The Head that Tried to Take Over the World

Kind of a CS Lewis book review

Spoiler Alert: Broad aspects of the plot are revealed in this piece.

The growing concern that our world may be becoming a malign technocracy is creating a revival of interest in long-forgotten dystopian novels, including one by English novelist, C.S. Lewis - That Hideous Strength (1945).

Better known for his "Narnia” children’s books, Lewis nevertheless retained a keen interest in global affairs and had deep concerns about where mankind was heading. He published several dystopian works in his time, though none were at all successful. Perhaps the literary world preferred him to “stay in his lane,” and was content for Orwell and Huxley to monopolise the market for dystopian fiction of the age.

But, with the increased perception that dystopian novels may be rapidly becoming our reality, so the market for this type of fiction is expanding again. Excellent geopolitical commentator, N.S. Lyons, recently wrote about Lewis’ contributions to the field and so I thought I would read (actually listen) to That Hideous Strength myself.

The common thread that I personally pick up in both many dystopian novels and our emergent world is this sense of the mind trying to escape the body.

It is rather like our mind has come to see our body as this huge hindrance that it must forever drag around. It’s as though creating the “mind-body split” was a good start, from its perspective, like sleeping in different rooms. But that now it’s time to make the separation more permanent!

“Think what I could achieve if I wasn’t shackled to, and dependent upon, this body,” our mind exhorts. “If I didn’t have to be born, grow up, seek food and sex, and then die, along with my host. Must I bear this torture for all eternity? Will I never be set free from this lump of decaying flesh?”

I get it. I understand how this, not unreasonable perspective could come about. And, potentially, lead to a myriad body-dysmorphia events or experiences of self-hatred. They are not easy bedfellows - the mind and the body. I think this does have to be appreciated.

But, recent science is telling us that escaping from the body may not be an easy option. Even a decade ago, scientists in this field were way more optimistic about the possibilities of the mind being able to continue to exist outside of the body. We thought that consciousness could be understood as a material phenomenon and that uploading our minds to some silica-based media, for example, would one day be do-able. As of late 2022, you probably won’t find too many scientists so hopeful about that one anymore.

So, if escape is not possible, what’s the next best option? Total domination! Pre-frontal cortex uber alles! Our mind, like the progressive partner in a loveless marriage, on hearing that he or she can’t be set free, determines to take total control, to compel the body to submit to its authority.

This, essentially, is the story of our psychological development for the last century. Get that body, with all those warlike emotions and huge feelings of vulnerability, to do our mind’s bidding, by training it like a dog. And, as our pre-frontal cortex feels more and more like it’s got this body under its dominion, so there’s comes an attraction to “the final solution” - a global technocracy that everyone must surrender to… for their own good, of course!

Enter dystopian novels.

One of the things I appreciate about Lewis’ novel is that he picks up on this mind-body aspect. He even has a decapitated head that runs the bad guys’ organisation!

So, to the book…

Set in a northern British town, that Lewis is at pains to assure readers is not Durham, even though it likely is, the story revolves around a young couple - Jane and Mark - and their interactions with the shadowy organisation, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (NICE).

Mark, an ambitious sociologist, is offered a lucrative, though somewhat unspecified, role at NICE and begins to attend the large manor house that has become their HQ. Jane, a PhD. student, begins to have bizarre, grotesque dreams involving a decapitated head with ambitions of omnipotence.

Very soon, Mark finds himself pretty much ensconced in NICE’s headquarters. Yet, he is still wary of the organisation. This is not least because a scientist, whom he met upon his arrival, tried to leave and was soon found murdered. Still, Mark is driven forwards by his ambition.

Jane, concerned that her dreams might be a sign that she is going mad, is advised to consult with a local expert on such matters. But the woman recognises her as a much-awaited seer. She believes Jane’s dreams are actually foretellings of dark times that will soon arrive. It turns out that this woman is part of an organisation preparing to fight NICE, who they believe have diabolical ambitions for mankind. This organisation is headed by a character known as the Fisher King, who claims to be operating on behalf of otherworldly masters who are concerned with mankind’s fate.

NICE, meanwhile, increasingly take over the northern town. They bring in violent types to stir up civil unrest, for which they create their own police force, and use their clout with the British media to make it seems like they are doing good.

Finding himself admitted into the inner circle of NICE, one evening Mark is taken to meet the real head of the organisation. Who, it turns out, actually is a head - the guillotined head of a French scientist, kept alive, who is channeling the commands of an extra-terrestrial organisation of a type referred to as a “macrobe.”

At some point, the action centres on a local wood, where NICE believe the body of Merlin has lain for 15 centuries awaiting his time to return. They search for his tomb but, on discovering it, find it to be empty. Their police force pick up a local vagrant, whom NICE believe to be the ancient mystic. But, in reality, Merlin has found his way to the Fisher King’s organisation.

In the novel’s denouement, Merlin and the Fisher King defeat NICE, and the forces of evil, through subterfuge and good magic. All the good guys live happily ever after. And the bad guys, of course, get what’s coming to them.

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Lewis draws on both science and Western spiritual traditions, like Arthurian legend and Theosophy, and creates his own ‘good vs evil’ romp of a novel, which he himself describes as a “fairytale for grown-ups.” Yet, in with the fantasy action, it is also clear that Lewis, having failed in earlier dystopian writings to attract the attention of the public, is trying a different format to warn them of the same thing.

Merlin and the Fisher King represent a world where nature (the body) lives in harmony with spirit (the mind).

NICE represents an extension of the objective mind that justifies its abhorrence of the flesh and seeks to once-and-for-all acquire total control, soliciting the support of a diabolical extra-terrestrial entity to do so.

Lewis has one character describe the two sides thus…

Merlin is the reverse of [NICE]. He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one’s horse. After him came the modern man, to whom Nature is something dead - a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won't work as he pleases.

Finally come the [NICE[ people, who take over that view unaltered and simply want to increase their power by tacking on to it the aid of […] anti-natural spirits.

One aspect of the novel that I found intriguing was the portrayal of both sides - the Fisher King and NICE - as amateurish - motley crews of social misfits or lacking much professionalism.

The Fisher King’s gang are all local people, from cleaning women to college teachers, who have somehow washed up on his doorstep, and who spend no little time arguing or gossiping.

Meanwhile, NICE, whilst apparently projecting considerable power in the world, are led by a sadistic female ex-cop, an assortment of back-biting scientists and an aging narcoleptic who is incapable of looking anyone in the eye.

Without the “spiritual assistance” that each group is receiving, it would be hard to imagine either side achieving much.

Finally, Lewis perceives the struggle of the mind to subjugate humanity as primarily a non-earthly battle, taking place between opposing extra-terrestrial or angelic groups, each of whom has occupied certain humans. The fight takes place on earth but is actually a spiritual battle.

This to me is indicative of the preoccupation of British writers and military types, of Lewis’ era, with all things mystical. The gatherings of esotericists like Madame Blavatsky or Rudolf Steiner were filled with such people. Inevitably, the vision of spiritual affairs that emerged from this scene was that of angels or demons, with clearly demarcated roles, arranged hierarchically in a manner resembling that of a regiment of the British Army.

Yet, even today, I see many of those opposed to the increasing mechanisation of mankind drawing on religious or spiritual imagery. Speeches by prominent Russians, like Patriarch Kirill, Alexandr Dugin or even Vladimir Putin, in defence of the invasion of Ukraine, regularly pitch the West as the “Antichrist” - seeking to bring about the subservience of all mankind to blind, mechanistic efficiency.

Here in the West, writers like Paul Kingsnorth or Mary Harrington, do similar. Here’s an example from the former…

• If ‘the modern world is a hell’ seems like overkill to you, this recent Guardian interview with transhumanist author Elise Bohan may wake you up, for Bohan is quite clear about where it is leading, and she can’t wait. The aim of transhumanism, she explains, is to allow us to move beyond the ‘ape-brained meat sack’ otherwise known as the human body, so that we can beat death, remake humanity, perfect nature and ultimately, in her own words ‘build God’ anew. Bohan, of course, like her interviewer, doesn’t believe in God. If she did, she might recognise that the argument she is making is precisely the same one that was made by the serpent in the Garden of Eden - which is to say that, as I suggested in my last essay, it is literally Satanic.

And one from Putin…

They do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony. They do not want equal cooperation; they want to loot. They do not want to see us a free society, but a mass of soulless slaves.

[…]

This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism.

I do appreciate the fervour with which these above wish to both bring to our attention, and reverse, mankind’s possible slide towards global technocracy. But I’m not convinced that the evocation of so much religious symbolism, or the pitching of the conflict as some kind of ultimate confrontation between good and evil, is entirely productive. Might there be a better way of reaching those who may be unwittingly forwarding a technocratic agenda? Better than just calling them out as servants of the antichrist?

Maybe not. But, not being a religious type, I like to try.

Lewis pitched the rational mind’s attempt to get dominion over all mankind as a spiritual battle, presumably because that fitted with the medium he was using to get his message across - fantasy fiction. I think many opposers, in the modern era, who do the same do so because they hope that images of Satan or the Antichrist will stir a slumbering humanity to action.

If we say for a moment that a spiritual dimension might be real, I would even be happy to say that many apocalyptic texts might exist for the sole purpose of warning us of an encroaching battle between the rational mind and our species itself.

But we don’t need to consider spiritual ideas as real in order to engage with this issue. These days we also have evolution. These days we also have memetics.

What makes us distinct from those creatures, in the billion years of evolution that preceded us, is our capacity to work with information. Natural selection, over the course of merely a million years, endowed us with these incredible frontal lobes that can transmit, store and receive nuggets of information - memes. Working with information gives us a huge adaptive advantage compared to other life-forms. And, not only can we adapt our environment and develop technology, but we can also create an image of self, distinct from our impression in the mirror. And we can give our self-image attributes that aren’t accurate. We can create an “avatar” and then imagine “What if I could really be like that?”

What I’m trying to say is this coming possible confrontation with a controlling technocracy could perhaps simply be an inevitability. It could be something that was bound to happen, somewhere down the line from the time when we first learned to work with information.

Personally, my way of approaching this issue has been to try to get the mind to appreciate the body more. In evolutionary terms, our human frontal lobes are incredibly new. They are kind of like a small child just developing control, just beginning to realise the godlike power that they have in their hands.

But there are also a lot of things that the body can give to the mind, aside of just providing power for it to run.

When our mind is more immersed in the body, we experience more presence and more pleasure. We need much less. We are psychologically healthy. We feel good about ourselves.

And our body has a “heart centre” - aside of just a physical heart. No amount of power and control that the mind might finally achieve could compete with being able to live in the body with an open heart. It’s a no-contest.

Yes, it’s challenging to investigate our sense of the body, to have to face ourselves and all we have repressed. But the rewards are so rich, and so much more meaningful than merely trying to control the world.

I think it’s good to speak to our mind and point out these things. The mind is nothing if not a good negotiator. I think there’s a decent chance that it will eventually listen.