members of my shit list all.
What's so great about connections? I'm trying to disconnect wherever I can. And conversation? It's already a dammed cacophony in my world. That's what's great about online commenting. I can turn it on and off as desired.
One thing that does suck is that you can't get people to answer questions that might force them to confront the weakness of their points. They say shit, and when confronted, they just ignore the question. They don't ignore insults or stupid shit, but ask a clarifying question like what President was ever more mistreated than Trump or what President was more accomplished in their first term? or, why don't you want the election thoroughly verified before declaring a winner, and you get crickets.
I don’t really have a problem with “light-weight religion.”
Every human being is a failed experiment. Take my ex-friend Lefty. After my prank with the chainsaw went horribly awry, he refused to forgive me. Some people, despite outward appearances, have an unforgiving nature and a poor sense of humor.....Both Disraeli and Gladstone were strangely muted on the slave issue. You'd think that would be a big deal, but it never was. The Irish question was nearly always the big human rights issue in Great Britain. Gladstone was more decent about this and and many more things than Disraeli, but Gladstone was right in a pompous way. Disraeli was witty and cynical and is more attuned to modern sensibilities. In his youth he wore brightly colored velvet pants. He was reactionary on many issues, but forgiveness is granted to the fashion forward.....Gladstone used to read Bible verses to prostitutes and then go home and flagellate himself. That's a perversion that's never really caught on.
Sure, there are always people out there to whom you are a slob, and always people out there to whom you are a snob. Elitism and populism and victim studies have to cope with the fact that we're all on a continuum between absolute privilege or superiority and absolute abjection and inferiority, and never as excellent or as oppressed as we might imagine.
You can always learn something from somebody, though it may not be something you are very interested to learn. But did we really need David Brooks to tell us that? It seems like he doesn't have anything of significance to say about politics or anything else, so he falls back on little homilies.
Lewis and Tolkien were friends though they didn't see eye to eye about everything (Catholicism and Protestantism for starters). One of them -- probably Tolkien -- commented on how significant it was that we had only one surviving humanoid or anthropoid species, instead of a variety (elves, dwarfs, hobbits, etc). Would things really be that different?
If we had never met a human, it would mean we weren't humans. What else would we possibly be? God being a human concept, if you have a concept of god or gods and the language to form such concepts, aren't you already in some sense "human?" Think of the animals. Your may believe your dog thinks of you as a god, but the others? The ones forever eating the shrubs and burrowing through the lawn and trying to get into the house? Are we really gods to them?
Every human being is a miracle, and your superior in some way.
No to the first assertion, and everyone is superior to David Brooks. Except maybe Howard, Chuck, readering, and Mark.
If it wasn't for comments about how Brooks dumped the altfrau for a young hottie, I'd have no reason to like David Brooks at all. I certainly haven't read much of his stuff for, oh, maybe as long as Mrs B #2 has been on the planet.
Lady Churchill raised money for the sick and wounded in the Boer War, and took great pains to make sure no religious messages were imparted with the aid.
Narr
Can we rank the religions like boxers? Featherweight, lightweight, middleweight etc?
Individual dignity. Intrinsic value. Inordinate worth. Go forth and reconcile.
Losing his Pro-Choice quasi-religion (e.g. "ethics")... a wicked solution.
I challenge that the quote is Lewis's. I am familiar with a lot of his writing. He said something similar about angels in one of the (three, different) introductions to The Screwtape Letters,, and in "The Weight of Glory" wrote “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
But the sentiment Brooks (or his young wife, who writes a fair bit of his stuff now) attributes to him doesn't seem quite right to me. It may be real, but I have never encountered it. Lewis gets misquoted a lot, as people like to have a heavyweight thinker who has read more than they have even heard of shoring up their little thoughts.
If anyone finds the quote, I will defer.
"Can we rank the religions like boxers? Featherweight, lightweight, middleweight etc?"
Sure. Religions have a beginning, and they grow. They reproduce, and they can die. They are therefore subject to evolution. They have varying traits, and those traits make them more or less competetive, in the context of the environment (human society) they inhabit. For example, the concept of Heaven turned out to be a very useful trait.
I stood near Brooks at a book-signing and at that moment I felt I was the smartest guy in Barnes & Noble.
And by the way, the crease in his pants was disappointingly unimpressive.
I challenge that the quote is Lewis's.
As it was stated in the post I took the statement to mean that one might be inclined to worship a human if one had never met a human, because one wouldn't know any better.
But perhaps this is the actual quote, from "The Weight of Glory" which you mentioned; your excerpt follows this:
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare."
Since we don't "live in a society of possible gods and goddesses" it doesn't mean jack.
I'll start believing the David Brooks when the NYT endorses DJT for president. That is to say, never.
Assistant Village Idiot said...
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
11/20/20, 12:19 PM
That sentiment, if you truly believe it and live your life by it, doesn’t sound lightweight to me at all.
Blogger Mike of Snoqualmie said...
"I'll start believing the David Brooks when the NYT endorses DJT for president. That is to say, never."
Don't be so hasty. Carlos Slim may get tired of yanking that particular chain and sell it to someone else. Some of the younger vermin at NYT might quit, but I think Brooks can learn to sing any song his Master wants to hear.
I don't mean the life-cycle of religions, of course, but their classification and differentiation into weight classes.
Since I'm most familiar with The Three Great Monotheistic Faiths (3GMF), their histories, accomplishments and excesses, crimes and consequences, let's start there.
Are they in the Heavyweight class? (Maybe Superheavy?)
After them, how to rank the other popular cults--Hindus and Buddhists?
Narr
Can we weight for (ahem) . . . cultural influence despite low numbers (jews cough cough)?
I recommend against mocking C.S. Lewis on any religious subject. He was wiser than you. (On other subjects, have at it.) Christian and Jewish scripture says that God made humans 'in our image, according to our likeness' (Gen. 1:26). That does mean that whenever you look another human being in the face, you are looking at the face of God. That's true even if you are looking at Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot -- or Trump or Biden. Or even if you are looking at yourself in the mirror. Scripture also tells us that we are fallen from what we are supposed to be. All of us. It wouldn't hurt to remember that, even as a commenter on Althouse.
Every animal is thrilled to meet another of the same species. My dog will scratch at the door for a walk in the yard if she senses the neighbors dog is all out. She doesn't read David Brooks I might add.
Lurker21, interesting. I would be curious to know which of them said it first, because Lewis (in Out of the Silent Planet) has his Malacandrians make much of the fact that on Earth (Thulcandra) there is only one kind of hnau (roughly: intelligent, mortal, rational being). On Mars (Malacandra) there are three: the hrossa, the seroni, and the pffltriggi (I hope I am spelling that right), and each illuminates the other two, but here on Earth there's just man. Maybe Tolkien got the idea of his many races (not like human races, more like separate species) from Lewis, rather than the reverse.
@ Kay - I confess I am being rude here, but could you please read more carefully before criticising others? I never said Lewis's sentiment was in the least lightweight. He has been my main teacher these last fifty years. He is the heavyweight, having written not only theological material still in print but literary criticism still taught at the graduate level, such as the the Oxford Sixteenth Century Literature(Excluding Drama), and A Preface to Paradise Lost. Brooks, or his bride, is likely being the lightweight here, breezing by a quote without thinking too hard.
@Fernandinande - I was aware of the context and I don't think you are entirely wrong for bringing it forward. But it is about humans resurrected and glorified, not humans in current state. From Paul's Letter to the Hebrews: "You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor" It is promised that we will become quite remarkable someday. I certainly hope so, as I don't feel all that remarkable at the moment.
@ Michelle Dulak Thomson. Lewis and Tolkien were both long aware of elves, dwarves and some of the more dangerous humanoid races because they are common in Norse literatures for centuries. The races in the Ransom Trilogy are (almost) entirely original to Lewis, though they owe some elements to previously-described creatures. They come later.
https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2020/11/surfeit-of-creativity.html
Until Prof gives us a cafe post, I'll hang out here for a while. Almost 250 on Daybreak and nobody has anything new to say--least of all me.)
Another clear(ish) night ahead . . . perfect temp, dry and a little breezy--made for contemplation of the sublime. At least.
My uncle in Alexandria VA had me reading Lewis that summer of 69 (Screwtape, Mere C) but it failed to take; CSL's fantasy writings I have ignored entirely whether originals or adaptations. Uncle was a Baptist then, but was a Methodist later.
Narr
On his way to Whiskeypalian
Assistant Village Idiot said...
@ Kay - I confess I am being rude here, but could you please read more carefully before criticising others? I never said Lewis's sentiment was in the least lightweight. He has been my main teacher these last fifty years. He is the heavyweight, having written not only theological material still in print but literary criticism still taught at the graduate level, such as the the Oxford Sixteenth Century Literature(Excluding Drama), and A Preface to Paradise Lost. Brooks, or his bride, is likely being the lightweight here, breezing by a quote without thinking too hard.
11/20/20, 6:43 PM
No, no, no, you misunderstand. I wasn’t criticizing you. I was criticizing the tag on this post. Maybe I am missing something. But I never believed that you thought Lewis was a lightweight. In fact I appreciate the context you’re bringing to the discussion.
And I’ll admit that I don’t know Lewis well, but on its face the Lewis quotes seem like powerful observations and not something I would consider to be lightweight.
David Brooks thinks he is writing by candlelight. The rest of the NYT staff is in on the joke by pretending there's nothing wrong with his office.
It would be sad if he didn't so very much and very richly deserve it. What a silk stocking jibone.
Kay,
I took the tag as criticizing Brooks, not Lewis. Given Brooks' pathetic mangling of Lewis's fairly profound idea, I think it's a fair criticism.
Kirk Parker said...
Kay,
I took the tag as criticizing Brooks, not Lewis. Given Brooks' pathetic mangling of Lewis's fairly profound idea, I think it's a fair criticism.
11/20/20, 7:19 PM
Yeah that makes sense. I’ll also confess I’m not familiar with Brooks’ writing or who he is.
mockturtle said...
11/20/20, 8:44 AM
Exactly.
I wouldn't tell anyone other than the mockturtle this, but the two PMs are forever the lion and the unicorn to me.
@Kay -- You say you don't know Lewis well, but you sound like someone who would get a lot from knowing him better. If I knew you better (actually, we don't know each other at all), I might have a good suggestion for where to start. For me, the Narnia stories were a good start -- yes, I know, they are supposedly "children's books". But we are all really children when it comes to God, and the lessons in these stories are deep. The "Screwtape Letters" is great, but it's easy to get confused about what's right and what's Satanic (at least I find it so). I guess my best guess for someplece to start would be "The Joyful Christian", a collection of writings (available on Amazon).
Assistant Village Idiot,
I didn't mean that Lewis's idea of many races was original to him, but that his idea that the existence of many races might influence one's view of the world might have influenced Tolkien.
Thanks for taking The Great Divorce seriously, btw. As pure Christian allegory, that beats anything else Lewis wrote, including the Screwtape Letters. As for That Hideous Strength, I repeat that there are passages in there as strong on particular subjects as anything else he wrote (cf. the way he brings in "the inner ring," which he also uses in an essay somewhere else). Still, it's infuriating not to know, say, more about Sulva. Or what the Seven Genders are! Couldn't he at least give us a hint? The two previous books in the Trilogy, confined as they are to worlds not our own, are less disquieting.
I should add that The Great Divorce, of course, led me straight to George MacDonald, and I'm glad it did.
OK, I've waited a few hours--interesting and productive hours, so there's that--but no new posts for a long time so I'll just throw out some dates and a warning.
One of the less politicized (AFAIK) little offerings on our PBS radio affiliate is Composers Datebook. On this date in 1805, Beethoven's opera Leonora (later Fidelio) premiered in a cold, occupied Vienna. He had struggled against Habsburg censors, and now the story of the patriot imprisoned and abused by a foreign authority opened to a sparse crowd including some French officers.
Austerlitz was still weeks away; it was that victory against the strongest old regime powers that transformed Bonaparte from pretend to real imperial status, both in France and the rest of Europe. Sometimes battles really do matter.
Anyway, Beethoven's 250th birthday is coming up, and I plan to talk about him and his times as much as practicable. The more I hear of his music that isn't the symphonies and concertos and greatest hits, the more awed I am.
Narr
And with that I concentrate on the Sibelius symphony on the radio. Good night.
No one has mentioned Lewis' great apologetic, Mere Christianity. I've read just about all of Lewis except Narnia.
I mentioned "Mere C" last night. Easy to miss.
Narr
JFTR
OK, Narr, sorry.
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