The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength

by C.S. Lewis

I imagine this is a glimpse of the kind of conversations that went on during the Inklings’ meetings.🥰

That is why it is of such immense importance to each of us to choose the right side. If you try to be neutral you become simply a pawn.”

“Quite simple and obvious things, at first—sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including prenatal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain . . .”

“Well,” said Mark, “this is all very interesting, Miss Hardcastle, but it has nothing to do with me. In the first place, I don’t want to become a journalist at all, and if I did, I should like to be an honest journalist.” “Very well,” said Miss Hardcastle. “All you’ll do is help to ruin this country, and perhaps the whole human race.

“You’ll never get the powers we want at Edgestow until the Government declares that a state of emergency exists there.”

that the police, in fact, must be relieved sooner or later of that growing body of coercive functions which do not properly fall within their sphere.

Its relation to the National Police cannot, perhaps, be defined with perfect logical accuracy; but, as a nation, we have never been much enamored of logic.

The executive of the NICE has no connection with politics; and if it ever comes into relation with criminal justice, it does so in the gracious role of a rescuer—a rescuer who can remove the criminal from the harsh sphere of punishment into that of remedial treatment.

The NICE is the people’s instrument for bringing about all the things we fought for.

If you hear anyone talking about the liberties of England (by which he means the liberties of the obscurantists, the Mrs. Grundies, the Bishops, and the capitalists), watch that man. He’s the enemy. Tell him from me that the NICE is the boxing glove on the democracy’s fist, and if he doesn’t like it, he’d best get out of the way.

So I’m very disturbed while reading this. These two letters are very much how leftists talk 😬

It was, after all, not so long ago that he had been excited by admission to the Progressive Element at Bracton. But what was the Progressive Element to this? It wasn’t as if he were taken in by the articles himself. He was writing with his tongue in his cheek—a phrase that somehow comforted him by making the whole thing appear like a practical joke.

Justification?

“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”

“Mrs. Studdock, I have no opinions—on any subject in the world. I state the facts and exhibit the implications. If everyone indulged in fewer opinions” (he pronounced the word with emphatic disgust), “there’d be less silly talking and printing in the world.”

“The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is, ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them, ‘in where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.”

“I think it’s just silly,” she said. “Who ever heard of trying to make bacon out of a bear?”

“This,” said MacPhee with great emphasis, “is becoming indecent.”

😂🤣😂