C.S. Lewis: “You Don’t Want to be Lectured . . . on Dinosaurs by a Dinosaur.”

C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis

Christianity Today has an interesting article on C.S Lewis and his suspicion of so-called “progress.” In “his inaugural address to his professorship in medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge, Lewis claimed to be more a part of the old Western order than the present post-Christian one. He admitted, “You don’t want to be lectured . . . on dinosaurs by a dinosaur.”” The article focuses largely on Lewis’ 1958 Observer article “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State,” in which he said, “I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has ‘the freeborn mind.’ But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing.” Lewis believed that the modern welfare state “entrusts power over many to a few, “none perfect; some greedy, cruel, and dishonest.” The more that people in government control our lives, the more we have to ask “why, this time power should not corrupt as it always has done before?””

Check it out.