One of the stranger anomalies of the modern world, and one that sets it starkly apart from most past times, is our tendency to memorialize victims rather than heroes.
Great points about unselfconsciousness and self-consciousness. I'm currently reading The Abolition of Man for the first time and see lots of connections with what you have said here. Lewis discusses how people in the past would see dying out of a duty for others as a given value and contrasts that with a more self-conscious, modern view.
Yes, the Abolition of Man is a wonderful book. I first read it many decades ago, so I can't really remember this, but I suspect that it was reading it that changed me from being an unselfconscious Catholic to a self-conscious one. I have read it many times since. It is certainly one of the key influences for my thoughts about the anomalous nature of the modern world and how that anomalous view of things affects our understanding of history.
Great post. The unselfconscious vs self-conscious modes of belief particularly struck a chord. As a fellow Catholic, I confess sometimes to feeling as though I am 'bootstrapping' myself into faith - i.e., trying in a very self-conscious way. A cynical way to put it would be to say that I'm "Larping" being a believer. But you're right to point out that for many of us, it is simply not possible to be unselfconscious about these things.
Would it be nice to live in a world where one could be unselfconscious? I suspect many of us think so, which is why the yearning for a medieval Christendom is particularly felt in some quarters. But that is simply not our situation. To admit & understand that should, I take it, be an encouragement.
C. S. Lewis said somewhere that the way to make yourself love someone you are supposed to love them is to consciously do those things that you would do if you did love them, and that this practice will cause you eventually to love them for real.
I suspect that the same thing is true of loving God. One certainly sees souls in anguish trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they love God as much as they are told they should. I tend to think that if we loved God as much as we really should for even a second, we would probably immolate on the spot.
So yes, larping the faith may not be such a bad thing. It may be the best we can manage today, and so we should not abandon ourselves to anguish or despair or scrupulority over it, but keep larping until the play at last becomes the real thing.
Great points about unselfconsciousness and self-consciousness. I'm currently reading The Abolition of Man for the first time and see lots of connections with what you have said here. Lewis discusses how people in the past would see dying out of a duty for others as a given value and contrasts that with a more self-conscious, modern view.
Yes, the Abolition of Man is a wonderful book. I first read it many decades ago, so I can't really remember this, but I suspect that it was reading it that changed me from being an unselfconscious Catholic to a self-conscious one. I have read it many times since. It is certainly one of the key influences for my thoughts about the anomalous nature of the modern world and how that anomalous view of things affects our understanding of history.
Great post. The unselfconscious vs self-conscious modes of belief particularly struck a chord. As a fellow Catholic, I confess sometimes to feeling as though I am 'bootstrapping' myself into faith - i.e., trying in a very self-conscious way. A cynical way to put it would be to say that I'm "Larping" being a believer. But you're right to point out that for many of us, it is simply not possible to be unselfconscious about these things.
Would it be nice to live in a world where one could be unselfconscious? I suspect many of us think so, which is why the yearning for a medieval Christendom is particularly felt in some quarters. But that is simply not our situation. To admit & understand that should, I take it, be an encouragement.
C. S. Lewis said somewhere that the way to make yourself love someone you are supposed to love them is to consciously do those things that you would do if you did love them, and that this practice will cause you eventually to love them for real.
I suspect that the same thing is true of loving God. One certainly sees souls in anguish trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they love God as much as they are told they should. I tend to think that if we loved God as much as we really should for even a second, we would probably immolate on the spot.
So yes, larping the faith may not be such a bad thing. It may be the best we can manage today, and so we should not abandon ourselves to anguish or despair or scrupulority over it, but keep larping until the play at last becomes the real thing.