"'The former race went up in the machines, not because it was forced but because it chose, because that was the way by which the spirit could live and grow forever.'" (p. 245)
The phrase,"...went up in the machines...," transcends the usual mechanistic connotations of the word, "machine."
Contrast this technological future with Elwin Ransom's words to the revived Merlinus Ambrosius:
"'The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven.'"
-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 13, 5, p. 656.
Lewis' political programme?:
technophobia
rurality
absolute monarchies
no birth control
Lewis wrote science fiction in order to oppose Wellsian-Stapledonian-Andersonian pro-technological science fiction.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to partially disagree with you about Lewis. While I disagree with his technophobia, scientific knowledge can be used destructively or for evil ends.
I also don't think Lewis had truly autocratic, absolute monarchies in mind. I think he had regimes which respected its own laws and probably had legislative bodies as a better ideal.
And artificial birth control, drugs or devices, is disgusting. To say nothing of the utter horror of the abortions and infanticides so common these days!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
You mention "abortions and infanticides" implying they are two different things, in which case abortions tend to prevent infanticides.
The regions that have freely available reliable contraceptives have the lowest abortion rates.
Kaor, Jim!
I'm sorry I was unclear. A direct abortion is infanticide, deliberate murder of the unborn child. I should have specified horrors like "partial birth" abortions, where, as late as the ninth month of pregnancy, a butcher masquerading as a physician, partially pulls out the child by the legs, and then stabs/cuts the spinal cord in the neck. BAH!!!!!
I still disagree re contraceptive drugs/devices. Because that easy and widespread of contraceptives breeds a mentality encouraging or tolerating abortion, as a means of getting rid of a child.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I've been forgetting something, I wonder what Lewis would have thought of Stirling's Kingdom of Montival, in the Emberverse books? Or Anderson's Dennitza, as seen in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS? He might have preferred either of them to what we have now!
Ad astra! Sean
Lewis' desires were self-contradictory.
For example, if you have a) the germ theory and good sanitation, and b) no birth control, you will have c) radical overpopulation and catastrophic famine, absent other controlling factors.
Most places before the modern period had periodic Malthusian catastrophes even -with- high mortality rates day-to-day.
Eg., England had over 4 million people in 1300, the first time it had equalled the population of Roman Britannia circa 300 CE; by 1450, it was down to below 1.5 million again, back where it had been in 1066. That was mostly caused by plague, but note that the plague needed a densely-packed, malnourished population to have the results it did.
The world to which Lewis looked back, to the extent that it existed at all, was made possible by a high mortality rate, and by -other- means of preventing reproduction.
In the post-medieval Western world, there was (somewhat) lower mortality than some places (fewer famines in particular, after the medieval period) but this was made possible by a combination of late marriage and a high proportion of people who never married at all -- in England, at times over 25%, as in the late 17th-early 18th centuries, for example.
Note, this was not a matter of -choosing- to be unmarried and childless, but social protocols which effectively forbade people below a certain social level from marrying or reproducing, and which made it impossible for most people to marry until a full decade after puberty even in good times, which cut 3-4 children off their total(*)
And infanticide of various sorts was fairly common, too.
Eg., "Foundling hospitals" for abandoned infants had a mortality rate of over 98%. Everyone knew it. It was a way of killing newborns without acknowledging you were doing it. That's where most illegitimate children ended up -- quietly killed, in other words, with a thin cover of verbal denial.
On a personal note, Lewis himself didn't marry until he was 58, and didn't have children with the woman he married then.
(*) to show that it wasn't really 'voluntary', witness the reproductive behavior of English settlers in the New World, who married much earlier and had marriage rates of over 97%, and about twice as many children on average -- about the biological maximum, resulting in a population that doubled every 23 years, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out.
Which is clearly unsustainable, and was only maintained for as long as it was by continuous expansion at the expense of the Indians.
In Ireland, sub-tenancy and potatoes removed the sort of social veto on really poor people marrying and having children that prevailed in England, and look where -that- ended up.
Up until 1847, Irish people married 4-6 years earlier than English people and a higher percentage married; by the 1870's, the Irish married -later- than the English and a higher percentage were never-married. Again, Irish -emigrants- behaved very differently -- one of the major reasons they left was that if they stayed home and didn't stand to inherit a farm or trade, they'd probably end up as perpetual bachelors/spinsters.
Note that Montival is only possible because 95%+ of the previous population -died-. After a generation of adjustment, there are only about 2.5 million people between the 100th parallel and the Pacific and between the Yukon and the old Mexican border.
The survivors have an open land frontier, in other words.
My fear is that we are about to throw ourselves centuries back at least.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Fascinating comments! Which got me interested enough to look up foundling hospitals. Esp. the famous one in London. Granted, alas, the existence of negligence, abuse, cruelty, etc., in the treatment of abandoned children, if I can trust the Wikipedia article, the governors of the Foundling Hospital sometimes TRIED to help these children.
Your comments makes even more urgent our need for a new frontier, first in the Solar System, and then out among the stars. Only that might prevent the despair, frustration, anger, ennui, etc., among people unable to fulfill some of the deepest drives, desires, and needs of humans, such as the desire to have children.
Ad astra! Sean
"deepest drives, desires, and needs of humans, such as the desire to have children."
If that desire is only followed to the extent that few people have more than 2 children, the Malthusian catastrophe is avoided even without an open frontier.
If most people have 3 children, population will double in less than a century and even the trillions of people that might be housed in a solar system full of rotating space habitats will be reached in a thousand years.
My understanding is that affluence leads to control of family size.
Kaor, Jim!
I am not so sure you are right and I'm more inclined to agree with Paul. Given advanced technology and prosperity many people might well delay having children.
But I would love seeing giant O'Neill habitats being built. That would be one way of getting off this rock!
Ad astra! Sean
I just gave the simple math of what happens if couple each have 2 children vs what happens if they have 3 children, if such birth rates are maintained for centuries.
The record of birth rates in the prosperous countries are consistent with Paul's statement. So a Malthusian catastrophe looks to be unlikely.
People don't have an instinct to desire children, not as such. They have instincts to have sex, and to -care- for children. That handled it just as well, back in the day.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree that makes sense.
Ad astra! Sean
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