All too Familiar: That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man

How nice a literary connection to all this political talk.

The N.I.C.E. is Great Britain’s National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, from the mind of C.S. Lewis in the conclusion of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength (THS).

“The N.I.C.E. was the first-fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory, on which so many thoughtful people base there hopes of a better world. It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints – “red tape” was the word its supporters used – which have hitherto hampered research in this country.” – THS, p. 23

As the drama unfolds, the N.I.C.E. proves to be the furthest thing from its acronym’s meaning, marked by media deception, violence and ulterior motives – bent on progress and control – and all nicely stated in the euphemism of “benefit to humankind.” This is starting to sound kinda familiar.

As I re-read this description today, I realize how visionary Lewis actually was. Inasmuch as That Hideous Strength is a literary allusion to his Abolition of Man (TAoM), his story is all too prophetic. As the Italian scientist Filostrato remarks to the misguided Mark Studdock regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the N.I.C.E. and the modern scientific community,

“All that talk about the power of Man over Nature-Man in the abstract-is only for the canaglia [Italian for "scoundrel"]. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument.” – THS, p. 178

And from The Abolition of Man:

“‘Man’s conquest of Nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science (p. 53)… In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?… From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (p. 54-55)… Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, mean the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men (p. 58)… For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please (p. 59).”

And:

“But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please (p. 60)… Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man (p. 64).”

And are the conditioners – the omnicompetent and scientific, the powerful and political – exempt from this abolition? No:

“Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out… to be Nature’s conquest of Man (p. 68)… As soon as we take the final step of reducing our species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same (p. 71)… It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’ and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will (p. 72)… Man’s conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce (p. 75).”

He wrote TAoM in 1944, during the writing of THS. And it applies today, March 9, 2009, in a worrisome way.

Have we a situation in which Nature is untrammeled by values? One in which ethics and the best of virtuous philosophy and theology no longer have any guiding hand or sway or influence over science? One in which we’ve reduced ourselves to mere Nature and raw material? I hope not. For I value the truly human.

But what would a “truly human” situation look like? One in which we acknowledge the personhood of the other, and rightly distinguish them from material to be manipulated. One in which we speak as “I” to “Thou” and not merely as “I” to “It” (nod to Martin Buber).

“The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When if spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose… the Thou-situation (p. 79).”

I fear in all this talk of the parts (stem cells), we have, in fact, forgotten the whole (the human… the embryo).