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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Published Letters: 329 Editor's Choice: 37
I feel for Green Eyes, I really do. The sad thing is that it's not some coveted inanimate object that both women want and only nasty SIL gets, but a child, a flesh-and-blood human being. Maybe it would help for the LW to replace her jealousy with compassion for a baby born--without asking for it--into what sounds like it could be a pretty miserable marriage and a potentially hard life. That kid--her niece or nephew--may need love and affection and support from sources other than his parents. Caring about what happens to someone else--even someone else's kid--might help the LW keep envy and resentment from draining her emotionally.
Someone asks what the Silver Chair had to do with Christianity. When I read it as a child it was simply one of the seven enthralling Narnia books. I absolutely loved the salamanders, and still do.
As an adult, however, having lost my faith, I found the central interaction in the story between the Emerald Witch and the children to be deeply troubling. After imprisoning the children in her underground world, the Emerald Witch attempts to brainwash the children into believing that the aboveground world doesn't exist--that there is now and has only ever been the underworld, and that the world above is only a pleasant dream, a fantasy, until Puddleglum the Marshwiggle sticks his foot in the fire and makes his speech about knowing that there must be a world above ground, even though he can't see it. The Emerald Witch eventually shows her true form and turns into a snake.
To me, the Silver Chair became a specious allegory about faith and rationality, casting the Emerald Witch in the role of the rationalist and materialist (which Lewis turned into a straw figure) and implying that, at best, the world that those of us without religious faith inhabit is bleak and miserable and dark, that we are brainwashed by our belief (comforting, if you can believe it) that this beautiful universe is all we have; and at worst, that we ourselves are seductive snakes and devils. This attitude--alternately condescending and pitying toward freethinkers and downright hostile toward and even fearful of them--seems to pervade much of Lewis's writing.
I still enjoy the Narnia books though, and like Miller try not to let Lewis's own theological insecurities ruin my pleasure in them.
On a side note: as for liberal Christians who complain that the Left looks down its collective nose at them: why does "the Left" need to "reach out" to you? You *are* the Left. Where were you when we were fighting the religious right in 2004 and passionately supporting our pro-choice Catholic candidate? Why didn't you speak up then, instead of allowing the Right to claim the language of religion? Or was it you who didn't want to align yourselves with us nonbelievers? Were you, like Lewis, afraid that we would seduce you into nonbelief? Or, like Lewis, did you pity us because we could not, in good conscience, accept the existence of the "nonrational"? Glad you're making your existence known now, but we'd like a little respect, please.
So what's the big deal about a nation of plumbers, electricians, firefighters, mechanics, etc.? Nothing wrong with a good trade. Nothing at all. Stack them up against a male art historian, and personally I'd find the guy who helps people in practical ways to be a lot more appealing.
But on a societal level, we need more than that. Where does the innovation come from that provides the engine for massive industrial economies? Sometimes from clever self-taught amateur inventors, true. And Bill Gates, famously, never finished his college degree (though some would argue that he was more thief than true innovator). However, the vast majority of new ideas come from trained scientists and engineers...not to mention the design and implementation of important infrastructure needs. I don't care if there are fewer male English majors or philosophy Ph.D.s, but I do care if, as a result of gender-based attrition, there are far fewer engineers who know how to build a sturdy, safe, elegant bridge.
Sure, women can handle all those things. But if one gender is excluded--or excludes itself--from a field of study, for whatever reason, that field suffers, because it's being deprived of all the potentially outstanding people who would otherwise have taken it up. When I was in college, women were routinely excluded from engineering and science departments, and what was lost as a result we'll never know. The same thing could be happening now.
I don't know what the solution is. Clearly, male ego appears to be a problem, as is our culture's current anti-intellectual, know-nothing attitude, and I'm strongly tempted to tell those guys to just get over themselves, that acknowledging that someone else knows more than they do and they could learn from them isn't going to shrink their penises. On the other hand, as a former teacher, I saw plenty of students who came directly out of high school and into college at a time when they didn't know what they were doing and what they wanted out of life, while my mature students attacked their coursework with gusto and made the most of their experience. All I can say is that we need to find a way to make sure that education is worthwhile, and not simply a credential used to get ahead, though that opens up an entirely different can of worms.
Can we have a troll filter, please?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
