Category Archives: C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis on “tyranny sincerely exercised”

Found here.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

C.S. Lewis predicted medical tyranny

in this exquisite sci-fi trilogy

Writes Kennedy Hall:

Lewis – perhaps best known for his Christian apologetics and Chronicles of Narnia series – wrote a science fiction trilogy that was aptly named The Space Trilogy. The three books that make up the series are called Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Each book can be read independently; however, read as a whole they are more exquisite and meaningful.

The third installation presents a scenario most analogous to today’s world. In it we find a global conspiracy largely led by academics and scientists, who are hell-bent (literally) on ushering in a world that is overtly sanitary and free of any intellectual or biological germs.

I believe that it was Lewis’s Christian sense that allowed him to be more accurate than Orwell. Orwell wrote of the government as an immovable and impenetrable force, whereas Lewis portrayed governments as a bit weak and thus controlled by nongovernmental organizations.

Since Lewis was not an atheist like Orwell, and therefore not a materialist, he understood that the most important thing was not force, but mentality and belief.