The
Abolition of Man
C.S.
Lewis’s essay, The Abolition of Man, argues that man does not have power over
nature as some might suspect. In fact, it is the ability of certain men to
control elements of nature or technology that gives them the power to bestow
their use on other men. He proposes an alternative method to science inquiry
which looks at the end goal.
Lewis
first looks at the idea of man versus nature. Lewis uses the example of
aeroplanes, wireless technology and contraceptives to explain that man only
have power to the extent to which other man give them. He explains that these
things are given to men by “those who sell, or those who allow the sale, or
those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods” (Lewis
23). Lewis concludes that what man thinks is a power, is controlled by other
men using nature as an instrument. He explains an extreme case of man holding
power over the existence of future generations can be seen with the use of
contraceptives. A man is essentially denying another man’s existence by making
the choice of using contraceptives.
This
controlling of man’s existence happens repeatedly. Lewis states, “Each generation
exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the
environment bequeaths to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits
the power of its predecessors” (Lewis 24).
However, as time goes by, there will eventually be a generation close to
extinction which will have a small population and less power to influence the
future. Lewis states that there will be a dominant generation (i.e. during the hundred century A.D)
which will have power over previous or future generations. Due to the
resilience of man, the last thing to be conquered will be the human nature
itself. At this point, Lewis says, “The
battle will be won” (Lewis 25) But he ponders “who, precisely, will have won
it?’ (Lewis 25). Most likely there will
be a smaller group of men who have dominion over a large group.
Men
refer to everything they conquer as nature, and if other humans consider some
“dehumanized” men as natural men, then they will eventually come to control
these “lesser men.” The Abolition of Man
focuses on how human nature is controlled by “conditioners” who pick and choose
what to include in the Tao of others. In contrast, these conditions keep the
original Tao for themselves as to become keepers of truth. These conditioners, having absolute power,
will get to do with the next generation as they please. They are outside the
Tao, so they have no sense of duty or responsibility to the “conquered.” Lewis
describes the conditioners as not good or bad, but rather not men at all. In
addition, he explains the first generation who are objects of their
conditioning are not men, either. They are subjects to the conditioners’
conditioning. Standing outside of the
Tao leads to the destruction of man by nature.
Lewis
finally concludes the essay by proposing a new method of scientific inquiry. He
argues that “there is something which unites magic and applied science while
separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages” (Lewis 30). He says they were
similar in their intent and end goal, but something more efficient about
science and so it won out. He argues that science has taken to explaining
things away and man has become lax about making inquiries and questioning
things. He hopes rather than explaining things away, that scientific inquiry
could change into asking how a thing fits into the whole. In other words, not
how man can conform to the science but rather how science can conform to
man. And if the scientific world keeps
explaining things away, they will eventually undo all their work.
2 comments:
As you say, Lewis insists that when we describe technology as granting power to people, what we would be better saying is that technologies mediate power relations among people in ways that benefit some while others suffer. When we speak of humans "mastering" nature, one might just as well speak of nature evacuating humanity of substance: If "man" [sic] wins the battle over "nature" by means of a technoscientific augmentation in terms of which human values are reduced to appetites and contingencies amenable to computation and engineering solutions… “The battle will be won” (as you aptly quote Lewis concluding) But “who, precisely, will have won it?’
Lewis applies this general thesis to three technological sites: contraception, airplanes, and radio. Again, you summarize this quite effectively. I suppose it is not too great a surprise in a way to find Lewis, in the belly of the beast of WWII, immediately goes from contraception to eugenics, from planes to bombs, from radios to fascist mass-propaganda in his tale. But it is clear even in Lewis's forceful formulations that real world technologies are more complex than the emancipatory machines of his dying friend's dreams nor the obliterative engines of his nightmares. As you reveal in explicating Lewis's eugenic reading of contraception -- it is surely at least odd to think of contraception as destroying potential futures when what he would presumably celebrate as happy future-making conception destroys quite as many "lives" on these assumptions. Part of the dreadful ominousness of the succession of generations shaped by genetic Conditioners in Lewis's narrative derives from the sense of their terrible omnicompetence, when in fact every use of technology has unintended consequences and applications, and the uses to which technologies are put are shaped by the ineradicable and irreconcilable diversity of their makers, users, owners.
Setting aside the rather facile and quintessentially British appropriation of the Tao here by Lewis to affirm as universal the values congenial to him from his elite perch as a rich white straight Christian British imperialist bourgeois academic, Lewis also uses this term to name the principle that those who instruct the people in values must be guided in their own lives by the principles they teach. This principle undermines the hypocrisy and opportunism that characterize the appetitive figure of the technoscientific imagination, but it does not finally accomplish the synthesizing stabilizing function with which Lewis invests it, since a world of non-hypocrites might still advocate incommensurable values to be implemented through their Conditioning technologies. Recall that Hannah Arendt, contending with similar questions, proposed democratic and public deliberation without any guarantees in advance of consensus, welfare, pleasure, utility as the way to preserve value in the storm churn of technological change.
(...continuing) Your precis is full of sharp thinking and clear writing. Fine, fine work here. I'll conclude as you did, mentioning Lewis's interesting discussion of the essentially magickal worldview that drives our understanding and expectations of the technological -- that this is a specifically Faustian bargain in Lewis's terms could not be clearer. I think the force of his point is not quite to suggest as you do that science "beat out" magic because of its efficiency or what have you, but that technoscience and magick share something more essential than distinguishes them, the making of devices or implements through which personal agency is amplified to rewrite the world in the image of our values. More than a reflection of the alchemical birth of Newtonian mechanics, Lewis is teasing at a discursive archive of stories and dreams as deep as there is, activated as wands become joysticks, demonic swords become doomsday bombs, fountains of youth become plastic surgery and boner pills, love potions become dating algorithms, genies become nanofactories or 3D printers or plastic, depending on the decade, prophetic dreams become digital virtualities, golems become bots, and gods AIs.
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