The bare, desolate state of the moon would seem an incomprehensible place to live and inferior to Earth’s astounding natural beauty. The image of an Earth stripped of its majestic landscapes and color, however, is the exact world that Filostrato, a physiologist at N.I.C.E, defines as the perfect landscape for the future of man. In That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis, the aspirations of the evil organization N.I.C.E to eradicate everything but intelligence epitomizes man’s need to overcome nature, therefore emulating Alexander Solhenitzen’s sentiment in the The Gulag Archipelago to survive at any cost in times of hardship. Solhenitzen writes about how his mentality in the Gulag was not just to survive “at any price”, but to survive “at the price of someone else”(603), sacrificing others for one’s own gain. N.I.C.E and Filistrato have convinced themselves that the cycle of life and death is the antithesis of a successful human race and to survive they must abolish the attachments that humans have to organic biology; creating a man without emotion. The goals of N.I.C.E are the exact fears that Lewis had for the future, fearing man would lose his relationship with nature, leading to a world where men thought only with their brains, eliminating self-thought and creating either a “tyranny or an obedience”(Abolition of Man 69) to a higher power, leading to the rise of a totalitarian regime. Although this may seem dystopian, the integration of technology into everyday life could cause an outcome similar to that of N.I.C.E where man’s connection to nature could be completely forgotten, creating a man with only intelligence.

The picturesque landscapes and colorful scenery that embodied the secluded area of Bragdon Wood, an area at Bracton College, slowly deteriorated as N.I.C.E began their demolition of the serine land. This serenity is not what Filostrato first thinks of when thinking of nature, rather thinking about the rotten trees and slaughtered animals that form his fear of death, therefore convincing him to destroy it, replicating the sentiment of survival and the permanent lie from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn describes how his mind became warped in the gulag due to “the permanent lie”(646) that warped his reality into a set of “ready-made phrases” that governed his thoughts even if they were not the truth. Since every action of Solzhenitsyn’s was monitored, he could never move away from the permanent lie. Filastrato’s fear of death is not unlike the permanent lie, as has created an irrational reality where he has falsely convinced himself to create a “man who will not die” and who will be “free from nature”(174). Both of these philosophies are a result of a false pretense that stems from the idea to survive at any cost and has convinced Solzhenitsyn and Filostrato to turn against nature. When this happens, the permanent lie can spiral and lead to a version of man that can be easily manipulated and fall under the power of a totalitarian regime.

The world is in a tumultuous and unclean form surrounded by disease according to N.I.C.E and must be removed to keep the world hygienic. N.I.C.E proposes to the outside world to eradicate all the imperfections of the modern world, therefore mimicking Sean McMeekin’s theory in his book Stalin’s War about the rise of the Soviet Union during World War II, where he contends that in desolate times such as imminent war or N.I.C.E’s view on the state of the world, propaganda becomes a powerful tool for those seeking a way to survive. In Filostrato’s attempt to reinvent man, he “offer[s] to make ” others “one of us” in their conquest to make “man the throne of the universe”(175). Filostrato offers a promise of a brighter future, stipulated on the idea that it would be at the cost of separating man from nature. This offering is a clear sign of propaganda, promising a better future in return for blindly trusting others to do good. Although this may seem fictitious, this is not far from reality in the modern world. During the early reign of Stalin, he made a promise to the citizens of the Soviet Union to revolutionize the Russian empire and make it the dominant world power. McMeekin describes how “Stalin’s industrialization drive was conceived, sold and executed”(26) to the public by rallying the Soviet citizens behind his message. This was only possible due to the poor economic conditions surrounding the great depression as people tried to reattach themselves to nature. This is reinforced by author Roger Scruton in How To Think Seriously About the Planet, where he offers a motive as to why people fall into these propaganda traps. Scruton uses the term oikophilia to describe “the love of home” (214) that is within every individual. It is this love for home which inspires people in times of wrong to find a solution that acts as a “shelter that future generations”(215) can use by eradicating the cause of evil in society. By trying to find an answer to a problem, it can lead to falling into a trap of propaganda, which eventually could lead to the rise of a totalitarian empire by seeking the wrong solution. This evil all stems from trying to find a way to survive, no matter the price.Three men cautiously approached the symbol of N.I.C.E’s future, a lifeless figure outlined only by a scraggly beard, nose, and eyes that were promised to be the future of the human race. The figure, named the Head, is an all-knowing being that symbolizes a technological advancement in man, therefore mirroring Shoshana Zuboff’s concern in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism of the irrational and evil advancements in technology created in the name of both the betterment of society and the survival of the human race. Technological advances and the integration of technology into everyday life have created “realities of being tracked, parsed, mined, and modified” and let groups “know everything about us”(11). Large technology companies such as Facebook have promised that this is for the advancement of society, just as N.I.C.E has done with the creation of the Head, but in reality leads to a society that eliminates natural order and individualism. This era of technology also emulates that of a totalitarian state, where privacy has been revoked and is no longer a right. By removing the right to privacy, there is now a group that has seized control over the population. Just as the Head in That Hideous Strength has “multiple sources of information”(173) in their attempt to create a totalitarian state, modern technology has the same access to information. Although it seems far-fetched that this would exist in the modern world, In Hannah Arendt’s book The Origins of Totalitarianism, she states that humans slowly come to think that “everything is permitted” and “underestimate the substantial power” of large corporations. By normalizing the overwhelming amount of control large corporations have on individuals, groups seeking control can gain power by disguising themselves as the solution to the modern era’s problems. If this happens, some groups may have the ability to take dominant control over the world and form the latest totalitarian regime. This process would prove Lewis’s fear correct that men who lost their relationship with nature would seek an opportunity to regain it, falling victim to evil powers and eventually creating a governing group that would preside over most of the human race all in an effort to survive.