A new era of tyranny

Most will know Lewis as a children’s author, but he was also a vigorous critic of modern society and the dangerous trends that were emerging within it

AS C.S. Lewis predicated, the rulers who are now seeking to refashion society, and the character of the people within it, do so through the erosion of our values.

Most will know Lewis as a children's author, but he was also a vigorous critic of modern society and the dangerous trends that were emerging within it.

In The Abolition of Man, one of the most prophetic books of the 20th century, he writes about the presence of a powerful elite that would seek to radically transform society for their own ends.

While recognising that there have always been those who seek to exercise power over others, Lewis notes that we are rapidly approaching a new age in which scientific and technological advances will enable a small minority of 'man-moulders' to dominate society.

However, technology alone will not be sufficient. To refashion society according to their objectives, they will need to undermine resistance to those objectives.

This will not be achieved by force, because trying to impose a radical new image of society on people would likely bolster their resistance against it.

Instead, the key strategy is to erode the traditional, established values of civil society, and thereby undermine the individual's sense of what is right and wrong.

People will then be less likely to unify around those values and provide robust resistance to the new direction that the rulers wish to take society and its members.

Talk of values can seem abstract. Our concern is understandably drawn to the practical implications and dangers that technological innovations bring - such as the control over our lives that digital ID and central bank digital currencies will place in the hands of a few.