Post -Modern Education

The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism

by Dr. Steve Turley

"In his third chapter, ‘The Abolition of Man,’ Lewis sets out his vision of what a world completely governed by scientifically verified facts and devoid of any conception of the Tao would look like. Here, he carefully traces out the premises to their logical conclusions. For Lewis, a society rooted in technology-inspired manipulation must, by definition, organize into two classes of people: manipulators and manipulatees, or in Lewis’ words, conditioners and the conditioned. Lewis recognized that technological societies succeed by convincing the masses that their highest happiness and freedom is found in their reliance on a class of experts and technicians who have the specialized competency to conform the world to their desires and ambitions. But Lewis also recognized that if all of reality has been reduced to mere nature, being understood solely through scientific facts, then even humanity itself will be seen as nothing more than mere nature. And if nature is there to be manipulated to the wants and desires of others, then inevitably the vast majority of humanity would be vulnerable to scientific and technological manipulation according to the needs of the technological elite. It is then, when man will have thought he’d finally conquered nature, that nature will have conquered man, for man as such would cease to exist; a new social order will arise that subsumes the vast majority of humanity under the category of impersonal nature which, in effect, redefines humanity as inherently meaningless; hence the title of his third chapter and the published book, the Abolition of Man."

Turley, Dr. Steve. The Abolition of Sanity: C.S. Lewis on the Consequences of Modernism (p. 10). Turley Talks Publishing. Kindle Edition.




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