Brenton Dickieson is celebrating his 1,000th post at A Pilgrim in Narnia, and everyone is invited! He’s been a positive influence on this little escapade into humanities scholarship since nearly the beginning. All the people who Know the Internet assure me that blogs are passé; nobody blogs any more.  Fortunately for his 7,500 followers, Brent doesn’t read those people.  Go on over and congratulate him. In honor of the occasion, an infinitesimal Festschrift about C.S. Lewis:

I’m just catching up on the Mythgard Academy class on Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. I first read it when I was a teenager. Even though I didn’t have the concept of “imperialism” clear in my head, I could tell that Weston’s rant about human destiny was a withering indictment of the whole imperial project. But something I never noticed before is the initial description of Oyarsa. He’s not part of the planet. He’s actually out in heaven, but he rules Malacandra.  We’re supposed to be thinking of planetary intelligences, of course, but that description also fits the civil-service functionary in London who administers a colony, or a bureaucrat in Washington DC who handles relations between an overseas military presence and the indigenes. Imperialism appears to be a tenacious concept — if we’re not careful, we’ll find ourselves with empires layered on top of empires, in a Great Chain of Politics.