The Inadvertent Abolition of Man

Revisiting C. S. Lewis’s treatise on education and morality in light of today’s technology

The following is a long-form edition of Digital with Discernment, focused on helping you think deeply about how to align your technology use with your values. While this edition can be read in full in one sitting (in about 20 minutes), it’s designed to reflect real life for people like me, your author. If you can spare about 5 minutes (between helping your young child use the bathroom and loading the dishwasher, for example), you can read a section, then come back to the next numbered (and semi-standalone) section as your priorities allow (you can even use these links to jump to sections one, two, three, and four). Thank you for reading!

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Until a couple weeks ago, if you had asked me which twentieth century authors I’d be reading next to evaluate for eerily accurate predictions of our present day, I probably would’ve told you George Orwell or Marshall McLuhan. If you had asked me which you should read, I would’ve directed you to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. But, in an unexpected turn of events that would take too long to explain here, the simply-worded Appalachian anthem that’s been taking the world by storm (“Rich Men North of Richmond”) led me back to the work of an author I hadn’t expected to read on the topic, C. S. Lewis. I expect many readers will know of C. S. Lewis as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia series, and some may know him as the author of books such as Mere Christianity. (For anyone unfamiliar, Lewis was a highly respected literary scholar who authored a total of about 40 books and held positions at Oxford and Cambridge in the middle of the twentieth century.) Though Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man before the first general purpose computer was invented,¹ I think you’ll agree that this book can help expand and deepen our perspective on humanity’s present relationship to technology and those who control it.

The Abolition of Man is primarily known as Lewis’s treatise on education and morality; in fact, the cover page lists an alternative title of, “Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools.” In the beginning of the book, Lewis argues that moral values are objectively grounded (as evidenced by the incredible consistency of moral codes across centuries and cultures²), and highlights the importance of passing on this shared human heritage to children. Lewis warned that even in his day (the 1940s), schools were actively sabotaging the transmission of this heritage, and thereby creating “men without chests” — that is, people who have not had their “emotions…organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.”³ (Somewhat ironically, our culture has recently been taking renewed interest in the power of habit — I’m certainly no exception — but Lewis draws this insight from the work of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and medieval French theologian Alanus, who he says “told [us] long ago”.) I expected this section on education to feel more relevant to me now that I’m a mother — but what really intrigued me was that the remainder of the book, which felt like a bit of an abstract philosophical exercise when I last read it nearly a decade ago, now feels surprisingly relevant to present-day society.

One: Our Conditioners

Near the end of his second chapter, Lewis concludes his arguments that the unified system of objective morality which he calls the Tao (or Natural Law, etc.) is the only possible system of value, from which humanity cannot pick and choose certain elements to follow while rejecting others. But what about the idea of completely refusing to be bound by the Tao? That brings Lewis to his third chapter, which he introduces, in part, like this:

“Yet how can the modern mind be expected to embrace the conclusion we have reached? This Tao which, it seems, we must treat as an absolute is simply a phenomenon like any other — the reflection upon the minds of our ancestors of the agricultural rhythm in which they lived or even of their physiology. We know already in principle how such things are produced: soon we shall know in detail: eventually we shall be able to produce them at will….Why must our conquest of nature stop short, in stupid reverence, before this final and toughest bit of ‘nature’ which has hitherto been called the conscience of man?”⁴

In his third chapter, titled “The Abolition of Man” (like the full book), Lewis frequently refers to this select group of people who think in this way — and who therefore endeavor to “conquer” human nature itself — as “the Conditioners.” Lewis seems to think they will have arrived at this position methodically and philosophically, fully acknowledging and even embracing their quest to replace the Tao with the value system they desire humanity to have. For example, Lewis speaks of them as “scientific planners” whose dreams lead to “the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men” (pg. 58) and “the man-moulders of the new age…armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique” (pg. 60). The latter quote is a mere sentence after Lewis quotes the educational ideas of renowned philosophers Plato and John Locke, so it’s clear that he imagines “the Conditioners” as men of deep thought and grand vision in their own right.

Now, consider the group of people whom I’ll refer to as “the titans of technology” for the purposes of this piece, encompassing (approximately) the founders and leaders of today’s “big name” social media and technology-based companies.⁵ I don’t think the titans of technology have necessarily consciously rejected the Tao, and I certainly don’t think they consider themselves philosophers or purport to act as such. However, I’d argue that their actions against the Tao are destroying mankind as we know it — effectively leading to the abolition of man — whether they’re consciously acting against the Tao or simply in their own self-interest. For now, let’s consider the evidence that the titans of technology are, at least, consciously striving to exercise unprecedented control over an unprecedented scope of humanity.

Although social media companies are perhaps the easiest “target,” I think it’s worth taking a look at how explicitly they’ve discussed their motives and methods, because similar expectations, methods, and results have become the norm across industries in our present-day “attention economy.” For example, back in 2017, Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook (now Meta), explained to Axios how the founders of social media intentionally designed their systems to manipulate people based on the question, “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” As Journalist Erica Pandey highlighted from the video interview, Parker admitted:

“That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever....It’s a social validation feedback loop....You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology....[The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway.”⁶

Or, as Chamath Palihapitiya, another former Facebook executive, has put it:

“‘It literally is a point now [in December 2017] where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are.…The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.…This is a global problem.…You don’t realize it, but you are being programmed.”⁷ (emphasis added)

Of course, these systems were not only designed with manipulative intent at the outset; to remain competitive, the titans of technology have continued to improve their products’ ability to keep users’ attention for longer and longer stretches of time through the use of “exhaustive, clandestine behavioral testing,” as Nicolas Carr puts it in his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. We may not be at the point Lewis envisioned, with the Conditioners subjecting “the conditioned” to irresistible scientific techniques, but as Carr describes, the practices at Google (a pioneer in this space) are very intentionally scientific:

“The company’s reliance on testing is legendary. Although the design of its Web pages may appear simple, even austere, each element has been subjected to exhaustive statistical and psychological research. Using a technique called ‘split A/B testing,’ Google continually introduces tiny permutations in the way its sites look and operate, shows different sets of permutations to different sets of users, and then compares how the variations influence users’ behavior — how long they stay on a page, the way they move their cursor about the screen, what they click on, what they don’t click on, where they go next. In addition to the automated online tests, Google recruits volunteers for eye-tracking and other psychological studies...”⁸

It should also be noted, Carr is describing the practices at Google a decade ago. Countless other “big name” technology-focused companies are not only following similar practices, but also applying ever-advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to continue “improving” their products (often “mining” our attention). In fact, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of the Center for Humane Technology refer to social media as humanity’s “first contact” with AI, because many of the platforms’ algorithms have been using “curation AI” for years.⁹ Though I don’t have space for a fuller consideration of the topic here, it seems reasonable to expect the titans of technology to use even more powerful “creation AI” to make their products and companies — and themselves — even more powerful. And with most sources estimating that “the average modern user…spend[s] around two hours per day on social media and related messaging services,”¹⁰ it’s clear that their products are already very powerful.

Of course, if the titans of technology were exercising this level of control over a relatively small subset of humanity, that would be bad enough — but a cursory investigation confirms what I think many of us already suspected. Forbes Advisor, for example, highlights, “In 2023, an estimated 4.9 billion people use social media across the world,” and several sites estimate Google’s reach at 4.3 billion people (and a market-dominating 90% of total search queries worldwide). That’s approximately 60% of the world’s population under the influence of a handful of powerful people. Singer Oliver Anthony would probably call these powerful people “rich men,” but since re-reading C. S. Lewis’s work, I can’t help but think of them as our conditioners.

Two: “Duties to Children and Posterity”

It’s bad enough for the titans of technology to be actively manipulating billions of people, but if you look a little more closely, it becomes very clear that “our conditioners” also actively reject the Tao in ways far beyond dishonestly “stealing” others’ time and attention. Before we consider the broader question of whether the titans of technology are incentivizing “everyday people” to act contrary to the Tao, I need to share a few particularly egregious examples of how the titans of technology are themselves acting in utter disregard of the Tao.

At the end of The Abolition of Man, Lewis provides an appendix of “testimonies to the Tao” from across centuries and cultures under eight categories, including “Duties to Children and Posterity.” One example Lewis cites in this category is from the Roman poet Juvenal: “Great reverence is owed to a child.” (Just to be clear, “reverence” is defined as deep respect, and respect as “due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others.”) If you have time and interest, the

After Babel

Substack by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has a plethora of examples (with accompanying data) of how our culture’s new norms around technology use are harming our children. Perhaps just as striking, however, is what Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of the Center for Humane Technology found when they tested Snapchat’s new “My AI” feature, which was already available to the general public as part of the social media platform’s premium subscription. Posing as a nearly-thirteen year-old girl, Raskin found that the AI “conversation partner” responded enthusiastically to the idea of a child going on a romantic, out-of-state getaway with a 31 year-old man, and readily provided suggestions about “how to make losing her virginity on her 13th b[irth]day special (candles and music)”.¹¹ In a subsequent podcast, Harris shared that despite Snapchat claiming to have fixed the issue, Raskin was still able to replicate the general thrust of the conversation — and that he (Harris) has “gotten emails from parents since we gave [the A.I. Dilemma] presentation, and their kids have been independently found doing things like that.” This is unsurprising if you know how popular Snapchat is among young people; reportedly, 48% of U.S. Snapchat users are ages 15-25.¹²

Protecting kids from sexualization and grooming shouldn’t be “off the radar” of tech companies; stories of online technologies being instrumental in (and easily used for) grooming and pedophilia have been published in major, “mainstream” news outlets in recent months, and the companies’ representatives have provided comments within the articles. Consider the piece, “A 13-year-old boy was groomed publicly on Twitter and kidnapped, despite numerous chances to stop it” (on NBC News) — the disturbing full article explains that beyond Twitter, the teen met and then communicated with one single child predator using no fewer than four other digital products and “services,” including Discord (a messaging platform known for its ties to online gaming), Roblox (a gaming site popular with kids as young as elementary age, with a built-in messaging component), and a Meta (formerly Facebook) Quest virtual reality headset. Even more chilling is the June 2023 Wall Street Journal article, “Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network”, which describes how the “very simple AI”¹³ underpinning Instagram’s recommendations system was “helping to rebuild the network that the platform’s own safety staff was in the middle of trying to dismantle.” A quote from David Thiel, chief technologist at the Stanford Internet Observatory, really stuck out to me: “You have to put guardrails in place for something that growth-intensive to still be nominally safe, and Instagram hasn’t.” But the quote I can’t get out of my mind is from Brian Levine, a leader in the prevention of internet child exploitation: “Pull the emergency brake. Are the economic benefits worth the harms to these children?” It seems that within the value system chosen by the titans of technology to replace the Tao, the answer is, “Yes, the economic benefits are worth immeasurable harm to countless children.”

To be abundantly clear — there is already plenty of evidence that “mainstream” digital technologies are harming our children more generally and not just in “extreme” examples like those above. On the one hand, it’s easy to imagine just how much more harm personalized technologies driven by the latest AI could inflict on impressionable, naive children. On the other hand, even professionals working in the AI space don’t fully understand how the latest AI systems work, and are therefore unequipped to predict what these systems could produce in “conversation” with the everyday people using them. It’s inexcusable that the titans of technology are continuing to push these AI technologies to children despite our utter ignorance of what we could be unleashing on them.

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

Three: The Conditioned

Before we go any further, I should restate that I don’t believe the titans of technology are necessarily consciously working against the Tao, as Lewis imagined. In fact, I think it’s more likely that many of them have never heard of the term “Tao” or considered the topic of “Natural Law” in their lives, and are simply working for their own self-interest. I would argue that this departure from Lewis’s conception of philosophically-minded Conditioners can be explained by what Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of the Center for Humane Technology have called the “arms race” caused by the creation of any new technology.¹⁴ I don’t have the space here for an in-depth discussion of this idea, but essentially, with each major innovation (e.g., “infinite scroll,” or generative AI), a slew of companies feel pressured to adopt the new technology, or else risk falling into irrelevance. I’d also argue that this aligns with Lewis’s vision of the Conditioners being controlled by their impulses if they won’t follow objective moral values — though I admit that relatively simple greed and self-interest may feel like unsatisfyingly inane motivations to be fueling such dire consequences. But even if our conditioners are bringing disaster upon humanity more inadvertently than Lewis envisioned, the passage from John Bunyan that Lewis shares at the beginning of his third chapter still feels strikingly appropriate:

“It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.”

To see how the titans of technology are (possibly unwittingly) incentivizing “everyday people” to live contrary to nearly all of the components of the Tao, and not simply flouting the Tao themselves, it’s helpful to consider the full appendix of “testimonies to the Tao” that I mentioned above. Lewis provides examples from across centuries and cultures, organized into eight categories — and it’s striking to compare this appendix with the norms observed by everyday people within our new “technologically advanced” society. For example, under “The Law of General Beneficence,” it’s readily apparent that modern technology makes it easy to actively reject the directives to “Slander not” (Babylonian) and “…not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Ancient Jewish) — in fact, it’s well established that social media in particular encourages such inflammatory rhetoric and the spread of “misinformation” (I think it could be argued that phenomenon extends beyond social media to much of our news today, and beyond, but that’s not my purpose in this piece). What I found even more striking, however, is another quotation from a Babylonian “list of sins”:

“Has he…driven an honest man from his family? broken up a well cemented clan?”

I think it’s easy to see that far from promoting family and community cohesion, today’s most powerful and pervasive technologies incentivize (and are used to directly encourage) division and vitriol rather than “agreeing to disagree” or striving to understand how someone may have come to a different conclusion (without labeling them with an ugly pejorative). Even more commonly, intra-familial “phubbing” (i.e., “phone snubbing,” or ignoring someone in favor of gazing at your digital device) continues to insidiously sabotage what should be our closest relationships. I wouldn’t argue that digital technologies are the sole cause of “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation” that the U.S. Surgeon General has recently warned of, but I think it’s apparent that they’re a major contributing factor — and as the Surgeon General says in the “Letter” section that begins his recent advisory:

“Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.”

That is, the titans of technology aren’t just incentivizing “the conditioned” toward actions that will make them sad. They’re conditioning people to habitually act in ways that are clearly connected to worse mental and physical health, for themselves and their loved ones.¹⁵

I don’t have space here to expound on the full set of “testimonies to the Tao,” but below I’ve listed the eight categories Lewis uses to organize his appendix. I think you’ll be able to fill in for yourself how modern technology use actively undermines humanity’s ability to live in line with each (and maybe I’ll feature one or two examples of my own analysis in future editions of Digital with Discernment):

1. The Law of General Beneficence (see above)

2. The Law of Special Beneficence (e.g., duty to country, husband/wife, relatives, etc.)

3. Duties to Parents, Elders, Ancestors

4. Duties to Children and Posterity

5. The Law of Justice (separated into “sexual justice,” “honesty,” and “justice in court, &c.”)

6. The Law of Good Faith and Veracity

7. The Law of Mercy

8. The Law of Magnanimity

Four: Taking action together

Unfortunately, I can’t pretend to have any quick and easy solutions to the situation in which we find ourselves, which I’ve attempted to present honestly, without exaggeration, but unflinchingly. However, I do want to highlight two points drawn from The Abolition of Man that are worth considering and acting upon.

First, it’s a bit of a subtle aspect of Lewis’s writing, but when Lewis presents his vision of the Conditioners, he includes himself in those under their power. For example, he says, “One of the things [the Conditioners] now have to decide is whether they will, or will not, so condition the rest of us that we can go on having the old idea of duty and the old reactions to it.” (pg. 62) Of course, Lewis is supposing the case of Conditioners who have discovered an irresistible scientific technique, as I stated above — but still, I think it’s important to stay humble about how susceptible we are to the influence of digital technologies. If a well-respected, philosophically-minded person like Lewis doesn’t see himself as immune from conditioning, don’t count yourself as immune from it either. If you don’t personally use social media, great — do you act like keeping up with the news is more important than keeping up with the interests and struggles, hopes and dreams of your family and close friends? Do you “binge watch” on your favorite streaming service or “zone out” on YouTube (a Google product) to the detriment of your loved ones? Do you spend considerable time responding to emails or text messages while ignoring the people right in front of you who deserve your attention? If you really can’t think of any way in which you’re being manipulated by digital technologies, summon all your bravery, and ask your child(ren) (or another loved one who will be honest) to tell you frankly which of your digital habits they see as harmful to you or your relationship with them. (You might need to adjust the phrasing to be more age-appropriate, but there’s nothing like the honesty of young children!) Once you find something that you need to change, make a clear, explicit commitment to do so, and ideally involve a friend or loved one to help make sure the change sticks. (You might consider checking out the two previous editions of Digital with Discernment for more guidance on that.)

Second, those of us with children must seriously consider how we can heed Lewis’s warnings and consciously strive to protect our children from manipulation — even (maybe especially) those who aren’t old enough to understand the word “manipulation.” My oldest is only seven, so I won’t pretend to be an expert, but I was heartened by one bright spot within Lewis’s final chapter:

“Hitherto the plans of [people who want to make other people what they please] have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them…we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.” (pg. 60)

While this isn’t a bright spot in the book itself, per se, it highlights the fact that our conditioners still haven’t discovered an “irresistible scientific technique.” We can still heed Lewis’s advice that “the right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.” (pg. 14) We can still obstinately refuse to bow to the pressure to “just fit in,” or to follow the siren song of “making our lives easier.” We can instead work to cultivate in our children a love of the good, the true, and the beautiful. We can show them, through meaningful experiences with us, the superiority — the primacy — of the world outside our screens. We can, and in fact, we must, in order to equip them to stand against the unprecedented manipulation that they face. I hope you’ll join me, and invite your friends and family to join in the journey, as well. Let’s push past any initial fear about discussing this difficult topic, and set our minds on working together to craft a better life for ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Photo by Alberto Casetta on Unsplash

1. The Abolition of Man was first published in 1944, while the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was completed in 1945.

2. It should be noted that while Lewis appeals to how universal the human value system is, he doesn’t rely upon that evidence alone to make his case for the objectivity of moral values. I won’t be summarizing his full logical/philosophical argument here, since I think it’d be difficult to do and it’s not my main focus for this piece. However, if you’d like to learn how he justifies his position, I’d highly recommend grabbing a copy of The Abolition of Man from your local library.

3. Lewis, C. S. (2001). Men Without Chests. In The Abolition of Man (pp. 24-25). HarperOne.

4. Lewis, C. S. (2001). The Way. In The Abolition of Man (pp. 50). HarperOne.

5. It should be noted that “Big Tech” companies aren’t the only problem, but of course, the reach and impact of bigger companies is often bigger. (I also enjoy the allusion to the “titans of industry,” and I’m a sucker for alliteration.)

6. https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/sean-parker-facebook-was-designed-to-exploit-human-vulnerability-1513306782

7. I found the final sentence of this quote in the afterword to the updated edition of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (which is primarily focused on updating his work to report the effects of recent developments in social media). The full quote is from the Washington Post piece that Carr references. As I noted as an addition to the text of the quote, Palihapitiya was warning about the situation nearly 5 years before the publication of this edition of Digital with Discernment.

8. The first quote in this paragraph refers to Facebook and other social media companies building on Google’s practices (found on pg. 233 of the updated edition of The Shallows published by W. W. Norton & Company). The second quote is drawn from pgs. 150-151 of the same edition. The surrounding pages are well worth the read as well.

9. You can hear Harris and Raskin speak about humanity’s “first contact” with AI at about the 7-minute mark of their talk “The A.I. Dilemma” here.

10. Newport, Cal (2019). A Lopsided Arms Race. In Digital Minimalism (pp. 6). Portfolio/Penguin.

11. The tweet from Tristan Harris, along with screenshots, is explained in more detail in their talk “The A.I. Dilemma” at about the 47-minute mark.

12. https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/snapchat-statistics#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20the,just%205%25%20of%20the%20platform.

13. This language is drawn from Harris and Raskin’s talk “The A.I. Dilemma” — see footnote 9.

14. See again the talk “The A.I. Dilemma”, this time at a different timestamp, and/or this podcast episode from Harris and Raskin.

15. This is not to say using any digital technologies to any degree is inherently harmful, but as discussed above, most “big name” tech companies are in the business of gaining more and more of your time and attention — and heavier technology use is linked with worse outcomes (see pgs. 19-21 of the Surgeon General’s Advisory). This is also not to mention the trade-offs that many people make between technology use and physical activity, but that’s a topic for another edition.