Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. -- That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
This is an AI generated image by Henry CastaigneNothing really changes. This is from the last of a trilogy book series written by C.S. Lewis. In it, an organization called National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments going under the acronym N.I.C.E. is trying to take over a college as part of a plan to establish a coercive, all powerful government to force humanity to change to their whims. So... basically what already has happened but with more science fiction stuff. There is a longer passage on the same page that is also brilliant.
The main bad guy is recruiting a propaganda agent to his cause and he encourages him to be deceptive. The justification for lying could not have written by Screwtape.
No. We want you to write it down — to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan’t have to bother about the great heart of the British public. Well make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the N.I.C.E. wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing it is — the word ‘experiment’ is unpopular, but not the word ‘experimental.’ You musn’t experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it’s all correct!This is why the left focuses so much on communication and using the absolutely right words. They need to deceive the normies about their desire for power.
This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.
Discussion (3)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Great book. Great post.
Some of the connections to other Lewis stuff:
Eustace and Jill's dreadful school in the Narnia books was one of those experimental ones.
That Hideous Strength illustrates a lot of stuff from The Abolition of Man.
When the bad guys follow the Macrobes and eventually offer human sacrifices to them they have become the Materialist Magician predicted by Uncle Screwtape--deniers of a supernatural who still end up worshipping demons.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Sort of like the Demos demanding unrestrained infant sacrifice (abortion) to Gaia while wildly celebrating Hama's slaughter of Jews.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Gee, maybe earth-worship is how the demons usher in the Materialist Magician. I'd been thinking it was aliens, and it probably is. But maybe earth-worship is a bigger front in the same campaign!