4 ms·

Even after all that exegesis, your presumptive point remains obscure. The top-level comment is relevant because it happens to describe the malicious credulity o

by prvc 4y ago

Even after all that exegesis, your presumptive point remains obscure. The top-level comment is relevant because it happens to describe the malicious credulity of the journalism consumers who chose to believe the mass graves narrative.

tptacek 4y ago
I don't think my point is obscure at all. It is, simply, that C.S. Lewis didn't write that quote to exhort people to skepticism of all wrongdoing; he was instead reminding people not to invent wrongdoing to impute to strangers by dint of them being "enemies". The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. Again: when Lewis wrote this, he was talking about the Nazis, the authors of many of the worst crimes in history. Lewis was no Holocaust denier: he was acutely aware of --- and reminds his reader throughout Christian Behavior of --- the wrongdoings he's alluding to. It might be hard to find a more inapposite quote for this story. I have no idea what happened in the residential schools in Canada, and no opinion about this particular article. But I do have an opinion about the abuse of C.S. Lewis on message boards.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  > The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. You’ve misread me/my intent, i’m afraid.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Certainly more than just possible. Could you say how?
    - cstrahan 4y ago
      FWIW, I read their quoting of C.S. Lewis as supporting precisely the viewpoint C.S. Lewis was intending — and the very same as you make a case for throughout this thread. Though I’ll admit I could be wrong. However, applying Occam’s razor: GP merely quoted C.S. Lewis, so it would seem to me that the simplest (and most charitable) interpretation is that they understood the quote and we’re not using it in any ironic/sarcastic way. I find your reaction/response to GP a little confusing, but as best as I can tell: are you thinking they were using the quote in an intentionally ironic way as a means of making a jab at C.S. Lewis’ character/beliefs? This whole thread has been really confusing, so I’d love to understand where the (apparent) disconnect is between both parties :).
      - tptacek 4y ago
        I understand Lewis to be saying that you shouldn't revel in revelations of wrongdoing or cling to them in the face of evidence, because your duty as a Christian is to find a way to forgive even your enemies; that you should hate (his word) the wrongdoing itself, not giving it an inch, but be careful not to needlessly attach it to specific people without cause, or to allow such an attachment to impede your process of forgiving them. Then, he's not saying that you should, on spec, be skeptical of claims of wrongdoing, or especially generous to mitigating claims. One way you know that's the opposite of his intent is that the essay is framed around the crimes of the Nazis; there is no possible way Lewis is suggesting we should be wary of news stories about the Nazis. Again: Nazism is a backdrop for not just the essay, or Christian Behavior, but really most of Mere Christianity. This is a thread where really all we have to go on is a story about whether a media claim about wrongdoing is true, or can be mitigated. The quote then reads as an affirmation of the story! The quote would be saying exactly the thing I just said I believe it doesn't say. But Lewis' quote doesn't apply here at all, unless you not only strip it of its context, but also turn it against that context. Nobody (at least, nobody identified) is reveling in what may have happened at the residential schools, or using it as a device to avoid forgiving any particular person. Our interest in the truth of what happened, and even our skepticism of mitigating claims, is totally independent of our duty to forgive, just as Lewis points out that our willingness to punish (or even kill) transgressors is independent of our duty to forgive them. I think the whole thing is a lot clearer if you include the paragraph before and after the super-popular "newspaper article" quote. I'm not clear on how I misread the original intent of the quote! I'm still interested in hearing that. So I'm re-explaining my own original intent in responding to it, but wouldn't want to be construed as doubling down on it. My personal stake in this discussion is: I think Mere Christianity is pretty neat, and I'm attentive of the ways it gets used in online discussions. I don't know enough about Canadian history to have a stake in the truth of the residential school claims, though note that there is an expert rebuttal of these Quillette claims, from an archeological authority, downthread.
        Ajedi32 4y ago
        > Nobody (at least, nobody identified) is reveling in what may have happened at the residential schools, or using it as a device to avoid forgiving any particular person. I believe this is where the misunderstanding lies. I think the root commenter is implying that that's exactly what the media was trying to do when they chose to push this narrative in the first place. The idea is that the media organizations in the linked article were trying to highlight historical wrongs in an attempt to ensure those wrongs are kept at the forefront of everyone's minds and not forgiven, and that resulted in "a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible", even in the face of a lack of evidence. The lack of skepticism isn't the point; it's what motivated the lack of skepticism in this case that the root comment was discussing. You can certainly disagree about whether that really was the media organizations' underlying motivation/bias, but I think the original quote is relevant.
- lupire 4y ago
  Part of the problem is that CS Lewis wrote in a deeply ambiguous way, that makes it hard to see what he is trying to say. (And since he is writing about and from a position of religiousity, that ia an extra step backwards from sense-making philosophy.) Quoting him out of context make it even worse.

by prvc 4y ago

tptacek 4y ago

I don't think my point is obscure at all. It is, simply, that C.S. Lewis didn't write that quote to exhort people to skepticism of all wrongdoing; he was instead reminding people not to invent wrongdoing to impute to strangers by dint of them being "enemies". The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. Again: when Lewis wrote this, he was talking about the Nazis, the authors of many of the worst crimes in history. Lewis was no Holocaust denier: he was acutely aware of --- and reminds his reader throughout Christian Behavior of --- the wrongdoings he's alluding to. It might be hard to find a more inapposite quote for this story. I have no idea what happened in the residential schools in Canada, and no opinion about this particular article. But I do have an opinion about the abuse of C.S. Lewis on message boards.

hprotagonist 4y ago
> The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. You’ve misread me/my intent, i’m afraid.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Certainly more than just possible. Could you say how?
  - cstrahan 4y ago
    FWIW, I read their quoting of C.S. Lewis as supporting precisely the viewpoint C.S. Lewis was intending — and the very same as you make a case for throughout this thread. Though I’ll admit I could be wrong. However, applying Occam’s razor: GP merely quoted C.S. Lewis, so it would seem to me that the simplest (and most charitable) interpretation is that they understood the quote and we’re not using it in any ironic/sarcastic way. I find your reaction/response to GP a little confusing, but as best as I can tell: are you thinking they were using the quote in an intentionally ironic way as a means of making a jab at C.S. Lewis’ character/beliefs? This whole thread has been really confusing, so I’d love to understand where the (apparent) disconnect is between both parties :).
    - tptacek 4y ago
      I understand Lewis to be saying that you shouldn't revel in revelations of wrongdoing or cling to them in the face of evidence, because your duty as a Christian is to find a way to forgive even your enemies; that you should hate (his word) the wrongdoing itself, not giving it an inch, but be careful not to needlessly attach it to specific people without cause, or to allow such an attachment to impede your process of forgiving them. Then, he's not saying that you should, on spec, be skeptical of claims of wrongdoing, or especially generous to mitigating claims. One way you know that's the opposite of his intent is that the essay is framed around the crimes of the Nazis; there is no possible way Lewis is suggesting we should be wary of news stories about the Nazis. Again: Nazism is a backdrop for not just the essay, or Christian Behavior, but really most of Mere Christianity. This is a thread where really all we have to go on is a story about whether a media claim about wrongdoing is true, or can be mitigated. The quote then reads as an affirmation of the story! The quote would be saying exactly the thing I just said I believe it doesn't say. But Lewis' quote doesn't apply here at all, unless you not only strip it of its context, but also turn it against that context. Nobody (at least, nobody identified) is reveling in what may have happened at the residential schools, or using it as a device to avoid forgiving any particular person. Our interest in the truth of what happened, and even our skepticism of mitigating claims, is totally independent of our duty to forgive, just as Lewis points out that our willingness to punish (or even kill) transgressors is independent of our duty to forgive them. I think the whole thing is a lot clearer if you include the paragraph before and after the super-popular "newspaper article" quote. I'm not clear on how I misread the original intent of the quote! I'm still interested in hearing that. So I'm re-explaining my own original intent in responding to it, but wouldn't want to be construed as doubling down on it. My personal stake in this discussion is: I think Mere Christianity is pretty neat, and I'm attentive of the ways it gets used in online discussions. I don't know enough about Canadian history to have a stake in the truth of the residential school claims, though note that there is an expert rebuttal of these Quillette claims, from an archeological authority, downthread.
      - Ajedi32 4y ago
        > Nobody (at least, nobody identified) is reveling in what may have happened at the residential schools, or using it as a device to avoid forgiving any particular person. I believe this is where the misunderstanding lies. I think the root commenter is implying that that's exactly what the media was trying to do when they chose to push this narrative in the first place. The idea is that the media organizations in the linked article were trying to highlight historical wrongs in an attempt to ensure those wrongs are kept at the forefront of everyone's minds and not forgiven, and that resulted in "a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible", even in the face of a lack of evidence. The lack of skepticism isn't the point; it's what motivated the lack of skepticism in this case that the root comment was discussing. You can certainly disagree about whether that really was the media organizations' underlying motivation/bias, but I think the original quote is relevant.
lupire 4y ago
Part of the problem is that CS Lewis wrote in a deeply ambiguous way, that makes it hard to see what he is trying to say. (And since he is writing about and from a position of religiousity, that ia an extra step backwards from sense-making philosophy.) Quoting him out of context make it even worse.