The Abolition of The Abolition of Man

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The Abolition of The Abolition of Man

        Clive Staples Lewis, arguably the most influential writer of his time, is nothing more than a callous individual with nothing better to do with his life than to pick at insignificant statements made by less-than-perfect human beings in order to enhance the appearance of his superior intellect.  In The Abolition of Man, Lewis attempts to bring out the importance of elementary text books on the human psyche of posterity and how Man will be its own demise due to its constant efforts to conquer nature, but his presentation of the materials both contradicts with itself and will mislead his readers into thinking things that were never meant to be portrayed in the first place.  Lewis completely destroys the morale of and belittles two authors who, with some misfortune, placed a few seemingly meaningless statements into their book that could be interpreted in the wrong way.  Lewis takes his observations of both this book and his view of nature to the extreme, completely abolishing everything mankind has ever stood for, and for this he is out of line.

        Lewis opens his book immediately by stating how important elementary textbooks are and how he was given a copy of an English prep book.  Immediately he insults the authors of that book by saying, “I shall have nothing good to say of them.”  A statement like that not only sets the tone of the book, but it also shows how ruthless Clive Staples Lewis actually is.  He does, however, have the courtesy of codenaming both the book and the authors as to protect their identity.  This may seem like Lewis isn’t as ruthless as once thought, but other than protect identities, he has absolutely nothing else kind to say throughout the entire book.  The names he proceeds to refer to the authors to as are ‘Gaius’ and ‘Titius’.  He names their book ‘The Green Book’.

        One can only pity Gaius and Titius, for what they state in their book was the sole reason this horrible book even exists.  Apparently, when quoting a well known story of Coleridge at the waterfall, Gaius and Titius said,

“When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall…Actually…he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings.”  

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This statement is, in fact, poorly thought out, but it does not merit an entire thirty pages of philosophy on the psyche of posterity.  Lewis follows his quote of Gaius and Titius with a discussion on how, because of this small statement in a single English textbook, future generations are doomed to deluded thought.  He states that now a schoolboy who reads this passage will forever, unknowingly, associate ones feelings about another object with that persons own feelings.  In the future, if presented with a situation such as a man complimenting the appearance of another person, the schoolboy would be ...

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