C. S. Lewis, Technology and Tyranny

We should have heeded his warnings long ago:

A number of voices over the past century have warned of the damaging results of a diabolical convergence – an unhealthy coming together of runaway statism, unchecked scientism, technological tyranny, and moral myopia. One clear voice on all this was that of C. S. Lewis.

Those familiar with his writings will immediately think of two major works of his. One of them is the third volume of his famous space trilogy, That Hideous Strength which appeared in 1945. The other is The Abolition of Man published in 1947. I have often discussed these crucial works, as in this piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/05/24/lewis-on-science-scientism-and-statism/

But it is worth being aware of the fact that Lewis spoke much further about tyranny, freedom, democracy and politics. With his many books, essays, lectures and letters, there are numerous passages scattered throughout the Lewis corpus that can be drawn upon. The following are just some of them.

As to democracy and the abuse of power, Lewis said this in an essay on equality: “I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. . . . Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.” (“Equality,” in Walter Hooper, ed., Present Concerns)

More on his views on democracy can be found in another essay:

I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. . . . [S]ince we have sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that ‘all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. . . . Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. (“Membership,” in The Weight of Glory)

Scientism, the idea that only that which science can deal with (only the empirical) was a constant bogeyman for Lewis. Morality, truth, love and freedom are all unable to exist in such a narrow worldview. At least there is no proper grounding for them in such a worldview. As he wrote in his 1943 essay, “The Poison of Subjectivism”:

The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his creation.” Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. (“The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Walter Hooper, ed., Christian Reflections)

The connection between science – or rather, scientism – and tyranny gets further treatment in a 1958 essay for The Observer called “Is Progress Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” Here are some key portions of it:

I do not like the pretensions of Government—the grounds on which it demands my obedience—to be pitched too high. . . . On just the same grounds I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants’ ‘science’– they didn’t think much of Hitler’s racial theories or Stalin’s biology. But they can be muzzled….

 

We have on the one hand a desperate need: hunger, sickness, and the dread of war. We have, on the other, the conception of something that might meet it: omnicompetent global technocracy. Are not these the ideal opportunity for enslavement? This is how it has entered before; a desperate need (real or apparent) in the one party, a power (real or apparent) to relieve it, in the other. . . . The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super welfare state’s honey and avoiding the sting?…

 

What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before? (“Is Progress Possible?” in Walter Hooper, ed., God in the Dock)

On the matter of law and its relation to tyranny, Lewis wrote at various times about this. While not a legal expert, he was well informed on areas such as the philosophy of law. An incisive article he wrote for the Australian Quarterly Review in 1949 titled “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” made some important points. Here is one:

[M]y argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. (“The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” in Walter Hooper, ed., God in the Dock)

This article and some replies to it were reprinted in Res Judicatae in 1953. Lewis in turn responded, closing with these words:

We are all at this moment helping to decide whether humanity shall retain all that has hitherto made humanity worth preserving, or whether we must slide down into the sub-humanity imagined by Mr Aldous Huxley and George Orwell and partially realised in Hitler’s Germany. For the extermination of the Jews really would have been ‘useful’ if the racial theories had been correct; there is no foretelling what may come to seem, or even to be, ‘useful’, and ‘necessity’ was always ‘the tyrant’s plea’. (“On Punishment: A Reply To Criticism” in Walter Hooper, ed., God in the Dock)

One final quote. Lewis said this in the Preface to the 1961 edition of his famous The Screwtape Letters:

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

In sum, it is clear that Lewis had a very healthy distrust of Statism, scientism, technocracy, and those who in the name of humanity would be so very cavalier about mere humans. The relevance for us today should be obvious. Consider the whole issue of transhumanism and the rather ominous techno-future which seems so high up on the agenda for the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari, and others.

Whether or not Lewis uses the term, he certainly had plenty to say on all this, even as far back as three quarters of a century ago. Had folks taken heed to what Lewis and the other prophetic voices were saying back then, perhaps we would have coped much better with (that is, resisted much more strenuously) the Covid Wars and the Orwellian government overreach that we all had to endure in recent times. We ignore these incisive prophets to our own peril.

Note: This article is a small portion of a chapter I wrote titled “C. S. Lewis, Tyranny, Technology, and Transcendence”. It is one of a dozen essays found in the new book Against Tyranny edited by Augusto Zimmermann and Joshua Forrester (pp. 227-248). Australians can purchase the book here: https://www.connorcourtpublishing.com.au/Against-Tyranny-by-Augusto-Zimmermann-Editor-in-Chief-Joshua-Forrester-Editor_p_643.html  

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