Status Updates From After Humanity: A Guide to ...

This seer “Knew too much to be clear, could not explain.”

Lewis took the title of his poem from a traditional proverb: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” But his poem indicates that the one-eyed man actually has no such proverbial advantage because his blind compatriots no longer believe him when he speaks of what he can see. He describes the sighted person not as fortunate but as “luckless,” “poor,” a “misfit.”

The Tao provides a more rational basis for ethics (and for democracy) than the one supplied by subjectivism.

Subjectivism afflicts democracies and tyrannies alike. Democracies can only be preserved, Lewis implies, if they view ethical systems in an undemocratic light. In other words, there is a hierarchy in play: different ethical systems are not all equal; some are better than others and remain objectively better even if a majority in a given electorate votes otherwise.

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny and an obedience which is not slavery

“We all want progress,” he writes in Mere Christianity. “But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be....If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”