Matt and David put on their berets and Gucci jackets and talk about fashion!

S4E50: “Fashion” (Download)

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Timestamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:12 – Welcome
00:37 – Chit-Chat
09:14 – Song-of-the-week
11:53 – Quote-of-the-week
12:32 – Drink-of-the-week
14:50 – Patreon Toast
15:50 – Chapter Summary
16:39 – Discussion
42:29 – Unscrewing Screwtape
46:51 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

No Skype Session today!

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

• This the first episode Matt and David recorded together since we had the virtual tour of C.S. Lewis’ home…
• We’ve had a few people reach out after the fact and ask whether or not it was recorded. I’m afraid we weren’t allowed to, but we’ll announce when the C.S. Lewis Foundation is opening the tours to the public.
• One of the kickbacks for top tier supporters is to jump on a video call with us and we had a few of them recently. One of them said that while he’s appreciated the increased output from Pints With Jack during the pandemic, he said that the volume was also a little intimidating, so it’s probably worth saying two things:
  1. Firstly, the number of episodes we’re going to release each month will be going down a little bit in Season 5…
     • We’ll probably just do two “After Hours” episodes a month.
     • I’ve also been polling supporters on our Slack channel and it looks like when we do dedicated months (like Tolkien Month, Barfield Month etc.) we’ll do them in contiguous blocks, so next season we’ll probably have an introductory episode, then post all our episodes for Apologetics Month and then start whatever book we’re studying for that season. We’ll do the same thing before starting the Narnia book of the season, and again at the end of the season…
  2. …but in the meantime, just consume whatever episodes suit you. 

• We’ve now seen the cover for Patti Callahan’s new book, “Once Upon a Wardrobe”. The book itself will be released in October…
• Premier is launching a new C.S. Lewis podcast on March 29th hosted by Alister McGrath called The C.S. Lewis Podcast.

• Gina Dalfonzo appeared on our YouTube channel last year to talk about her book, Dorothy and Jack, which talks about the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L Sayers. It’s currently being converted into an audiobook and will be released on May 18th.
• Lina Maslo appeared on an After Hours episode a while back, talking about her illustrated children’s book, Through the Wardrobe. That is also being converted into an audio book.
• Finally, Pints With Jack co-host, Andrew Lazo, recently gave a talk to the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. It was called Sehnsucht as Signpost: The Autobiographical Impulse of C. S. Lewis:

Song-of-the-week

• On to the song-of-the-week… So many options this week as Screwtape teaches his nephew how to inculcate the patient with a fear of “the Same Old Thing” and to love novelty and fashions…
  • We had a bunch of suggestions from listener and resident meistro, John Marr:
    • He suggested two songs from The Alan Parsons Project: Day After Day and “Time”
    • “Fashion” by David Bowie
    • “Seasons of Man” by Yes
    • …and even The Four Seasons by Vivaldi! John commented that most people have heard the first movement, “Spring”, too many times in bad films, who hire lazy music supervisors.  
  • I came up with some more suggestions…
    • A fun little song, Same Old Thing by Eric Hutchinson
    • I even came up with a Taylor Swift option, Change (you’re welcome Matt!)
• But, after much consideration, I decided that the song-of-the-week should be Fashion! by Lady Gaga. If you’re not familiar with it, here are some of the lyrics…

You’ve got company Make sure you look your best …
Make up on your face A new designer dress …
There’s a life on Mars Where the couture’s beyond, beyond …
Married to the stars! I own the world, we own the world

Fashion, Lady Gaga

Quote-of-the-week

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart — an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

Drink-of-the-week

• The drink-of-the-week is… Macallan 18
  • Color: Deep caramel brown.
  • Nose: Sherry sweetness and spice, creme brulee.
  • Taste: The sherried sweetness and some spice carry over from the nose. The whisky is big and creamy. A delicate, charred smokiness permeates the dram. More like a wood smoke than
• I’m drinking some Bulleit Bourbon today (with a couple of drops of water) .

Patreon Toast

• One of the benefits for Gold-level supporters on Patreon is that we toast one of them each episode. Today we are toasting Kimberly K:

Kimberly K, your presence on the “PWJ Slackers Community” has been a blessing and we raise our glasses to good health of you and all those close to you

Patreon Toast for Kiberly K

Chapter Summary

• Onto the one-hundred word summary for Letter #25, which was first published in The Guardian on October 17th, 1941…

Screwtape complains about the patient’s “mere christianity”, wanting him to attach some fashion to his faith… and ultimately supplant it! Scewtape plans to do this by fostering a horror of “the Same Old Thing”…

God has made humans to enjoy both change and permanence. Screwtape wants the desire for change to become so twisted that the patient demands absolute novelty… something which is costly, diminishes enjoyment, promotes illicit pleasures and fosters both greed and misery.

Demands for novel thinking are crucial for Hell to distract humans from the real dangers of their time, and keep their thinking muddled.

Chapter Summary of Letter #25

Discussion

Mere Christianity

• Screwtape kicks things off by identifying something which really bothers him about the group to which the patient’s new girlfriend has introduced him… they are “mere Christians”.
  • We spoke about this back in Season 1 when we worked our way through Mere Christianity, but the phrase “mere Christianity” comes from the 17th Century English Puritan, Richard Baxter. It’s found in his book The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.
  • Just to recap… Mere Christianity isn’t a replacement denomination! Lewis described it as a hallway of a house and encouraged everyone to pass from the hallway and find a home in a room, but not chosen for purely superficial reasons.

Christianity And X

• Screwtape outlines what they want instead of this “mere Christianity”…

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call “Christianity And”. You know — … Christianity and the New Psychology, … Christianity and Faith Healing, … Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

The Same Old Thing

• Screwtape says that this should be achieved by inculcating in the patient a “horror of the Same Old Thing”. As he says in today’s quote-of-the-week, it’s…

one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart — an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• If you always want novelty… …that’ll drive you towards heresy in religion (think of “The Episcopal Ghost” from The Great Divorce). …it’ll make you give bad advice (because you’ll stay away from tried and true wisdom) …and it’ll drive you towards having affairs and turbulent friendships.

Time and change

• Screwtape explains why the “horror of the Same Old Thing” is even possible… Humans live in time, and things change over time. Because change is inevitable, God (whom, once again he accuses of being a hedonist) has made change pleasurable.

Balancing with permanence

• …but change isn’t the only thing in our lives. So, because of this, God made us find not only change pleasurable, but also permanence. God offers a way to fulfil both of these loves:

…in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• He gives examples of how God does this, both in nature and in the Church. In nature we have the seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer, …) And in Church life we have the liturgical year (Christmas, Lent, Easter, …) and alternating periods of fasting and feasting. Rhythm allows for both change and constancy – genius!

Demanding Novelty

• So far in the letter, …
  • … Screwtape has explained the goal (get the patient to attach some fashion to his Christianity to ultimately replace it)..
  • …he’s explained why this is even possible (God made both change and permanence pleasurable)
• …so now Screwtape explains how they’re going to exploit this.

Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

If Hell fails

• Screwtape said that if they don’t do this, humans will love…

mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• You play Conkers with horse-chestnut seeds. You put a hole through one of them, thread a string through and tie a knot at one end.  You then take it in turn to hit another child’s conker until one of them breaks. 
• Hopscotch is a game based around hopping between different squares drawn on the ground. It was generally more favoured by girls – I found it rather boring and nowhere near as violent as conkers!
• Whereas love of some change is natural, Screwtape says that the demand for constant, infinite novelty is entirely their work.

Advantages for demanding absolute novelty

• Screwtape outlines the advantages of fostering this desire for novelty in the patient. He gives three reasons. Firstly…

In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• Secondly, demands for novelty inevitably costs money, fostering greed, unhappiness, or both.
• Thirdly, demands for novelty means that you quickly use up innocent sources of pleasure and move onto the illicit ones. Honestly, all of this is sounding like all sensual addictions, such as pornography – diminishing returns, increased costs, moving further and further away from the God-given design.
• Screwtape points out that this kind of thinking has meant that artists continually try to push the limits of art, greatly hindering the ability for it to be used by Christianity (cf Madonna and most artists trying to shock us).
• For the fourth and final advantage, Screwtape says that if they can foster a desire for novelty, then they can create Fashions, particularly Fashions in thought, which he then goes on to explain…

Distract from real dangers

The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• What he describes next is really quite comical…

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under [i.e. nearly under water – the Gunwale is the top edge of a boat where weapons are mounted]. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• He explains that, in emotional ages, they make people fear reason, lecherous ages are on their guard against Puritanism..

…and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism [the general ideas of liberty] the prime bogey [evil spirit]

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

Philosophy of novelty

• Screwtape says that the real win is to turn this desire for novelty into a fully-fledged philosophy. At that point…

…nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• Screwtape comments about the Evolutionary model of thought is useful here:

It is here that the general Evolutionary or Historical character of modern European thought (partly our work) comes in so useful.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

I suggested that Lewis is referring to the evolutionary model’s idea that constant change moves towards perfection. This connects to “Chronological Snobbery”, the idea that old ideas are inherently bad because they’re all.

• Screwtape says that God wants us to ask certain questions about our actions:

is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• In contrast, Screwtape wants Wormwood to encourage his patient to ask weird questions:

“Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• These questions cannot possibly be answered because we can’t see the future (although, funnily enough, the choices we make in the present will help shape it). While we’re preoccupied with these wrong questions, Screwtape says they can easily bend our will.
• Screwtape ends his letter by saying that, at one point, humans knew that some change could be good, bad or neutral, but that…

We have largely removed this knowledge. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

• He says they’ve replaced the word “unchanged” for the emotionally-evocative “stagnant” and to….

…think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain — not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

Unscrewing Screwtape

1. Do… learn to be still and present, and not always need change/Do not… demand constant novelty
2. Do… root yourself in the historic teachings of the Church, no matter how “unsexy” and “boring”
3. Do not… judge based on the current fashionable trend, but on truth itself/Do… beware of attaching fashions to your Faith
4. Do… embrace rhythm (in life, nature, and spirituality)
5. Do… think clearly about the dangers of the current age
6. Do not… drink some Macallen 18 and then try Macallen 12

Closing thought…

• A couple of weeks ago, in my episode with Taylor Schroll, I referred to Screwtape’s assessment of a theologian whom I identified as Reinhold Niebuhr.
  • As I was listening back to that episode I realized that I have a connection with this theologian! He was the author of a prayer which I adopted at my Confirmation.
  •  You may know it as the Serenity Prayer, a version of which is associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. 
  • I thought it might be an idea to today’s episode with a one of the later, longer versions of that prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it, Trusting that You will make all things right, If I surrender to Your will, So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

Reinhold Niebhur, The Serenity Prayer

Fr. Jeffrey Doyle