{"id":2593,"date":"2021-05-07T19:20:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T19:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/07\/the-future-as-the-most-completely-temporal-of-the-temporal-modi-and-the-least-like-eternity\/"},"modified":"2021-05-07T19:20:54","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T19:20:54","slug":"the-future-as-the-most-completely-temporal-of-the-temporal-modi-and-the-least-like-eternity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/07\/the-future-as-the-most-completely-temporal-of-the-temporal-modi-and-the-least-like-eternity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future as the Most Completely Temporal of the Temporal Modi and the Least like Eternity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tip of the hat to Brother Inky for reminding me of the following intriguing passage from C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters<\/em>. The following is lifted verbatim<\/em> from Powerline<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Lewis<\/a>Another classic passage that bears on the essential maliciousness of the modern \u201cProgressive\u201d mind comes from C.S. Lewis\u2019s Screwtape Letters<\/em>. If you\u2019re not familiar with this work, it is the fictional ironic letters written to a junior officer in Satan\u2019s army with instructions on how to corrupt the particular human assigned to this junior tempter. Although geared to higher spiritual matters, here and there are passages of great perception about modern ideology. Like this one from Chapter 15, which illuminates the malignancy of Progressivism\u2019s fixation on \u201cthe Future\u201d and the \u201cside of history\u201d that they always want to help move along at a faster pace:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. . . It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time \u2014 for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men\u2019s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality<\/strong>. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too \u2014 just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow\u2019s work is today\u2019s duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future \u2014 haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth \u2014 ready to break the Enemy\u2019s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other \u2014 dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow\u2019s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tip of the hat to Brother Inky for reminding me of the following intriguing passage from C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters. The following is lifted verbatim from Powerline: Another classic passage that bears on the essential maliciousness of the modern \u201cProgressive\u201d mind comes from C.S. Lewis\u2019s Screwtape Letters. If you\u2019re not familiar with this … Continue reading “The Future as the Most Completely Temporal of the Temporal Modi and the Least like Eternity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[382,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lewis-c-s","category-time-and-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}