C.S. Lewis and Bureaucracy

“…Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?”
-Juvenal, Satire VI

The success or failure of implementing bureaucracy is wholly reliant upon two things: A definitive, just power source, and clear communication amongst divisions. Bureaucracy is, in theory, the most efficient way to divide power only if there is a power regulating the bureaucracy itself; a bureaucracy which stands alone has no source from which to divide power, in turn ensuring its own downfall. The famed Marxist utopian experiments in the Twentieth Century failed when movements to decentralize power became subject to totalitarian dictatorships, ultimately bringing about genocide and war in their desperate attempts to ensure societal and economic uniformity. The USSR, China, and others each were devoted the cause of power divided equally amongst all citizens. Therein lies the problem. Power is not meant to be overspecialized to the point of individual autonomy. Rather, each individual is given rights and protected by the jurisdiction of power. Famed sociologist Max Weber noted that bureaucracy has an “impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible.” Each of these characteristics makes bureaucracy an ideal candidate for manipulation; it is through this means to an end society would become that much more vulnerable to malevolent forces and hideous strengths.

The lack of clarification within the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) is addressed by C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength through the lens of obsessive insider Mark Studdock. Studdock is able to maneuver himself into good standing with progressively more and more exclusive circles. Amongst inner circles at Belbury he finds that there is a great deal of backstabbing and finger-pointing, and, much to his chagrin, that no one has the faintest idea of their ultimate purpose as exclusive members of the N.I.C.E. When he finally enters into the innermost circle of Belbury—those purported to have been directing the affairs of the organization—he finds that even fewer of the elites know of their true purpose. The air of paranoid oversight ensnares followers and keeps them under the control of the organization, showing the N.I.C.E.’s sly utilization of organizational mayhem and groupthink.

Worse yet, he finds that they are deluded into thinking that their specific function is driving the Institution. Filostrato, for instance, is fueled by the belief that humanity can transcend biological constraints by scientific means: Straik is convinced through his set of heretical religious views that any form of power is an embodiment of God’s will: Even the actual Director of the N.I.C.E., Jules, is, through his scant knowledge of science, completely unknowing of the real purpose of the N.I.C.E. He is merely a figurehead. Only Wither and Frost are informed enough to know the N.I.C.E.’s purpose as direct servants of the Macrobes (fallen eldila). Being informed, however, comes at a rather hefty price: Both Wither and Frost are so sickeningly deluded by the Macrobes that they are absolutely devoid of soul or interior. Wither is oftentimes described as having momentary bouts of a lack of expression, which could be interpreted as an outward sign of his lack of a soul.

Still, there is no central power. Wither answers to the real Head (literally and figuratively), the severed head of Alcasan, which is the host to a fallen eldila. The Macrobes are the very essence of opposition to authority through their rebellion against Maleldil the Young, yet the reader is given no insight as to whether there is a ‘bent’ Oyarsa overseeing the process. Even if it is present, one cannot assume that the fallen eldila are willing to abide by any sort of authority whatsoever, as presumably autonomous Satanic agents. The bent Oyarsa could have presented itself to the innermost circle just as the good Oyarsa’s were able to visit Ransom and Merlin at St. Anne’s. Therefore the reader can deduce that the bent eldila, the embodiment of heavenly rebellion, are autonomous.

In Satire VI, Roman poet Juvenal raises a question which eerily haunts us today:

“Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

(But who will watch the watchmen?)

How could any plot without a concrete leader - in this case, the Watchman of watchmen, Maleldil - succeed? The Macrobes can manipulate the Earth’s laws, its people, and bend it in the wrong direction, but they are utterly powerless in the face of Maleldil the Young. The sheer fact that animals could overcome an organization bent on eliminating humanity shows the readers that there had to have been a serious flaw.
N.I.C.E.’s weakness was its lack of power structure. The purported plot to completely abolish true mankind had to remain completely clandestine in order to appeal to the competing interests of the selfish workers of N.I.C.E. Only through manipulating flaws inherent in organizational power structures and through delusion were the Macrobes able to gain significant enough momentum to put the world under their sway.

Upon arrival in the present time, Merlinus expresses his dismay over the lack of a leader “whose office it is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms.” Ransom, however, is able to reestablish this role as Director when he, through the careful operations of the Logres, put down the tyrannical N.I.C.E. The power structure of the Logres is rather clear: It is led by the Pendragon, who has been appointed by Maleldil as the successor to previous Pendragons, the first of which was Arthur. Here we have an explicitly clear case for centralized power, in that the rightful leader is approved by Maleldil. As for the division of power, there is an indirect division of power through labor and the inhabitants’ various spiritual gifts; even Ivy Maggs holds a unique role at St. Anne’s as the caretaker of Mr. Bultitude and the animals. This power structure is actually more efficient in practice than that of any bureaucratic regime.

The very same ethical problem seen in the N.I.C.E.’s Macrobial motivations arises in the award-winning graphic novel The Watchmen, an expose on the alleged corruption of famous Superheroes. Adrian Veidt, better known as Ozymandias, who is purported to be the “smartest man in the world” and the most successful of the former superheroes in the aftermath of the Keene Act of 1977, deliberately opens Pandora’s box through an elaborate scheme involving an alien invasion with the intent to unite the entire world against a common, absolute enemy. In doing this, he uses murder to achieve his means to an end, sacrificing half of New York City’s population in the process. His vision of reality and his self absorption with his hierarchical understanding of humanity (under the guise of Eastern Mysticism) has been so distorted that he believes he is doing the world a service; no one deliberately takes the lives of the multitude for more lives to be saved. One should start by saving as many lives as possible in the first place.

The smartest man on the planet became so idealistic that he had to create evil to unite humanity to destroy it. Filostrato believed that the world had to be wiped clean in order to fulfill the biological imperative. Both tried to make the same dream a reality, and both saw their plans infiltrated.

Even so, the N.I.C.E. ended the very way it began: In confusion and chaos. Those who worked at Belbury were following a lie that conformed to their interests and obsessions as the chameleon changes color in his environment, and manipulated situations to their own advantage, only to be caught up in a complicated web of blaming and pointing fingers. Luckily for humanity, there is something so much more powerful than the red tape and naivety of such a power structure: The absolute power of God.