I'm currently reading C.S. Lewis' autobiography "Surprised by Joy", and just came across a passage in which the author effectively articulates my thoughts in my last blog posting ("Ideas etc.". In this excerpt, the young student Lewis has just moved to Surrey in England, and is describing one of his first walks in the area:
"Meanwhile, on afternoons and on Sundays, Surrey lay open to me. County Dawn in the holidays and Surrey in the term - it was an excellent contrast. Perhaps, since their beauties were such athat even a fool could not force them into competition, this cured me once and for all of the pernicious tendency to compare and to prefer - an operation that does little good even when we are dealing with works of art and endless harm when we are dealing with nature. Total surrender is the first step towards the fruition of either. Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. That can come later, if it must come at all." - Lewis, "Surprised by Joy" (Glasgow: Fount, 1955) p. 118
Taken literally, Lewis is talking about appreciation of nature here; the passage doesn't appear to be a salient metaphor for thought processes such as moral reasoning. Indeed, anyone who's read Lewis to even a modest degree realizes that he rarely hesitates to make a strong distinction between "right" and "wrong". However, I think this excerpt speaks to the danger of making that distinction too hastily, notwithstanding the fact that it ultimately does need to be made.
Now, for a bit of autobiographical content on my part: I arrived in Perth, Western Australia yesterday, after a relatively long and arduous plane journey (I don't think it would be hyperbolic to compare a pan-Pacific plight on United Airlines to passage to Australia on a convict ship in the 1780's). As was the case in India, I don't intend to bore anyone with chronological updates; rather, most of my postings in the next couple weeks will consist of the random musings and outlandish allegories that you've come to expect in this blog. I'm pretty sure they'll be more numerous than they have been for the past couple months - there's something about travelling that brings out the blogger in me!
Cheers,
Tom
