The Abolition of Man - How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality

I was reading C.S. Lewis's abolition of man

he starts talking about the this idea of like an ape in trousers

That was just a mainstream thing that was taught in school. That got taken out of the school system. That was no longer being taught because that is the story of man. And then they wanted to usher in this era of scientism, as C.S. Lewis refers to it as, to replace God with the concept of science, making people think that they come from apes.

I recently read C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man.

I've old enough to have listened to C.S. Lewis by the way when I was younger and C.S. Lewis in the 1940s saw exactly what was going to happen if a group of human beings took it into their heads to determine and redefine all future generations through genetic experimentation and so on. And in two books, the abolition of man, that had his strength he spelled that out and he made the point that if that happens it is not good to liberate human beings. In fact, it's good to abolish them because what will be created by, say, playing around with the germline is not human beings but artifacts. And so he writes the final triumph of humanity, scientists will be the abolition of man. And it's that that I fear is really permeating our culture. I mean the Caesars in Rome and the Babylonian emperors who thought of themselves as gods, looks pretty trivial stuff compared with this insidious teaching that's around in particularly the Western world today that we are actually all gods and we ought to rise to this and the only way to rise to it is to reject the transcendent completely. There is nothing above us.

There's a great book that was written in the 1940s. I think it's 1940s by C.S. Lewis. Anyone like C.S. Lewis? I'm a huge C.S. Lewis fan.

It's great. And Chronicles and Arnie are great. They're all terrific. But there's one book in particular that I think is his greatest work which is called Abolition of Man.

And in Abolition of Man, he warns that if you do not have an objective understanding of what is good, what is true, what is beautiful. If you don't have the way or the Tao or a truth to live by, your entire society will fall apart.

Now he was writing this 80 or 90 years ago. The Abolition of Man.

C.S. Lewis wrote many years ago that we are on the precipice of the abolition of man. We have now lived through that.

it is the end of women C.S. Lewis wrote the book The Abolition of Man we are living through the abolition of women

And it reminds me of one of the greatest lines from one of C.S. Lewis's greatest books, The Abolition of Man, which if you've never read, you should. We remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chess and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

The sages of old, for the sages of old, the cardinal problem had always been how do I conform my soul to reality?

And the solution had been wisdom. You understand that?

He says for ancient people, wisdom was the answer to the cardinal problem of life, which is here's the world. I need to see how it works and then live in accordance with it.

In other words, the cardinal problem is how do I conform my soul to reality, and the answer is wisdom.

But he says, it says, however, for magic and today's science alike, the cardinal problem has been how do I subdue reality to the wishes of my soul?

And the solution is a technique.