What C.S. Lewis Said about Influencers
Introduction
In C.S. Lewis’ essay “After Priggery – What?” he explores what to do about Cleon. Some newspapermen are so desperate for attention that they stir angry bewilderment as the technique to attract readers. They disseminate falsehoods for money. They make claims “calculated to produce envy, hatred, suspicion, and confusion.” Cleon is the name Lewis uses for this kind of provocateur. He is an intellectual prostitute. He gives people a base pleasure and infects them with a dangerous disease. He is a wicked man who draws in the honest man. He is the person of bad will who draws in the person of good will. What should we do about Cleon?
Lewis’s Answer
Some believe “Cleon to be as false as hell” yet still “meets him on perfectly friendly terms over a lunch table.” He does not hesitate to read Cleon, listen to him, joke with him, and shake his hand. Cleon ought to have “the same social status as a prostitute.” Yet there this good man is, treating him as a friend. He isn’t maintaining contact from a perspective of charity. He is not associating with Cleon like a pastor or missionary would minister to a prostitute to help them turn to Jesus, who “saves his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). The person doesn’t remain with Cleon out of Christian love for the villain. He accepts Cleon with “a tolerant laugh or a shrug.”
Treating Cleon like a friend is to falsely build up the scoundrel. “The result is that things are a good deal too easy for Cleon. Even when the rewards of dishonesty are strictly alternative to those of honesty some men will choose them. But Cleon finds he can have both.” Cleon gets to express his inferiority complex, enjoy unearned influence, and gain access to the ears of the honest man.
Then Lewis says this, “From such conditions what can we expect but an increasing number of Cleons? And that must be our ruin.” Why? “They render impossible the formation of any healthy public opinion” and become “tools of government,” tools of “the totalitarian threat.” Therefore, Lewis concludes, we should refuse to associate with Cleon.
“In cold-shouldering a man for his vices … are” we “claiming to be better than he is?” Lewis points out that the sober man who drives his drunk friend home implies that one man is sober and the other is not. In that one moment, the sober man is better, even if, generally speaking, neither man is better or worse. If one man can walk straight and the other can’t, then there is a difference between the two men. When there is a lawsuit, one man claims he is right and the other man is wrong. This is a claim of particular superiority, not a general one.
Likewise, “We can (and should) blackball Cleon at every club and avoid his society and boycott his paper without in the least claiming any general superiority to him.” Lewis goes on, “We may have a hundred vices from which he is free. But on one particular matter we are, if you insist, ‘better’ than he.” How so? “We are not professional liars and he is … And that one thing which he does and we do not do is poisoning the whole nation.”
Lewis is saying that it is necessary to prevent Cleon’s influence. This requires discrediting him. And the way to discredit him is to not buy his newspaper and not be interested in what he has to say. This doesn’t eliminate all attention toward Cleon. But it leaves only Cleon’s like to support him.
Cleon’s influence perishes by being ignored. Buying the paper perpetuates the paper. If only the real true-blue supporters are left, they may not be enough to keep Cleon afloat.
Modern Answer
The current version of Cleon is not a newspaperman, but an influencer. There is an entire class of conflict entrepreneurs who spawn polarization, brush off nuance, and foster fights. The method for attention is to be intensely loved and intensively hated. This is accomplished, first, by giving a great deal of trouble to everybody. And second, by giving a special sort of trouble to those people who agree with them in nearly everything.
Conflict entrepreneurs can’t exist in isolation. They need each other, and it creates an entire ecosystem of parasites where one preposterous opinion is met with another. The monetization of conflict requires an ouroboros where two snakes eat each other’s tails (Gal. 5:15).
What should we do about it? What would Lewis’s Cleon argument look like in application to the conflict entrepreneurs? Lewis would say that we give them too much credibility by paying attention to their conflict. If the honest person, if the person of good will, pays attention to the wicked fools, then that multiplies attention to mendacity. Attention builds their brand, their bank account, and their potential for drawing in the next honest person (2 Tim. 2:23).
While acknowledging there are some exceptions (Lewis never tells us what the honest critic or faithful watchman looks like), let’s imagine that Lewis’s prescription is right and the church’s response to the flame-throwers is to ignore them. What would that mean?
First, it would mean the Proverbs method for dealing with scoffers.
Proverbs 26:4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” So, engaging on the conflict entrepreneur’s terms drags you down to their level and into their frame. Cleon makes you Cleon. Then Proverbs 26:5 apparently gives the opposite view, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” This means discernment is required in dealing with fools. We must know what is fitting and what is unfitting, not according to what passes for respectability today, but according to God’s standard. If people insult you, you don’t insult back, because God says so (Mt. 5:38-48). We overcome evil with good (Prov. 25:21-22). Yes, we should expose the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11). Lies shouldn’t go unanswered. But Lewis’ point is that one of the methods for exposing darkness is the contrast that occurs when your light is moved further away from the abyss. Practically, this means don’t respond on Cleon’s terms, which are designed to profit and grow from your response, whatever it is.
So then, when do we answer the fool, and when do we not? The goal is to destabilize the fool in their foolishness without becoming like him. Since listening to Cleon won’t destabilize Cleon, but potentially make you like him, and since your tweets won’t change Cleon, but make him bigger, the church would be wise to collectively ignore Cleon as the best application of Proverbs 26:4-5.
Proverbs 9:7-8 and 23:9 warn that correcting a scoffer earns abuse and accomplishes nothing. Proverbs 26:20 establishes the principle of staving fire rather than feeding it: “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.” If attention is the fuel, if attention is the wood, then how do you make the fire go out? Remove the attention, and you remove the oxygen to sustain the strife. Proverbs 17:14 changes the metaphor: “The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.” Now the problem isn’t fire, but water. When the water breaks through the breach, you get a flood. How do you stop the flood? Get out of the strife. Ignore it.
Second, it would mean the skill of disengagement.
Titus 3:9-11 says, “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” Paul gives Titus the prescription for dealing with Cleon: disengagement rather than repeated rebuttal.
First Timothy 6:3-5 says, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.” What is Paul’s counsel? “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things” (1 Tim. 6:11). Involvement with quarreling, even listening to ongoing quarreling, is the thing that does the damage (2 Tim. 2:14).
Third, it would mean the deliberate reallocation of attention.
Where does your attention rightly belong? Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Focus your attention not on the inflammatory but on the worthy. The conflict entrepreneur’s content nearly always fails to be true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, or excellent.
Conclusion
Lewis concludes his essay with a proposal: “In the present ‘tolerant’ age he has the support and countenance not only of the rascals but of thousands of honest people as well. Is it not at least worth our while to try the experiment of leaving him and the rascals alone? We might try it for five years … I doubt if you will find him still rampant at the end.” So, what would it look like to put Lewis’s advice into action? It would require a newfound boredom in the influencers, countermanding your attention to something fruitful.
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of the books The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.
Other Articles
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/blog/2024/09/17/are-you-mature-enough-to-use-social-media
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/blog/2026/01/08/the-algorithm-and-the-christian
Bibliography
C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays (HarperOne, 1986), 65-72.
In C.S. Lewis’ essay “After Priggery – What?” he explores what to do about Cleon. Some newspapermen are so desperate for attention that they stir angry bewilderment as the technique to attract readers. They disseminate falsehoods for money. They make claims “calculated to produce envy, hatred, suspicion, and confusion.” Cleon is the name Lewis uses for this kind of provocateur. He is an intellectual prostitute. He gives people a base pleasure and infects them with a dangerous disease. He is a wicked man who draws in the honest man. He is the person of bad will who draws in the person of good will. What should we do about Cleon?
Lewis’s Answer
Some believe “Cleon to be as false as hell” yet still “meets him on perfectly friendly terms over a lunch table.” He does not hesitate to read Cleon, listen to him, joke with him, and shake his hand. Cleon ought to have “the same social status as a prostitute.” Yet there this good man is, treating him as a friend. He isn’t maintaining contact from a perspective of charity. He is not associating with Cleon like a pastor or missionary would minister to a prostitute to help them turn to Jesus, who “saves his people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). The person doesn’t remain with Cleon out of Christian love for the villain. He accepts Cleon with “a tolerant laugh or a shrug.”
Treating Cleon like a friend is to falsely build up the scoundrel. “The result is that things are a good deal too easy for Cleon. Even when the rewards of dishonesty are strictly alternative to those of honesty some men will choose them. But Cleon finds he can have both.” Cleon gets to express his inferiority complex, enjoy unearned influence, and gain access to the ears of the honest man.
Then Lewis says this, “From such conditions what can we expect but an increasing number of Cleons? And that must be our ruin.” Why? “They render impossible the formation of any healthy public opinion” and become “tools of government,” tools of “the totalitarian threat.” Therefore, Lewis concludes, we should refuse to associate with Cleon.
“In cold-shouldering a man for his vices … are” we “claiming to be better than he is?” Lewis points out that the sober man who drives his drunk friend home implies that one man is sober and the other is not. In that one moment, the sober man is better, even if, generally speaking, neither man is better or worse. If one man can walk straight and the other can’t, then there is a difference between the two men. When there is a lawsuit, one man claims he is right and the other man is wrong. This is a claim of particular superiority, not a general one.
Likewise, “We can (and should) blackball Cleon at every club and avoid his society and boycott his paper without in the least claiming any general superiority to him.” Lewis goes on, “We may have a hundred vices from which he is free. But on one particular matter we are, if you insist, ‘better’ than he.” How so? “We are not professional liars and he is … And that one thing which he does and we do not do is poisoning the whole nation.”
Lewis is saying that it is necessary to prevent Cleon’s influence. This requires discrediting him. And the way to discredit him is to not buy his newspaper and not be interested in what he has to say. This doesn’t eliminate all attention toward Cleon. But it leaves only Cleon’s like to support him.
Cleon’s influence perishes by being ignored. Buying the paper perpetuates the paper. If only the real true-blue supporters are left, they may not be enough to keep Cleon afloat.
Modern Answer
The current version of Cleon is not a newspaperman, but an influencer. There is an entire class of conflict entrepreneurs who spawn polarization, brush off nuance, and foster fights. The method for attention is to be intensely loved and intensively hated. This is accomplished, first, by giving a great deal of trouble to everybody. And second, by giving a special sort of trouble to those people who agree with them in nearly everything.
Conflict entrepreneurs can’t exist in isolation. They need each other, and it creates an entire ecosystem of parasites where one preposterous opinion is met with another. The monetization of conflict requires an ouroboros where two snakes eat each other’s tails (Gal. 5:15).
What should we do about it? What would Lewis’s Cleon argument look like in application to the conflict entrepreneurs? Lewis would say that we give them too much credibility by paying attention to their conflict. If the honest person, if the person of good will, pays attention to the wicked fools, then that multiplies attention to mendacity. Attention builds their brand, their bank account, and their potential for drawing in the next honest person (2 Tim. 2:23).
While acknowledging there are some exceptions (Lewis never tells us what the honest critic or faithful watchman looks like), let’s imagine that Lewis’s prescription is right and the church’s response to the flame-throwers is to ignore them. What would that mean?
First, it would mean the Proverbs method for dealing with scoffers.
Proverbs 26:4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” So, engaging on the conflict entrepreneur’s terms drags you down to their level and into their frame. Cleon makes you Cleon. Then Proverbs 26:5 apparently gives the opposite view, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” This means discernment is required in dealing with fools. We must know what is fitting and what is unfitting, not according to what passes for respectability today, but according to God’s standard. If people insult you, you don’t insult back, because God says so (Mt. 5:38-48). We overcome evil with good (Prov. 25:21-22). Yes, we should expose the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11). Lies shouldn’t go unanswered. But Lewis’ point is that one of the methods for exposing darkness is the contrast that occurs when your light is moved further away from the abyss. Practically, this means don’t respond on Cleon’s terms, which are designed to profit and grow from your response, whatever it is.
So then, when do we answer the fool, and when do we not? The goal is to destabilize the fool in their foolishness without becoming like him. Since listening to Cleon won’t destabilize Cleon, but potentially make you like him, and since your tweets won’t change Cleon, but make him bigger, the church would be wise to collectively ignore Cleon as the best application of Proverbs 26:4-5.
Proverbs 9:7-8 and 23:9 warn that correcting a scoffer earns abuse and accomplishes nothing. Proverbs 26:20 establishes the principle of staving fire rather than feeding it: “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.” If attention is the fuel, if attention is the wood, then how do you make the fire go out? Remove the attention, and you remove the oxygen to sustain the strife. Proverbs 17:14 changes the metaphor: “The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.” Now the problem isn’t fire, but water. When the water breaks through the breach, you get a flood. How do you stop the flood? Get out of the strife. Ignore it.
Second, it would mean the skill of disengagement.
Titus 3:9-11 says, “But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” Paul gives Titus the prescription for dealing with Cleon: disengagement rather than repeated rebuttal.
First Timothy 6:3-5 says, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.” What is Paul’s counsel? “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things” (1 Tim. 6:11). Involvement with quarreling, even listening to ongoing quarreling, is the thing that does the damage (2 Tim. 2:14).
Third, it would mean the deliberate reallocation of attention.
Where does your attention rightly belong? Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Focus your attention not on the inflammatory but on the worthy. The conflict entrepreneur’s content nearly always fails to be true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, or excellent.
Conclusion
Lewis concludes his essay with a proposal: “In the present ‘tolerant’ age he has the support and countenance not only of the rascals but of thousands of honest people as well. Is it not at least worth our while to try the experiment of leaving him and the rascals alone? We might try it for five years … I doubt if you will find him still rampant at the end.” So, what would it look like to put Lewis’s advice into action? It would require a newfound boredom in the influencers, countermanding your attention to something fruitful.
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of the books The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.
Other Articles
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/blog/2024/09/17/are-you-mature-enough-to-use-social-media
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/blog/2026/01/08/the-algorithm-and-the-christian
Bibliography
C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays (HarperOne, 1986), 65-72.
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