Hello readers!

Today, I make good on my promise that this page would be a mixture of all different types of posts, not just my original writing, not just poetry or short stories, but posts featuring a notable writer or topic. In light of all the political developments surrounding the coming election, I’ve been in a bit of a mood, one that wishes to discuss important issues, not just sweep them under the rug and avoid them in conversation like so many would like to do simply to keep conversation light and uncontroversial. It is true than many people lack the ability to discuss politics in a scholarly objective manner, and so I very much understand the reasoning behind trying to avoid unnecessary tension in a group setting. I myself find it hard not to become frustrated with those who simply rufuse to see the truth. I know you all have encountered those described in this quote (also from the same address as the longer excerpt below by C.S. Lewis):

Every teacher knows that people are constantly protesting that they “can’t see” some self-evident inference, but the supposed inability is usually a refusal to see, resulting either from some passion which wants not to see the truth in question or else from sloth which does not want to think at all.”

When I encounter individuals with whom there is no discussing anything that differs with their own opinion, those who are not interesting in seeking truth for its own sake, but rather more interested in proving me wrong, there comes a time when one must simply be kind, understanding,  and patient (which many times is no easy task).

Anyway, the excerpt I have today is not meant to inspire any heated arguments that end in belittling tones or name-calling, but really just something that made me think. I am most definitely not a pacifist, but I hadn’t really found something that made such good points simply based on logic. I have my own personal beliefs, but not everyone shares those, so I simply wanted to share something that supports my views simply on the basis of reason.

With that, here is a little of C.S. Lewis’ lecture that was delivered to a pacifist society in Oxford sometime in 1940. I encourage anyone intrigued by this excerpt to read whole lecture found in The Weight of Glory, a collection of many of his topical addresses and sermons.

As always, happy reading!

Excerpt from “Why I Am Not a Pacifist”

First to the facts. The main relevant fact admitted by all parties is that war is very disagreeable. The main contention urged as fact by Pacifists would be that wars always do more harm than good. How is one to find out whether this is true? It belongs to a class of historical generalisations which involve a comparison between the actual consequences of some actual event and a consequence which might have followed if that event had not occurred. “Wars do no good” involves the proposition that if the Greeks had yielded to Xerxes and the Romans to Hannibal, the course of history ever since would have been perhaps better, but certainly no worse than it actually has been; that a Mediterranean world in which Carthaginian power succeeded Persian would have been at least as good and happy and as fruitful for all posterity as the actual Mediterranean world in which Roman power succeeded Greek. My point is not that such an opinion seems to me overwhelmingly improbable. My point is that both opinions are merely speculative; there is no conceivable way of convincing a man of either. Indeed it is doubtful whether conception of “what would have happened” — that is, of unrealised possibilities — is more than an imaginative technique for giving a vivid rhetorical account of what did happen.

That wars do no good is then so far from being a fact that it hardly ranks as a historical opinion. Nor is the matter mended by saying “modern wars”; how are we to decide whether the total effect would have been better or worse if Europe had submitted to Germany in 1914? It is, of course, true that wars never do half the good which the leaders of the belligerents say they are going to do. Nothing ever does half the good — perhaps nothing ever does half the evil — which is expected of it. And that may be a sound argument for not pitching one’s propaganda too high. But it is no argument against war. If a Germanised Europe in 1914 would have been an evil, then the war which would have prevented that evil would have been, so far, justified. To call it useless because it did not also cure slums and unemployment is like coming up to a man who has just succeeded in defending himself from a man-eating tiger and saying, “It’s no good, old chap. This hasn’t really cured your rhuematism!”

On the test of fact then, I find the Pacifist position weak. It seems to me that history is full of useful wars as well of useless wars. If all that can be brought against the frequent appearance of utility is mere speculation about what would have happened, I am not converted.”