Iron fills the air, and the pungent smell of blood encompasses the room, the room once full of laughter, now full of screams and incoherent words, like the combination of hundreds of languages. A bear and tiger ravage the room, attacking whoever gets in their way, including Professor Filostrato, who manages to scramble out of the room while blood is dripping down his mauled arm. C.S. Lewis questions modern progress by showing the unsustainability of modern technology in That Hideous Strength; therefore, in The Abolition of Man, a central theme is the idea that if you try to destroy or control the Tao, everything else will fall along with it. Lewis centers around the concept by depicting how an organization, N.I.C.E., leads to its demise due to its focus and strives for modern advancements. Similarly, The Abolition of Man concentrates on the theory that the Tao, despite all modern attempts to separate from it, is the cornerstone of all aspects of life and that failure will follow if you try to remove or alter it. Modern technology is responsible for the lack of privacy experienced today, and as a result, society continues to question and advocate for more significant restrictions on technology. 

Filostrato leaves a trail of blood as he navigates the dark, musty and narrow halls, unknowingly falling straight into the hands of the Head, who only desires Filostrato’s head. The characters of the story, colleagues, turned against one another in the most severe of cases, where Reverend Straik and John Withers murder Filostrato in a sacrificial event to obey the Head; therefore, it is common in totalitarian societies for the people to follow those with power as a means of survival blindly. In That Hideous Strength, the character Filostrato becomes aware of his colleagues’ plans to kill him due to the Heads’ demands. Filostrato was hurt with his “right arm badly mauled” due to his injury; he was the perfect candidate to be sacrificed for the Head (Lewis 328). In this case, the Head had to state it wanted “‘another head’” Straik and Withers blindly followed with no regard as to who Filostrato was as a person (Lewis 329). In their minds, he became just a body and something they needed to conquer to keep moving forward with their survival and technological advances. This is a prime example of when people blindly follow those in power and, in this case, to an extreme. Lewis feared what people would be capable of doing to move forward in society and with technology which he conveys through this scene. The scene shows there are no limits to what people can do, as demonstrated by Straik’s and Withers’s willingness to “slash repeatedly with his knife” until Filostrato’s head is on the floor. Similarly, Lewis’s concerns are illustrated in accounts from Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and Jordan Peterson’s Forward to the Gulag Archipelago, where it is apparent what Soviet citizens did to survive in the labor camps. Peterson argues that even those with a “holy desire” are susceptible to “be overtaken by those motivated primarily by envy, hate and the desire to destroy” despite their most substantial efforts not to be overtaken (Peterson). In the case of the Soviet citizens, some gave in to the demands of those in power and did what was necessary to survive, including stealing and losing themselves. More often than not, people would enter the camps as one type of person and leave an entirely different person. People, in this case, were capable of things they hadn’t even thought of before, solidifying Lewis’s fear of the unknowns that people are capable of due to the fear those in power instill upon them. 

Professor Frost meandering through the N.I.C.E. compound, stumbles upon the morbid scene of Withers, Straik, and Filostrato all lying dead alongside the Head, chemicals fill the air, and all self is lost, ultimately Frost chooses his death by fire, ending N.I.C.E.. The fiery ending to N.I.C.E. proves that technology has detrimental effects; therefore, it is common for the totalitarian idea of survival at any cost to create mayhem in society. In That Hideous Strength, the modern “advancements” that N.I.C.E. had achieved, turned to ashes due to their desire for ultimate control over nature. Frost, one of the last members of N.I.C.E. to survive, becomes enlightened to the fact of all his wrongdoings while being a part of N.I.C.E.; however, he “refused the knowledge” and ultimately decides death was the better option than acceptance (Lewis 333). While burning to death, Frost became more open to the idea that he was “wrong from the beginning,” but he “hated” the idea that he was wrong more than the suffering he was enduring (Lewis 333). The idea of “survive at any cost” is shown through this because his beliefs survive and go on untarnished despite the situation he is placed in. In Roger Scruton’s Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet, a central focal point is Scruton’s his idea of “oikophilia,” which means one’s “love and feeling for place” (Scruton 3). This idea stems from totalitarian ideals of surviving at any cost. Where it is made evident that you do what is necessary to survive, in Scruton’s case, it is causing harm to one’s home, Earth. This, in turn, has caused countless negative consequences on the Earth due to people surviving at any cost. In modern society, tearing apart the Earth is seen as the only means of survival. The same “survive at any costs” is brought up in Sean McMeekin’s Stalin’s War and in Hannah Ardent’s, The Origins of Totalitarianism, where McMeekin brings in the idea that for Stalin’s and Hitler’s war efforts to survive, there were distractions in place. The two figures had to disregard the concept of one another for the wants of war to survive and succeed through the West’s scrutiny. Ardent also shows that the idea of totalitarianism survived at any cost by becoming attractive to members of all social classes. Rather than appealing to one group, the ideals became modified to fit all social classes. 

A totalitarian society creates its own set of roots that run deep within every member of the society, whether they are known or unknown to that individual. As asserted in That Hideous Strength, where members of N.I.C.E. fall into the aspects of totalitarianism, their strive for every growing power over society and nature through technology led to its ultimate demise. Modernly, a similar result is inevitable, according to Shoshanna Zuboff in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, where Zuboff reveals the power technology has over society. Zuboff continues in her book that the powers technology and technological companies, like Google, have over society, and its members are grotesque. The vast ability those companies have to gain and record data off of its user for governmental and personal use is an invasion of privacy. This has led to the recent demands for more significant restrictions placed on technological companies for totalitarian ideals to have less risk of protruding into society.