C.S. Lewis
Modern education systematically dismantles the concept of objective value by reducing moral and aesthetic judgments to mere personal feelings. When educators teach students that calling a waterfall sublime only describes a psychological state, they strip the world of intrinsic meaning. This pedagogical approach implies that objects cannot merit approval or reverence, leaving students incapable of discerning true beauty or goodness.
By starving the emotional sensibilities of the young, this framework creates a vulnerable population that relies entirely on subjective whims rather than a grounded moral compass. The tragic result is a society demanding virtue and enterprise from individuals who have been systematically stripped of the very moral sentiments required to produce those qualities.
To counter the subjectivist threat, an objective rational and moral order must be recognized as the foundation of human existence. This framework, often called the Tao or Natural Law, represents a set of permanent, universal values shared across classical civilizations and major world religions. The Tao dictates that certain attitudes are genuinely true to reality while others are strictly false.
Rejecting this universal standard inevitably leads to the rejection of all value, because every ethical system requires a foundational premise of what ought to be done. Without this overarching moral law, society loses the ability to make valid judgments about justice, duty, or the common good.
The classical understanding of human nature relies on a tripartite structure where the intellect and the animal appetites are mediated by trained emotions. This mediating element, the chest, is the seat of magnanimity and ordinate affections, making humans distinctly human rather than mere spirits or animals.
Modern educational practices bypass this crucial middle element, failing to train students to love what is good and hate what is evil. Consequently, these methods produce intelligent but emotionally hollow individuals who are powerless against their own animal instincts.
Attempts to replace the Tao with entirely new ethical systems consistently fail because they rely on the very objective principles they seek to debunk. Innovators often appeal to basic instincts or societal utility to justify their moral frameworks, yet neither instinct nor utility can logically generate a moral imperative.
Identifying an instinct does not explain why one should obey it over a conflicting urge, and preserving society requires a prior agreement that society ought to be preserved. Any effort to establish values outside the traditional moral order ultimately smuggles in fragments of that same order to function.
The modern pursuit of absolute power over the natural world inherently requires the reduction of reality to raw material meant for manipulation. When humanity attempts to subdue nature without the guiding principles of objective value, human nature itself becomes just another object to be analyzed and controlled.
This technological and scientific ambition does not actually empower humanity as a whole. Instead, it consolidates power into the hands of a few technological elites who use nature as an instrument to dominate the rest of the population.
A society governed solely by scientific utilitarianism inevitably divides into two distinct classes of people: the Conditioners and the conditioned. The Conditioners are the elite manipulators who possess the technical competency to mold society according to their desires, while the conditioned are the vast majority subjected to this control.
Having stepped outside the Tao, the Conditioners lack any objective moral standard to guide their decisions. Consequently, they are driven entirely by their own irrational impulses and biological instincts, reducing both rulers and subjects to mere artifacts rather than true human beings.
The absolute rejection of objective value in favor of total control triggers the end of recognizable human existence. If human beings choose to treat themselves as raw material, they will inevitably be shaped by the arbitrary appetites of their dehumanized rulers.
When rational explanation is endlessly applied to deconstruct every foundational truth, reason itself becomes transparent and invisible, leaving nothing but a void. At the exact moment humanity claims total victory over the natural world, nature completely conquers humanity, finalizing the abolition of man.