What we’re up against

(cum idea ex  C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength) It must be remembered that in the post-Christian mind, there is hardly one inkling of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan.  The vast majority of the population is in possession of an education which has neither instilled thinking as a discipline nor understanding as a pursuit.  There is barely any capability, even among the so-called best, to hold to any axiom or proposition independent of their opinion. That they must make their own world, estimate their own value, define their identity — and they giddily do so independent of any transcendent notion or entity, for that is their raison d’etre.   Their minds, generally, have had the tendency toward critical instinct thoroughly wrung out by an education which has been neither scientific nor classical—merely “useful.”  ‘The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed them by;’ they blithely venture in the world somnambulant, unaware of, and unconcerned about, their presuppositions or why they think as they do.  They are neither shrewd nor honorable – being made entirely of intellectual straw, empty, glib and self-centered, but extremely well versed in subjects that require no exact knowledge.  (Oh, of opinions this person is well possessed; in their minds they are pioneers, effulgent of the kind of speculative irrational extremism which insulates them from any reasoned challenge.  If they express, they express as preachers of their own truth to a world where everyone is an expert (which is the same thing as saying that no one is…).  Cognitively and chemically anesthetized, unprepared for hardship, they reel at the exposure of even slightest crack or threat to this self made world of theirs, this fool’s paradise in which they dwell.