Brendan Cody’s Blog

On my way to blog this evening…

August 4th, 2018

… I came across this passage while doing some research reading. In it CS Lewis captivates almost exactly the central theme of Broken Evolution:

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. [..] The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.

– C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

The only disagreement I would have with Lewis (-does one do such a thing?-) is in the notion that future man will exercise least power. Humans have the ability to prevail, endure, and transcend, no matter who we are, or how we are made. I think bio-engineered challenges for the human race are ones, for sure, that humanity will ultimately have to grapple in its own circumstances, and in so doing define and assert humanity once again, for another generation, in a future time – that’s the innate power of human nature.

If that power to question, discover, shape, and transcend is lost it will be because of nothing less than a loss of human nature. If that were to happen, could we even be considered human anymore? I choose to believe that won’t happen … but then, I’m human like that, you see.

Entry Filed under: Writing