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  It is the image of old machines being superseded by new and better ones.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"He went on to argue that our assumption that everything is provisional and soon to be superseded - that we should live for the next thing rather than treasure and honor the permanent things - was the single aspect of modern life that detached us most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.

A deep breath of cool clear water (or something like that)

For several years now I have been attempting to understand how the culture I am immersed in (as an American, and with Western History in my particular past) has influenced me.  How has it shaped my understanding of reality and the truth about the world I live in?  It has been an exhausting investigation as I realize that I have been radically and fundamentally influenced by the last 400 years of culture currents.  In several senses, I have never had an original thought in my life, but have been fed every thought I have ever had by others, and I have been curious about who those others are, and what it was they were attempting when they passed on their thinking to subsequent generations.  In some ways, this whole endeavor has been unhealthy, causing a large dose of epistemological claustrophobia.  In other ways it has been a spreading of my horizons as I understand who I am better.

For example, try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.  This book will alter your view of what it means to be an individual, and forces you to realize that you are only "individual" and "authentic" in roughly exactly the same way as everyone else in this American Democracy is "individual" and "authentic".  That book made me laugh out loud, it was so startlingly accurate about me and my neighbors.  And it was written by a Frenchman in the early 1800s!

So, for a couple of years now I have been trying to figure out how to respond to this strange, constricting realization I have come to: how deeply the philosophies around me (in particular, the branches and fruit and fruit pies coming from the philosophies of the "Enlightenment" (really, the Endarkenment) and Romanticism have been all I have ever partaken of, in some senses.  In fact, in a difficult and sometimes amusing way, I only ever assess the Enlightenment on its own terms...from an Enlightenment perspective.  Arrgh!  How to escape from this philosophical tail-chasing.

Along comes a couple of quotes in the last few weeks that have helped me take a really deep breath for the first time in a while.  One from Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas

To procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you are afraid of erring...seems to me almost to run counter to love.  To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love.

In the middle of trying to carefully weave my way through decision-making, attempting to take into account all of the philosophies that are informing my thinking has been pretty crippling.  Here, Bonhoeffer reminds me that LOVE is the goal, and (I add) since I know I am probably not going to get it perfect, even if I reflect on a topic for decades...why not put love at the forefront, pray, think and then take action...then assess, and take more action...then assess again, etc.  I am trying to make that my new Mode of Operation.

THEN, along comes a few more thoughts, this time from Tim Keller's book, Gospel and Life.

A worldview is...the story of the world that operates at the root of a person's life.

And

We cannot help but participate in the worldview of our particular culture and generation.  But the gospel changes the way we look at everything.  We are to look at everything...and decide (a) what to keep as good, (b) what to reject as just too distorted, and (c) what to revise, rename, and reshape with the gospel. 

Very helpful thoughts for me.  I have realized for a while now that I can't "get out" of my own worldview, and that participating at some level in the worldview around me is impossible to escape.

Ken Myers suggests that we must make a decision.  Do we interact with that worldview in a mode of acceptance and adoption, or do we interact with it at some points in a mode of resistance and rejection.

Tim Keller's thoughts added to Ken Myer's help me to have a framework for thinking about these things.  And Bonhoeffer's helps to relieve the incapacitating pressure to think that I have to get it all logically and philosophically perfect before making decisions, and the Gospel itself, most importantly by far, has helped me to understand that it was for such an errant philosopher and sinner as myself that Jesus came to die, and restore me to right relationship with Himself.

Wisdom, or knowledge?

Ken Myers, in his book Signs of the Times, makes the following distinction between knowledge and wisdom.

"Literary critic Cleanth Brooks, in an essay on literature and technology, once obverved: "Secretly we may  hunger for wisdom, but our overt craving nowadays is, of course, for information." Later in this article, Brooks later made mention of the famous lines from T.S. Eliot which lament the loss of wisdom in the growing flood of public knowledge, and the loss even of knowledge in a deluge of sheer information.  Mere knowldege can easily be mistaken for wisdom, just as the accumulation of info-bits, factoids, and trivia can replace the pursuit of knowledge . 

Richard Weaver, a thinker committed to the recovery of the tradition of wisdom, wrote in 1948 that, "Having been told by the reeltivists that he cannot have truth, [modern man] now has 'facts'....the acquisition of unrelated details becomes an end in itself and takes the place of the true ideal of education." Weaver believed that our view of reality had become thoroughly fragmented; modern culture had forgotten (or rejects) the context of truth within which individual facts make sense.  Education itself has become an elaborate form of Trivial Pursuit for credit."

Citation: Myers, Ken. Signs of the Times: the Table Talk Columns. Mars Hill Monographs. 

Deliberate Living Recommended

Ken Myers, one of the most influential people in my life (via, primarily, his Mars Hill Audio Journal) says this about the focus of his work with the Journal:

"My work is really about producing thoughtful Christian faithfulness. If you start to think carefully about how you eat, how you spend time, how you think about place, all those things some people may think you’re trying to achieve salvation by works.  So my sense is that people with that kind of tendency, not just in the PCA, accept conventional ways of living from secular culture because they regard the effort to think thoughtfully and live deliberately as a kind of semi-Pelagianism.  And the idea that living deliberately is semi-Pelagian just baffles me.  Because when you don’t, you end up living in accordance with a very post-Christian, and in significant ways, anti-Christian culture."

Citation: Ken Myers, in interview with Walter Henegar

Loneliness in the chatroom

"The cheeriness of the great big chat room that we are all in at the moment isn't really working.  It is all a battle against loneliness."


Is there another, perhaps better way out of loneliness besides constantly being logged on?  And how can we get [back] there?


Citation:
Thomas, David. Mars Hill Audio Journal 103. "Psycho and American Culture". 2010.

Wisdom in cultural context

Eph 5.15-17 says "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,  Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.  Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is" (KJV)

I believe that a part of wisdom is being able to accurately assess to what extent culture has already influenced my thinking, so that I can then ask for wisdom in order to know how I should deal with my conformity to the world, as I seek to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. (See Romans 12.2)

Or something like that.

Anyway.  Ken Myers has been deeply influential in helping me to see the nature of cultures influence through his writings and audio compilations and interviews at the Mars Hill Audio.

Ken influentially (to me) says in his book:

            “Culture is an abstraction.  We cannot isolate for observation three pounds or fourteen centimeters of culture.  These abstract questions of definition are extremely important, just as some amount of abstract thinking about who God is and what man is are necessary if we want to be obedient to God.  But responsible evaluation of culture must always deal with concrete human experience of what has been labeled “culture.” We don’t, after all, encounter culture.  We hear a particular song or see a specific film or read a novel that we have chosen from among all the others available.

            “Not only does cultural analysis require that we look at real cultural experiences, it requires that we look at them in their natural habitat, and that we understand something of their history.  In assessing rock’n’ roll, for example, it’s not enough to read the lyrics and find out on what beat of each measure the accent falls.  We also need to consider what relationship rock has with other aspects of pop culture, what social role it plays for its fans, and how it compares with other musical options available to listeners.  We need to look at the culture of rock, not just the words and the music.

            “Such consideration of the context of a particular cultural expression is important not for the sake of some sort of academic purity, but for the sake of Christian wisdom.  (emphasis mine)  Many of the decisions we make about our involvement in popular culture are not really questions about good and evil.  When I decide not to read a certain book, I am not necessarily saying that to read it would be a sin.  It is much more likely that I believe it to be imprudent to take the time to read that book at this time in my life.  To paraphrase Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 10 (which is, as we shall see, a very significant passage for our thinking about culture), something may be permissible, but it may not be very beneficial or constructive.

            “Each of us arises every morning with, in the providence of God, a number of duties, dilemmas, opportunities, and confusions that stem from living in a particular culture at a particular time.  Our decisions about what sort of involvement with popular culture is prudent does not occur in isolation.  Just as a critic cannot understand a song or a novel or a movie outside of its cultural context, so we cannot anticipate or evaluate the effect popular culture has on our lives without looking at that context.  Do I want to read that book because everyone else is reading it, or because of some intrinsic merit it has? Am I turning on the television because there is something I want to watch, or because I am addicted to distracting titillation?” 

Myers, Ken. All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture.Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1989. 30-31.