S5E5 – TFL 2 – “Likings and loves for the sub-human” (Part III)

Two Americans and an Englishman discuss patriotism.

S5E5: “Likings and loves for the sub-human” – Part III (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

When the natural loves become lawless they do not merely do harm to other loves; they themselves cease to be the loves they were—to be loves at all.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Chit-Chat

• Andrew’s Updates
  • Back in Florida with family.
  • Going to see The Most Reluctant Convert again
  • Writing paper about Lewis and Autobiography

• Matt’s Updates
  • Reading Loved as I am – such a beautiful book and 6/8 with chapters starting with a Lewis quote
    • God knows our hearts completely
    • He is not deterred by our ugliness or sinfulness or walls we put up between us and him.
  • Looking forward to recording a video chat of the three of us hanging out (Name? “Happy Hour”, “The Inner Ring”, “Extra Pints”, “Another Round”).

• David’s Updates
  • I’ve been doing a bunch of recording…
  • I was recently on The Tolkien Road. John invited Dr. Holly Ordway and me onto his podcast to talk about Tolkien’s opinion of Narnia….
  • I’ve recorded a few Skype Sessions. This weekend I interviewed Murphy Thelen who is filming Out of the Silent Planet starring his family – it’s quite adorable!
  • I’ve also been getting some of “After Hours” interviews in the can…
    • Writer/Director/Producer Norman Stone – it’ll be coming out at the start of December
    • Presbyterian Pastor, Douglas Wilson, as part of our Ecumenical Lewis series

Beverage and Toast

• Andrew
  • Ledaig (10 Year) from Tobermory Distillery

• Matt
  • Cough Medicine!

• David
  • Glen Moray – Fired Oak (10 Year)

Recap & Summary

Recap

In the Introduction, Lewis spoke to us about Need-love and Gift-love, Nearness-by-approach and Nearness-by-likeness, and we were warned not to let our loves become gods, lest they become demons!

And for the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working through Chapter 2, “Likings and loves for the sub-human”. We read about Need-pleasures, which are short-lived and must be preceded by some kind of desire in order to be pleasures. They foreshadow Need-loves. These were contrasted with Pleasures of Appreciation, which are pleasures in and of themselves, demand our attention and foreshadow Appreciative Love.

Then, last week, we read the section which described the love for nature. This isn’t love of beauty, views, plants or animals, but of the “spirits” and “moods” of nature. We read how Lewis rejects the idea that nature is a teacher, but he does believe it can be used to “clothe” our theology. Finally, Lewis ended that section on love of nature by showing how it is just as susceptible to demonic corruption as any other love, if we allow it to become a god.

Summary

Lewis examines another love for something less-than-human: love of country. He analyses the different ingredients in patriotism: love of home, the sense of the country’s history, national superiority, as well as the subsequent rights and duties…and how each can corrupt.

He identifies issues with loving our country because it’s great, rather than just because it’s ours.

To those who would dispense with patriotism entirely, Jack asks with what would it be replaced?

Lewis ends by saying the kind of love he has described here could equally be applied to love of a school, regiment, family, class, church or religious group.

S5E5 Episode Summary

Discussion

1. Saving Patriotism

So last week we looked at the love of nature, and today we look at the love for something else which is less-than-human – love of country – patriotism. Well, on to the text itself… Lewis begins by saying that we all know how patriotism can go wrong, how it can become a demon once it becomes a god. 

He says that, in light of this, some people suspect that patriotism is just simply demonic. This isn’t surprising, given that his generation had just endured two World Wars…

However, Lewis points out that if we reject patriotism entirely, we’d have to throw out Christ’s lament over Jerusalem because, according to Lewis, “He too exhibits love for His country”. This is the passage in Matthew and Luke where Jesus approaches the city and cries out:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Luke 13:34-35/Matthew 23:37-39

So, that’s one reason we can’t reject patriotism entirely. Not only that, he says that if you reject it, you’d…

“…reject half the high poetry and half the heroic action our race has achieved”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

2. Define and Describe

Before we even attempt to praise or dispraise, we’ve should describe and define… and that’s exactly what Lewis does next, outlining what he is and isn’t going to talk about regarding  patriotism…

He says he’s not going to discuss international ethics or talk about what constitutes right and wrong acts between countries. Instead, he’s going to focus on distinguishing innocent patriotism from its demonic counterpart.

In this section he also distinguishes between the rulers of a country and its citizens. He says that rulers are the ones who deal internationally, but he points out that they can act wickedly more easily if the populus have a demonic patriotism, which is actually one reason why they might attempt propaganda in order to secure popular support. Of course, the reverse is true – true virtue in the people might help keep their rulers on the straight and narrow. He says:

That is one reason why we private persons should keep a wary eye on the health or disease of our own love for our country.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

3. Ingredient – Love of Home

Lewis points out that patriotism is somewhat an ambivalent term – it’s a mixture of different ideas and elements. For proof, he points out that both Rudyard Kipling and G.K. Chesterton praised patriotism. If two such different men could praise patriotism, it must be a complicated mixture of elements, like coffee or beer!

Hopefully Chesterton needs no introduction since everyone here listens to my wife’s podcast, Pints With Chesterton… (Funnily enough, they’re going through Orthodoxy at the moment which has much to say about patriotism, particularly in the chapter Flag of the World).

Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist (1865–1936).

Lewis spends the remainder of this chapter looking at the different ingredients, or elements of patriotism…

The first ingredient of patriotism is a “love of home”, which is the love…

…of the place we grew up in… and of all places fairly near… love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

According to Lewis, the largest unit of size allowed here is a country of the United Kingdom – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales… He takes a jab at “foreigners and politicians”, who talk about “Britain”.

The text then takes what initially seemed to me to be a bit of a swerve. Earlier we mentioned Rudyard Kipling. Well, Lewis now comments that his claim:

“I do not love my empire’s foes” strikes a ludicrously false note

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

(A) Association with something so much larger than yourself:

(B) “Love of home” must necessarily be reasonably local. An empire doesn’t have that homogeneity.

With this love for the place there goes a love for the way of life; for beer and tea and open fires, trains with compartments in them and an unarmed police force and all the rest of it; for the local dialect and (a shade less) for our native language.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

(C) Are the “enemies of the Empire” those people being ruled? He quotes Chesterton as saying that a man doesn’t want foreigners ruling his country for the same reason he wouldn’t want his house burned down – he couldn’t even begin to count the things he’d miss.

So what is good about “love of home”? Lewis says:

As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this [love of home] offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

However, Jack notes that this is “not pure charity”… which is a bit of a loaded phrase. Lewis says that love of home teaches us to love our literal neighbours – those who live next door.  He contrasts this with loving our neighbours in a broader sense. He calls it the “dominical sense”, which comes from the Latin word Dominus, meaning “the Lord”. The Lord in this question is, of course, Jesus, who quotes Leviticus 19:19, commanding us to love our neighbour and, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, answering the question: “Who is my neighbour?”.

So Lewis is saying that love of home gives us a step beyond family selfishness. It doesn’t get us quite to love of all humanity, but sounding rather reminiscent of 1 John, he says that we can’t love our neighbours out in the world whom we can’t see if we don’t first love our actual neighbours next door whom we can see! Lewis then reiterates a sentiment we see again and again in this book:

All natural affections… can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Alluding to Christ’s words about plucking out your right eye if it causes you to sin, Lewis says that, at some point, a natural affection may need to be renounced.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 5:29

He rather amusingly says that a creature with no eyes would be “very ill employed” meditating on this passage. Rightly-ordered virtue is meaningless to someone with any virtue.

Is this kind of patriotism aggressive? Lewis says, no…

It asks only to be let alone. 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

It only becomes militant when protecting things that it loves. 

What kind of attitude does it foster towards foreigners? Actually, a rather good one! In one of my favourite quotations from the whole book:

How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like café complet just as we like bacon and eggs–why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Cafe complet is coffee and a croissant, brioche roll or large piece of a baguette, accompanied by butter and a selection of preserves and honey. Fruit juice may also be served.

4. Ingredient – History

Next up, Jack says the second ingredient in patriotism relates to how our country’s past is viewed, not so much in strict history, but in the popular imagination. He cites examples of Marathon, which was a major Greek victory against the Persians in 490 BC, and the Battle of Waterloo where we gave Napoleon and the French a good thrashing!

This past is felt both to impose an obligation and to hold out an assurance; we must not fall below the standard our fathers set us, and because we are their sons there is good hope we shall not.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Jack says that this ingredient doesn’t have quite as good credentials as the previous ingredient, love of home, for the simple reason that… 

The actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

This often results in people either whitewashing history or producing disillusioned cynics.

Jack suggests a way of having your cake and eating it too, to be empowered by the past, but neither deceived or puffed up. Separate history in schools from stories at home. The purpose of history is to give us a balanced view. The purpose of the stories (he calls them sagas) is to fire the imagination and hence strengthen the will. Funnily enough, he mentions Our Island Story which is actually a book we inherited from my grandfather.

This is contrasted with a demonic form of patriotism which is the indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief – surely it is very bad biology – that we can literally “inherit” a tradition.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

…and he says that this often leads to a third element which is sometimes called patriotism…

5. Ingredient – Superiority

The third ingredient is a firm belief that your own country…

…has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Lewis recounts a conversation he had with an old clergyman expressing this sort of view:

“But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Responding with the gravity of a religious declaration he replied:

“Yes, but in England it’s true.”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Results in a racialism which is rejected by both Christianity and science.

6. Ingredient – Rights & Duties

So from “Superiority”, we come to the fourth ingredient or element… 

If our nation is really so much better than others it may be held to have either the duties or the rights of a superior being towards them… 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

In the 19th Century, the English thought a lot about this with regards to their Empire. It was called the “white man’s burden”. 

Many would want to call this self-appointed guardianship of other people purely hypocritical, but Lewis actually doesn’t think it was all hypocrisy or a complete failure.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

However, he says that the altruistic rhetoric used by the Empire and of many joining the Indian Civil Service made the rest of the world want to vomit!

Jack says that these sorts of attitudes always want to expand their influence, “wider still and wider”, which is actually a little jab at the patriotic song, “Land of Hope and Glory”.

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

Land of Hope and Glory, Edward Elgar and A. C. Benson

Having said that the problem is, if you view yourself as having rights over other people, what happens if you think them so bad that you should subjugate or exterminate them?

Jack says if the results weren’t often so terrible, the pomposity would be hilarious. 

He gives a number of examples of different scandals, but doesn’t explain them.

• Broken treaties with “redskins” – Native Americans
• Extermination of the Tasmanians – The aboriginal population of the island south of Australia were basically annihilated in the 1830 “Black War” between the Tasmanians and the Colonists.
• Belson – German concentration camp 1943-45.
• Amritsar – Site of a massacre in India in 1919 when the British Indian Army opened fire on a crowd of civilians.
• Black and Tans – Volunteer army during the 1920 Irish War of Independence
• Apartheid – White rule and segregation in South Africa 1948-1994.

7. Demonic Patriotism

In the final part of the chapter, Lewis says that…

…we reach the stage where patriotism in its demoniac form unconsciously denies itself.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

To explain what this means, he references both of the men we’ve mentioned already today: G.K. Chesterton and Rudyard Kipling…

I get the impression that Lewis thinks Chesterton did this a little unfairly, but in his book Heretics, he quotes two lines from one of Kipling’s poems:

If England was what England seems
  ‘Ow quick we’d drop ‘er. But she ain’t!

Rudyard Kipling

Well, let me just quote Chesterton:

He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English…

G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Lewis says love doesn’t talk like this.

It is like loving your children only “if they’re good”, your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Although Lewis describes it as “one of the Greeks”, he then seems to quote the Roman author, Seneca the Younger, who lived around the time of Christ (4 BC – AD 65):

“For no man loves his native land because it is great; he loves it because it is his own.”

Seneca the Younger

Of course, if we only love based on merit, it begs the question, what happens when the merit decreases or deteriorates? It no longer loves!

Thus that kind of patriotism which sets off with the greatest swagger of drums and banners actually sets off on the road that can lead to Vichy.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

This is a reference to Vichy France, the southern part of France which collaborated with the Nazis and was seen as treacherous.

Lewis draws out the point we’ve encountered and will continue to encounter:

When the natural loves become lawless they do not merely do harm to other loves; they themselves cease to be the loves they were – to be loves at all.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

8. Dispensing with Patriotism

So, after looking at all these different ingredients and elements, Jack concludes that Patriotism has many faces. 

He then says that some people want to get rid of patriotism entirely, but he doesn’t think they’ve thought about what might replace it. Nations are subject to threats from other nations and rulers need some way of encouraging the people to offer some kind of defence. (Is this still true?). If there’s no patriotism, it can only be urged on purely ethical grounds, for justice, civilization, or humanity as a whole. Lewis is suspicious of this kind of idealism, explaining using the analogy of a burglar:

I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds–wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine–I become insufferable.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

The pretense that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

When war involved patriotism, at least we still knew it was a sentiment and had a sense of humor. He illustrates the difference by comparing two songs: The British Grenadiers (A traditional British marching song from 1800’s) and Land of Hope and Glory:

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.
But of all the world’s great heroes, there’s none that can compare.
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadiers.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

He says that the former have an element of humour, but the latter is more like a hymn.

9. Similar objects of love

Jack then points to the applicability of the kind of love he’s been describing. Not only could it describe love of country, but of a school, regiment, family, or class – all the good and bad still apply! Our love taxonomy continues to become more complicated.

He points out that it could also be felt for a Church, a group within a Church or a religious order.

He doesn’t want to talk about that though:

If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of “the World” will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

Moloch was one of the pagan gods who accepted child sacrifice and who somehow kept drawing the Israelites away from the worship of the One God (Leviticus 18:21,20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 King 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35).

10. Ignoring Animals?

Jack closes out his chapter by saying that he thought animals would fit into the next chapter better. 

Whether animals are in fact sub-personal or not, they are never loved as if they were.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

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