The Abolition of Me

It is pure visceral pleasure to read C.S. Lewis' writing. I'm talking about the unexpected glimpse of a beautiful woman, first taste of a small house Cognac, cassoulet on a frigid day-type pleasure. I've taken to reading his words out load, having discovered that this increased my pleasure. But there is more than just beauty. Unlike a beautiful woman who will seduce you and break your heart. Unlike the Cognac which will lead to a hang over. Unlike the cassoulet that will pack on unneeded pounds and clog your arteries. Lewis doesn't use beauty to distract you from a lack of substence. He uses to make a difficult topic palatable.

In comparison, I offer Dave Eggers. There is no doubt Mr. Eggers is a master storyteller and wordsmith. His sheer facility with the English language is mind-boggling enticing me to read about things I have no interest in. But at the end of it all, I just don't care. Much like candy, the pleasure is great but lacking in nutritional value. I want a Ducasse, a Keller, an Adria. Skill is just not enough for me. I admire great writers. I just believe that they should be great thinkers first.

The Abolition of Man gives shape to my personal quest. I had mistakenly thought that the goals of Eastern spirituality and Western intellectualism needed to reconciled. What I now realize and what Lewis so clearly expounds is the fact that both disciplines come from the same Truth or Tao as he refers to it. I won't go through the book piece by piece. Though short in length, I'm quite sure that I would misrepresent the depth of this work. I will, however, share some of my thoughts as they relate to the book and hope you will find them interesting enough to want to read The Abolition of Man.

The martial arts. Why do I always come back to this? Undoubtedly, part of the reason is because I know this better than I know anything else. But there's more to it than mere self-absorption. The arts continued to fascinate me long after my skills as a fighter stood to gain no noticable improvement because they are a telling metaphor for life. Watch a man train and watch him fight and you will know more about him than he ever would or could tell you himself. I have acquired instructor-level skill in 9 distinct martial arts and proficieny in 7 more. I didn't do this just to pad my CV. I don't believe I truly understood the martial arts until I mastered my 3rd. From there they became easier and easier to learn because they were all derivatives of the same Truth. I'd explain it to my students like this. Everybody eats rice but the preparation depends on where you live. Cooking the rice is basically the same process everywhere but how you spice it, how you dress it gives each rice its own character. Learn to cook the rice properly and then you can spice it however you want. And yes, they would look at me funny when I would say this.

There is some crazy and ridiculous stuff out there in the martial arts world. There are also some pretty amazing skill sets bordering on magic. (See my previous post- the Devil and Sifu Frank) But you can pretty much divide the martial arts world into 2 camps. One has been in real fights. The other hasn't. People who belong to the fighting camp generally tend to agree on most things and their techiques and applications start to look remarkably similar. On the other hand, the people in the no-fighting camp argue about every little detail because they have no standard by which to judge the efficacy of a technique. Actual fighting is to styles like the wind tunnel is to car design. In the name of efficiency and effectiveness, things generally start adopting the same shape.

In his much more intelligent way, Lewis says this is true of Life. He says that there is a universal standard, naturally existing right or wrong that are so, long before we get to them. Whatever we call them, however we might try to manipulate them, they are still inherently right or wrong. And how are we to know this? Only by perceiving correctly, a skill which I maintain has been woefully neglected by Western Thought. (See my post- Descartes! You French Bastard!) He goes on to show how a world without standards taken to its logical ends destroys itself.

Cyrus the Great used to send his young princes to go live in a rugged far off land like Bactria to return to when they were 18. Until then, they were only to be taught 3 things: to ride well, draw the bow, and speak the truth. Only then would they be taught more advanced topics like philosophy. Even 2500 years ago, Cyrus knew that teaching boys to be clever before you taught them to be good creates problems. Lewis takes this concept further and refines it arriving at the conclusion that the study of Ethics will only make sense to someone who has been taught from childhood to love goodness. As he put it, he would rather play cards with a man who was skeptical about Ethics but was raised to believe that a gentleman never cheats than a man who understood the study of Ethics intimately but would try to win at any cost.

My only problem with this book is personal. His reasoning against using the human body as spare parts for medical advancement is very difficult to argue with. He could have just as easily been talking about stem cell research and transplants. As much as I agree with his reasoning, I can't help but feel his logical conclusion is just wrong. I think Lewis fell into the Cartesian trap in believing that a well thought out argument is the same as the Truth. But it's equally likely that I'm wrong as well. I'm alive because of a transplant. Stem cell research holds great promise for my future happiness. I cannot distinguish between what is and what I wish it to be, in this case.

The Abolition of Man completely destroyed my internal philosophical system which, in all honestly, needed destruction. I had gotten too caught up in trying to think an Original Thought- a pointless exercise in ego gratification. I know better than that. I look at all the charlatans starting their own martial art systems which invariably are nothing but new training methods. The Tao is all coming from the same place. The effort should be to discover it fully, not take a piece of it grow it into a monstrosity. This was the wake up call I needed and I have the Dumb Ox to thank for it. My goal as always, is to forget 'me' so I can see reality clearly. This book gave me an intellectual foundation for what I believed was true in my heart. Validation? Yes, but so much more than just that. My apologies to Mr. Lewis for using "Abolition" in a manner counter to what he meant in his book in the title of this post. But the Abolition of Man freed me, however momentarily from my petty and ridiculous attachment to my ego. That is the 'me' that needed to be abolished.