Churlishness in the Time of Pandemic

Yesterday while walking I heard this on a podcast I like:

People do not deserve to die because they vote the wrong way or have opinions that are unfashionable.* 

I thought about the kind of comments I hear now and again, not just on social media, but yes, mostly on social media. Like if someone we don't like--typically a politician or maybe a public figure--gets sick, maybe catches this Covid 19 virus--there's a kind of gleeful gloating. I heard it when Boris Johnson was stricken with the coronavirus. I've heard it about Rush Limbaugh's Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. I'm pretty sure I'd hear it if Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi got the virus.

It's human nature, I guess. But maybe we need to push back against our human nature. 

I'm reading a book by C. S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man that I admit is way above my pay grade. But what little I do grasp so far is this: There's a higher law, not just for one religion or another, but that simply exists. Being aware of and even conforming to this law is what makes us human. Though Lewis was a Christian, he's not even talking about Christianity. He calls it the Tao--a kind of objective set of values that transcends and yet permeates all doctrines. It's the thing which elevates us, that distinguishes us from animals, that enables us to choose to be good, to be decent, to be kind or generous or sacrificial. To jettison this higher law is to become less than human. That's what he means by the abolition of man.

I'm still trying to get my head around this (will probably have to re-read a few times), but I think there's something to this. Maybe it's what Jesus was tapping into when he told his followers to love their enemies. And so on a practical level, when people we despise suffer, even if we can't genuinely wish them well, at the very least, we shouldn't celebrate, shouldn't gloat. To do so makes us less human.

There's a famous saying, probably attributed to any number of people but which I first heard years ago in a book I was reading by a missionary named Amy Carmichael: 

Let nothing be said about anyone unless it passes through the three sieves: 

Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

This is neither religious nor secular advice. But I think it's good advice.

******* 

* Podcast

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Episode 262

Kevin D. Williamson and Charles C. W. Cooke

The More Things Change . . .

I've been re-reading Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. I can't remember when I last read it--somewhere between 2001-2006 according to my own reading list (right side of this blog). Though it was written in the first half of the last century (that sounds so weird), around the mid to late 1940's, so much of it seems pertinent today. There are a few things that sound jarring to the 21st century ear. His discussion about marriage, for instance, would get him booted from Cambridge University in a New York minute, particularly his reference to same sex attraction. Nonetheless, I believe it's absurd to judge people in our past, distant or recent, by today's standards. Better to let their words be understood and respected in the context, era, morals, mores, or their day.

On Forgiveness

His Words

My Response

My marginal notes mention the Covington Catholic High School melee that took place earlier this year at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.  and Donald Trump (I'll link a couple articles below for context). Trump was penciled in later since I re-read this passage on the day the Mueller Report essentially exonerated him of the so-called Russian collusion charge that was leveled at him shortly after he was elected president. The question Lewis poses here ("Suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite as bad as was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that . . . '") needs no response, since we all know what the answer is. This chapter is written in the context of the Biblical injunction that we "love our enemies." Nothing further needs to be said.

The page I copied above strikes me as profoundly prescient. Surely the poisonous political climate brought about by a confluence of social media and Donald Trump is historically unprecedented. But Lewis seems to be describing the 21st century politics to a tee: "fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." Was it as bad as that in the 1940's? Maybe it's true, what another wise man said, "There's nothing new under the sun." This book was written last century but seems indistinguishable from today. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Links

"The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story" (The Atlantic)

Our Long National Hysteria (National Review Online editorial)