A little truth which is bigger than it first appears

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
-Robert Brault

Ken Myers on C. S. Lewis' views on Presentism

Ken Myers, author of the "Contours of Culture" column in Touchstone magazine, illuminates C. S. Lewis' thinking on "Presentism": 


"Lewis laments the mentality of "Presentism," of provincialism in time, that plagues modern imaginations.  

"How has it come about that we use the highly emotive word 'stagnation,' with all its malodorous and malarial overtones, for what other ages would have called 'permanence'?...Why does 'latest' in advertisements mean 'best'?" 

"Lewis argued that this preoccupation with the present (and indifference  to or suspicion of the past) was a function of living with so much technology

"I submit that what has imposed this climate of opinion so firmly on the human mind is a new archetypal image.  It is the image of old machines being superseded by new and better ones.  For in the world of machines the new most often really is better and the primitive really is clumsy."

"He went on to argue that our assumption that everything is provisional and soon to be superseded - that we should live for the next thing rather than treasure and honor the permanent things - was the single aspect of modern life that detached us most thoroughly from all previous ages of history." (1)


This view is particularly pithy when cross-referenced with a letter I read recently while reading Letters of C. S. Lewis. Lewis is responding to a letter from (I am not making this up) "The Society For The Prevention Of Progress" in May 1944:

"While feeling that I was born a member of your Society, I am nevertheless honoured to receive the outward seal of membership.  I shall hope by continued orthodoxy and the unremitting practice of Reaction, Obstruction, and Stagnation to give you no reason for repenting your favour..." (2)

Citation: 
(1) Myers, Ken. Touchstone Magazine: Contours of Culture, "No Time Like the Present". May/June, 2011.  Volume 24, Number 3. Pages 11, 12.
(2)  Lewis, W. H., Editor. Letters of C. S. Lewis. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York. 1966. Page 204.