C.S. Lewis on GCA and "Novelty"

[A.G._Crockett]

With Easter upon us, consider this quote from "The Screwtape Letters", in which Screwtape (the devil) discussed the "demand for novelty" as a corrupting influence on mankind:

"This demand is valuable (to Screwtape, the devil) in various ways. In the first place, it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire.  The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns.  And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both.  And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure...  Thus by inflaming the horror of The Same Old Thing we have recently made...both 'low-brow' and 'high-brow' artists alike now daily drawn into fresh, and still fresh, excesses of lasciviousness, unreason, cruelty, and pride."

If you play tomorrow (Easter Sunday), or the next time you do play, enjoy the pleasure of the simple, routine, ordinary, familiar things in golf.  If you miss them, you will be farther from God when you finish; if you find them, the universe will delight in your play.

Have a happy and blessed Easter!

[Phil_the_Author]

A.G.,

When I say the title of your thread I was so certain that you had, at last, found the missing sea-side links on Perelandra, built by the King himself!

[Darren_Kilfara]

A.G., C.S. Lewis is my Christian hero - The Screwtape Letters is a wonderful book, isn't it? Thanks for the Easter citation.

The GCA point about novelty seems quite relevant to me. What, really, is the difference between playing a great golf course 10 times and playing 10 great golf courses once, apart from novelty? Although I'm loathe to label as "corrupted" anyone to whom the quest for golfing novelty applies (not least on account of stones and glass houses and all that), I'd be very interested to hear someone try to put an answer to that into words...

Cheers,
Darren

[Jim_Kennedy]

Darren,
There is nothing "corrupt" in the search for the "novel", after all, we might just learn something new and valuable.
There is quite a bit of difference between being "rapacious" in one's "demand for novelty" and the simple quest for knowledge.

 

[Paul_Turner]

Yes, what's wrong with novelty?  It's human nature to want it.

I read some CS Lewis to see if he could convert me (I don't believe).  But the crux of his main argument, that all humans have a similar moral code and therefore that moral code must have been from God, was weak in my opinion.  Any anthropologist, worth their salt, would laugh at the notion.

Down with the moralists!

[A.G._Crockett]

Paul,
That is far, far, far from the crux of C.S. Lewis argument(s) for belief, but as this is a GCA website, I'll leave that for another time.  

In fact, as you say, the desire for novelty is very much human nature!  Lewis writes as much; he just goes on from there.