I think that Lewis over reacting when he describes the future of men and how they are to be molded into the future. This makes him seem like he is being prophetic and he describes his predictions in great detail but it is drastic. He begins with that technology will eventually dominant society and the Conditioners, who will erase natural laws or the Tao, will form society to where no one will have any opinions for themselves. The Conditioners would consist of state planners, engineers, and those who rejected the Tao, and they exist by debunking natural laws from education. Essentially, they plan to change human nature by taking it out of education and conditioning their people through propaganda and genetic engineering, thus forming human nature into whatever they please. Another example of this hell of a future is George Orwell’s 1984, in which the government controls every aspect of society and continuously watching the masses in order to take out any rebellions before they happen. Although Lewis makes a very good argument, I think he underestimate the individuality of human nature. There is always someone who doesn’t follow and makes their own path. It’s hard to believe that a few conditioners could completely overthrow a society like the United States especially in this day in age. People would see what it is happening and it would immediately question this new method of oppression. Today’s America seems to disrespect authority and not trust it, so why in the future would a oppressive form of control go without with some kind of retaliation. As for debunking natural laws in education, the natural laws will never go away. They will exist one way or another for humans will always embody natural laws for this is how society first formed. I think it is unlikely will happen because human nature will persevere one way or another. The mass propaganda is diverse these days just in the political forum, and there is always the internet where anyone can post their thoughts. Opposing ideas are always being disputed, and the one who wins in the end, gets even more criticized. It’s a great and well supported prophecy but I think present day, it is unlikely and too drastic.

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis gives brief insights into what may be the near future of modern science and human relation to nature. Those who are developing and promoting a way to overcome and dominate nature through scientific advances (the conditioners), will soon, mold future generations into a society devoid of the basic elements of the tao. Instead of letting nature take it’s course in affecting people and their interactions with it, the “conditioned” will already have had a predetermined mode of consciousness set into action by teachers who do not take the tao into consideration as a motive for their teachings but rely on their own speculations. By detaching ourselves from the natural laws of human nature and evolving into an increasingly transcendent and value deprived race. Lewis also explains that the irony of man’s increasing control over nature is the simultaneous surrender to nature as a result of that control. For example, while scientific advancements make it possible for humans to predictably direct many aspects of their lives down a constructed path, these same technologies increase earlier generations’ power over all of their successors. This will eventually trickle down to a point in the future where there is no more to be conquered. The selection and specificity with which a future human race will be created or conditioned will undoubtedly result in the lack of diversity needed to sustain a species indefinitely. I believe Lewis may be slightly exaggerating, partly because there are just too many people that are still unsure about science and technology’s competence at controlling and guiding humans with a conscience—something science and technology will never be able to possess. Because of this simple fact, there will eventually be a turning point when humans realize the downward spiral science has the ability to cause in the future, and they will make an attempt to counteract it in some way. Even though in this life time it will be unlikely to see any extreme incidences that can prove Lewis’s prediction, there will probably increasingly more evidence of “explanation itself being explained away” by the conditioners of the modern world.

I personally believe that Lewis is overreacting in his book. Although I believe he explains his theories very well, I believe that they are impossible. However I believe Lewis makes some very good points to examine. His thoughts of the future may be a little far-fetched and blown up but I also believe that they are very interesting to look at and examine.
I agree that we, as humans, need a set of rules and order to live by; without this chaos would be rampant. I do not agree that the “Conditioners” will ever take control of people’s minds and change the way our world is run. People are too different and there are too many cultures and languages for this to happen. Also too many people have very different ideas of how something should be handled and what decisions should be made to actually just follow what one person, or one group, says should be correct. People have different understandings of each situation, therefore I do not believe that it is possible to change our whole value system and system of order. Our value and belief system will moderately change with time as new generations come about but it will be impossible for there to be a massive change in the way society works and operates. Therefore I believe that Lewis is completely reacting about this topic.
When it comes to the topic of nature, I also agree that Lewis is overreacting. I believe that nature is our world and a main aspect of science, therefore I do not believe nature and science will ever be completely separated. While I believe there are great advancements being made in science, I believe that they are being able to occur because of and through nature. Advancement in science can and does affect our value and belief system. Some people may agree with specific scientific advancements while others may not. This may have some effect on our values and beliefs but it will never completely change our society. Science will continue to progress through nature, and therefore I once again believe that Lewis is overreacting.

Lewis is to a degree prophetic, in his book he talks about how removing all feelings from a pupil’s mind will lead them to become men without chests with ambiguous morals. He mentions that they will be those who “laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors among [their] midst.” This has certainly become the case in all instances in our society from out elementary schools to our government.
The hostility that our schools have against religion in the classrooms has reached an unprecedented level. In the years past, separation of church and state was just that a separation, but late in the 20th century separation began to be confused with government hostility to the church. So now, children in public schools are not taught anything that might mildly resemble religion. They get robbed of an education in inalienable values or the Tao. Is it so wrong to teach children in the classroom not to steal or murder? According to Lewis it is not, and the lack of doing so will create men without chests who were never able to decide for themselves because there was nothing provided to decide on.
Many of our politicians and business people can be said to be men without chests. Lewis suggests that we make men without chests and “expect of them virtue and enterprise.” This is definitely the case for politicians and business people, throughout their education they have not been expected to uphold an honor code. Some of the most used phrases in college seems to be “whatever it takes.” As college students, they are expected to out-do no matter the means, but as alumni and members of our society we expect them to be moral vessels. For example, authors and reports think is okay to bend to facts and still call them non-fiction, and many still debate on whether or not President Bush lied information previous to the attack on Iraq.
In many ways, Lewis’s book is prophetic. He talks about the lack of defined values in our society due to improper education and how these Men without hearts have hard hearts but “soft minds.”

C.S. Lewis is correct in saying that if human beings were to have no standard of objective values, mankind as a whole would be have no choice but to be governed by a new order. If there is no organized value system in place, people will have to be given guidance through orders by someone, or chaos will ensue. This would be the instance when a powerful person or group could take control over societies and train people to obey and behave in ways they never have in the past. In theory, and theory only, Lewis’ arguments are agreeable. However, I feel that this theory could never pan out because of how many people there are in the world. It would be an immense task to control a large enough amount of people’s minds as to reinstate a new social value system. I believe that the world of scientific advancement is the only essence or force that could ever have enough power to completely alter people’s value systems. Interconnectivity and global communication has changed the way in which people can send and receive information, and in the instance where social order and values are challenged, human beings would unite and share ideas of how to overcome it. Science has been advancing at incredible rates, and its achievements often conflict with people’s religious views. I still believe that science could not possibly pull off a task this immense (destroying value systems). Human beings could not exist in a world independent from nature, because nature is the life-giver and is the source of everything. Without nature, there would be no science. By the time this is even conceivable, mankind will already have evolved to higher states of mind, and thus the author is overreacting. This is why I feel that C.S. Lewis is a false prophet, because his idea, though well-supported and explained, could not work out in our world. Too many people have free will, and too many people have become well-educated, and thus would exercise their own beliefs. No state or potential ruling power could ever gain as much power as C.S. Lewis implies, not even science, in my opinion.

C.S. Lewis’ position in The Abolition of Man contains a lot of good analysis on the reasons why those in the Green Book’s school of thought are too easily discarding value- and aesthetics-driven aspects of human nature, but ultimately he goes too far in calling for a defense of an absolutist value system such as the Tao he describes. Therefore, I categorize the book as more “overreacting” than “prophetic” while still accepting a large portion of Lewis’ reasoning.

The key problem in accepting Lewis’ conclusion about defending the Tao is that this way of looking at value structures offers no attempt at reconciling the inevitable conflicts that occur when people disagree about the means of satisfying this universal order. Throughout the history of Western Europe and to this day, as well as in other cultures, particular interpretations of what the natural order should be have been used as justifications for wars and genocides. Often there are underlying material motives that Lewis would argue fall outside the Tao, but he misses a possible alternate view that would encompass the reasons why humanity needs a system of values without ascribing to it a universal or sacrosanct status.

It is possible to capture this impact without presupposing a Tao by viewing a society’s system of values as something that precedes and lives beyond the life of any one individual, but is still a construction of that society and is constantly reshaped by that society’s members. Lewis comes closest to arguing against this by saying values should not be treated as constructs. His warrant to this argument is that the Innovators seek to portray everything as a construct in order to represent it as something that can be dismissed easily. However, there is no argument made that allows us to conclude that calling something constructed means it simply ceases to have any meaning whatsoever. If one takes the stance that societal constructs can still have meaning in the very fact that they were constructed through a process spanning years and manifest themselves in structures that have effects on the everyday lives of individuals.

I ultimately believe that, explained in this way, Lewis might not be at total odds with the view presented here, but in his quest to react to the Green Book, I believe he under-covered a large and important middle ground.

Lewis is blessed with insight beyond his era—insight and discernment that breaks down generational barriers with simplistic, foundational truths. In “Abolition of Man,” he provides a glimpse into a futuristic society in which all traditional values of the “Tao” are thrown out the window, only to be replaced with the scientific method of a new “Tao,” which is the conditioning of all posterity to the like.
He gives notice to the Conditioners who don’t believe in value, so they follow their instinctual drives, thus man’s conquest of nature becomes nature’s conquest of man. In getting rid of the “Tao,” human nature—in fact humanity altogether—also is done away with. One cannot escape the innate human instincts, emotion, and felt needs (impulses). We should not decide or try to mold what traditional humanity is when it has already been decided (by nature that is) for us. It is arrogant and boastful to say the least, to endeavor to figure out nature which has existed and changed for millions of years and expect to “conquer” and re-program it according to this microscopic age (on the timeline of existence) which has existed but a mere couple of hundred of years.
Science views everything as a process, a constant progression and moving forward at the attainment of knowledge. But perhaps each step being taken is taken in the wrong direction, towards the wrong end . . . a dead end. Maybe it’s not getting better and there comes a point at which we have to say “no more.” And we find the answer we have come to reach was given before the argument even began: humility towards nature as the only plausible solution. In this instance, I do not believe Lewis is overreacting. If somebody had spoken about sex change operations, envitro fertilization, and cloning in the 1930s as examples in justifying their fears of scientific and technological advancements, I would think they were irrational, paranoid, and over analytical. Seeing these events as having already come to pass, the entertainment of possibilities can never be too severe when in the context of science.

Lewis says that when humanity finally conquers nature (through applied science), it is when man surrenders to human nature. He explains that every time we advance and gain power, we gain power over ourselves as well. For instance, when man invented guns, he also allowed for the possibility of getting shot and dying. We are slaves to our own advancement. At this time there will also be a ruling minority who will dictate the way the human conscience will work. Natural impulses will prevail and man, in a way, will revert to the times of their basest, most natural tendencies, back to when instinct ruled. It’s like man will give up his soul in return for power. He gains everything while losing everything.

What Lewis explains is inevitable. It is in our nature to advance—particularly in the realm of modern science. In this case, it seems that there is no way to stop the abolition of man. Perhaps it will become a never-ending cycle of advancement then degradation then advancement again. We may never know because we’re in the first advancement stage we know of—or is the history we know just a construct of our modern minds, the ones that only recollect events post-degredation? It is really sad to have that perception about the direction of mankind. To move forward is to move backward.

I personally thought that Lewis was overreacting a bit when explaining how man will eventually destroy himself. It had the air of an apocalyptic, sci-fi story. Despite overreacting a bit, his ideas in general, I feel, eerily describe the direction that man is heading toward – though perhaps not to the extent in which he describes. His grand ideas parallel many other books that prophesied the future. When those books were written, they seemed absurdly unrealistic, but once that future date arrived, people began to realize that some features of the book actually did arise. I think that “Abolition of Man” is part of that group of books. Overreaction is natural in this case because if it did not seem to be over-the-top, then the probability of some parts actually occurring would be slim. Imagination and innovation are key because the future is uncertain and anything can happen.

Lewis critiques modern science saying that it is headed down the wrong path, and he gives the reader a glimpse of what life will be like if science is allowed to continue down this path. He argues that the Conditioners, the elite masterminds of science and psychology, will find a way to triumph over Nature, and they will determine a way to control man’s interaction in the universe. Furthermore, they will be able to place man in an artificial setting that is independent of and separate from Nature. This elite group will hold the powerful responsibility of defining the men that they have conditioned- mind, body, and soul. But here, the Conditioners will meet a paradox. They will have overcome Nature, yet without it, there are no morals, no values, and no consistencies governing human interactions. The Conditioners will be left to determine what is “good” and what is “bad,” but without Nature, will “good” and “bad” still exist?
The situation that Lewis is warning us about between the Conditioners and the Conditioned parallels the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. In The Giver, there exists a similar situation where several superior intellectuals govern and control an entire town of people. These people, arranged into pre-determined family units, are conditioned from the time they are born to marry a certain person, have a certain job, and raise certain children. The town all behaves in accordance with a strict set of guidelines outlining what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Those who choose to cross the line are dealt with accordingly in an effort to maintain what the “Conditioners” have established. It could be argued that in this instance, the Conditioners have successfully separated the men in the town from all the governing laws of Nature because everyone in the town conducts themselves in strict accordance with the Conditioners laws, and they are completely ignorant of the laws of Nature. There is one boy that manages to slip through the cracks. He pieces together information about the Conditioners, realizes he has been conditioned, rebels from their authority, and manages to escape from the town. In a world governed by Conditioners rather than Nature, rebellion is destined to occur.
Lewis has a point when he argues that there is an overwhelming modern push to distinguish man from Nature and to subsequently be able to control man independently from Nature. I especially agree with him when he elaborates on the paradox that the Conditioners will encounter when they try to establish a new set of morals and values for the men they have conditioned because without Nature’s governing authority, morals and values cannot exist. However, I do not believe that the situation Lewis describes between the Conditioners and the Conditioned has the possibility of occurring. There are too many people today who choose to cling to tradition and turn up their nose at science. Today, for example, amazing scientific breakthroughs such as biotechnology and cloning are met with much controversy. I think that overall, few people trust scientific advancements and most people view science with a critical eye. Lewis is overreacting if he believes that people would accept a scientific breakthrough capable of making man completely independent of Nature.