Lewis and Masters

Lewis makes a point that he believes in democracy because he believes in original sin. He takes this to imply that no men are fit to be masters. However, Lewis’s delusion is that democracy has no masters. This is manifestly false because democracy has always and everywhere produced masters that drove the masses in a particular direction. We can no more eliminate master than we can eliminate sin.

In fact, Lewis’s faith in democracy is entirely contrary to original sin. If we believe in original sin, why would we give even the worst and most repugnant of men equal footing with better men? Since all men tend toward evil as per original sin, why would we entrust government to all men?

This is Lewis’s utopian perspective analogous to Marx though watered down and with a conservative framework. The problem of evil men possessing authority and abusing isn’t cured by democracy. Evil men in authority is no more curable by social structures than sin itself. The mod will and has abused their power and by Lewis’s logic they too have lost their power. We are all born slaves and now not even having the chance of a marginally good master.

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Lewis and Wycliffe

Lewis’s defense of democracy has clear elements of Wycliffe’s theory of dominion. He does not deny that no kings or priests ruled with authority, only that having abused it they have lost it.

Applying this logic consistently if only in Lewis’s watered down version, kings must not only be relieved of their heads, but the wealthy must be released of their property.

A proprietor has a certain authority over external objects and consequently other men with respect to those objects. However, the wealthy have often abused this power and they have lost it through their sin.

Is there any man who is fit to be a master? Isn’t it communism or unchecked power?

Lewis then is only a step shy of being a Marxist and his rhetoric is easily converted in defense of communism. We must make political authority common and so too property authority, because we believe in original sin and no man can be trusted with authority.

C.S. Lewis on the necessity of Democracy

Equality by C.S. Lewis

• Democracy must be tolerated, because rulers have abused their power. We must suffer the ignorance, stupidity and weakness of the masses, because some rulers have been evil. It is not sufficient that we acknowledge those men as evil and see them punished if only by God, but we must undermine the whole system of authority, so that some men born slaves must bear the weight of being masters and so become worse themselves and make the community worse by their incompetence.
• Democracy must be tolerated because the alternative is unchecked power.
• Kings and priests lost their power because some abused it. That is kings and priests were brutally murdered, because some men were bad. Authority was stripped from those with it by those subject to it. The fact that the masses in their ignorance and stupidity abuse it can be ignored, because we equally do stupid things.
• Since there are no men fit to be masters implies there are no masters. That is since men are incompetent with authority, then every incompetent and the most incompetent must be given political authority equally.
• Democracy is not tolerated because some men objectively do not possess authority over others, but rather because some men have abused that power. Democracy isn’t justified because the masses have authority, but rather because men with authority abused it.
• However, so powerful is our desire for hierarchy and authority, that we must not permit that authority to actually act and subsist, but we must make it a pleasant mantle piece to make us feel better. A husband does not actually possess authority over his wife, but rather in that trivial erotic moment she must pretend to submit to possess its fullness. When complete she may return to her mutual tyranny. Has she really submitted at all or met the fullness of the erotic?

 

Fleshy Misery and Angelic Purity

The more I live, and I’m not that old, the more I realize the pathetic misery of material existence, particularly in contemplating even the most remote knowledge of angelic life.

Going about our day we have to eat, sleep, bathe and so forth. We are constantly torn by our passions and led in all sorts of absurd directions. We require sensual comforts and pleasures to get about life. Our intelligence is weakness itself and we are blind to the most basic aspects of reality. A tiny rock can kill any man or a misplace gene can debilitate him for life.

In comparison to angelic life, we are nothing but misery. No matter how much material wealth and pleasure we accumulate, we are nothing but dust and ash. The lost of the angels has an intuition into the essence of things and knows even the most trivial essence with ease. Even in his natural state at the moment of his creation prior to choosing for or against God, he is at a natural peace and does not have a battle internally. He neither sleeps nor eats and has none of the misery of material existence. Once he has chosen God, there is no sway or deviation of his will. He remains always in loving union with our God and Father.

This may be my melancholic coming out, but who want to live save to please God? Life is misery apart from Him and death will only be good if we are His friend.

Note to self

Never let small children play with an iPhone with internet enabled and a WordPress app…

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Economic Notes

• Given an insurance premium and a clever person with public data, you could determine the margin over the risk premium of the insurance. This would require understanding the relevant risk statistics, benefit payments, and asset returns. One could make reasonable assumptions to determine this.
• A economic problem is information asymmetry. In the case of insurance, there are different sets of information that are asymmetric. In health and life, a person knows better than a company maybe able to glean from whatever data they have available. A large company can work out ways of determining and minimizing adverse selection.
• In car insurance, the seller has a significant advantage in understanding the failure rate and cost of car parts. In this case, the buyer is at a significant disadvantage in determining real value of the insurance.
• A competitive environment allows for a buyer to estimate the real value of something by comparing prices between sellers. Sellers will try as best as possible to limit their profit margins in order to sell the product against others. This provides a signal to the buyer to determine the real value of the product and make an informed and rational decision.