"For the Hideous Strength confronts us and it is, as in the days when Nimrod built a tower to reach heaven." (quote from That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis)
Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
C.S.Lewis wrote a Space Trilogy of science fiction novels during World War Two, which is rarely read or, at least, less read than his other publications. It comprises three novels called
In passing, I picked up a copy of That Hideous Strength in a charity shop last week and bought it because the synopsis on the dust jacket hit me between the eyes. The novel tells how a small English university town (probably based on ancient Durham) becomes the centre of a gigantic conspiracy against the human race when a devilish organisation, N.I.C.E, a conscious co-operation of the government and science, is founded in the grounds of an ancient academic college which believes it has the hidden grave of Merlin, the ancient Romano-Celtic fictitious seer. This secret goal of N.I.C.E is to re-create mankind in the image of slave robots. In a dialogue between the revivified Merlin and the leader of the Christian resistance group, Ransom, the tentacles of N.I.C.E are described like this:
First, the N.I.C.E conspiracy, which involves the highest officials, politicians and press barons in the land (but probably not the monarch) appoints its own police force headed by a chunky woman, dressed in leather, who tortures men and women. She is ironically called The Fairy (words lose their meaning in N.I.C.E). The initial taking and retention of Emergency Powers is crucial, as the Fairy explains to a naive recruit, Mark. All that is required is an arranged riot in the town. N.I.C.E already have the real police (i.e. the law) under their thumb, through political influence. Soon only their 'law' will prevail in the town.
If N.I.C.E wants to murder whistleblowers, they can with impunity. N.I.C.E has corrupted the media, submitting subtle 'balanced' reports on the staged riots, before they happen, using talented pseudo-journalists, like the naive recruit Mark, a former don. Mark is flattered to be mixing with the 'in' elite crowd (such as peers of the realm) and to be writing for the leading newspapers. He is also blackmailed, tempted with money, monitored and controlled himself. It is not clear in the book how the total control of the press has been put in place. Probably the Government is directly funding the newspapers, on behalf of its joint 'project' with N.I.C.E.
It is not entirely obvious, at least to me, what the N.I.C.E conspiracy is and how it will enslave humankind. The plot is all about the moneyed, political and scientific elite taking sole control and possession of the entire world's resources and population, even overcoming death itself (naturally on offer only to the elite). Their plan also involves using supernatural forces, an aspect which the original reviewer, pessimistic George Orwell, who had not yet written '1984' at the time, felt weakened the plot.
Perhaps most startling of all are the planetary higher beings (angels and demons), both good and bad, on Mercury, Venus and Mars (concepts coming from medieval cosmology). One condition of their current interventions on Earth is man reaching Mars, thereby breaking 'the lunar barrier' which of course, has now taken place. Did C S Lewis envisage the exploration of Mars in 1943?
C S Lewis was very sceptical about the direction of elites and science and what they are doing to our relationship with Nature. He sets out it like this:
"He (Merlin) is the last vestige of an older order in which matter and spirit were, from our point of view, confused. For him, every operation on Nature was a kind of personal contact. After him came modern man to whom Nature is a machine to be worked, and taken to bits, if it won't work. Finally, comes these (Hideous Strength) people who take over that view unaltered and simply want to increase power by tacking on to it the aid of spiritual powers - the old 'magia' combining it with the 'goeteia' (chthonic sorcery) - the brutal surgery from without".
It is not until the end of the novel, after the intevention of mysterious beasts and spiritual beings which fight the demonic 'principalities and powers' (which are the powers behind N.I.C.E) that all comes clear. The story is about 'elite' mankind's innate desire to build a Tower of Babel on earth i.e. a single godless, totalitarian. world government, above the rule of law.
The Book of Genesis in Chapter 11 describes the building of a mightyTower of Babel. As we know, in Genesis, corrupt mankind, in revolt at God, decides to create a self-gloryfying tower to reach to heaven. This fortress, in Lindsay's imaginative poem, is ten miles in perimeter and reminiscent of the Eye and tower of Mordor, in Lord of the Rings. It has five score city gates (100) and when the sun is in the right position the shadow of the impregnable tower falls six miles across the darkened land. The Bible describes the story in Genesis 11: 1-9 thus:
"Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech. And as people journeyed eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” So they used brick instead of stone, and tar instead of mortar. “Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.”Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the LORD said, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it is called Babel, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth."
God intervenes in this overreaching, global project whose the real aim is to make Him, morality and the human race redundant. How does God do it? He makes their single means of communication redundant so that words entirely lose their meaning. Everything that comes out of every mouth is gibberish. It does not just make little rational sense: it makes no sense, at all
What is the meaning of the curse of Babel for us, today? Communication and language is all that makes mass cooperation (and mass control) possible. However, only words of truth engage and unify people. Once the true meaning of words have been corrupted, for evil ends, the unifying force of truth is lost and with it. all trust in a unifying authority. Thus effective communication is annulled. Words become noise without power. Without common meaning, manipulation and co-operation even among the elites becomes impossible. Everything falls apart without language. The Tower reaching the heavens, collapses.
In the Bible, multiple languages and their allied cultures are brought into being by the curse on Babel. We still live under that curse for to communicate with the most people in the world, we must learn one or two of the major languages or use 'Google Translate' - a lot.
Naturally, since this novel is written by the same author as the Narnia series, we encounter natural magic, curses working backwards, myths and protective intelligent animals acting on the side ofthe angels. Lewis also deals with the issue of marriages based on false assumptions, especially 1940s marriages, which deprived women of their independent jobs, talents and outside interests. However, Lewis's ability to convey credible adults, as opposed to children, is limited. Yet he can create a very powerful sense of dark spiritual and magical powers, even though some of the later novel's action is hard to envisage. This is, no doubt, why the book has never become a film, however relevant its political theme still is, and however much action (and blood) there is in the plot.
The philosophical side of Lewis shines through and so one reads on to enjoy his 'nuggets' and to arrive at the revelation of Babel. One idea really amused me. That is his notion that the personality that we create to 'do the business of life' is our secondary personality not our real self, which I imagine, in Lewis's world, is 'the child' inside. Three cheers to recovering that - because he certainly did and with it his genius and faith.
I can see real profit in a film being made of this book, using the raw material but building an adapted storyline which clarifies
a) what the N.I C.E scientific plan is in detail; and
b) how it will be implemented.
There could be a real sense of terror in visual portrayals of N.I.C.E police, the censorship, the torture, the imprisonments - all operating outside the rule of law. Unless it is a Christian film, the link with the Tower of Babel would probably not be made explicit. Maybe I am throwing down a gauntlet to Christian filmmakers?
C S Lewis was not just the pre-eminent children's author of the twentieth century, alongside Tolkein, a leading English literary and academic critic, a revered Oxford don, a rivetting lectuere and honoured Cambridge professor. He was also a Christian science fiction writer - with a startling gift of prophecy.
For a comparison of this novel with the almost contemporary Orewell novel '1984' see here
Here is the relevant part of the poem mentioned above.
Thank you Alison. This has been one of my favourite CSL books for a long time. There is also an audio book which is complete and unabridged. In my view NICE want machines to dominate the world because they are 'more hygienic' (my words) than flesh and blood. To this end they enlist the operations of the fallen angels. There is this theme of 'sterility' running through - from Mark's choice of childless marriage to the lunar denizens. Terrible things happen to animals in the name of 'science' so we rejoice at the judgement which includes them as agents.
ReplyDelete