Country of the Blind?

“Premarital sex normal for most.” The headlines screamed at me from The Seattle Times on a wintery Advent Day as I enjoyed my early morning coffee. Even in the 1950’s this was true, the columnist assured me. ( It always bothers me when someone who did not live in the 1950’s tells me what it was like.) Could this be another example of rewriting history to confirm the current moral blindness of our society? Of course the random interviews were conducted on 38,000 people. Could we try a different random 38,000? Could we talk about how accurate people are in reporting information in interviews? Or how many people are willing to be interviewed about their sexual behavior?

But I guess that didn’t bother me as much as the implication that “normal” is defined with no standard for evaluation. If we sampled 38,000 people and found that 95% confessed to stealing, would that make the activity of stealing “normal”?

I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’ description of such a “normal” society.

Country of the Blind

“Hard light bathed them—a whole nation of eyeless men,
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.

At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few,
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date,
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heav’n;

Whose blind mouth would abuse words that belonged to their
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some
Eunuch’d, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of

Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea waves, or admired how
Warm tints change in a lady’s cheek,

None complained he had used words from an alien tongue,
None question’d. It was worse. All would agree. ‘Of course,’
Came their answer. ‘We’ve all felt
Just like that.’ They were wrong. And he

Knew too much to be clear, could not explain. The words—
Sold, raped, flung to the dogs—now could avail no more;
Hence silence. But the mouldwarps,
With glib confidence, easily

Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set
Fools, concocting a myth, taking the words for things.
Do you think this a far-fetched
Picture? Go then about among

Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once,
Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable,
Dread but dear as a mountain-
Mass, stood plain to the inward eye.
( ‘Country of the Blind,’ Poems by C.S. Lewis HBJ 1964)