A World Without Values: C.S. Lewis (Part 2)

Cooper: I saw an interview in CNBC with Sam Altman yesterday and he said that it's going to be totally positive and awesome for society. almost verbatim. I'm not I'm

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: not mocking him. He's like totally awesome, positive society. And it's like you don't have you don't have any concerns. ⁓ Like

Bryan: If you consider

Cooper: it makes me think you know it's actually

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: gonna be the opposite of what you're saying,

Bryan: If you consider Wally and and the in the picture

Cooper: no.

Bryan: of a human being, you know, laying in a recliner, watching TV, slurping a shake, growing in circumference, if you consider that an ideal future, then then I think that Sam Altman is correct. Welcome to the Holy Order Podcast. My name is Brian Holland and I am your host. I'm very pleased today to be joined by my regular co host, Cooper Nye. Cooper, how are you doing this morning?

Cooper: Hi Brian. Hi everyone. I'm good. how are you?

Bryan: Doing okay. What's new with you? How how's Charleston?

Cooper: Not a ton is new, just hanging on through the South Carolina summer. It's it's beautiful, but it's it's too hot sometimes. So just getting through it. But luckily I've got an excuse to stay inside. I'm doing some prep for my courses that are starting soon or course that I'm taking at Trinity here in the fall. So looking forward to that.

Bryan: Yeah, that's good. We're gonna have to pepper you with questions about your class as we as we record these as we record. Maybe we can quiz you right here in the right here in the podcast and see what see what's being taught and what is being learned. That'd be a good thing to do.

Cooper: Yeah. Look out for any questions that sound like they might be prompts for a biblical interpretation paper. You

Bryan: All right.

Cooper: know, might be mining you.

Bryan: Good. Well.

Cooper: But no, I'm I'm excited for it. And yeah, what about you? What what have you heard or what are you seeing about the upcoming semester? Anything exciting?

Bryan: Yeah. a lot there's a lot that's going on right now at Trinity and it's all good. You know, we the start of the fall semester is always a big sort of gauge for us. You know, how'd we do last year with all of our efforts in marketing and recruiting and you know, how do do people like us or do they not? And we've actually got the largest incoming residential class that we've had in at least 10 years.

Cooper: That's great. And is is that fairly representative of all of the diocese? People from all over.

Bryan: we have students from almost every diocese in the ACNA, typically not from the REC diocese. They have their own seminaries which they support. and I I think we there's probably one or two dioceses who does not which does not have a student on campus right now. but we generally we we generally do get students from just about every diocese, and then quite a few provinces from around the world. The the biggest number or the largest number of students typically come from the from the northeast down to Florida, you know, the the mid-Atlantic and and your neck of the woods. We've got three students maybe coming from in fact, I just met one of your I just met someone from your church yesterday who's moving in. Yeah, John O.

Cooper: Was that Jonathan? Yeah.

Bryan: Yeah, yeah. he and his wife, I went over and and well, my wife made some cookies for them. and so we we took them to their house. But yeah.

Cooper: that's great. You

Bryan: Yeah, yeah.

Cooper: know, we're doing our best to send send folks your way.

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: Yeah, but point being there's there's Anglicans all over. And

Bryan: This is true. This is true.

Cooper: now I'm getting us off topic here.

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: because want to get into the next two chapters of Abolition of Man, which is another way of saying the rest of the book. And so, listener, if you're hearing this first, if you came here first, just know you could skip back a track to the second episode where You will probably get a lot more from what we're going to talk about today, having heard that first. And before getting into chapters two and three, you know, Brian, last time on episode on chapter one, we talked about Lewis's starting point with this textbook, the fact value distinction he sees. We got into its origin. Lewis doesn't go too deep into that. And then just what that means for modern education, how it compares to classical education than getting into the Tao natural law and how it relates to Christianity. And looking back, you know, because I'm editing it, I heard a lot many times about how we talked about the worldview, the type of person that this modern education or sorry, classical education aimed to create. but then you texted me right after that we didn't talk about how these values were taught. So in previous ages, that is. So Could you fill us in on that?

Bryan: Sure. well, I think I did mention last time that that The Abolition of Man is one of the texts that people who are involved in classical school education often look to as kind of foundational for the movement. there was another book by Dorothy Sayers or or I think it was an essay actually by by Dorothy Sayers, called good grief. I'm gonna forget The Lost Art of Learning or something like that. where she kind of outlines an approach to education that that has become very influential for classical schools especially. But what people in the ancient world believed was that as you're raising up a child, you really need to form their heart first. And so you must teach them how to love things that are truly lovable and good and beautiful first, before you before you really focus on their reasoning skills or even their argumentative skills. skills. And so for instance you'd

Cooper: Which is to say like you're you're doing that at their age before like r they're really reasoning for themselves. Like in other words, like before they're thirteen or fourteen, right? Like this is early

Bryan: Yeah, that's right.

Cooper: just

Bryan: Yeah. So so poetry, and story and and myth and music. you really want to cultivate a sense of wonder in children, but then also curate the formative sources that they are reading and listening to and and studying. And so great books, great books of literature that really sort of carry with them intrinsic value, that are that are that are a witness to what Lewis would call the Tao. Should be introduced to young people very early. And then you then you teach them later how to argue on behalf of those moral absolutes and those absolute truths that have been conveyed in in the great works of art and music and and literature and whatnot. You know, Lewis was a huge fan of of Jane Austen, for for instance, like a like a number of other philosophers and theologians that I know. and that's because when you read a Jane Austen novel. You just know who the good guys and the bad guys are. and you find yourself wanting to be like the good guys and sort of detesting the bad guys. and and so it it's kind of it's a kind of tr it's an imaginative training in virtue. so anyway, there there are many, many ways to do it, but certainly parents and others should not be afraid to make sort of objective statements about what they believe to be valuable works of art and literature and and poetry and music and everything else. and then Use those to shape the hearts of young people. and then teach later young people how to justify their their values.

Cooper: And let me tell you, that's actually a real struggle as a parent with young children. It would just like children's literature today. I mean, going to the library and the things that that are promoted and held up, there's like a real lack of this moral dimension. Like it it and

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: I I compare it to some of the books we've inherited from my in-laws that are beautiful, like built beautiful children's books. And my son's four and he will sit there and he'll read to like the whole of the jungle book by Rudyard Kipling and you know it's it's a lot there's hardly any pictures, but he he he really responds to just like the good guys and the bad guys. And so

Bryan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cooper: many books don't have those anymore.

Bryan: Yeah, there's a lot to say about sort of what goes wrong and what can go right in the formation of young people's minds and imaginations, but they are sponges, you know. And there's this great actually quote in in the abolition of man, and it's actually I'll read it. it's at the end of of chapter one, which we've already covered, but on page thirteen he writes this, and it's a really famous line. He says, The task of the modern educator is not to Cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils, we can only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged, and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head. great stuff. But but that's what that's what people are, that's what our young people are. You know, they are deserts which need to be irrigated. And they're famished and they and they want to be nourished. So that's the job.

Cooper: And why since you have it right in front of you, could you read the first sentence, the first few words from chapter two?

Bryan: Sure. Just the first few words, like the first two.

Cooper: Yeah, I think it's like something the practical results and then it, you

Bryan: Yeah, yeah.

Cooper: know, accepts it, something like that.

Bryan: Yeah, he writes, this is how he begins, the first sentence, the practical result of education and the spirit of the green book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

Cooper: Yeah. So

Bryan: Mm.

Cooper: could you quickly define we it's probably obvious if you listen to the last episode, but even still, could you just quickly define the education in in that spirit? Like what are what what are we really talking about?

Bryan: Yeah. Well, I think what what Lewis I mean the reason the reason actually why he picks the Green Book is not because the the example of Coleridge and the Waterfall is the best illustration that he could use. It's because of the argument made by the authors about about what the meaning of that story really is, or about their debunking of the story. they argue that in fact there is no such thing. as as beauty or goodness, insofar as we we claim that it exists in the waterfall itself, all that is actually happening is that we are experiencing sublimity or that we're having sublime feelings. and so what they're arguing for is subjectivism or relativism. They're they're arguing against the existence at all of a realm which precedes us, in which truth and beauty and goodness actually object objectively exist. and so that is the spirit of the green book. when we deny absolute truth or when we deny absolute or objective morality, then we necessarily do something terribly, terribly harmful to the society that we live in. And when a society as a whole rejects those things, as ours has, certainly, then only very bad things can come.

Cooper: Yeah, so that's to me a strong enough case for why that's wrong. But Lewis doesn't rest there. He actually goes on to offer several logical arguments for why not only is subjectivism wrong, but incoherent. And for me in reading it, you know, it's not what his arguments aren't so much with the green book. It's really subjectivism itself as a a philosophy and worldview. So I just think it's so it'd be so helpful to walk through some of those because these are the type of things that we're immersed in and that we all often hear from people who hold them. So whether you're a a believer, I think it's edifying or if you're a preacher, it just helps to refute some of these dogmas of our a our default worldview. and so the first one, you know, he points out the hypocrisy of of the green book or of subjectivism. What what is what is it exactly?

Bryan: it's sort of hit it's shot through with hypocrisy because what they're what they're really doing is they're making an argument. they're saying they're saying that the way things really are is total subjective subjectivism, okay. or they're they're they're saying that relativism is actually the way things are. But and they're trying to convince the reader that in fact the way things are is relativistic. but that's the hypocrisy because the way things are in their minds is the the absolute truth to which we must all assent. and so it is blatantly inconsistent and incoherent, the argument that they're making. they are making a statement about what is actually true.

Cooper: what are some common phrases that we hear today that reflect that viewpoint?

Bryan: Well, you you hear all the time. and you know, that's just your opinion. or you do you, as though there really is no sort of there's no standard that we can appeal to in order to find common ground about anything. live your best life or you do you. There's all kinds of phrases that that are are sort of thrown around these days. It's the philosophy of of Oprah Winfrey, I think you you could say. No no offense to Oprah Winfrey, but it really is. And and it is absolutely part of our culture. it's what we would call exp again, expressive individualism, this idea that that we are our own truth, that that we live we live our own truths.

Cooper: Mm-hmm. Right. And so that's the first one. The second one, he he points to axioms, right? So argue

Bryan: Mm-hmm.

Cooper: Lewis argues that ever every act of reasoning eventually rests on truths that cannot themselves be proved. Can you can you explain that a little bit? Why is that the case?

Bryan: Yeah. Well, for instance, he makes he makes the comment at one point that you really cannot say for sure whether or not it is rational to sacrifice oneself for a greater cause, perhaps their country, or whether or not it is irrational if you cannot agree beforehand that the preservation of society itself or the preservation of humankind itself is something good. that's that's an axiom you know that that is a truth that we all assent to or at least should and it and it really requires and can receive no validation if in fact the authors of the green book are right then that axiom itself can't even be made you know the the ancients talked about practical wisdom or or phronesis which is which is just practical wisdom and practical wisdom rests on certain axioms that we all just sort of naturally take to be true. That is reason itself. Reason itself doesn't exist without without these axioms.

Cooper: So then Lewis moves on to the next argument that sort of debunks subjectivism. And it's on in going after what many of those with this viewpoint would claim, well, there may not be this objective moral standard, but we maybe we can find it on a lower level, emerging from biological reality, you know, in instinct. But why how how does Lewis argue that you actually can't ground a morality in Instinct.

Bryan: Yeah. Well, you certainly can't ground a morality to govern a culture or civilization or society in instinct because people have very different instincts. And those instincts will bring people into competition with each other, you know. the biological drive is powerful, and it is very often animal. it's it's a drive to survival, you know, to protect one's own children. and it certainly is not. capable of sort of mediating disagreement without again appealing to some truth or or moral absolute which transcends to are more individuals. And so it just doesn't work. It can't operate for a culture or for a society the way that that I think these these authors would claim here.

Cooper: Yeah, it's right. So there's competing instincts between individuals, but he he also points out that there's competing instincts within an individual and that there's no there's no

Bryan: That's ex that's exactly right. Yeah.

Cooper: way to order them. you know, he points out there's no instinct above that instinct and and and so on and so on. And I I thought that was really amazing.

Bryan: Yeah. Yeah. Like my instincts are very different before I eat and after I eat, actually. They're they're they they they tend to be much more reasonable after I've had a good meal. yeah, that's exactly right.

Cooper: That's right. And then the other one that I I I also really enjoyed is he points out there's no instinct for posterity. And that's because a lot of these subjectivists still assume some good, right, about preserving humanity or caring for posterity, but that's not really rooted in biology. That's not r that's that's a moral sort of sentiment. And he just points out like you don't have an instinct in those moments. Like that's related to the future or generations beyond you.

Bryan: He he is important to remember that he's making this argument in 1943, at the

Cooper: Right.

Bryan: height of the Second World War, when everyone in Britain who would have been hearing these talks would have known someone who had given their life and had had gone over and fought in the war and made great sacrifices. he points out that, you know, we we can sometimes we will be willing to make sacrifices for our homeland or our family, but typically at least. Or typically no more than the current generation or maybe for our children. but then when you start thinking about making a tremendous sacrifice for generations removed, which is what you're saying right now, then that instinct dies. and we we really don't make those kinds of sacrifices.

Cooper: And also I I learned recently that he himself fought in World War One. And so this

Bryan: That's right.

Cooper: is a man who knows exactly what human soul needs in order to operate under fire and to to act in that way.

Bryan: Yeah, yeah.

Cooper: there's a really great line in there somewhere. And he kind of alludes to it. He doesn't do it in a bragging way, but it's just he speaks as someone with experience in like a really authoritative way that you know that you're any type of innovation in morality, like this notion of, you know, I must sacrifice myself for because of in in some calculated artificial way. Like that is not what moves you. Like it's really a love of something.

Bryan: Absolutely. Yeah. He l he lost his best friend. and came

Cooper: Yeah.

Bryan: back and of course took care of his best friend's mother for the rest of her life and and his sister. it's interesting, almost all of the, in my opinion, at least some of the some of the greatest philosophy and theology of the 20th century came out of the wartime and was written by people who did exactly what Lewis did, and that is they fought in World War One, and then they came into the height of their careers during the Second World War. that was true of Lewis, It was true of Henri de Lubach, who I who I wrote on, a famous Catholic theologian. the the the war really just saw a flowering of tremendous, really deep and rich, both theology and philosophy and and literature. I guess that's not both, that's a a a thrice. Well, never mind. I'm using the wrong wrong words. but it was a it was a rich time, because they really experienced the things that they were talking about.

Cooper: So after Lewis shows this regarding morality and being unable to ground it in instinct, he then makes another point on how you can't really criticize the Tao or natural law without it or from outside

Bryan: Yeah. Right.

Cooper: of it. And there was one quote I really liked about it. He says The human mind has no power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary color. And so he says every attempt to criticize it depends on it.

Bryan: Well, again, if you are making an argument at all, any argument that you make requires you to convince another human being of some again, truth or objective moral value which transcends the two of you. and so if in fact all things are relative or all things are subjective arising from within the individual, then how can you possibly appeal to some third thing? that the two of you must or should both be compelled by. and so there there there there is no possibility of argumentation without first agreeing that there is a truth to appeal to and to convince people of. and so even trying to argue while not believing in truth is is incoherent. and that's what he's arguing there.

Cooper: So that's that's essentially chapter two, this thorough contradiction

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: of subjectivism and what he calls the half-hearted skeptics who still hope to find real values after debunking traditional ones. And the scarier part is so he concludes by raising the possibility of another perspective: the rejection, this is quote, the rejection of the concept of value altogether. And so that brings us to chapter three. where Lewis describes this world ruled by power without value. And so Brian, could you just explain how how does humanity get there? How does Lewis see humanity getting there? And what would it look like?

Bryan: Be ruled by power without value. well, that's I I do think that's the world we've lived in. And we're not we're not the first people to have lived in a world like this. This is sort of the story of human history, I I think. but the way it the way it works is when when a a society rejects the Tao, when we reject the whole idea of a kind of natural law, you know, objective truth and and beauty and goodness, we find ourselves adrift and we Perhaps justify our desire for truth and our and our kind of moral convictions by instinct. but ultimately they fail. And what we find is we really cannot escape the need or the desire to live according to values. and we see that. And so claiming there are no values, what we do is we sort of smuggle values in. and typically it's those who have the most money or the most power. in a culture who are able to tell everyone else what values should be obeyed. and so so the world that we live in kind of becomes a a a place where those who are strongest are the most successful, you know, and are able to impose their will on others. and once they do that, then they objectify humankind. and that is really what he means by the abolition of man. It it is A profound and and sort of ultimate dehumanizing. when we live in a world where we do not believe in God, we have without meaning to or or understanding it, we have really abolished humankind as we've abolished God. And that's that's an argument again that was made quite a few times by important thinkers in the mid-20th century. and so I that's what that's really what he means. and we clearly live in a world where a very few people have tremendous power and subject us to their values, which are not very well considered, quite frankly.

Cooper: Yeah, and there's a quote I I want to read off here. This so it's actually from the end of chapter two, but Lewis is speaking as somebody who he's speaking as somebody who has this perspective of those who would reject value. And it he it's it goes, let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that, not on any ground of imagined value, but because we want him to be such. Having mastered our environment, let us master ourselves and choose our own destiny. Now I would love to know like a few things came to mind for me, but where what books or like which verses in scripture come come to mind for you when you hear that?

Bryan: Gosh. I I mean I think to a certain degree the the fall in Genesis three is a

Cooper: Yeah.

Bryan: kind of declaration of independence from God. You know, we we we choose to go our own way and and reject the the word of God itself. I'm sure that there are r sort of repetitions of that theme all throughout scripture. What are you what are you thinking, Cooper?

Cooper: Yeah, I I was thinking of the fall and then like Tower of Babel. and then

Bryan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Cooper: also just I I didn't I I wish I've had this pulled up, but just there's certain quote from like the devil in Dante on you know, better to to rule on earth than what I yeah,

Bryan: Serve in hell, yeah.

Cooper: yeah.

Bryan: Yeah. It's you know, the Tower of Babel is a really great example because the the people who build the tower, it says want to make a name for themselves. and

Cooper: Yeah.

Bryan: this idea of naming actually was really important in the old testament. of course, God named Adam, and Adam then named the animals, but the act of naming itself carried great significance. it was To name something was to sort of to declare sovereignty over it or to sort of define the role that that thing would play in history. And so you see that many of the Old Testament patriarchs have important names which sort of describe their function in history. And God, of course, can never be named. He gives us His own name, but so it's it's significant that that these people want to make a name for themselves. In other words, they want to be sort of self-defined. they do not they they reject the author of life, and determine what their place and role in the world will be. And of course they do that to their own destruction.

Cooper: Right, thank you. Yeah, th that was a somewhat of a sidebar, but I couldn't help. it's

Bryan: Yeah, yeah. That's good stuff. It's it's very fitting actually for what we're talking about.

Cooper: And but going back to what you had said about you know just power over people, you know, so Lewis talks about the conquests of nature, you know, through science, through technology, as you know, this conquest becomes power over people. And what what does he mean exactly? He gives some like technological examples, but like what if you could just speak a little more about that.

Bryan: Well, it it is true. And I think many of us are experiencing this right now in so many ways. But he he mentions a couple of sort of technological advancements that have far reaching consequences. so he mentions contraception, which is I think an obvious one in that someone who when we use contraception, obviously those children that are never born are are affected by it. But even more than that, culture itself changes. and so we all now live in a world where contraception has been practiced in common for more than a you know for for close to a hundred years. I'm not sure exactly. I think it was the 1920s or 30s when and I could be wrong. the pill arises though in the 20th century. And the the consequence is that we all now live in smaller families. and these things are certainly connected. We we live in a world where culturally men and women are often no longer distinguished from one another because we are not governed nearly to the degree that we once were by sort of biological necessity. And so the roles that men and women play in our culture have changed dramatically. you know, we we we now it's hard to raise a family because it's just expected that men and women will both work because we we can, because we can control our own biological processes. Now I know that that certainly arguments can be made to suggest that contraceptive contraceptive technologies brought good things. but the the point that Lewis is making is that we cannot, we living now are subjected to the choices and to the technologies that were created by those who came before us. Another another technology he mentions is the creation of the airplane. and again, you have to remember the context that he's writing in. Lewis actually and his brother Warney, you may not know this, collected a lot of kids from London. And so they had had young children from London moving out to the kilns to stay with them. Some kids were being shipped off to America and into many other destinations at this time. Exactly. That's exactly that

Cooper: like Narnia. Like the the the language in the wardrobe. Okay.

Bryan: it's exactly right. Because Germany was bombing the tar out of London and other major cities. They never bombed Oxford, which is really, really interesting. And the reasons for that are are are I won't go into it all, but it's really interesting. people

Cooper: I never heard that one.

Bryan: think that Hitler may have had designed designs on some of the centers of learning, but but they bombed most major cities, especially industrial cities. And so Lewis writes about the fact that you know people created airplanes, and now we live in a world where we have to be afraid that bombs are gonna fall out of the sky and kill innocent people, as they certainly can. in our own day, we can think about so many things: nuclear technology, you know, the combustion engine. We can think about

Cooper: Yeah.

Bryan: especially. social media, which

Cooper: Mm-hmm.

Bryan: has, I think, just taken the world by storm. and and it swallows our kids up because of its ubiquity. You know, it it it has created a world where it is so hard to transmit values from one generation to the next because our our children, really all of us, are exposed constantly to cultures and traditions and to to disordered values that that parents certainly wouldn't want to transmit. And so we are s we are subjected to the the decisions that others have made. Anyway, you can go on and on about this. it is certainly one of the truths about powerful tech powerful technologies that we create.

Cooper: Yeah, I I was reminded I saw this post on Substack a couple weeks ago and the Ruth Gaskovsky, I can't recall,

Bryan: Yeah, I know.

Cooper: I think she's like a a home educator, but she's yeah, she's does a lot of great work. she shared this quote. She says, If you've been on social media too long, C. S. Lewis's notion of hell will sound familiar. And then she quotes him. In we must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.

Bryan: Is that from the weight of glory? Do you know where that's from? Does she say? I am

Cooper: Might be

Bryan: it it sounds a little bit like the end of the weight of glory, but it it I'm not sure if it's in a previous anyway, it doesn't matter. But yeah. Yeah, that's really that's absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah.

Cooper: Yeah. But that's yeah, that's like Twitter. That's X. There's a lot you know, good good things come of it too. but And that that we you haven't even touched on AI. I mean, what what would he say about that? I mean

Bryan: It is hard to know what it's gonna what it's gonna mean for future gener generations. But as as an educator, it's something that I'm obviously deeply concerned about. You know, I I'm I wouldn't describe myself as a Luddite, you know, I'm not afraid of technology generally, but if if young people can come up through an educational process and never because they can fake it so well, you know, writing papers with AI. And if they're first of all, if they if we can no longer trust Writing papers digitally and we continue to assign them in homework, I think we can we can be pretty confident that students are going to use AI to do that for them, which means that they will not have wrestled with just the process of thinking out an argument. They will not have wrestled with great books, or or any books for that matter. if if students can summarize a book and and get it sort of digest its argument without reading it, then the consequences are. are far reaching and devastating. I I think about my own education, which was at least after I I finished my undergraduate degree and became serious about things, it transformed me. And there are certain authors who live in my head permanently for my good. Scripture, certainly. The book of common prayer lives in my head. So that as I go throughout my day and I make decisions, I make judgments, those prayers and and and readings are with me. A number of books by St. Augustine just live in my head, which means they they form my identity as a human being. C.S. Lewis absolutely lives in my head. I really want for my kids to have people like that living in their heads rather than some social media influencer because it will shape their identity and every relationship they have.

Cooper: Yeah, because it to you know, in the way that subjectivism removes the heart of man, in a certain way, AI has the potential to remove our heads and remove

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: our ability to like really think for ourselves. And I've seen

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: that in my own experience because I I've used it for for work and I can tell a difference in a day where I've spent a lot of time creating with that versus days

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: I've created myself.

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: And like the the one hand is like feeling drained and the other is feeling like fulfilled or just even the effect it has on my cognition, I can tell. You know, like it it can be a real crutch and there's like a real danger, I think, in that. That I mean, I'm

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: I'm lucky I'm thankful like I I'm in this generation that grew up before the internet, and then also before the AI, because it's like I remember life before both and it's just Strange to think my children won't know. And that it could very easily be a trap. that can be dehumanizing. I mean, it removes a way that we're meant to reflect the image of God, you know, we're in this

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: it's as an idol, really. a friend of mine sent a really interesting article on like this idols being made, you know, out of silicone, you know, or or or these other types of metals and

Bryan: Yeah. It's it is to outsource our minds. and it's interesting, AI and robots are the two main emerging technologies, which we can't even imagine how they're gonna affect society, but both of them outsource things that are so fundamental to human nature. and the people pushing these things, it's it's you know, they're they're pushing them because they value them, usually as they value efficiency and profit. and these are values which we have no reason to share, you know. and if we if we if we thought a little little bit about it, would not agree

Cooper: I I saw an

Bryan: to.

Cooper: interview in CNBC with Sam Altman yesterday and he said that it's going to be totally positive and awesome for society. almost verbatim. I'm not I'm

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: not mocking him. He's like totally awesome, positive society. And it's like you don't have you don't have any concerns. ⁓ Like

Bryan: If you consider

Cooper: it makes me think you know it's actually

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: gonna be the opposite of what you're saying,

Bryan: If you consider Wally and and the in the picture

Cooper: no.

Bryan: of a human being, you know, laying in a recliner, watching TV, slurping a shake, growing in circumference, if you consider that an ideal future, then then I think that Sam Altman is correct. because that's really what that's really what these guys are trying to sell us. That's what Elon Musk is saying. Well, just have infinite leisure time. and it's insane. It's it is almost the definition of insanity.

Cooper: But not leisure in like the proper sense, like just

Bryan: That's right.

Cooper: distraction entertainment

Bryan: Not not what Joseph Pieper was writing about, that's for sure. Yeah.

Cooper: Yeah. But yeah, I I I watched Wally recently with my kids and it it's phenomenal. And it could also be like if it was re shot, it could be a horrifically dark and scary dystopian movie. I mean, it's it's actually

Bryan: Yeah. Yeah, it is one. Yeah.

Cooper: sc it's very it's a terrifying movie in a lot of ways.

Bryan: Yeah. Yeah.

Cooper: But it's cute. So it's fun. But back to, you know, speaking of some of these these leaders, you know, that are really at the helm of a lot of these technological shifts that shape all of us. why does Lewis call these rulers the conditioners?

Bryan: Yeah, it's because they're the ones who have smuggled in certain values and are imposing them on the rest of us. And that's what we see especially happening with social media, you know. they and you know, I mean, our culture, and I don't want to go, I don't wanna I don't wanna be overly negative, although it it maybe it's justified, but if you if you think about what has happened with the way that our culture thinks about human sexuality, you know, for instance, or about what we should be doing with our bodies, you know. the I the ideas are are crazy and would have been so easily and quickly dismissed in previous generations. But our children are just seduced. and not just our children, but we all are being seduced by values driven by by corporations. And so it's coming to us In social media, in all in all forms of media, in the news. it's coming through our corporate culture. And those who are the titans of industry are the conditioners because they are imposing their values upon us. and they don't even hold these values for any good reason other than they are they are convenient and have some utilitarian value to them. they they subject us all and enslave us to a certain extent, and they become increasingly wealthy. as we are increasingly addicted to the vices that they that they are selling. that sounds really cynical. but I do think that's what Lewis meant. And I think that is what is pretty clearly happening in the world we we inhabit, unfortunately.

Cooper: Yeah. And I I wanna I wanna draw out of that what he goes on to say about this, you know, like in the absence of this order, like these conditioners are are, you know, as you said, like they're they've replaced values, but where are these values arising from? Like what is the source within the conditioners?

Bryan: Yeah. They they're just assumed. and again, what what really is driving everything is is profit, quite frankly, and efficiency in the service of profit. And so, that is you know, that's that's something we probably ought to be talking about. I mean, what are you what does AI bring to the world? How does it improve human human well being in any way. I'm not sure it does or can, but we act like I mean, the whole world is is behaving as though it's just inevitable. and perhaps it is, because we have lost our minds. certainly we do not have an objective value to appeal to.

Cooper: Yeah. And so like for the for the organizations, like the motive then is profit, right? But for then the person steering that organization within within them, the motive is just their pleasure. Right.

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: And that there's no restraint, there's no limit on that. It there's

Bryan: Yeah.

Cooper: no calculus with the pleasure or well being of any others.

Bryan: Yeah. It's hard for me to imagine being in the mind of a of Mark Zuckerberg or Eric Schmidt or any of these, you know, I I I can't even imagine or Elon Musk. I can't imagine what actually motivates them. I don't know. I really don't know. and yeah, it's strange world.

Cooper: But st looking at their role though, still on the conditioners, you know, so their role as conditioners, would you say that makes them the priests of postmodernity?

Bryan: I I do think to a certain degree that that that conditioners are like the the they're sort of the anti-priests of of postmaternity or

Cooper: Anti priest.

Bryan: are they play a a kind of priestly role in in their and that they their their vocation is to sow disorder quite quite frankly, you know, and to tear down and to rebel against the order of God. And I actually in my in my prayer book class I go through the abolition of man before I talk about holy orders and the nature of Christian vocations. And and I that's how kinda I kind of pr presented actually as the the conditioners as sort of the priests of Baal, you know. and they are exactly who the church is to be opposed to, not in the flesh, but we're to certainly oppose the the principalities and powers of the air that that they are beholden to and that they represent. we are to create order in the context of disorder. And anyway, a lot more to say about that. But yeah, they I think that they kinda have a priestly role. They they mediate to the rest of us something dark, and dehumanizing and and destructive.

Cooper: Yeah, i y you're calling it like an anti priesthood. I I I'd love to hear you explain that a little bit more because and maybe maybe a simple way to do that is if on the one hand you could sort of define what is the priest really doing? And I already heard you say mediate. And then on the other hand, like what is this anti priesthood doing? Like, are they mediating anything?

Bryan: I I I don't want to get I yeah, I mean I think that they are perhaps mediating mediating the will of of the Prince of Darkness, quite frankly. I don't I don't know if we want to go there, Cooper, people are gonna think people are Yeah,

Cooper: I I was gonna ask. I was like, all right, Brian, let's open it up. Let's get into all that.

Bryan: yeah. Well we could say a lot about what what a Christian priest is. I mean, cr first of all, Jesus Christ is the is the one true priest. He fulfilled the old testament priesthood completely. in his life and in his sacrifice. and his sacrifice is the one true sacrifice and and we need no other. what what the priesthood is that we share exactly is we share the royal priest or the common priesthood, the whole church, which has a ministry within Christ, participating in him by the power of his Holy Spirit, has a priestly ministry, which is to mediate his truth to a fallen world. And so we do that in the context of the church by centering our lives around his word, eternal, which we find in scripture and which we find preached on Sunday mornings and we feed on in the Eucharist and so forth and so on. And so a Christian priest, those called to the special vocation of priesthood, are representative of the royal priesthood. but we are never independent of Jesus Christ. We just operate within the context of that royal. priesthood. Our ministry is derivative from it. We're not some special thing in opposition to or in in in distinction from the the the whole church, the royal priesthood. But also our our authority is always proximate to Jesus Christ. So as long as we are obedient to the word, as long as we are faithful, then we then we operate in a kind of proximate way, just drawing people to the Lord who is the one who can save. and so we have we have a role to play within the church, gr keeping it grounded in its Lord. and so that's what a priest is. And an anti-priest, I guess, would be one who seduces people away from truth and life and and and God himself represented in Jesus Christ and promises them all kinds of evil and idols as the satisfaction of all of their wants and needs and desires. and so you know they are they are the priests of idols. And I think it's pretty clear that that the conditioners in our worlds operate that way, in our world operate that

Cooper: Yeah, and so in in other words, like a a a true mediator, like a true priest is ultimately pointing beyond themselves. Right.

Bryan: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. And so we're being conditioned to look for the solution to our problems in all kinds of idols, which will not save us and cannot satisfy us.

Cooper: Hmm. And we we got into this a little bit, but I just wanna come back to to what extent do you think Lewis's prophecy has been fulfilled? I mean, has it even been what what's what's the prefix for beyond filled?

Bryan: Yeah, verified maybe. it's it's verified. well I do think it's important. When I whenever I teach this for the C.S. Lewis Institute, I always say, you know, what he's it's easy to read his book and think this is the first time in human history that something like this has occurred and it's very bad,

Cooper: Yeah.

Bryan: you know. but really the the the kind of dehumanization, the kind of abolition he's describing, is just the fall. and cultures and societies sort of Ebb and flow, and they they there are better times and worse times and and the West is in decline and we've it has brought many benefits. there's been kind of dark side to parts of it as well. but we're clearly living now at a time when the West and the Christianity which animated it for so many years is is is in shadow, you know, is is is hidden. Now this isn't this isn't a new thing, but we are experiencing it in in a very real way right now.

Cooper: So this is this all sounds pretty discouraging. It's also nothing new. Like we all look out into the world and the news and like we see all of this disorder. Now, does Lewis give us an antidote? You know, what what what can keep us free from conditioning?

Bryan: Yeah. he does not give us an antidote in the abolition of man. And and when people read it and when I teach it, sometimes you know, people get depressed, quite frankly, and object. I've had a few people get pretty upset. but he does certainly give us an antidote, he gives us an answer or a solution in other books that he's written. and he wrote that hideous strength, the third volume in his space trilogy, at about the same time that he wrote The Abolition of Man. And he's actually called it the kind of companion volume to that abolition of man because it shows us what the answer is. and he presents in that hideous strength these two different communities. one is a group of scientists called the National Institute for Controlled Experiments. they they believe in a

Cooper: Nice, the nice institute.

Bryan: yeah, NICE. the acronym is NICE, which I love. and they are

Cooper: And so they're the conditioners in this case, right? So you have like this

Bryan: They are the conditioners. and he is just absolutely bashing some of his colleagues at Oxford, I think, when he in in describing this group this way. They are what you might call logical positivists. they believe in the infinite in the infinite potential of of science. they believe that there is no God, of course, and they are profoundly guilty of. Dehumanizing and objectifying each other and and just and humanity in general and also nature, one of the things that Lewis writes a lot about. he believes that nature should be treated in a particular way. in fact, he writes about the way that we treat our pets and he does not like animal experiments and all kinds of other things because for a bunch of reasons, but you see this throughout the book, the way that they treat God's creation. and so you've got nice on the one hand, and then you've got this other community. Called St. Anne's on the Hill. And then the primary characters in the book are a young couple named Mary, I'm sorry, Mark and Jane Studdock. Mark is a young scholar who's being sort of seduced into nice, but is also his wife has been introduced to people associated with St. Anne's on the Hill. And so in this book, they're sort of torn between these two communities, almost like the city of man and the city of God. you know, it's just very interesting. St. Anne's on the Hill is a community that clearly believes in objective truth and objective value. And people flourish and they and they laugh and they love and treat each other well. it is just a profoundly humanizing community, as opposed to nice. And so this is really Lewis describing to us what the solution is. And the solution is the community on earth that God has chosen and that he himself has created. and that he has given his gospel, gospel to, and that he now animates the church. that is the that is the community that we are to throw our efforts in, because the gates of hell will not prevail against it, you might say. And so we have every reason to be hopeful, because God dwells there and he has made promises to us and he will keep them. And Lewis absolutely believed that. and the church will endure even as civilizations come and go. and and and We have we have every reason as Christians to trust that what we've been told in the gospel is true.

Cooper: Thank you for the encouragement. It's good to remember we we know the ending. And thank you for listening to Holy Order. If you have questions, as always, please reach out to me or drop them into the comments And if you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share it and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that's Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

Bryan: All right. As we close now, I'd like to end as always with a collect. This is from page six seventy in the twenty nineteen Book of Common Prayer. it is a collect for trustfulness in times of worry and anxiety.

Cooper: Which many of us probably need after hearing about the the abolition of man. So

Bryan: Yeah, that's right. All right, let us pray. Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our cares on the one who cares for us. Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us. In your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

Cooper: And thank you all. We'll see you next time.