The Poison of Subjectivism

                C.S. Lewis introduces the problem of subjectivism with the idea that misguided fad philosophies can be very dangerous.  He says, “Correct thinking will not make good men of bad ones; but a purely theoretical error may remove ordinary checks to evil and deprive good intentions of their natural support”.  This statement is important because it touches on the fact that when new ideas can disarm us because we haven’t thoroughly thought about the repercussions of the new theologies.  Change always builds on other change which can lead us in unexpected ways.  In science we like to call the result of these changes as unintended consequences.  We must be wary of ideas that may have disastrous unexpected consequences.

                He then goes on to explain that we cannot use purely logic because that is tainted by subjectivism.   He notes that our thoughts and how we think it subject to our environment and how we were raised and the experiences we have had.  C.S. Lewis says, “To say that a thing is good is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have”.  I thought this was really interesting.  Since I have been at Calvin I have become friends with some people who grew up in different cultures than I and it has been interesting to see how we have different ideas of several different things.  For example, we talked about the term hick and some of us throught of a cowboy while others thought of a redneck.  Our definition of a hick was determined by the type of people around us.  I live in a rural area so hick didn’t really seem like a derogatory term while my more urban friends thought it was a big insult.  Therefore our logic cannot be completely trusted because among other reasons we can’t even make clear definitions.  Therefore we just rely on both experience and logic.  This goes back to the idea of looking at and looking along. 

                 Also Lewis’s view of leadership shows how as a society and as individuals we have subjective values. This can be seen in what a person values in a leader. One person may value virtue and honesty more than another person who may value sincerity and vision and creativity. However Lewis makes the point that we shouldn’t value things like this necessarily but more objective values rather than each person holding to their personal subjective values.  Lewis ends by saying “But give me a man who will do a day’s work for a day’s pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts and who has learned his job”.  None of these qualities seem particularly extravagant, however, they are more important that extravagant ones.  These simple qualities are hard to find.  They are the qualities we need to be looking for.