Be@sTech
Dave Long (dl@silcom.com)
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 08:38:06 -0700
In the preface to the 1961 edition, C.S. Lewis wrote:
> I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial
> Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in
> those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not
> done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see
> its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded,
> carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted
> offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and
> smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence,
> naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the
> bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty
> business concern.
-Dave