US Democrats and Republicans, along with other political activities around the world, probably take up a lot of space in my head. In 1945, CS Lewis gave a lecture on “Membership,” later published in the collection, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Lewis wrote one of his Christian apologetics in this essay. However, when he writes in the second sentence that he “only thinks about the values of nature”, it is a way to set aside the main topic of the Christian faith and discuss the secular society in a few lines. This is Lewis:
Being happy at home, says Johnson, is the end of all human endeavours. As long as we only think about the value of nature we have to say that the sun looks down on anything half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or someone alone reading a book that interests them; and all economy, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, unless they prolong and add to the scene, are only plowing the sand and spreading the ocean, useless and disturbing the spirit. Collective action is, of course, necessary, but this is ultimately what is needed. …
A sick society must think as much about politics, as a sick man must think about his digestion; to ignore the subject can be fatal cowardice for one and the other. But if one considers it as the natural food of the mind – if we forget that we think about something just so that we can think about something else – then what we do for health has become a new and deadly disease. In fact, there is a fatal tendency in all human activities for the means to violate the desired ends. Thus money came to hinder the exchange of commodities, and the rules of art to hamper genius, and examinations to prevent the young from becoming educated. It does not, unfortunately, always follow that encroaching means can be dispensed with.
Here is a previous meditation on Samuel Johnson’s quote, “To be Happy at Home is the Chief Result of All Ambition” (December 26, 2018), in relation to a similar comment earlier from Blaise Pascal. When I wrote there: “I want to remember and live in the value of happiness at home. But I know for myself the contradiction of aiming for rest through agitation. I know that my own opinion, together with the opinion of those who have known me longer and more intimately, must be the most important.