The Abolition of Man
Hello,
It is easy to critique. It is easy to find things which are against reason. It is easy to dismiss people’s thoughts because of one thing that struck you as absurd. I am the chief of sinners in this. As a teacher, I am also susceptible to training my students to be critics as well, to “see through” unreasonable things. Yet, as C.S. Lewis puts it, if we see through everything, there will be nothing left in the end. No truth. No goodness. No beauty. The end of skepticism is oblivion.
So, how do we recapture a spirit of humility when reading and when listening to people? A spirit that is willing to be a real student again, willing to see past the possible absurdities to lay hold of the gold that is underneath. A spirit that is charitable first, second, and third. Then, after charity has been exhausted, after a thought/person/written work has been digested properly, understood for what it truly is, only then does it begin to critique.
I believe I will be spending the rest of my life trying to recapture this spirit in myself. Trying to unlearn years of habitual critiquing. I will also be searching for the proper pedagogy which will gift this spirit to my students. However, this will not come easy. Those of us in this camp of classicalism are attempting to burrow upstream in our postmodern world. The thought that everything and everyone can be debunked has permeated our western world’s new ethic. In a society so trained, I believe this will require a development of curiosity for the beauty and truth found in the great authors and even in our fellow man.
It starts with reading and understanding what C.S. Lewis is doing in his great work, The Abolition of Man. If you have not read it, I would highly recommend it. It is only 3 chapters (though you may need to reread it a few times to understand what he is saying), yet its message is sorely needed for we who are responsible for training up the next generation. If we are not careful, we may, in our haste to critique and question everything, leave the next generation with the task of building mankind in its own image. Tethered to nothing but a vision for humanity that has been freshly debunked and tossed aside. So to those who have a voice, read the book, and train your children/grandchildren/students/friends to discover, digest, and be a humble student of the true and beautiful things before allowing criticism to drag us into oblivion.
-NR
