Post-Humanism and the Regime of the Heartless

Politics of the Heart, Part 4 of 5

C.S. Lewis was a realist in a double sense: he understood the reality of power and he understood the reality of morality.

In 1944, writing in The Abolition of Man, he saw that we already stood on the far side of the precipice of a post-human (his term) or transhuman future. He was not enthralled by any ‘progressive’ ideology that this would be just fine. In fact, he had very good reasons to think otherwise.

Knowledge is power

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) famously proclaimed “knowledge is power,” by which he meant modern scientific knowledge represented the power of ‘man’ over ‘nature.’ Lewis understood this power and also understood that Bacon’s optimism was naïve.

Foreshadowing some of the better observations of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) (who was no defender of the Natural Law, what Lewis termed the Tao), he understood that knowledge does not operate in a power-free environment. Knowledge as power did not serve some abstract ‘man’ or ‘humanity’.

In fact, Lewis makes a double observation regarding the operations of power and humanity. First, “What we call Man’s power is,” he writes, “in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by” (Lewis 1974, 54). Ouch! You mean some people will wield this knowledge/power and may not use that for the common good of the community or species? Yep. In fact, they probably won’t; they seldom do. So much for the ‘right side of history.’

Secondly, given that this power ‘over nature’ extends to power over human beings as well (because we are a part of nature), “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” (Lewis 1974, 55). Double ouch! So, when we go to designing future humans we won’t collectively decide on how that should go? No way. Some will decide for others. To the extent the decisions are made by the wealthy, we are not all equally wealthy. To the extent the decisions are made by the technocrats, we are not equally experts. To the extent that the decision is made politically, we do not possess equal political power. However you slice it, power is used by some over others. That’s kind of the point of gaining it.

The outcome of taking human nature in our technological hands will turn out more like: “Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men…. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well” (Lewis 1974, 58). The ‘billions upon billions’ reflects Lewis’ understanding that whenever this power is chosen to be utilized, all human beings born after that point are artifacts: they have been designed to be whatever the first generation of what Lewis calls the ‘Controllers’ desired for them to be. Sound vaguely familiar? Lewis saw this 80 years ago. I always feel really stupid when something hits me as a great realization and then I discover people 50 or 100 years ago said this is where we are. That has happened to me innumerable times in the past 10 years. I, or perhaps we, ask: why didn’t we listen? Because, apparently, we’re rather dense.

How did Lewis see this playing out? He writes, “The final stage is when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself” (Lewis 1974, 59). We have only added to the arsenal since Lewis’ time, especially with genetic science and more robust digital surveillance techniques.

Beyond good and evil

In the previous essay we looked at what Lewis took to be the one consistent approach to the topic of existential totalitarianism: the Conditioners would jettison any concern for ‘value’ as values which were bound up with our human nature which was to be the subject of their control. They could just operate, as Nietzsche put it, beyond good and evil: they could just follow their will or their inclination with no attempt to morally justify their decisions.

Lewis elucidates: “To some it will appear that I am inventing a factitious difficulty for my Conditioners. Other, more simple-minded, critics may ask, ‘Why should you suppose they will be such bad men?’ But I am not supposing them bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’, applied to them, are words without content: for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforward to be derived” (Lewis 1974, 63).

For these Conditioners, who have risen above ‘humanity’ to engineer ‘humanity’ henceforth, “All motives that claim any validity other than that of their felt emotional weight at a given moment have failed them.” And further, “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains” (Lewis 1974, 65). Oh, let us listen! It helps explain a lot to realize that our overlords are not actually human!

Let’s unpack why Lewis asserts that. If the Conditioners had remained within the operations of ‘traditional value,’ of the Tao, of the set of values required for human flourishing, they could not have consistently set about to reshape humanity itself. The norms are tied to human nature. To seek to go beyond human nature is, by definition on Lewis’ thinking, to go beyond values. The Conditioners will be bold creators indeed. Nietzsche had prophesied, when we move beyond man, to what he called the super-man (the beyond-man): “shall we not have to become gods?” When it comes to designing human nature, there is no ‘good’ or ‘evil’ because those terms only make sense given human nature.

Yes, indeed, the Conditioners are gods. Unlike God, on consistent traditional accounts, there is nothing in being a god that requires you look out for the good of your creation: only that it be as you will it.

Hence, Lewis laments, “Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man” (Lewis 1974, 64). “At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’- to their irrational impulses [whatever they happen to want]” (Lewis 1974, 67). Ironically, “All Nature’s apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals” (Lewis, 1974, 68). By reverting merely to their will, these ‘gods’ will have allowed a bit of ‘nature’ to triumph over the species.

Let’s return to Plato’s original formulation of the architecture of the soul: the head (reason) directing the stomach (passions) through the heart (moral sentiment). As Lewis pictures the post-human condition, it will be the stomach (the passions, the inclinations of the will) of the powerful that have come to govern the head by abolishing the heart! Please let that sink in for a moment. The post-human situation is post-human!! That means not only in terms of our ‘biology’ but of our ‘psychology,’ ‘morality,’ and whatever we have meant by our ‘humanity.’ Can a human consistently wish to be ‘post-human?’ I think Lewis thought not. You must be possessed by some irrational impulse and that impulse will come to define what you and all the others are from here forward. This also coincides, in a more modern formulation, to how Plato had understood ‘tyranny’: the passions (eros) of one person or regime dominating the whole. That is also helpful in more fully understanding modern totalitarianism.

Lewis focuses in on the mechanics of the dynamic operative here. He observes: “We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may ‘conquer’ them” (Lewis 1974, 71). By reducing things to ‘mere Nature,’ Lewis means viewing them under the auspices of Technik. “But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified…” (Lewis 1974, 71). Expressed more prosaically, “if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be; not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners” (Lewis 1974, 73).

Lest we think this would be some future event, let’s reflect a moment. All of the ‘human sciences’ do just this: medicine, psychology, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, etc…. As Lewis pointed out in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge that we looked at in essay 2, this has already occurred: in fact, Lewis took it as the definition of what initiated the modern, post-Christian, West. We are already in the post-human condition!! That is how good Lewis is and how good this book is!

The Tao, again

How, if it is even possible, are the rulers and the ruled, the Conditioners and the conditioned in this case, to be placed on equal footing? Lewis asserts that it is only possible by appeal to the Tao, the Natural Law, the law of our shared human nature. “Only the Tao,” he asserts, “provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike” (Lewis 1974, 73). He explains: “In the Tao itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive, and growing like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and dignities of application” (Lewis 1974, 74-75). This is the only alternative Lewis sees to “the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity…” (Lewis 1974, 75).

What is the proper stance of ‘Man’ to ‘Nature’ according to the Tao? According to Lewis, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge [as wisdom, not Technik], self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science [which Lewis morally equates with one another] the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique…” (Lewis 1974, 77). I have long thought just this is our essential existential decision. Am I in charge or is reality in charge? Should I fundamentally seek to shape the world to my will or try to discipline and educate my will into conformity with the world (which for me, is primarily transcendent reality)? We can see ‘modernity’ as the attempt to answer and act out the former proposition, the anti-modern as the affirmation of the latter.

This essay was first published on Winter Oak.