Mere Orthodoxy

 

 

I think I'm a Communist for the same reason that G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis were orthodox Christians* - an irrational blinding love for what this world could become, and an intense seething hatred of what is ruining it. Not for nothing is "Tikkun Olam" a slogan of the Abrahamic religions and the insurrectionist movement.

Where those worthy gentlemen saw a personal transcendent God, however, I see the possibilities (even as far as going to the stars) of the consciousness of humanity as a species, with a duty of care towards the rest of Earth's biosphere; and where they saw the Devil, I see the intense selfishness of material privilege which will destroy consciousness - and Earth's biosphere - in order to preserve itself. The rigid theists don't have any place in their mythology for empathy and altruism among animals, for example. And Jack Lewis doesn't seem to have any better argument against Islam, for example, than Brett Kavanagh's "I LIKE BEER".**

Still, it's amusing to see how Chesterton in particular combined orthodox Christianity with a passion for democracy and social justice which tipped into sympathy for anarchism, and this bit is particularly funny:

 

The guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it. The favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in the axe. The Evolutionist says, "Where do you draw the line?" the Revolutionist answers, "I draw it HERE: exactly between your head and body."

Lewis liked that revolutionary imagery as well:

This universe is at war. It is a civil war, a rebellion, and … we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

The shitty thing is that this is precisely what the Bad Guys - the fascistic culture warriors who really want to go to war for Mr Potato Head's gender - believe, as well. So you get modern "tankies" who learn that freedom is slavery, solidarity is imperialism, exploitation is anti-colonialism, and still get to play-act the good guys. All you need, as Orwell knew, is to worship the Powers that Be, The Prince of This World, because they're "obviously going to win" so they might as well be God. And you also get Philip K Dick's gnosticism. The revolutionary/resistance aesthetic is not necessarily progressive, is my point.

* And why Rudyard Kipling believed in the British Empire and the White Man's Burden, I suppose.

** Chesterton is awful on Islam. He firstly defends Trinitarianism by conjuring up a racist fantasy of consistent monotheism leading to bloodthirsty Muslamic hordes, coincidentally implicating the other consistent monotheists from that part of the world. And then he brags about how Christian civilisation is great because when Rome fell the Church preserved civilisation. Yeah, right, the freakin' Islamic world preserved Greco-Roman learning while the Franks were all chopping one another's heads off in bogs, and only after a few centuries of rank barbarism did they come to steal all that civilised stuff back at swordpoint from not only the Muslims but their Eastern "Christian brothers".