This was posted in Kendall Harmon's blog. Good food for thought.

In his famous book The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis described the elevation of self-fulfillment in similar terms. Lewis observed that for both Christian and classical culture, the principle moral task was “how to subdue the soul to reality”—that is, how do we train our souls to fit in with the order of things in the universe. Social and cultural institutions in traditional societies were generally organized around this task. But the modern project, Lewis warns, turns that older and wiser goal on its head. The chief end of modern society is “how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.” Similarly, social and cultural institutions in modern societies have tended to follow the logic of this goal. The idea that divine or natural law should restrain or direct social activity was still widely plausible at the beginning of the twentieth century. But by century’s end, almost all social institutions were committed to encouraging the liberation and fulfillment of desires rather than their restraint.

--Ken Myers, host of the remarkably helpful resource entitled Mars Hill Audio

The quote from C.S. Lewis:

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality.... For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

And here is the fuller version:

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique: and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.

--(The Abolition of Man, p. 88).