CS Lewis
Article
CS Lewis is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 26, 2021 and August 11, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “The most charming part of the comments was the subthread on CS Lewis”; “CS Lewis is a leading expert on devils and he was very clear that moral battles generally don’t happen in war-torn parts of the Congo”; “attributed to one of GK Chesterton or CS Lewis”. It most often appears alongside COVID, Scott, Vox.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: August 26, 2021
- Last seen: August 11, 2022
Appears In
- Highlights From The Comments On Missing School
- The FDA Has Punted Decisions About Luvox Prescription To The Deepest Recesses Of The Human Soul
- Will Nonbelievers Really Believe Anything?
Related Pages
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- COVID (2 shared issues)
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- Scott (2 shared issues)
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- Vox (2 shared issues)
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- ADHD (1 shared issues)
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- alt-right (1 shared issues)
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- American (1 shared issues)
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- Arabian thoroughbreds (1 shared issues)
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- Argentus (1 shared issues)
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- Aslan (1 shared issues)
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- aspirin (1 shared issues)
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- Astralcodexten Com (1 shared issues)
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- atheists (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
In "Prince Caspian" when Aslan goes around freeing the kingdom from Telmarine tyranny one of the first places he stops is a school building, which he magically turns into a forest glade. C. S. Lewis didn't like school, and for good reason. He was tutored by his mother until she died of cancer while he was young. Then he was sent to an awful boarding school in Britain, where the headmaster was suffering from some kind of mental disorder and only taught geometry: the rest of the "lessons" consisted of him randomly choosing kids to answer questions on various topics and beating them with a cane if they got it wrong. After the school folded (due to not teaching anything and having a crazy headmaster) he was sent to a much better boarding school where he didn't have a great time. Quoting from his autobiography: "Never, except in the front line trenches (and not always there) do I remember such aching and continuous weariness as at (school). Oh, the implacable day, the horror of waking, the endless desert of hours that separated one from bed-time! And remember...a school day contains hardly any leisure for a boy who does not like games. For him, to pass from the form-room to the playing field is simply to exchange work in which he can take some interest for work in which he can take none, in which failure is more severely punished, and in which (worst of all) he must feign an interest...Consciousness itself was becoming the supreme evil; sleep, the prime good. To lie down, to be out of the sound of voices, to pretend and grimace and evade and slink no more, that was the object of all desire--if only there were not another morning ahead--if only sleep could last for ever!"
So yeah, C. S. Lewis hated school big time.
The most charming part of the comments was the subthread on CS Lewis, starting here. I’ll just quote FLWAB’s comment:
Inline links: here, FLWAB’s comment
Still, I do want to stress the “facing the Devil” aspect, where this is a difficult moral battle. I know that’s a weird way to frame a prescription decision. But CS Lewis is a leading expert on devils and he was very clear that moral battles generally don’t happen in war-torn parts of the Congo. They happen in ordinary decisions about whether to do slightly unusual things that we worry might affect our social status among people we respect.
Inline links: he was very clear
Big talk, although I notice that this is practically always attributed to one of GK Chesterton or CS Lewis, neither of whom actually said it. If you’re making strong claims about how everybody except you is gullible, you should at least bother to double-check the source of your quote.