Merlinus Ambrosius was struck to silence when Ransom told him that there was no Emperor to be called upon for help, even in Mankind's uttermost peril. Ransom explained:
"The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from the Earth their mother and from the Father in heaven. You might go East so far that East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus.".
I wonder if, in 1945, there were those who thought that Lewis had overstated his case. We know now how vastly he understated it. But he was a true prophet of the generations that were to follow, and not least in his description of "the Spirit of the Age ... like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut ... They saw some of the guard coming towards them leading a great black stallion, and in it was seated a figure ... a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to him like a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand. The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her.
"'Who are you?' he said.
"'My name is Reason,' said the virgin.
"'Make out her passport quickly,' said the giant in a low voice. 'And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes.'
"'Not yet,' said Reason ... and set spurs in her stallion and it leaped up on to the giant's mossy knees and galloped up his foreleg, till she plunged her sword into his heart. Then there was a noise and a crumbling like a landslide and the huge carcass settled down: and the Spirit of the Age became what he had seemed to be at first, a sprawling hummock of rock."
I ask not whether the Woke know that they are part of the Zeitgeist ... simply whether they even know that there is such a thing as a Zeitgeist.
How does one define “the Woke”?
ReplyDeleteOriginally, I believe, the word, or term, came from African-American slang; ie- a person who is “Woke” is one who has been awakened to the nature of social injustice; especially racism.
However, thanks to the wonderful Helen Pluckrose (a scholar of the spiritual writings of women in late medieval and early modern European times) and the book “Cynical Theories” I now, I believe, have a deeper understanding of what it means to be Woke:
Woke scholars and activists are obsessed with power, language, knowledge and the relationship between them. They interpret the world through a lens that detects power dynamics in every interaction, utterance and cultural artefact - even when they aren’t obvious OR REAL...
This is a worldview that centres social and cultural grievances and aims to make everything into a zero-sum political struggle revolving around identity markers like race, sex, gender and sexuality....all our human sociological interactions are interpreted in the most cynical way possible.
It IS another worldview, a NEW worldview; it just happens to be a peculiar view of “power-knowledge” (see Foucault) and language and their ability to create inequality and oppression.
The Woke believe that knowledge is not found but made; they also believe that language does not really describe reality as it constructs reality.
Dear Father. Maybe by the time World Youth Day is held at Stonehenge because of the similarities between the rocks there and Peter as the rock, folks will being to notice what up until now has been invisible because it is gigantic.
ReplyDeleteDear Father, Just reading The Pilgrim's Regress at present, having been gven it for my 18th birthday - a long time ago- by an American friend. I have not read it before. Very interesting to read Lewis's views on the shortcomings of the scientific method, and other topics.
ReplyDeleteIt was an age of prescience. Sadly we lack that now (apart from on this blog, of course).
ReplyDeleteI have just translated (partly for my own amusement) the Eucharistic hymn from the 1938 Congress in Budapest (this year's is back there).
The third verse (changed after the War, and it became a popular Hungarian hymn) was truly prescient, and remember that Cardinal Pacelli presided as Papal Legate. Even then they could see the horror ahead. It makes one weep. It reads:
Fratricidis ardent bellis
Huius gentes saeculi,
Odiorum heu procellis
Agitantur populi.
Seda venti tu furorem,
Bella aufer tristia,
Tuum doce nos amorem,
Dulcis Eucharistia!
I have rendered it thus:
Brother set at war with brother,
All the nations of the world;
Gusts of hatred seek to smother
Faith: banners of war unfurled.
Come O Breath, and calm our anger,
Wars grim sadness now resist,
In Thy Love Thy children gather
In Thy Sweetest Eucharist!
In this country (USA) we seem to be divided into 3 groups: the Woke, the woke, and the oblivious.
ReplyDeleteThe "Woke" are as Paul described above. Most of them are "useful idiots" being used as part fo the plan to advance Marxism.
The small-w "woke" are those who have woken up to what is happening, after the November 2020 election steal, the gaslighting of conservatives after the Jan. 6th "insurrection", and the COVID lockdown theater.
The oblivious are those that think everything is great now that we got rid of Bad Orange Man and his rude tweets. We can now hold our head up high on the world stage and can be friends with the Chinese again.
Naturally there are parallels within the Church. Just ask people what they think of Archbishop Vigano then stand back.