A Brief Anti-Machine History
Paul Kingsnorth's Against The Machine: In Context | Book Study # 2
Next Thursday, October 30th at 7:30pm (EST) we will begin our book study of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity in earnest. For our first meeting, we’ll be reading the Introduction as well as Chapters 1 & 2.
(That said, if you’d like to join me live this evening (Thursday, October 23) beginning sometime between 8pm EST and 8:30pm EST, I will be live-streaming on the Gadfly Academy YouTube channel!)
This week I thought I’d provide a bit of context for Kingsnorth and his new book. I’ll try not to reproduce what he has already provided on his website (you can read his biography here). Kingsnorth initially caught my attention because of the remarkable story of his conversion to Orthodox Christianity (which you can read here), but it was his writing about what he refers to as “The Machine” that made me a fan.
As a young man I had read Philip Sherrard’s The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science (a book that Kingsnorth refers to in his new work), a work that profoundly shaped my interpretation of the modern world, and that provided a critical perspective from which to understand both history as well as contemporary society. Kingsnorth’s latest offering is the culmination of decades of consideration, and a condensation of the past five years of blog posts from his Substack blog, The Abbey of Misrule. When I began reading Kingsnorth’s articles, my love for Sherrard and my appreciation for his vision of the world was rekindled. Gadfly Academy (previously, You Are Not A Machine) is largely the result of this rekindling.
Against The Machine is the latest in a venerable, though relatively esoteric, tradition of writing about (and against) the Machine. The How Did We Get Here? Reading List includes many of this tradition’s most important books (though admittedly the List needs updating - Kingsnorth’s book clearly needs to be on it!) Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Ivan Illich, Neil Postman, Philip Sherrard, and Wendell Berry are some of the main contributors to this tradition. In this tradition, Kingsnorth’s new book is, arguably, the most important of all, as it offers a synthesis of previous writers and a necessary update to this prophetic-critical tradition. The last great book in this tradition was probably Neil Postman’s 1992 Technopoly, so there is no question that an update for the twenty-first century was an imperative. Happily, Kingsnorth’s book has been received well and is getting substantially more publicity than previous offerings in the tradition.
Kingsnorth’s new book is definitely timely. It has been competing in the New Times Bestseller’s List with Eliezer Yudkowsky’s new book about AI: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. When I discuss Against The Machine with friends inevitably the first question is: “Does he discuss AI?” (Spoiler alert: he does. Hot take: AI is a red herring.) Kingsnorth repeatedly makes a point I have been emphasizing for a long time: regardless of the particular dangers of any given technology, we should be more concerned about the underlying techno-scientific project (and its philosophical-theological presuppositions) that brings dangerous technologies to life and deforms the world it encounters.
In 2009 Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, a fellow apostate from the environmental movement, started something called The Dark Mountain Project (you can read The Manifesto here) which reflected their disillusionment with the environmental movement, and their acceptance of the reality that there was no longer any real hope for their vision of a human-scale environmentalism. In many ways, Against The Machine continues in this tradition of extreme realism: rather than sugarcoat the problem, Kingsnorth makes a compelling case that unless we change fundamental things about the way we view the world (which should in turn change the way we live our lives) there is little hope for society on its current trajectory.
I am by nature an optimist, unfortunately however, I share Kingsnorth’s realist view. As in all of life, the only path forward is to confront reality rather than trying to avoid it. Kingsnorth offers a vision for a path forward, but it is a quiet and countercultural one and, I believe ultimately, the most realistic one:
“This, in practical terms is, the slow, necessary, sometimes boring work to which I suspect people in our place and time are being called: to build new things out on the margins. Not to exhaust our souls engaging in a daily war for or against a ‘West’ that is already gone, but to prepare the seed bed for what might, one day long after us, become the basis of a new culture. To go looking for truth. To light particular little fires—fires fueled by the eternal things, the great and unchanging truths—and tend their sparks as best we can. To prepare the ground with love for a resurrection of the small, the real and the true.”
~ Paul Kingsnorth, Against The Machine, p. 30
That’s it for today! I’m excited to read this book with you. If you haven’t already subscribed to the Gadfly Academy YouTube channel and newsletter, now is a great time to do that!
Here is the tentative schedule for our book study:
What: Public book study of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
Where: Gadfly Academy YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@gadflyacademy
How: I will begin by reading my weekly blog covering the content. You are free to post questions or reflections in the comments and I will respond as best I can.
When:
October 30: 7:30pmEST
Pages xiii-21
November 6: 7:30pmEST
Pages 22-42
November 13: 7:30pmEST
Pages 43-63
November 20: 7:30pmEST
Pages 64-88
November 24: 7:30pmEST
Pages 89-110
December 1: 7:30pmEST
Pages 111-134
December 11: 7:30pmEST
Pages 135-156
December 18: 7:30pmEST
Pages 157-179
December 22: 7:30pmEST
Pages 180-205
December 29: 7:30pmEST
Pages 206-229
January 8: 7:30pmEST
Pages 230-261
January 15: 7:30pmEST
Pages 265-284
January 22: 7:30pmEST
Pages 285-318