One would think that with over two million deaths and counting, along with a global economy in freefall, that politicians would have no trouble focusing on what is important.
Of course, if you base your assumption on the logic of the matter—you would be wrong.
Politicians, nearly all of them it seems, possess an unlimited capacity for ignoring vital concerns and focusing on petty matters. Today’s example comes via the long-extinct theropod, Suciasaurus.
In the United States and, I suppose, various other nations, we have the quaint custom of adopting specific flora, fauna, etc. as their own. So, for example, the state tree of New Jersey is dogwood. The state fish of Wisconsin is the muskellunge.
I recently discovered a number of states have their own dinosaur (sometimes referred to as a fossil, which most are). Some, like Colorado, choose a familiar giant, in their case the stegosaurus. Others, such as Kentucky, opt for something more humble, in their case a brachiopod. (They look like clams, but are not molluscs.)*
Since dinosaurs are fashionable—even J.R.R. Tolkien has one—states without them are rushing to claim one before the best are all gone. Which brings us to our point.
Why, with life and death concerns competing for a government’s actions, would legislators waste their time with such inconsequential concerns?
In the “one-party” state in which I live, Washington, the legislative majority has already (in 2021) sought to schedule time to elevate the public stature of Suciasaures. (The minority party has suggested instead that COVID-19 cries out for attention before turning to dinosaurs, who have inarguably been waiting without complaint for some time.) More on dinos below.
C.S. Lewis’ Thoughts on the Subject
C.S. Lewis shared my ever-expanding disdain for most politicians. In The Literary Legacy of C.S. Lewis, we read that his stepson Douglas “Gresham pictures Lewis as completely skeptical of politicians . . .”
In The Allegory of Love, Lewis describes the power of politics to subvert a person from their earnest beliefs. “Some politicians hold that the only way to make a revolutionary safe is to give him a seat in Parliament.” Get people invested in the system, reaping the “rewards” of power and office, and it may come to own many of them.
C.S. Lewis’ clearest warning about politicians may come in his essay “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” It is worth reading in full, but I share here the pertinent section.
Here, I think, lies [humanity’s] real dilemma. Probably we cannot, certainly we shall not, retrace our steps [to freer, less governed ages]. We are tamed animals (some with kind, some with cruel, masters) and should probably starve if we got out of our cage. That is one horn of the dilemma. But in an increasingly planned society, how much of what I value can survive? That is the other horn.
I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has “the freeborn mind.” But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology.
Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets.
Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
It is shocking to realize the prescient Oxbridge professor wrote this essay more than sixty years ago. For further discussion of Lewis’ political thoughts, read this fine review of C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law.⁑
C.S. Lewis, the Dinosaur
C.S. Lewis made no apology about holding fast to what he deemed the treasures of the past. In this regard, he famously referred to himself as a dinosaur. In an essay entitled “De Descriptione Temporum,” he described the unique lessons that can be taught by dinosaurs.
If a live dinosaur dragged its slow length into the laboratory, would we not all look back as we fled? What a chance to know at last how it really moved and looked and smelled and what noises it made! And if the Neanderthaler could talk, then, though his lecturing technique might leave much to be desired, should we not almost certainly learn from him some things about him which the best modern anthropologist could never have told us . . .
I would give a great deal to hear any ancient Athenian, even a stupid one, talking about Greek tragedy. He would know in his bones so much that we seek in vain. At any moment some chance phrase might, unknown to him, show us where modern scholarship had been on the wrong track for years.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you somewhat as that Athenian might stand. I read as a native, texts you must read as foreigners. You see why I said that the claim was not really arrogant; who can be proud of speaking fluently his mother tongue or knowing his way about his father’s house. . .
Where I fail as a critic, I may yet be useful as a specimen. I would even dare to go further. Speaking not only for myself but for all other Old Western men whom you may meet, I would say, use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.
C.S. Lewis, the Dinosaur?
And, finally, there is a curious mention of dinosaurs in C.S. Lewis’ book, Miracles. While affirming the bodily resurrection, he dismisses the peculiar notion held by some that bodies will be comprised of the very cells that comprised the [original] body of each individual person. Lewis alludes to the recycling of atoms for other uses,⁂ which is an overwhelming concept.
The general resurrection involves the reverse process universalised—a rush of matter towards organisation at the call of spirits which require it. It is presumably a foolish fancy (not justified by the words of Scripture) that each spirit should recover those particular units of matter which he ruled before.
For one thing, they would not be enough to go round: we all live in second-hand suits and there are doubtless atoms in my chin which have served many another man, many a dog, many an eel, many a dinosaur.
Nor does the unity of our bodies even in this present life, consist in retaining the same particles. My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect like a curve in a waterfall.
Well, that’s certainly something to ponder. But don’t ask any politicians to read this post; they have far more serious matters that demand their attention.
* Talk about digressions . . . now we have trivia within trivia.
⁑ From the review of C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law:
Lewis contends the roots of the rejection of natural law were formed by the ideas put forth in the 16th century. At the beginning of that century, “eternal verities” were abolished and by the end, man was abolished himself completely ruled by his passions and void of reason. Lewis termed these people, “men without chests,” an apt description for many politicians driven more by their passion for power and popularity than by reason.
⁂ Apparently, according to “Atomic Tune-up,” up to “98 percent of our atoms are replaced every year.” If you are willing to consider some freakish mathematical calculations related to the atoms recycled from the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that we breathe and become a part of us, check this out.
. . . there are hundreds of billions of King Tut’s atoms inside you right now, hundreds of billions of Hitler’s or Caesar’s atoms inside of you, and if you want to go even farther back, trillions of atoms that were a part of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Sue, at the moment she died.
Mere Inkling Press 