Robot vs. Saint, objectivity, and That Hideous Strength

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Contarini said:
I think you are going about it entirely the wrong way. I think you are trying to turn yourself into a robot, not a saint.
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That is from this thread, but I’m quoting it here instead, because my response would take that thread far off-topic and also because the post is over a year old.

There has been a discussion before about robots and objectivity, but I would note that C.S. Lewis, in this part of That Hideous Strength gets into the idea of “objectivity” in a way that is deeper, and rather unusual.

For people who remember that (or want to read it again), did that passage speak to you? Or was it too fantastic to be anywhere close-to-home?
 
Peter_J said:
There has a discussion before about robots and objectivity
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P.S. and also about this line in “Patch Adams”:

“The sad fact is, human beings are not worthy of trust…
It is our mission here: to rigorously and ruthlessly train the humanity out of you, and make you into something better. We’re gonna make doctors out of you.”
 
Peter_J said:
P.S. and also about this line in “Patch Adams”:

“The sad fact is, human beings are not worthy of trust…
It is our mission here: to rigorously and ruthlessly train the humanity out of you, and make you into something better. We’re gonna make doctors out of you.”
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The natural body makes us human. As long as we have hearts that pound, lungs that gasp, and minds that fear, any amount of “training” will have a breakdown point.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
The natural body makes us human. As long as we have hearts that pound, lungs that gasp, and minds that fear, any amount of “training” will have a breakdown point.

ICXC NIKA
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That’s true, and somewhat reassuring. But nevertheless I think it’s possible for some of our humanity to be stolen from us.
 
Peter_J said:
That’s true, and somewhat reassuring. But nevertheless I think it’s possible for some of our humanity to be stolen from us.
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Although you may be treated inhumanly by another, you can only be dehumanized if you allow it. (Or when death deprives you of your human body.)

ICXC NIKA
 
Peter_J said:
That is from this thread, but I’m quoting it here instead, because my response would take that thread far off-topic and also because the post is over a year old.

There has been a discussion before about robots and objectivity, but I would note that C.S. Lewis, in this part of That Hideous Strength gets into the idea of “objectivity” in a way that is deeper, and rather unusual.

For people who remember that (or want to read it again), did that passage speak to you? Or was it too fantastic to be anywhere close-to-home?
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That’s a really good point–I didn’t think of THS when I wrote that some time ago, but I like the connection you are making.

The idea that Catholicism eradicates “natural feelings” and turns people into robots is actually a traditional part of anti-Catholic polemic, based in particular on some unfortunate things St. Ignatius of Loyola said about obedience (I believe he was actually echoing language in the Benedictine Rule).

In a way, Lewis is echoing that tradition. I don’t mean that he’s associating the N.I.C.E. with Catholicism, but the way the N.I.C.E. manipulates Mark is very similar to the way Catholics (especially Jesuits) manipulate people in old-fashioned anti-Catholic fiction. I’m not sure how much of this Lewis had read, but it’s quite likely he had read some of it and that sort of image of cold, impersonal evil may have been rolling around in his head. (I read a lot of novels in my youth by a 19th-century evangelical Anglican named Deborah Alcock, and some of the Catholic priests in those books had a certain resemblance to Frost.)

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
That’s a really good point–I didn’t think of THS when I wrote that some time ago, but I like the connection you are making.
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Thanks Edwin. I didn’t think of it at the time either. And, as I recall, your original saint-vs-robot remark didn’t get discussed much, which I think is a shame.

If I might cross threads a bit, I also find it kind of interesting to compare the techniques that Frost used for “training in objectivity” with the elements of a Hell House. (But that’s not why I started the thread about Hell Houses – or at least, if it was the reason, it must have been on a very deep subconscious level that even NICE would have trouble digging out.)
 
Contarini said:
The idea that Catholicism eradicates “natural feelings” and turns people into robots is actually a traditional part of anti-Catholic polemic, based in particular on some unfortunate things St. Ignatius of Loyola said about obedience (I believe he was actually echoing language in the Benedictine Rule).

In a way, Lewis is echoing that tradition. I don’t mean that he’s associating the N.I.C.E. with Catholicism, but the way the N.I.C.E. manipulates Mark is very similar to the way Catholics (especially Jesuits) manipulate people in old-fashioned anti-Catholic fiction. I’m not sure how much of this Lewis had read, but it’s quite likely he had read some of it and that sort of image of cold, impersonal evil may have been rolling around in his head. (I read a lot of novels in my youth by a 19th-century evangelical Anglican named Deborah Alcock, and some of the Catholic priests in those books had a certain resemblance to Frost.)

Edwin
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Interesting … I’ll have to look into those.
 
 
Peter_J said:
True. For example,

archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3A%22Alcock%2C%20Deborah%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Deborah%20Alcock%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Alcock%2C%20Deborah%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Deborah%20Alcock%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Alcock%2C%20D%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Deborah%20Alcock%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Alcock%2C%20Deborah%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Deborah%20Alcock%22%29%20OR%20%28%221835-1913%22%20AND%20Alcock%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29

gutenberg.org/author/Alcock,+Deborah

I also note that, for example, The Spanish Brothers got 4.9 stars on Amazon (but that’s based on only 7 reviews).

Edwin, do you recommend anything?
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The Spanish Brothers is maybe the most gripping and the best known (I believe BJU turned it into a movie, or maybe just planned to do so). Also the grimmest and in a sense most anti-Catholic, or most responsible for my visceral fear of Catholicism, particularly in its Spanish “Counter-Reformation” form. (Also partly responsible for my longstanding fascination with “evangelical Catholics”–Alcock, of course, presents the Spanish evangelicals as Protestants or as people who would become Protestants if they followed through on their convictions, but “Fray Constantino” Ponce de la Fuente was a more complex figure than that.

Probably the book I enjoyed most as a kid was Not for Crown or Sceptre, which is about a little-known conflict in Sweden between “high church” and “low church” elements, which Alcock clearly saw as a parallel with the Tractarian controversies of her own day. The portrayal of one of the characters, Arvid, clearly owes something to John Henry Newman, and I’ve also often seen myself in this character. But as a kid I enjoyed it because there’s a prince in disguise (I think the real prince, historically, died in childhood, but in the novel he survives and comes back to Sweden incognito) and a lot of cloak and dagger stuff. And it’s one of her more complex books in terms of its presentation of the Catholic/Protestant conflict, because the prince is nominally a Catholic (though he sits loose to the whole thing) throughout the book, though he enjoys a close friendship with the low-church Protestant pastor who is the book’s spiritual hero. (The title refers to the prince’s decision, under the influence of his pastor friend, not to convert to Protestantism for political reasons.)

I have a soft spot for Alcock, although I have come to disagree with her view of the world quite dramatically. The emotional effect of her books on me probably has a lot to do with how long it’s taken me to become Catholic (though that was only part of an overall Protestant atmosphere in which I was raised).

Edwin
 
A lot of other anti-Catholic fiction (not Alcock) is described in the fascinating book Gains and Losses, which is a survey of Victorian religious fiction generally (the title obviously is a reference to Newman’s semi-autobiographical novel about conversion to Catholicism).

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
The Spanish Brothers is maybe the most gripping and the best known (I believe BJU turned it into a movie, or maybe just planned to do so). Also the grimmest and** in a sense most anti-Catholic, **
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That kinda what holds me back.

I guess I’ll probably sample it a bit anyhow, but most likely won’t read the whole book.
 
Peter_J said:
That kinda what holds me back.

I guess I’ll probably sample it a bit anyhow, but most likely won’t read the whole book.
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I wasn’t particularly recommending them. They aren’t great literature, though I enjoyed them immensely in my youth. The author was clearly a very pious and sincere person with a good imagination and a great love of history. They’re important to my own development because they helped focus my imagination on the Reformation era.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
I wasn’t particularly recommending them. They aren’t great literature,
…
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Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. 🙂 (Still haven’t really taken the time to look into them TBH.)

In any case, I really wish there were more literature touching on the subject (no pun attempted).

Also, I was thinking … Frost’s thinking hinges strictly on the idea of *removing *subjectivity (he says, for example, in response to Mark’s objections

“It can be experimentally shown that it still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity.”

) but I think it’s worth noting that another such person might instead approach the matter in terms of “the subjective” (if we might use that phrase) not needing removal so much as being entirely irrelevant, and then proceed to manipulate his audience, using that idea as a kind of immunity against objections.

It seems to me that their have been characters like that, but if so I can’t think of them at the moment.
 
Peter_J said:
but I think it’s worth noting that another such person might instead approach the matter in terms of “the subjective” (if we might use that phrase) not needing removal so much as being entirely irrelevant, and then proceed to manipulate his audience, using that idea as a kind of immunity against objections.

It seems to me that their have been characters like that, but if so I can’t think of them at the moment.
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There also examples like that, but involving real-life “characters”.

A concrete example: I was posting on an SSPX-type forum, some years ago. I think the conversation was about Marian Apparitions, but for some reason we suddenly found ourselves talking about racism. In any case, the post I particularly recall contrasted two hypothetical people, one saying “I hate black people” and the other saying “I love ni***rs”. He/she then went on to say (paraphrasing) that whether someone used the n-word was completely irrelevant/neutral.
 
As I see it, Frost’s real intention was to do to Mark what he had done to himself–divest him of any influence Christian faith and Western culture had had upon him in order to do the devilish things he wanted him to do. It’s a way to destroy the conscience–the way other people do who adopt atheism/scientism or get into the drug culture or are sexually promiscuous, etc., thinking these will let them “throw off the shackles” of Christianity/religion. They don’t do that, however, they only desensitize them, making them easy targets for all sorts of soul destroying isms.
 
On a side note, it’s hard not to notice that some people (a woman on MSNBC comes to mind) substitute *liberal/left *for good, and conservative/right for bad.
 
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