Thanks for the review. I appreciate the engagement. I don't normally respond to reviews, but in this case I feel the need to, because you characterisations are to my mind both wrong and mistaken, and I am itching to stick my oar in ...
So please accept following the kickback against your review in the spirit in which you offered yours, and from one Orthodox Christian to another. Maybe we will get the chance to have that drink together one day.
Let's start with the notion that 'the Machine' is a product of Christianity. Here are a couple of quotes from your review:
'But contra Kingsnorth, the intent wasn’t to replace religion with Christless secularism; that may have been an effect—it’s at least worth debating—but it was not by design as he claims.'
'Chesterton was clearsighted about many things, but he overlooks his own tradition’s role in capitalism’s emergence and what that origin might tell us about the thing itself. Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason shows how, for instance, capitalism arose from European monastic communities where agricultural produce was cultivated, traded, and managed with the development of cash, credit, interest, and investment.'
The first thing to say is that my book makes the explicit argument that the current Western model did indeed emerge from Christianity, quoting Christopher Dawson, among others, to make the point. The first few chapters are taken up with arguing this case. At no point does the book claim that the Reformers and their descendants had an 'intent' to replace Christianity as such. In fact, it quotes Brad Gregory's 'The Unintended Reformation' at some length to argue the opposite.
These reading errors aside, the point you make about Chesterton and the monasteries is, to my mind, just wrong, and it is a wrongness that underpins your whole review. A rather obvious undercurrent throughout is your defence of capitalism, which you seem to bizarrely regard as a system that Christians can get behind. Given the fact that the Gospels are a long blast against wealth, accumulation, greed and inequality this is quite a stretch, though not an uncommon one, I have found, amongst American Christians.
The notion that the monasteries gave birth to this system however, is simply wrong. As the book demonstrates at some length - as did Chesterton - capitalism did not 'evolve' to 'meet needs' but was an enforced system created by land enclosure - or land theft, if we want to be blunt about it. There is a lot of talk in your review about the misery of pre-modern cultures, and there was plenty of it, but you say nothing about the misery of the millions wept into factories during the industrial revolution, or of those currently labouring in China and Africa to dig up the coltan for our phones or sew cheap sweatshirts in endless sweatshops surrounded by dead rivers and dead skies.
As for the monasteries - well, usury was a sin in Christian Europe, and for the simple reason that is was fundamentally unChristian. Only after that notion died was capitalism able to emerge. You say:
'The question is whether modern capitalism represents a continuous development or a qualitative break. I lean toward the former.'
The book leans towards the latter and provides plenty of argument. I might be wrong, but the case is not a flimsy one.
Incidentally, you include an aside about Cuba without mentioning that the book is as harsh on state communism as it is on monopoly capitalism, both of which are manifestations, to my mind, of the same Machine mentality.
Later, you ask:
'How could, after all, such a malign machine produce the gains outlined above? It didn’t. Because there is no malign machine. Kingsnorth might be describing something real: emergent structures that, whatever their origins, now constrain human freedom and flourishing in ways that feel systematic and mechanical. But that’s not the whole story—nowhere near it.'
Well, there certainly is a malign Machine! In my view. But even regardless of that, the book does not deny the gains created by the process. In fact, I repeatedly stated that the gains were real. I also agree with your point that most people like the Machine and its fruits. I am indeed in a minority. Just like the apostles ;-) But then, that's why I wrote the book. If you want a book about the wonders of Western liberal capitalism, they're ten a penny. That's the sea we swim in. This book swims against the tide. I happen to believe that the human soul, and the Earth itself, ultimately does too.
'Corporations like Amazon and Google—not to mention governments—don’t set the parameters of our culture. Culture is a bottom-up phenomenon, an emergent system like language and markets.'
In an ideal world, yes. That would be the 'Four Ps' outlined in the book: people, place, prayer and the past. But it's very naive to imagine that a world dominated by massive corporations and overweening states leaves any air at all for this to happen. When was the last time you wrote a folk song? The Machine commodifies culture and sells it back to us, and this is the enclosure process continuing. My first two books were travelogues exploring this process at work all over the world.
As you correctly say, cultures are dynamic, and ever-changing. This is not at issue. What is at issue is, broadly, 'who we are' in the modern West. The overall impression I get from this review is, I am afraid to say, one of a familiar kind of complacency. 'Cultures evolve, lots of good things happen, and some bad ones too, but we deal with them, and we live in the best system there could be. Don't you like antibiotics and dentists? then stop complaining, whiners!'
Overall, it seems a curious review for an Orthodox Christian to have written. You sing the praises of liberalism, capitalism, secularism and the whole gamut of the modern Western, and especially American project. But it could be argued that these are all products not of 'Christianity', as you suggest, but of a of a mistaken application of it. None of them arose in Orthodox lands, after all. Arguably - though it is not this book's place to argue it - the highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West is a product of the separation that began with the Great Schism. Other Orthodox writers have in fact made this case. The case being made here seems more like that of a liberal protestant. Sorry to be rude ;-)
That becomes even more so when you argue that:
'As products of Christianity as lived within Christian Europe, secularism, liberalism, individualism, capitalism, and the rest, are not foisted upon us from without or by a cabal of malicious elites. These developments are us; we created them in response to real needs and genuine problems. And their best, most fruitful expressions will come not from rejecting them and wandering off, but from better participating in them.'
Hm. Tell that to the Desert Father! Or to the monastics on Mount Athos. Tell that to two millennia's worth of hermits, ascetics, desert saints and monastics who all 'wandered off' to seek God. Ironically, the destruction of precisely this tradition of holy withdrawal during the Reformation is what precipitated us into the Machine, with its values of commerce and self-love. And an Orthodox Christian does not see the irony of trying to demonise 'withdrawal'?!
Finally, I'll just end, as you do, with this:
'The attractive picture he paints at the end of his book—people free to pursue value and meaning in small pockets of community and industry, a politics embracing family, home, and place—is best practiced, perhaps only practiced, within a liberal order that leaves people free to experiment and try new ways of living.'
Again, the complacency is curious. Not only does this quote ignore the fact that James C Scott - who your review specifically mentions - offers examples in my book from across southeast Asia of communities doing just this, but it takes a rather smugly Western-centric view of the world, of the kind I would normally expect to see in the Economist. The notion that communities with deep culture, human freedom and links to the Four Ps can only exist under the umbrella of Western liberalism is so astonishing that I had to read it twice.
In fact, not only is Western 'liberalism' currently creating nations in which people are regularly arrested for expressing their opinions, and can barely afford to live in any way other than as cogs in the digital machine, but true human freedom is increasingly to be found only outside the Machine - which often means outside the West. The notion that the capitalist liberalism bequeathed by 'our Christian past' is all that allows us to homestead, 'practice artisanal crafts' and live in a working community is so bizarre that I wondered if the author had travelled much outside the West - or noticed what is actually going on inside it at present.
In the end, I suppose, we are simply at loggerheads here. I am 'Against the Machine', you deny that the Machine exists. Fundamentally, while we can argue about history, the real issue is theology. This book sets itself up as a 'spiritual manual for the digital age.' Whether it is that I can't say, but the argument is fundamentally a spiritual one. The Machine is, at root, the spirit of the serpent in the garden. We are trying to become 'as gods', and our technologies are the tools we use to do so. Absent from your review was any mention of the chapters in the book which address the move towards post-humanity which this process engenders. Soon enough we will be having to decide not just whether we like capitalism but whether we want to remain human at all - and what that even means.
Paul, thank you for your gracious reply. You could easily have taken my review as an attack and didn’t. And before I begin, I do hope we might someday get the chance for a drink. I’d also count it a privilege to help work your land with you if the occasion ever comes. A friend vacationed in Ireland solo years back, showed up at a pub, met a pig farmer, and spent a week helping with his pigs. He said it was a blast. I don’t enjoy farm work—I’ve had plenty of experience—but I do enjoy working on pretty much anything when the company’s good.
You say, quite reasonably, that we may be at loggerheads. You may be right. But let me make some concessions up front.
I was wrong to say people pursuing value and meaning in small communities is “perhaps *only* practiced within a liberal order.” That’s false. It’s been done outside liberal orders, is being done outside them, and will be done outside them. Nothing is forever, and humans will outlive liberalism.
I might even have gone too far saying they’re best practiced within a liberal order, though given our context of actually living in such an order, that point still seems valid. The sorts of moral economies and social arrangements you advocate are largely permissible within a liberal order on its own terms: individual conscience, free association, pluralism, and so on.
You object that Western liberalism is “currently creating nations in which people are regularly arrested for expressing their opinions.” I’ve seen the news coverage and am appalled. You’re right to scare-quote “liberal” in your response—that repression is fundamentally illiberal, anti-liberal. That’s why liberals like your near-countrymen Brendan O’Neill and Andrew Doyle push back so vigorously. State repression violates liberal values rather than expressing them.
This is what I mean by saying answers to abuses live within the tradition itself. But you got me on withdrawal: “An Orthodox Christian does not see the irony of trying to demonise ‘withdrawal’?!” Touché! An embarrassing oversight on my part. But then, I wasn’t referring to monastic retreat but to those of us who must live in the world, loving our neighbors and caring for our families. I think this is best accomplished using the freedoms a liberal order provides.
As for the Great Schism and Western Christianity’s trajectory producing “the highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West”—that’s a conversation worth having, one I alluded to in a footnote in the review. What’s more, we might even be on the same page—the East and West diverged long before the Schism, maybe as far back as Augustine—even if we come to different conclusions.
That said, we are products of the West and its formative influence on our assumptions and affections. You may reject that inheritance (or at least its modern manifestations). I don’t know how to, nor do I see the need or gain in doing so, though I accept the need to qualify and reform it.
Socially, politically, economically, I’m a classical liberal—maybe better to say libertarian. I was raised in Northern California in a household that affirmed those values. They’re practically instinctual to me. As an aside, your response is the first time I’ve been dubbed a liberal Protestant. I smiled at the jab, which you seemed to have intended. You may regard my position as complacency—barbarianism far too cooked to be of any use. There we disagree.
That disagreement comes to the fore with capitalism itself. You’re right to call me out on enclosure—it was land theft, and I shouldn’t have skated past it. But your description doesn’t match what else I know to be true about capitalism. Your claim that capitalism “was an enforced system created by land enclosure” that subsequently metastasized across the globe strikes me as a highly idiosyncratic understanding of the history.
Capitalism is a loaded word, but we’re stuck with it. Here’s what I mean when we I use it: the voluntary widespread use of cash, credit, interest, investment, and profit-minded coordination and production. I think it’s a matter of record that these tools arose from European monastic communities centuries before English enclosure. Cistercian monasteries ran rationalized agricultural enterprises with wage labor in the twelfth century, their surpluses flowing into regional markets and trade fairs. Those fairs became places where merchants formalized bills of exchange and credit. Monasteries even hosted some fairs and collected rents, while their agents made deals with tradesmen, merchants, and bankers.
From there the tools spread as their usefulness answered bottom-up needs. Italian merchants developed sophisticated banking in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Dutch built financial networks on urban trade. None of this required English fields to be seized and fenced. The tools found willing users because they solved real problems: How do you move value across distance? Share risk on a voyage? Scale production without losing coordination?
As these solutions spread throughout Europe, they developed along multiple trajectories having nothing to do with English enclosure: the physiocrats arguing against mercantilism, Smith’s division of labor, Ricardo’s comparative advantage, the French philosophes pushing laissez-faire. Some developments were entangled with exploitation—but certainly not all, not even most.
So when you trace modern capitalism back to English enclosure, claim that scheme was globalized, and that it now represents the spirit of capitalism across the board, you’re collapsing a sprawling, centuries-long process into one national episode and ascribing blanket malice to its participants. This strikes me as both false and counterproductive. Perhaps the enclosure example colors the entire enterprise for you, but I fail to see why capitalism writ large should bear the sins of English plunder—or even any other examples of malfeasance. If we’re going to have a serious moral reckoning, we need to distinguish between forms that rest on theft and those that don’t.
You mention “usury was a sin in Christian Europe”—true, but even then loaning money at interest wasn’t identical with usury and was permissible if not exploitative. That seems an essential difference between our views. You see capitalism as fundamentally exploitative. I do not. To address another point you raise, neither it seems do the Gospels. Exploitation exists and Christ routinely denounces it, as should we. But consider the parable of the workers; it’s assumed a mutually agreed wage isn’t exploitative, even if unequal. The parable of the talents assumes marginal benefit in putting money out to lenders. Christ wasn’t praising capitalism; it didn’t exist. But he seems to acknowledge two antecedents—contracts and credit—as valid.
The question is how we distinguish legitimate from illegitimate wealth creation. Some accumulation results from genuine value creation that lifts living standards—hence my pointing to the work of Joel Mokyr, Deidre McCloskey, Johan Norberg, and HumanProgress.org. Other accumulation results from rent-seeking, monopoly power, and exploitation. But liberalism, particularly its free-market expressions, actually opposes all of that.
You bring up abuses in China and Africa. My company formerly contracted printing in China’s Shenzhen district—the most economically liberalized area in the country, essentially an experiment in allowing workers to negotiate contracts and working conditions. When our US partner exited, we did too; I had no way to oversee production. I switched to South Korea where I could better ensure ethical arrangements.
The example shows that the complexities stem not from biases toward abuse inherent to capitalism but from global supply chains enmeshed with illiberal states who have no qualms about allowing the abuse of their citizens. Meanwhile, the call to reform these conditions comes in large measure from consciences shaped by liberalism’s Christian heritage. These tensions have led to material improvements in worker conditions—for instance, the right of free association and contracts allowing labor unions to press their case.
American slavery provides another example. I now live in Tennessee. Three of my five children are black. Our family lives on a corner of the former Carnton Plantation. That is to say, they now own property on land where they would have once been property. We fought a civil war to create such an outcome; I count this a victory for Christian morality as manifest in American liberalism. The same with expanded civil rights in the twentieth century. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t reject the liberal order; he used it to reform a society not living up to its own values.
This validates my claim that, owing to its Christian past, liberalism contains the tools of its own self-correction.
That said, if the Western package emerged from Christianity, that doesn’t baptize all results. Heresies come from within too. There’s a question of faithfulness and congruence. Liberal values like freedom of conscience, equality, individualism, and pluralism are morally congruent with Christianity. Communism also emerged from the same roots but is fundamentally exploitative. If there’s a Machine, communism would exemplify it—a coercive system with no avenues for escape. Same with the overweening administrative state. But these systems are fundamentally illiberal, and we can join in wishing their ruin, though perhaps while standing on different ground in doing so.
This is why I reject your characterization of the Machine. A machine is designed for certain ends. Western liberal culture wasn’t designed or imposed by malicious actors; it evolved, and participants shaped its evolution to suit their needs and manage tradeoffs (some of which I accept as injurious; it’s a fallen world). But it’s the currents and crosscurrents of the tradition which allows us to manage those tradeoffs and work for better ends. Regarding Amazon and Google, for instance, we retain meaningful agency and can choose how we interact with those companies, even if our options are constrained by structural factors.
This is also why I don’t believe I’ve misread your opening chapters. I interpret you saying: once there was a Christian story that enlivened us and held us together; subsequent developments ruptured that story, sending us off in trajectories that betrayed our Christian heritage; those trajectories coalesced into oppressive forces we can label the Machine, and the deadness of our present culture reflects the truth of this claim. Based on a different reading of our history, I see that as false. The present is more continuous with the past than you represent, and the Christian impulse—even when secularized—remains a vital force providing conditions for human flourishing within the liberal order that arose from that same impulse.
Liberalism takes as given it’s not the best system. The best system still waits to be discovered through its participants innovating on their heritage. If the real issue is theological, as you say, Christians in the West can use available resources of our heritage in that project. Liberalism can—and does—serve those ends, permitting experiments in applying faith to questions of the day.
Perhaps we’re talking past each other, owing to fundamental disagreements on our culture’s virtues and vices and understanding of how persistent Christianity’s influence is. We’re also talking past each other in another regard, as you point out: Your emphasis in the book is spiritual, my critique more material. It’s muddier than that—I’m not uninterested in the spiritual question—but we have our emphases.
I avoided commenting on your argument concerning posthumanism because I don’t feel equipped to assess the case. I’m considerably more optimistic about technological development than you are. I suspect while many will go off in concerning directions, many others will opt out of the worst developments and take stands for human flourishing. Perhaps I’m naive. Time will tell.
Since I reject your model of the Machine, I don’t see it as “the spirit of the serpent in the garden.” But I don’t reject that spirit’s existence; it’s lurking in whatever system humans construct. We find ourselves in a Western liberal order, and the serpent is present within it. But, as I see it, faithful Christians can use resources of their faith, including those that find expression in the modern liberal order, to oppose the serpent and elevate what’s good and humane in the world.
Thanks for the long replies. I’ve mostly said my piece so I won’t respond at equal length. Maybe just a few more points.
Firstly, your very long promotion/defence of liberal Western capitalism seems rather quaint to this 53 year old. It takes me back to Tony Blair or Bill Clinton speeches in the 1990s, or perhaps an op-ed by Thomas Friedman or Francis Fukuyama from the same era. Have you noticed what’s been happening in the West since then? I can’t believe that anyone can take this naive and rosy view of the status quo in 2025, and its direction of travel.
Secondly, my book is not actually about ‘liberal capitalism’ and whether or not it delivers the goods. It is doing something quite different from rehashing that stale old debate. If you don’t agree, then you don’t agree - but you seem to be having a parallel discussion which does not really engage with the substance of my argument.
Thirdly, as ‘Professor Dig’ rightly points out below, the notion that any Christian could see the current system as anything other than soaked in sin is remarkable. I suggested in my Erasmus Lecture that our society monetises and glorifies the Seven Deadly Sins, and that seems obviously true. I continue to be gobsmacked when I hear Christians trying to marry up the gospels with consumer capitalism - or indeed when I hear Orthodox Christians defending capitalism on the basis of its relationship with Western monasteries! Hint: Orthodox monasteries did not produce this system. Do we wonder why …?
Anyway, I hope a few readers here might get hold of the book and see for themselves which of us (if either)they agree with. Thanks for hosting this discussion in such an open way. Serious, respectful disagreement is vanishingly rare on the Internet.
Paul, thank you for your response. You’ve got me beat by a few years; I turn 50 next month. But I take your point. I don’t think we’ll make much progress here, so I’m happy to let it sit. I would welcome renewing the conversation over drinks if the opportunity arises. I hope it someday will.
In the historical sense, the present is continuous to the past in the same way as a person's present is continuous to his past. But Joel, that person, if he veers off the narrow road and 'wanders' off in sin is no longer spiritually--in the state of his soul--the same person. This is exactly the same in societies, cultures and nations.
Even if we accept your reading of the historical development of capitalism, the soul of capitalism is not at all in the same state as it once was. Our system is sinful. It no longer benefits the humans--us--through and upon whom it was and is built. That is precisely what the Machine is. In its various forms, it has subsumed our humanity, our dignity as God's people.
Someone so bright as yourself, dont you see this? Ours is a vast and sinful system, regardless of its roots or original intentions.
Just as a man must repent and turnaround--metanoia--so must we as a people.
I take your point but just don’t see it that way. I don’t see our system as inherently sinful. I don’t, for instance, see it as necessarily exploitative; in most instances, it’s not. In fact, it has tended to—admittedly, only one metric—improve living standards for nearly all involved.
Universal improvement of living standards is a byproduct of the value people have to the system - it's the bribe people get for participation, not the inherent product.
I don't know what the inherent product is, but it's probably something that is fed back into the system rather than clearly being an output. That would also explain why the system is so good at sustaining itself.
Thank you for responding here Paul. When I came across this review, I truly felt that the author and I had read different books. I find Against the Machine to be deeply encouraging because my husband and I have made many sacrifices over the years in order to scoot back from the Machine and raise our kids in a rural American town near an Orthodox monastery. Perhaps we have even managed to become cooked barbarians.
Our community is threatened by a solar farm that will consume agricultural land and create increased fire danger in our dry region. Have we benefited from modern “progress”? Certainly. But the threat of the Machine is bracingly real.
Thank you for responding to this review of your book Paul. Most of the comments - as with the review itself - have been very one-sided and imo display very little understanding of your critique and of capitalism and the world we live in. And are very disheartening for their very *complacent* lack of understanding on many levels - religious and spiritual included.
As I was reading this review, and your response, not for the first time I was struck by the thought that this debate - and your attempt to critique the 'machine' and develop a prophetic response to the spiritual and human crisis fast engulfing us, imo might benefit from engagement with the ideas of the radical philosopher Giorgio Agamben (my apologies if you have already and I've missed it).
In particular I'm thinking of two particular strands of Agamben's work, which are spread across a number of different books and essays. The first is his examination of the success and failure of the early Franciscan Order - which I think is very germane to your prophetic project. The second is his philosophical analysis of capitalism - which he describes as a type of religion - and, contrary to this reviewer's conception of the continuity of capitalism (and liberalism) with Christianity, for Agamben (following in the footsteps of Walter Benjamin) it's *not* a secularised Christian outgrowth but sonething more sui generis and much darker.
But these two subjects are only a fraction of Agamben's fascinating political theology.
Another scholar coming from a very different academic discipline, with a different though I would say complementary or intersecting perspective on the state of religion, especially Christianity, in the contemporary world is the social anthropologist and social historian of the long dureè Emmanuel Todd. An interesting and prescient prophet of the 'decline of the West'.
I hope these suggestions might be helpful or at least interesting to some people on this thread.
Lots to think about here. You wrote that Capitalism did not appear in Orthodox lands, which is true, but of course Communism certainly seemed to gain a foothold there (for a while at least). Do you think there's something in Orthodox thought that might tend towards a collective rather than competitive system, that may have caused Orthodox lands to tend towards communism more than Protestant regions?
Communism was imposed by non-Orthodox upon Orthodox lands, Bolshevism being financed by Jewish and anti-Orthodox, anti-Traditionalists non-Jews from London, New York, and Germany. The Western Liberal Order was trying for centuries to dismantle Orthodox lands and impose their 'freedom' upon it, in exactly the same way the Judeo-American Empire now imposes homosex and LBGTQ rights, indebtedness to their banking system, and non-Christian values along with its 'freedom and liberty.' Same gameplan for the past 200 or more years, and the propaganda and foreign meddling (color 'revolutions') finally toppled the Russian Orthodox Monarchy, leaving the rest of Orthodox Eastern Europe very easy to pick apart and/or invade later on. Communism was imposed from outside, it did not grow organically from the soil of Orthodox nations.
I have read you on this and am sympathetic to your thesis. In fact I once interpreted a major canonical work of the West, Vergil's *Aeneid*, as a kind of ahead-of-its-time exposé of the Machine: see "Arma Virumque," Classical Journal 108.1 (October-November 2012) pp. 37-63. I certainly don't deny that the Machine exists. On the contrary. Jacques Ellul has been a decades-long influence on my thinking since I encountered *La Technique ou l'Enjeu du siècle* in my twenties. Where you lose me, not to belabor this, is in your lifelong search for some established belief system that would satisfy whatever itch it is that you have needed to scratch. I myself cannot imagine replacing the Machine with the Church. I suppose I'm a pagan. Give me a forest and a river. But let's put that aside, because to each his own. Then there's this: I get the feeling from your writing that some of the impetus to stand "Against the Machine" is aesthetic in quality. "Highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West." I read "grasping" and I get a vision of a person whose facial expression is contorted, who is wild-eyed, who is in a word ugly. Even the distaste in the (jokey) reference to a "liberal protestant" (lower-case intentional?) suggests to me a sort of squeamishness and fastidiousness that the average person simply can't afford to indulge.
I’m not sure who ‘the average person’ is. Are you one? Perhaps then you can tell me why I don’t count as ‘average’, and why I can ‘afford to indulge’ things that you can’t. Perhaps as a pure and spoilt aesthete I simply can’t understand your daily proletarian struggle on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Please do clarify.
By your own account, you're not average if you're not highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative, and fundamentally anti-Christian, like the rest of us who constitute the modern West. Congratulations?
I'm glad to hear that it's not your account. I welcome you to the tribe of average people!
Not that it's your problem, but I'm left with considerable confusion. Your book and its argument are intended to be indictments of The Machine. What is the alternative to the Machine? Well, here's what Jacques Ellul thought:
"We also believe that hope is in no way an escape into the future, but that it is an active force, now, and that love leads us to a deeper understanding of reality. Love is probably the most realistic possible understanding of our existence. It is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is reality itself."
Hope and love are the alternative. In the spirit of love, someone in your place might seek to engage with an open heart, graciously, and gratefully with people who take your ideas seriously. I don't feel the love, Paul.
I mentioned Virgil and his own indictment of The Machine. His epic ends, infamously, with his enraged hero rejecting pity and killing his defenseless foe. The Machine, it turns out, cannot tolerate dissent and deviance. That's worth pondering, don't you think?
Unfortunately, Kingsnorth took your comment as an attack, rather than an invitation to engagement. I've been trying to decide whether or not to read his book. That he wishes to replace the Machine with the Church suggests that there might be a reactionary impulse being expressed. Or at least that is what worries me. And I hope I'm wrong.
If like you I'm drawn to Nature more than Church, I'm not sure I'm exactly a pagan. I must admit I felt out of sync with both Kingsnorth and the reviewer, as both are Orthodox Christians. I was raised in a kind of Christianity that is liberal, progressive, and egalitarian; love idealizing, positive thinking, and new agey. I have no love for dominance hierarchy, religious or economic.
In that light, I'm more than fine with critiquing capitalism along with Kingsnorth, but I have no interest in turning away from liberalism and leftism toward what I fear might be some kind of comforting reactionary nostalgia. Maybe I have Kingsnorth all wrong. That's why I'm here trying to sense what this book is about and if it's worth my time.
Thank you for your comment. I have dipped into Kingsnorth’s writings on the Machine in the past. I got there via Wendell Berry and some of the writing at The Front Porch Republic, that is, via an instinctive sympathy for Berry’s blend of spirituality, localism, conservation. I think Kingsnorth, though, quite unlike Berry, is at his core a polemicist. He is made angry by what he sees in the contemporary West. His writing is infused with that anger. In a trivial way, that makes him a prickly figure to debate. More substantially, it may siphon nuance from his otherwise valid, in some ways, critique of our culture.
That helps contextualize Kingsnorth and your interaction with him. I'm probably similar to you in many ways. I too have been drawn to Wendell Berry and The Front Porch Republic. I have much love for that "blend of spirituality, localism, conservation."
But Kingsnorth's irritability or even anger, as expressed in his response to you, indicated my concerns may have been valid. I have nothing against polemics, per se. It's just maybe Kingsnorth's style is not my preference. It doesn't seem inspiring.
A couple of thoughts upon having read the book and now the review. The review uses the word culture in a very loose way, as though it merely refers to whatever way a group of people happen to be thinking now. In Latin the word originally meant "to till" and has always had a sense of place, being tied to the land, permanence, continuity and tradition.
I suspect that is why Paul describes the Modern, future-oriented, time obsessed, progressive succession of fashions as a "Machine". It is something constructed rationally, entirely artificial, thus scalable and transferable.
This is only tangentially related to your comment, I suppose. But here is one of my favorite quotes:
“As long as we keep ourselves busy tilling the earth, there is no fear of any of us becoming wild.”
~ Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer, 1782
Interestingly, the issue of enclosure was discussed by Kingsnorth and the reviewer. I used that quote at the beginning of a piece I wrote on how the enclosure of land related to the enclosure of mind.
That has everything to do with 'culture', as you define it here. And it's definitely about the Machine.
I made this comment on Mr. Miller’s main thread, but I should repeat it here, if the author himself would like comment: It’s not clear that we can maintain a civilization with 8 billion people using pre-industrial production methods. Humans didn’t hit 1 billion until after Industrial Revolution was underway, and we only crossed the 2 billion threshold 100 years ago. The world population might gradually decrease over the next few centuries, but destroying "the Machine" within the memory of a generation or two will only happen with a mass death event. Which 7 billion people have to die so that we can defeat “the Machine?” I’m assuming that Mr. Kingsnorth doesn’t believe he and his family will be among the unhappy 88%?
There’s a second a thing that bothers me: this discourse assumes that Christianity is the only or the best framework for dealing with the dislocations of modernity. But what about those of us who feel no particular connection or affection for Christianity? I’ve lived my whole life in the shadow of Christianity as the default religion and have never once felt that it represented my feelings about the world or my spiritual experiences. The problem is that, while I’m happy cede the worth of certain Christian values, this is not sufficient to embrace Christianity as a holistic cultural package. Love, charity, forgiveness, etc. are human virtues that can be accepted without the metaphysical baggage that comes with the religion; a Christian apology must provide a justification for the whole bundle as something other than a historical artifact. Fulminating against "the Machine” is not that.
Well, firstly: nobody is arguing that we should ‘destroy the Machine’, least of all me. Please read my book before offering up these standard-issue talking points, because they have nothing to do with me.
Similarly, I do not argue that Christianity is the only or best way to deal with the Machine. I just happen to be talking to another Christian here, who raised these points. Christianity is not a political philosophy, it is a way home, and as such is very personal. I’ve not interest in trying to force it onto you.
There is also the very real threat implied in our debt-based banking systems that much of our current development and abundance has been 'stolen' from the future by using debt-based instruments to supercharge growth.
If we had been progressing at a normal pace, we may not have had nearly the same development stage as we do now, and likely a much lower population. Once that system collapses, we could also face a very real correction event back to normal.
I’m with you on this concern. The US national debt (for just one example) is atmospheric at this point, and no one in political leadership seems even remotely interested addressing it.
Kingsnorth is a Christian but I did not feel like the message was "we must all become Christians to deal with the dislocations of modernity." The "four P's" that he presents as the solution to reclaiming our humanity in the machine age are people, place, prayer, and the past. He does not say we all need to convert to Christianity or live by pre-industrial production methods. I really recommend reading the full book and wrestling with what's actually in it.
A second point would be that I concede yes, certainly one does attain the highest of highs outside civilisation. There is no air conditioning produced by a tribe neither does one get an opera in a village.
That said, you don't get a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several thermonuclear warheads either. Only civilisation does that.
I haven’t read this book but I find your diagnosis of what actually makes culture poignant. It reminds me of people complaining about traffic. You’re not IN traffic. You ARE traffic.
Joel, you clearly wrestled with this one, and you offer a gracious but incisive critique. I appreciate how you examined culture and the system that has grown out of our Christian roots. I also reject the idea that we should "burn it all down", and resonate especially with your conclusion that we are indeed free "to push back against what we find dehumanizing". In our recent talk at the Doomer Optimism gathering, we made a similar point, that "our guiding principle should not be that we are against things", but rather to focus on the most defining things of our humanness. Thanks for your writing!
Ruth, I’m exceedingly glad that came through to you. When I dug into the book, I realized I had to write a review and I knew it would have to be critical. It’s not an approach I enjoy, and frankly I recognize I’m accountable to Kingsnorth for how I interact with his claims. I may have done him wrong, but not for great effort in the opposite direction.
Good tone and insight. However, what your critique perhaps fails to acknowledge is that there are actual evil forces, spiritual forces trying to subdue us to lives of idleness and distraction, to make us as empty and impotent as possible. Kingsnorth's references to Brave New World are chosen precisely to warn us that all these great "advancements" that you prefer to defend have incredibly powerful role in that seduction, and indeed some of them are foisted upon us. There was no bottom-up demand for AI powered search engines or ChatGPT, but now they are fully integrated into the processes by which we used to produce creative thought. There was no bottom-up demand for the smartphone app, but now our children in some cases are literally required to have access to such things in order to submit school assignments, participate in competitive sports, engage in student leadership, etc. It starts as convenience and ends as a necessary condition. Do you not see these things? For all your laudable caution about being too pessimistic, I am more worried that the average citizen is blithely yielding to the current without evaluating any of the consequences. "It's not so bad; it'll be fine. Enjoy the many fruits of civilization!" or "Pick up your cross"/"He who tries to save his life will lose it." What's the better messaging here? Highly recommend William Ophuls' Immoderate Greatness if anyone needs a short cure for their stubborn optimism. ;-)
That’s all possibly so, though I don’t see it that way. I am happy to admit—and wholeheartedly believe—that there are evil forces in the world. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t renounce the devil upon our baptisms. But I don’t see any fundamental, nefarious connection between demonic activity and, say, large language models.
The same holds on the bottom-up question. In fact, I disagree on the AI observation in particular. We don’t have to have a near-universal request for a solution or product to see bottom-activity in producing it. The roots of AI go back to a longstanding need to organize data; it comes out of actual people with actual needs—to find and process information, to transform it from one state to another, and so on. That’s what the history of the innovation shows. In terms of its development, it was definitely bottom up.
It’s widespread deployment is coming because (at the moment) it’s a relatively inexpensive way for product makers to improve their feature set—in some cases because customers want it, in others because they’re just guessing it’ll solve problems the consumers haven’t voiced. If they’re wrong, companies will abandon the service; if they’re right, they’ll keep it rolling.
That said, there are less-than-humane uses of AI and people may favor those: deskilling their writing abilities, losing their critical thinking, etc. I can see the arguments for those critiques and remain sensitive to them—even though I don’t know exactly how to respond. I may be stubbornly optimistic. Thanks for pushing back.
I loathe AI but the demand is bottom up. It was created because the demand is there and they know it. And we’ve been conditioned for it - templates, guides, formulae, conformity - so much of ‘creative life and work’ in the past decade or two might be fairly described as ‘prep-AI’.
It would be very interesting to see a statistician quantify the actual demand for AI - how many people are embracing it, and where they sit in the org chart or income bracket.
In my anecdotal experience, for each person excited about AI, there are 2 or 3 people exasperated by how it’s being forced on them, either by their boss or tech oligopolies cramming it into products that worked just fine without it.
And that’s before we get into AI’s impact on energy costs, disruption of education, entertainment, and other sectors, and the fact that it’s increasingly likely to be the source of the next 401(k)-obliterating market bubble.
Sure but isn’t Paul’s definition of the Machine anything building taller than three stories, any business owned by more than two or three people, any marketplace fancier than the morning fruit market? I mean, maybe I am wrong but he seems to argue that it’s not just smartphones that are the problem but everything that led to them since about 500 years ago. No thanks.
Makes me think of William Cronon's distinction between a wilderness ethic and a garden ethic. The former is suitable for high-minded essays on the human predicament. But for actually living in this world, the latter is where it's at. And we do have to live in the real world.
I have purchased, but have not yet read, Paul Kingsnorth’s book. However, I did avidly read the essays on which the book was based while he was publishing them. So I can’t speak directly to your critique, Joel. But I do have some reflections.
I wholeheartedly agree with your closing words: “By all means, push back against what you find dehumanizing. Build alternatives. Create communities that embody superior values. Retrieve and revive ways of life that modernity has marginalized.”
This is exactly what Ruth Gaskovski and I, among others, have been encouraging. Where does Kingsnorth fit in? I would suggest he’s the original inspiration for the conversation.
In my own reading of his original essays, Kingsnorth’s contribution was not in any strict sense a scholarly or highly analytic contribution. While he wasn’t the first to write about the dark side of technology and civilization, he was writing (on the Substack platform starting in the early 2020s) at a time of accelerating technological and social change, which continues apace even now—to say nothing of the pandemic at the time, and governments that were using technology, like digital IDs, to control movements and access to services. It was an uncertain, unsettling time. And I remember discovering those essays with a sense of revelation. Kingsnorth was saying things that nobody else was saying, or at least not with such depth and literary power.
I began my own Substack after being inspired by his writing, and even wrote my novel of the future, Exogenesis, partly through the same inspiration. So I am grateful for Kingsnorth’s work. I think at the time he was writing his essays, he was meeting the historical moment. It woke a lot of people up and got them thinking much harder about the dark side of technology; not just the isolated problems, like smart phones making us more distracted, or social media making people anxious, but sweeping civilizational considerations. Hence the metaphor of “the Machine”.
For me, much of what made the essays compelling at the time is that they felt like a conversation between my concerns and the writer’s insights, and it gave me a sense that I was not alone in my worries for the future.
Fast forward to his current book, and I think without seeing it in that earlier context, it can come across as too dark and imbalanced; yes, one can get the feeling he underappreciates the genuine benefits that have come out of technology or the West, or that his solutions are underspecified or even contradict his original critique (e.g., decrying a liberal order that gave us the right to decry the liberal order).
I don’t know whether Kingsnorth himself sees his work as scholarly, in the sense of a precise and measured analysis of a problem. But to me, it isn’t. It is more like an essay-style poem, capturing epic themes in visionary ways, in order to awaken people to a particular overarching concern. This doesn’t negate your criticisms, Joel, but overlooking the context of the essays, at the time they were being written, is an important consideration.
And if our technological age grows more bleak, then those essays may start resonating even more strongly; and if (as I hope) we move into better times, then they might feel dated and “off” the mark.
Peco, Paul responded to my critique in the thread below and I likewise responded to him. I was waiting to respond to your comment until I could do that; it took me quite a while :) It might be helpful to see where that conversation goes.
That said, let me validate where you’re coming from. I think I am far more optimistic on technology, but I absolutely loathe the kind of repressive application of technology you describe. So many of the features of the system outlined in Exogenesis are present and even being used to similar ends now. And it’s horrifying to imagine where they might go. We are aligned on that point for sure. If Kingsnorth inspired that work, I’m all the more grateful for his.
I also appreciate the spirit in which you offer your critiques. Frankly, that holds for Kingsnorth as well, which is part of the reason I treated my critique as carefully as I did. As I said in the piece—and this goes for you as well—we are brothers and I want more than anything to maintain friendships and communion with all people but especially this riotous family we call the Church. I hope we meet in person someday so I can demonstrate that with a hug.
“The Machine is, at root, the spirit of the serpent in the garden. We are trying to become 'as gods', and our technologies are the tools we use to do so.”
To me this is the essence of it all. One can argue about historical particulars, and the particulars do matter. Some interpretations are better than others. But that is mostly above my intellectual pay grade. What I have no doubt is, there’s a spiritual element throbbing at the heart of the problem, everywhere and always.
As per your closing suggestion, remembering that many of us are, in fact, in communion, and that we are more fundamentally human beings trying to stay grounded in chaotic times, should be the context of this conversation. Anything else, and the spirit of the serpent prevails. Even more than creatures of history, we are creatures of relationship.
The very notion is built right into the Great Commandment. When that is forgotten, or displaced from its fundamental position, all is lost.
Amen. All import for us to remember regardless of how things shake out. Philosophy (good or bad) can’t replace friendship and the mutual reliance we have on each other.
I really appreciated your review. Disclaimer: I haven't read the work in question - partly because I've grown weary of vaguely utopian, Benedictine Option-esque responses to the world's ills that fail to take context, history, and privilege into account. I've just found approaches like this to actually make me more disillusioned and confused with life as it is, because they fail to take something crucial into account that I struggle to name. Your review helped me better understand some of my concerns.
Two thoughts for what they're worth.
1) One thing I would have liked to hear more of us what, on a deep level, you actually think is at stake here. I get the intellectual shortcoming of dismissing historical contexts and continuities you articulate, and they bother me too, but so what? What's the bigger "Why?" for you? Why do you think it's is it important we--as readers, or as a society or as a humanity-- take these sorts of nuances seriously, not just with regards to PK's book but more broadly. Or even cosmically. I have my own answers to these but would have liked to hear your thoughts.
2) Regarding the point that culture is largely a dynamic, bottom up process. Or at least more of a back-and-forth between top-down and bottom-up factors. A good point to make, for sure. However, one reason i think people are feeling so unmoored right now is that from the vantage point of the average person, some of those top-down factors often feel as though they come out of nowhere, usher in fast paced substantial changes and questions, and in ways even collectively there is little possibility of changing significantly. For many, the curulre we find ourselves in does not actually feel like a bottom up process (even if, on further study, it is) nor does it feel like we have any power to influence meaningfully. The powerful fusion of global capitalism, wealth inequality, and digital technology--and the encroachment of these impersonal forces on human 'culture'--is highly complex. Even if they were brought about by bottom up cultural development, it doesn't feel like that was a free or self-aware choice. For many it feels more like we created a monster. I think that sense it what PK's book is trying to address, and why it resonates with so many people.
Regarding what’s at stake: I’m grateful, not resentful, for the long trajectory of Christianity and it’s cultural heritage, including individualism, equality, pluralism, capitalism, civil rights, and the rest I outlined above. I think we’re better served to work in the present if we understand what we’re working with. That’s one of things that makes Dylan Pahman’s book so helpful. Beyond that, seeing this level of mischaracterization rankles me. You should see my marginalia as I was arguing my way across the pages of Kingsnorth’s book. Scarcely a page goes by without my scribbling about our differing understandings of what’s happening (and has happened). These overlooked continuities have a direct bearing on your second issue.
Re feeling unmoored and powerless: The primary reason we can feel that way is we expect to feel differently—in part because this same heritage has shaped us to expect a large measure of autonomy, agency, dignity, consent, and the rest. What I hope I communicated at the end of the piece is that the tradition we’re talking about abandoning actually possesses the resources we need to carve out room for those things in the here and now. They’re part of the package even if we have to struggle to realize them. There’s no magic lever to pull, but the tradition gives us options and approaches we can pursue as individuals and communities. Per the feeling of facing the monster, I think that’s what makes Pascal Bruckner’s observation so powerful: the jailer may lock us away, but he slips us the key at the same moment.
Circling back to what’s at stake, if you check the work of people like Mokyr, McCloskey, and Norberg, and organizations like HumanProgress.org, the improvements to the human condition in the wake of liberalism, capitalism, and the like are actually somewhat mind-boggling. We’re so used to them we don’t see them for what they are: as massive advances over prior conditions. I want to be quick to acknowledge the downsides—Kingsnorth raises plenty—but they’re far from the only facts on the table.
How big a deal is this? In his book Stubborn Attachments, economist Tyler Cowen suggests a thought experiment: “Redo U.S history, but assume the country’s economy had grown one percentage point less each year between 1870 and 1990. In that scenario, the United States of 1990 would be no richer than the Mexico of 1990.” That has massive implications for the state of healthcare, employment, and other aspects of material well being. It’s easy to take that for granted, but there’s a reason we’re not climbing over the border wall to Mexico instead of the other way around. (It’s also an argument for why we should expand their freedom to come; it’s unconscionable to proactively cordon off opportunity from those who seek it to benefit their condition, especially when they contribute to the wealth both here and at home when they come to participate in our economy.)
Based on my reading of Kingsnorth, he has no real appreciation for that—nor the historic roots of what made it possible. Is it perfect? Far, far from it. And people are left out and left behind. Serving them is part of our responsibility as faithful custodians of this long and rich tradition.
I think you pinpoint very well the shortcomings of “Against the Machine.” Kingsnorth writes with conviction and a certain charisma. I like getting lost in his writings. But perhaps his exploration of the Machine is a bit sentimental. As a Christian, I absolutely sign up with one of his solutions to the current predicament, namely repentance. If we truly learn to repent, and practice it like we mean it, all shall be well.
Father, we could all do with more of that. It’s one of the few things on which I agree with Martin Luther: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance” (95 Theses, thesis No. 1).
That is one of my concerns, what has made me resistant to starting Kingsnorth's book. No matter how well written, I just have no interest in sentimentality, especially not of nostalgic (and reactionary?) visions of a traditional past that often never really existed.
Having been raised liberal Christian, I'm not even drawn to repentance. What inspires me is simply the radical egalitarianism of the earliest Christians. And now that faith became revolutionary over time, from the European peasants revolts to the English Civil War.
That is my opposition to the Machine, as such. But though I agree with the counter-arguments of the reviewer, I can't say I have any love for present capitalism either. There has to be a third choice other than religious orthodoxy and corporate plutocracy.
I also found myself agreeing with his major points. Kingsnorth is hard to pinpoint on basically any subject. Thus, many people can find something to disagree with him on, basically, any point he makes.
I’ve fallen out of fascination with Kingsnorth’s thesis for many of the reasons you’ve articulated here. Brilliantly done.
I think I was intuiting that Kingsnorth wasn’t quite on target when I wrote my piece on composting. Even IF his thesis is true, the rotting West will simply become the nutrient-dense soil of future growth.
Thanks, Nate. And that analogy holds. Nothing is wasted. Functional cultures are large-scale exercises in solving problems, sometimes badly, other times well. Over time, the good solutions tend to take precedence until evolving circumstances make them untenable. Then it’s back to the drawing board.
I featured Kingsnorth's "four P's" of People, Place, Prayer, and the Past in my own post this morning and applied that rubric to myself. One of my takeaways is that discontent is always louder than contentment. And I agree that Kingsnorth's personal journey is fascinating and authentic. But he is an outlier in his view of modern times.
Those four P’s (contrasted with his S’s) are a helpful frame for thinking about how to be and act. Part of my beef is that he undermines the point about the Past by mischaracterizing our actual history and the developments that have led to modern expressions of Western culture.
I think you’re right about contentment vs. discontent. It’s probably basic to our physiology/neurology at some level. Our brains are designed to keep us safe; threats to our safety always speak louder and occupy our minds greater than peace and calm. We’re hypervigilant for what’s *not* working and overlook what is working.
Joel, once again you have written a clear and very helpful review. I am a big fan of Paul Kingsnorth, but have not read this book. I was in the room when he delivered his lecture, “Against Christianity,” last year, which had a similar theme. I find his willingness to be outside the culture for the sake of fidelity to the gospel very inspirational, but there was something about his critique of civilization that I couldn’t agree with, but couldn’t identify. You have helped me!
I enjoyed your thoughtful review. There are several sections of the book that are eloquent and offer an astute diagnosis of what ails us in modern western “civilization.” The toxic consumerism and worship of money, for example, are pretty low hanging fruit. What troubles me most about the book are the underlying assumptions- the same false assumptions that I hear from so many conservatives - that there is some idyllic pastoral life we should return to or revitalize to regain our soul. Well I am old enough to know the stories of the generations before me, and I know my grandmother lived on a small farm in the middle of nowhere with an abusive, alcoholic husband, no birth control, no plumbing, no doctors, no education, no recourse. I don’t think he understands how privileged he sounds, homesteading in Ireland with a loving family. It’s a perfectly wonderful choice to go off grid (especially if you’re male perhaps) but evil is within humanity, not some outside machine. Wherever we go, it will find us. That said, I appreciate his points about how we have lost certain skills that it would be smart to gain, such as growing our own food.
Those impressions mirror my own. One of the challenges in writing a critique like this is missing those parts of the book that do resonate or have value. That’s on me.
Here's what the "Machine" commented on your review: appreciate the sharpness of your critique, but I think it underestimates what Kingsnorth is actually attempting. His use of myth and theology isn’t ornamental — it’s the very heart of his argument. To dismiss the “Machine” as rhetorical excess risks missing the point: he is naming technology as a spiritual structure, not a neutral tool.
You rightly ask about practicality, but Kingsnorth’s project is prophetic rather than programmatic. He is less concerned with offering a manual of resistance than with re‑framing our imagination so that resistance can even be conceived. In that sense, his mythic language is not nostalgia but diagnosis.
What feels missing in your review is engagement with the theological depth of the book. Kingsnorth’s Orthodox lens — incarnation versus disincarnation, possession versus presence — is central. Without grappling with that, the critique risks becoming another rationalist reduction, which ironically enacts the very Machine logic he warns against.
I don’t read him as offering despair, but as calling us back to symbolic seriousness. The question isn’t whether he provides a neat alternative, but whether we are willing to see technology as spiritually charged and therefore requiring repentance, ritual, and renewal.
One of the major problems I have with PK’s desired world is that it’s hard to see how it comes about without an awful lot of coercion. As the review notes, most can do what he recommends right now. Drop your phones and pick up a trowel. Walk away from the machine. So, what more does he want? Well … for all of us to be obliged to live that way? Haven’t read the book. Heard the lecture.
If put in terms of coercion I don’t think he would support that, but somehow couched in other, more palatable language you never know. He certainly expresses no allegiance to seeing the current system work well. I thinks it’s trash.
The difficulty is how else do you get there? Well, evangelization would be one. A return to an earlier era where Christians led by example and were more obviously at odds with the modern world. It’s true it’s all gotten a bit cozy and self-satisfied. Or was.
I haven’t read Kingsnorth’s book, but I’ve engaged with his essays and critiques over the years, and this is a genuinely thoughtful and charitable critique that wrestles seriously with his arguments. I appreciate how carefully you’ve worked through the genealogical connections between Christianity and modernity’s developments—that attention to continuity is important and often missing from reactionary critiques.
I should say upfront: I’m not particularly a Kingsnorth partisan. His writing can drift into a cultural reactionary register that I don’t share. I agree with many of his concerns about technology and what it does to human dwelling and meaning, but I don’t believe in conservative or religious paths to salvation from our predicament. So my response here isn’t really about defending his book (which again, I haven’t read) but about engaging with some of the core assertions you’ve made in your review.
From my perspective, your central argument is that cultures evolve rather than rupture, that secularism and capitalism emerged organically from Christian roots, and that these developments represent continuous adaptation rather than qualitative breaks. I think this mistakes genealogical connection for ontological continuity. Yes, modern capitalism traces back to monastic grain trading. But the real question is whether scale and systematization transform the nature of the thing itself. When monks traded wool, they remained embedded in practices connecting them to land, craft, seasonal rhythms. When data centers process billions of interactions to optimize engagement metrics, or when green fields get converted to logistics hubs surrounded by traffic and artifical light, we’re dealing with a fundamentally different mode of engagement with the world. These aren’t just bigger versions of old tools. They represent a different relationship to being itself.
The review’s conclusion celebrates liberal pluralism for protecting our freedom to opt out, homestead, build alternatives. But this misses the point about background conditions. The system doesn’t forbid resistance—it makes resistance require resources the system itself systematically erodes. When housing becomes unaffordable, meaningful work grows scarce, community bonds fray, and attention gets colonized by designed compulsion, formal freedom means remarkably little. The issue is whether the default paths and incentive structures make certain ways of living nearly impossible to sustain.
This points to the deeper disagreement. You argue the system is fundamentally sound, with problems to address through intentional participation. But the operating logic itself—optimization, efficiency, quantification, acceleration—seems to systematically corrode conditions for human meaning even as it delivers material comfort. Not because anyone designed it that way, but because that’s what this mode of engagement does to human practices and relationships. The dynamism you celebrate as self-correcting might be precisely what needs interrogating.
The gains you list—life expectancy, poverty reduction, literacy—are undeniably real! But they don’t answer a different kind of question: what kind of creatures are we becoming? What practices can we no longer imagine? What skills atrophy when we optimize relentlessly for convenience and efficiency? These questions aren’t about rejecting modernity wholesale or returning to some imagined past. They’re about whether we can recognize what we’re losing even as we’re gaining, whether we can maintain the conditions that make life meaningful even as we extend its duration.
Hannah Arendt argued that truth is simultaneously fragile and necessary, that we cannot abandon it without losing the common world itself. What worries me is that technological capitalism erodes precisely this shared ground, not through overt suppression but through fragmentation and optimization. When every interaction gets algorithmically sorted, when disagreement becomes performance for separate audiences, when we rarely encounter genuine difference—we lose the friction that makes meaningful argument possible. Your defense of liberal continuity and the concern about ontological transformation can only remain in productive tension if the conditions for that tension survive. The question becomes whether the liberal order can sustain the practices and attention spans and shared reality that make such conversations more than theater.
Thanks for this careful engagement with Kingsnorth’s work and for creating the space for this kind of exchange.
Thank you for this critique. You raise several valid issues—which I’ll be thinking on. Solving for one problem, we often create more. I don’t have an answer for these, but I am troubled by them and thinking about them somewhat regularly. E.g., the rapid adoption of AI—I’m busy trying to think through the tradeoffs and how we should think about those. Thanks again.
You suggest what I've been concerned about: "His writing can drift into a cultural reactionary register that I don’t share. I agree with many of his concerns about technology and what it does to human dwelling and meaning, but I don’t believe in conservative or religious paths to salvation from our predicament." I briefly picked up his book at the bookstore. In randomly reading a sentence in the middle of the book, he mentioned religion and I instantly got a suspicion about something reactionary.
Yet I was drawn to the idea of his critique. I've read anarcho-primitivists like Paul Shepard and Derrick Jensen. But they are challenging the status quo of the Machine from an entirely different perspective. They have no time for traditional religion which, particularly as Jensen sees it, has been part of the Machine for a very long time. The Church is simply another aspect of the Machine. That isn't to dismiss spirituality, as Jensen has a clear sense of something greater. Besides, in having been raised in liberal Christianity, I particularly have no interest in conservative religion of any sort.
On the other hand, I can't side with the reviewer here either. I'd argue Church and Capitalism are two sides of the same Machine. I come at it from the religious dissenter tradition, specifically of Anglo-American history: English Peasants Revolt, English Civil War, Roger Williams' Rhode Island, William Penn's Pennsylvania, American revolutionaries (Deists, Unitarians, Quakers, Pietists, Huguenots, etc), Quaker abolitionism, Christian-inspired slave revolts and Underground Railroad (Harriet Tubman), 19th century evangelical separation of church and state, MLK's civil rights movement and socialism, and on and on.
"people free to pursue value and meaning in small pockets of community and industry, a politics embracing family, home, and place" was how most people lived in most societies for most of history. Today it is a luxury lifestyle. For most of time it was the only lifestyle available. The difference between the ancient and modern forms is that in the ancient form, something like 50% of all children born did not live to reach adulthood. Maternal mortality was high, as was mortality from disease and injury, which is why, despite there being no effective birth control, populations grew very slowly for most of history. How many children should we be prepared to sacrifice to build the kind of world Kingsnorth wants?
The Machine, as Kingsnorth calls it, sustains the modern version of this bucolic lifestyle without the concomitant grief, agony, and death. Kingsnorth may rage against the teat that sustains him, but I don't think he'd much like the world in which it was gone.
I was trying to be a tad softer than your critique, but yes :) Think about the medicines we enjoy; it’s easy to dismiss science and the price system (as he does), but you’re out your antibiotics if you do.
Joel, I truly do appreciate the conversation you've opened up and admire youre interaction with Paul.
But good grief, man! When Kingsnorth, or any other sane traditionalist critiques Progress, we’re not critiquing penicillin. We’re critiquing the metaphysics that turned technique into a telos — the belief that the accumulation of tools equals the ascent of man. We’re attacking the story, not the scalpel.
But modern people reflexively respond at the level of gadgets because that’s the only level their cosmology allows. They think “progress” means “the stuff that kept my kid from dying of strep throat.” They refuse to distinguish between goodness of technique and the ideology that crowns technique as the new Logos.
It’s like criticizing gluttony and being told, “So you want everyone to starve?”
No, friend. I’m saying feasting isn’t life’s purpose.
There’s a deeper flaw in the antibiotic-defense: it assumes that spiritual order and material competence are mutually exclusive. Christendom built cathedrals with geometry finer than anything in a STEM lab. Byzantium kept more people alive, more fed, and more educated than any surrounding empire. There’s nothing inherently “modern” about human health.
Modernity didn’t invent healing; it industrialized it.
And this is the trick: qProgress wants credit for every lifesaving advance, but wants no responsibility for every soul-killing disorder it unleashed. High infant survival? That’s Progress!
Loneliness, deracination, family collapse, spiritual disintegration? Well, those aren’t related.
The honest accounting, the one Kingsnorth is trying to force, is that modernity is a metaphysical revolution, not a medical one. Its claim isn’t “We made antibiotics”; it’s “We redefined the human.”
The antibiotic-argument avoids that reckoning like it’s allergic to self-knowledge.
FUthernor, if you push these same people, they’ll admit they don’t actually want a society governed by medical progress. They want anesthesia for a spiritual wound.
The story we live inside matters. A civilization can keep babies alive and still forget what a human is for. A civilization can cure infections and still corrode meaning. A civilization can conquer disease and still die of despair.
Antibiotics are a gift. Progress is a god. Mixing the two is idolatry.
I don’t buy the “we redefined the human” angle. That said, I do not think all is well in Western culture and agree with you on several of the problems manifesting. I don’t think liberalism, secularism, or capitalism are the root cause of those, however. We do suffer from a spiritual crisis; that seems plain to me.
The reference to antibiotics is pertinent in that their development and production (and countless other pharmaceuticals) has depended on the same system that (by your account) is producing loneliness, deracination, family collapse, etc. No one is against penicillin—but some are against the system that helped produce it. Innovations in efficiency, new approaches, and so on contribute to all our benefit.
'How many children should we be prepared to sacrifice to build the kind of world Kingsnorth wants?'
Asks the man who hasn't read the book.
Goodness, if I had a penny for every time I've seen this mindless 'critique' trawled up over the last forty years I'd be Jeff Bezos by now.
For your information - and to save you the trouble of bothering to read it - the book is not an argument for 'returning to the past'. Such an argument would be a complete waste of time, given its impossibility. That said, the kind of one-note versions of that past that you chime in with here are just as simplistic and silly as the ones the reviewer accuses me of promoting.
Thanks for the review. I appreciate the engagement. I don't normally respond to reviews, but in this case I feel the need to, because you characterisations are to my mind both wrong and mistaken, and I am itching to stick my oar in ...
So please accept following the kickback against your review in the spirit in which you offered yours, and from one Orthodox Christian to another. Maybe we will get the chance to have that drink together one day.
Let's start with the notion that 'the Machine' is a product of Christianity. Here are a couple of quotes from your review:
'But contra Kingsnorth, the intent wasn’t to replace religion with Christless secularism; that may have been an effect—it’s at least worth debating—but it was not by design as he claims.'
'Chesterton was clearsighted about many things, but he overlooks his own tradition’s role in capitalism’s emergence and what that origin might tell us about the thing itself. Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason shows how, for instance, capitalism arose from European monastic communities where agricultural produce was cultivated, traded, and managed with the development of cash, credit, interest, and investment.'
The first thing to say is that my book makes the explicit argument that the current Western model did indeed emerge from Christianity, quoting Christopher Dawson, among others, to make the point. The first few chapters are taken up with arguing this case. At no point does the book claim that the Reformers and their descendants had an 'intent' to replace Christianity as such. In fact, it quotes Brad Gregory's 'The Unintended Reformation' at some length to argue the opposite.
These reading errors aside, the point you make about Chesterton and the monasteries is, to my mind, just wrong, and it is a wrongness that underpins your whole review. A rather obvious undercurrent throughout is your defence of capitalism, which you seem to bizarrely regard as a system that Christians can get behind. Given the fact that the Gospels are a long blast against wealth, accumulation, greed and inequality this is quite a stretch, though not an uncommon one, I have found, amongst American Christians.
The notion that the monasteries gave birth to this system however, is simply wrong. As the book demonstrates at some length - as did Chesterton - capitalism did not 'evolve' to 'meet needs' but was an enforced system created by land enclosure - or land theft, if we want to be blunt about it. There is a lot of talk in your review about the misery of pre-modern cultures, and there was plenty of it, but you say nothing about the misery of the millions wept into factories during the industrial revolution, or of those currently labouring in China and Africa to dig up the coltan for our phones or sew cheap sweatshirts in endless sweatshops surrounded by dead rivers and dead skies.
As for the monasteries - well, usury was a sin in Christian Europe, and for the simple reason that is was fundamentally unChristian. Only after that notion died was capitalism able to emerge. You say:
'The question is whether modern capitalism represents a continuous development or a qualitative break. I lean toward the former.'
The book leans towards the latter and provides plenty of argument. I might be wrong, but the case is not a flimsy one.
Incidentally, you include an aside about Cuba without mentioning that the book is as harsh on state communism as it is on monopoly capitalism, both of which are manifestations, to my mind, of the same Machine mentality.
Later, you ask:
'How could, after all, such a malign machine produce the gains outlined above? It didn’t. Because there is no malign machine. Kingsnorth might be describing something real: emergent structures that, whatever their origins, now constrain human freedom and flourishing in ways that feel systematic and mechanical. But that’s not the whole story—nowhere near it.'
Well, there certainly is a malign Machine! In my view. But even regardless of that, the book does not deny the gains created by the process. In fact, I repeatedly stated that the gains were real. I also agree with your point that most people like the Machine and its fruits. I am indeed in a minority. Just like the apostles ;-) But then, that's why I wrote the book. If you want a book about the wonders of Western liberal capitalism, they're ten a penny. That's the sea we swim in. This book swims against the tide. I happen to believe that the human soul, and the Earth itself, ultimately does too.
'Corporations like Amazon and Google—not to mention governments—don’t set the parameters of our culture. Culture is a bottom-up phenomenon, an emergent system like language and markets.'
In an ideal world, yes. That would be the 'Four Ps' outlined in the book: people, place, prayer and the past. But it's very naive to imagine that a world dominated by massive corporations and overweening states leaves any air at all for this to happen. When was the last time you wrote a folk song? The Machine commodifies culture and sells it back to us, and this is the enclosure process continuing. My first two books were travelogues exploring this process at work all over the world.
As you correctly say, cultures are dynamic, and ever-changing. This is not at issue. What is at issue is, broadly, 'who we are' in the modern West. The overall impression I get from this review is, I am afraid to say, one of a familiar kind of complacency. 'Cultures evolve, lots of good things happen, and some bad ones too, but we deal with them, and we live in the best system there could be. Don't you like antibiotics and dentists? then stop complaining, whiners!'
Overall, it seems a curious review for an Orthodox Christian to have written. You sing the praises of liberalism, capitalism, secularism and the whole gamut of the modern Western, and especially American project. But it could be argued that these are all products not of 'Christianity', as you suggest, but of a of a mistaken application of it. None of them arose in Orthodox lands, after all. Arguably - though it is not this book's place to argue it - the highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West is a product of the separation that began with the Great Schism. Other Orthodox writers have in fact made this case. The case being made here seems more like that of a liberal protestant. Sorry to be rude ;-)
That becomes even more so when you argue that:
'As products of Christianity as lived within Christian Europe, secularism, liberalism, individualism, capitalism, and the rest, are not foisted upon us from without or by a cabal of malicious elites. These developments are us; we created them in response to real needs and genuine problems. And their best, most fruitful expressions will come not from rejecting them and wandering off, but from better participating in them.'
Hm. Tell that to the Desert Father! Or to the monastics on Mount Athos. Tell that to two millennia's worth of hermits, ascetics, desert saints and monastics who all 'wandered off' to seek God. Ironically, the destruction of precisely this tradition of holy withdrawal during the Reformation is what precipitated us into the Machine, with its values of commerce and self-love. And an Orthodox Christian does not see the irony of trying to demonise 'withdrawal'?!
Finally, I'll just end, as you do, with this:
'The attractive picture he paints at the end of his book—people free to pursue value and meaning in small pockets of community and industry, a politics embracing family, home, and place—is best practiced, perhaps only practiced, within a liberal order that leaves people free to experiment and try new ways of living.'
Again, the complacency is curious. Not only does this quote ignore the fact that James C Scott - who your review specifically mentions - offers examples in my book from across southeast Asia of communities doing just this, but it takes a rather smugly Western-centric view of the world, of the kind I would normally expect to see in the Economist. The notion that communities with deep culture, human freedom and links to the Four Ps can only exist under the umbrella of Western liberalism is so astonishing that I had to read it twice.
In fact, not only is Western 'liberalism' currently creating nations in which people are regularly arrested for expressing their opinions, and can barely afford to live in any way other than as cogs in the digital machine, but true human freedom is increasingly to be found only outside the Machine - which often means outside the West. The notion that the capitalist liberalism bequeathed by 'our Christian past' is all that allows us to homestead, 'practice artisanal crafts' and live in a working community is so bizarre that I wondered if the author had travelled much outside the West - or noticed what is actually going on inside it at present.
In the end, I suppose, we are simply at loggerheads here. I am 'Against the Machine', you deny that the Machine exists. Fundamentally, while we can argue about history, the real issue is theology. This book sets itself up as a 'spiritual manual for the digital age.' Whether it is that I can't say, but the argument is fundamentally a spiritual one. The Machine is, at root, the spirit of the serpent in the garden. We are trying to become 'as gods', and our technologies are the tools we use to do so. Absent from your review was any mention of the chapters in the book which address the move towards post-humanity which this process engenders. Soon enough we will be having to decide not just whether we like capitalism but whether we want to remain human at all - and what that even means.
Paul, thank you for your gracious reply. You could easily have taken my review as an attack and didn’t. And before I begin, I do hope we might someday get the chance for a drink. I’d also count it a privilege to help work your land with you if the occasion ever comes. A friend vacationed in Ireland solo years back, showed up at a pub, met a pig farmer, and spent a week helping with his pigs. He said it was a blast. I don’t enjoy farm work—I’ve had plenty of experience—but I do enjoy working on pretty much anything when the company’s good.
You say, quite reasonably, that we may be at loggerheads. You may be right. But let me make some concessions up front.
I was wrong to say people pursuing value and meaning in small communities is “perhaps *only* practiced within a liberal order.” That’s false. It’s been done outside liberal orders, is being done outside them, and will be done outside them. Nothing is forever, and humans will outlive liberalism.
I might even have gone too far saying they’re best practiced within a liberal order, though given our context of actually living in such an order, that point still seems valid. The sorts of moral economies and social arrangements you advocate are largely permissible within a liberal order on its own terms: individual conscience, free association, pluralism, and so on.
You object that Western liberalism is “currently creating nations in which people are regularly arrested for expressing their opinions.” I’ve seen the news coverage and am appalled. You’re right to scare-quote “liberal” in your response—that repression is fundamentally illiberal, anti-liberal. That’s why liberals like your near-countrymen Brendan O’Neill and Andrew Doyle push back so vigorously. State repression violates liberal values rather than expressing them.
This is what I mean by saying answers to abuses live within the tradition itself. But you got me on withdrawal: “An Orthodox Christian does not see the irony of trying to demonise ‘withdrawal’?!” Touché! An embarrassing oversight on my part. But then, I wasn’t referring to monastic retreat but to those of us who must live in the world, loving our neighbors and caring for our families. I think this is best accomplished using the freedoms a liberal order provides.
As for the Great Schism and Western Christianity’s trajectory producing “the highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West”—that’s a conversation worth having, one I alluded to in a footnote in the review. What’s more, we might even be on the same page—the East and West diverged long before the Schism, maybe as far back as Augustine—even if we come to different conclusions.
That said, we are products of the West and its formative influence on our assumptions and affections. You may reject that inheritance (or at least its modern manifestations). I don’t know how to, nor do I see the need or gain in doing so, though I accept the need to qualify and reform it.
Socially, politically, economically, I’m a classical liberal—maybe better to say libertarian. I was raised in Northern California in a household that affirmed those values. They’re practically instinctual to me. As an aside, your response is the first time I’ve been dubbed a liberal Protestant. I smiled at the jab, which you seemed to have intended. You may regard my position as complacency—barbarianism far too cooked to be of any use. There we disagree.
That disagreement comes to the fore with capitalism itself. You’re right to call me out on enclosure—it was land theft, and I shouldn’t have skated past it. But your description doesn’t match what else I know to be true about capitalism. Your claim that capitalism “was an enforced system created by land enclosure” that subsequently metastasized across the globe strikes me as a highly idiosyncratic understanding of the history.
Capitalism is a loaded word, but we’re stuck with it. Here’s what I mean when we I use it: the voluntary widespread use of cash, credit, interest, investment, and profit-minded coordination and production. I think it’s a matter of record that these tools arose from European monastic communities centuries before English enclosure. Cistercian monasteries ran rationalized agricultural enterprises with wage labor in the twelfth century, their surpluses flowing into regional markets and trade fairs. Those fairs became places where merchants formalized bills of exchange and credit. Monasteries even hosted some fairs and collected rents, while their agents made deals with tradesmen, merchants, and bankers.
From there the tools spread as their usefulness answered bottom-up needs. Italian merchants developed sophisticated banking in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Dutch built financial networks on urban trade. None of this required English fields to be seized and fenced. The tools found willing users because they solved real problems: How do you move value across distance? Share risk on a voyage? Scale production without losing coordination?
As these solutions spread throughout Europe, they developed along multiple trajectories having nothing to do with English enclosure: the physiocrats arguing against mercantilism, Smith’s division of labor, Ricardo’s comparative advantage, the French philosophes pushing laissez-faire. Some developments were entangled with exploitation—but certainly not all, not even most.
So when you trace modern capitalism back to English enclosure, claim that scheme was globalized, and that it now represents the spirit of capitalism across the board, you’re collapsing a sprawling, centuries-long process into one national episode and ascribing blanket malice to its participants. This strikes me as both false and counterproductive. Perhaps the enclosure example colors the entire enterprise for you, but I fail to see why capitalism writ large should bear the sins of English plunder—or even any other examples of malfeasance. If we’re going to have a serious moral reckoning, we need to distinguish between forms that rest on theft and those that don’t.
Continued…
My response, continued:
You mention “usury was a sin in Christian Europe”—true, but even then loaning money at interest wasn’t identical with usury and was permissible if not exploitative. That seems an essential difference between our views. You see capitalism as fundamentally exploitative. I do not. To address another point you raise, neither it seems do the Gospels. Exploitation exists and Christ routinely denounces it, as should we. But consider the parable of the workers; it’s assumed a mutually agreed wage isn’t exploitative, even if unequal. The parable of the talents assumes marginal benefit in putting money out to lenders. Christ wasn’t praising capitalism; it didn’t exist. But he seems to acknowledge two antecedents—contracts and credit—as valid.
The question is how we distinguish legitimate from illegitimate wealth creation. Some accumulation results from genuine value creation that lifts living standards—hence my pointing to the work of Joel Mokyr, Deidre McCloskey, Johan Norberg, and HumanProgress.org. Other accumulation results from rent-seeking, monopoly power, and exploitation. But liberalism, particularly its free-market expressions, actually opposes all of that.
You bring up abuses in China and Africa. My company formerly contracted printing in China’s Shenzhen district—the most economically liberalized area in the country, essentially an experiment in allowing workers to negotiate contracts and working conditions. When our US partner exited, we did too; I had no way to oversee production. I switched to South Korea where I could better ensure ethical arrangements.
The example shows that the complexities stem not from biases toward abuse inherent to capitalism but from global supply chains enmeshed with illiberal states who have no qualms about allowing the abuse of their citizens. Meanwhile, the call to reform these conditions comes in large measure from consciences shaped by liberalism’s Christian heritage. These tensions have led to material improvements in worker conditions—for instance, the right of free association and contracts allowing labor unions to press their case.
American slavery provides another example. I now live in Tennessee. Three of my five children are black. Our family lives on a corner of the former Carnton Plantation. That is to say, they now own property on land where they would have once been property. We fought a civil war to create such an outcome; I count this a victory for Christian morality as manifest in American liberalism. The same with expanded civil rights in the twentieth century. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t reject the liberal order; he used it to reform a society not living up to its own values.
This validates my claim that, owing to its Christian past, liberalism contains the tools of its own self-correction.
That said, if the Western package emerged from Christianity, that doesn’t baptize all results. Heresies come from within too. There’s a question of faithfulness and congruence. Liberal values like freedom of conscience, equality, individualism, and pluralism are morally congruent with Christianity. Communism also emerged from the same roots but is fundamentally exploitative. If there’s a Machine, communism would exemplify it—a coercive system with no avenues for escape. Same with the overweening administrative state. But these systems are fundamentally illiberal, and we can join in wishing their ruin, though perhaps while standing on different ground in doing so.
This is why I reject your characterization of the Machine. A machine is designed for certain ends. Western liberal culture wasn’t designed or imposed by malicious actors; it evolved, and participants shaped its evolution to suit their needs and manage tradeoffs (some of which I accept as injurious; it’s a fallen world). But it’s the currents and crosscurrents of the tradition which allows us to manage those tradeoffs and work for better ends. Regarding Amazon and Google, for instance, we retain meaningful agency and can choose how we interact with those companies, even if our options are constrained by structural factors.
This is also why I don’t believe I’ve misread your opening chapters. I interpret you saying: once there was a Christian story that enlivened us and held us together; subsequent developments ruptured that story, sending us off in trajectories that betrayed our Christian heritage; those trajectories coalesced into oppressive forces we can label the Machine, and the deadness of our present culture reflects the truth of this claim. Based on a different reading of our history, I see that as false. The present is more continuous with the past than you represent, and the Christian impulse—even when secularized—remains a vital force providing conditions for human flourishing within the liberal order that arose from that same impulse.
Liberalism takes as given it’s not the best system. The best system still waits to be discovered through its participants innovating on their heritage. If the real issue is theological, as you say, Christians in the West can use available resources of our heritage in that project. Liberalism can—and does—serve those ends, permitting experiments in applying faith to questions of the day.
Perhaps we’re talking past each other, owing to fundamental disagreements on our culture’s virtues and vices and understanding of how persistent Christianity’s influence is. We’re also talking past each other in another regard, as you point out: Your emphasis in the book is spiritual, my critique more material. It’s muddier than that—I’m not uninterested in the spiritual question—but we have our emphases.
I avoided commenting on your argument concerning posthumanism because I don’t feel equipped to assess the case. I’m considerably more optimistic about technological development than you are. I suspect while many will go off in concerning directions, many others will opt out of the worst developments and take stands for human flourishing. Perhaps I’m naive. Time will tell.
Since I reject your model of the Machine, I don’t see it as “the spirit of the serpent in the garden.” But I don’t reject that spirit’s existence; it’s lurking in whatever system humans construct. We find ourselves in a Western liberal order, and the serpent is present within it. But, as I see it, faithful Christians can use resources of their faith, including those that find expression in the modern liberal order, to oppose the serpent and elevate what’s good and humane in the world.
Thanks for the long replies. I’ve mostly said my piece so I won’t respond at equal length. Maybe just a few more points.
Firstly, your very long promotion/defence of liberal Western capitalism seems rather quaint to this 53 year old. It takes me back to Tony Blair or Bill Clinton speeches in the 1990s, or perhaps an op-ed by Thomas Friedman or Francis Fukuyama from the same era. Have you noticed what’s been happening in the West since then? I can’t believe that anyone can take this naive and rosy view of the status quo in 2025, and its direction of travel.
Secondly, my book is not actually about ‘liberal capitalism’ and whether or not it delivers the goods. It is doing something quite different from rehashing that stale old debate. If you don’t agree, then you don’t agree - but you seem to be having a parallel discussion which does not really engage with the substance of my argument.
Thirdly, as ‘Professor Dig’ rightly points out below, the notion that any Christian could see the current system as anything other than soaked in sin is remarkable. I suggested in my Erasmus Lecture that our society monetises and glorifies the Seven Deadly Sins, and that seems obviously true. I continue to be gobsmacked when I hear Christians trying to marry up the gospels with consumer capitalism - or indeed when I hear Orthodox Christians defending capitalism on the basis of its relationship with Western monasteries! Hint: Orthodox monasteries did not produce this system. Do we wonder why …?
Anyway, I hope a few readers here might get hold of the book and see for themselves which of us (if either)they agree with. Thanks for hosting this discussion in such an open way. Serious, respectful disagreement is vanishingly rare on the Internet.
Paul, thank you for your response. You’ve got me beat by a few years; I turn 50 next month. But I take your point. I don’t think we’ll make much progress here, so I’m happy to let it sit. I would welcome renewing the conversation over drinks if the opportunity arises. I hope it someday will.
In the historical sense, the present is continuous to the past in the same way as a person's present is continuous to his past. But Joel, that person, if he veers off the narrow road and 'wanders' off in sin is no longer spiritually--in the state of his soul--the same person. This is exactly the same in societies, cultures and nations.
Even if we accept your reading of the historical development of capitalism, the soul of capitalism is not at all in the same state as it once was. Our system is sinful. It no longer benefits the humans--us--through and upon whom it was and is built. That is precisely what the Machine is. In its various forms, it has subsumed our humanity, our dignity as God's people.
Someone so bright as yourself, dont you see this? Ours is a vast and sinful system, regardless of its roots or original intentions.
Just as a man must repent and turnaround--metanoia--so must we as a people.
I take your point but just don’t see it that way. I don’t see our system as inherently sinful. I don’t, for instance, see it as necessarily exploitative; in most instances, it’s not. In fact, it has tended to—admittedly, only one metric—improve living standards for nearly all involved.
Universal improvement of living standards is a byproduct of the value people have to the system - it's the bribe people get for participation, not the inherent product.
I don't know what the inherent product is, but it's probably something that is fed back into the system rather than clearly being an output. That would also explain why the system is so good at sustaining itself.
Fair point. I think that some systems reward re-investing in the system better than others.
Thank you for responding here Paul. When I came across this review, I truly felt that the author and I had read different books. I find Against the Machine to be deeply encouraging because my husband and I have made many sacrifices over the years in order to scoot back from the Machine and raise our kids in a rural American town near an Orthodox monastery. Perhaps we have even managed to become cooked barbarians.
Our community is threatened by a solar farm that will consume agricultural land and create increased fire danger in our dry region. Have we benefited from modern “progress”? Certainly. But the threat of the Machine is bracingly real.
Thank you for responding to this review of your book Paul. Most of the comments - as with the review itself - have been very one-sided and imo display very little understanding of your critique and of capitalism and the world we live in. And are very disheartening for their very *complacent* lack of understanding on many levels - religious and spiritual included.
As I was reading this review, and your response, not for the first time I was struck by the thought that this debate - and your attempt to critique the 'machine' and develop a prophetic response to the spiritual and human crisis fast engulfing us, imo might benefit from engagement with the ideas of the radical philosopher Giorgio Agamben (my apologies if you have already and I've missed it).
In particular I'm thinking of two particular strands of Agamben's work, which are spread across a number of different books and essays. The first is his examination of the success and failure of the early Franciscan Order - which I think is very germane to your prophetic project. The second is his philosophical analysis of capitalism - which he describes as a type of religion - and, contrary to this reviewer's conception of the continuity of capitalism (and liberalism) with Christianity, for Agamben (following in the footsteps of Walter Benjamin) it's *not* a secularised Christian outgrowth but sonething more sui generis and much darker.
But these two subjects are only a fraction of Agamben's fascinating political theology.
Another scholar coming from a very different academic discipline, with a different though I would say complementary or intersecting perspective on the state of religion, especially Christianity, in the contemporary world is the social anthropologist and social historian of the long dureè Emmanuel Todd. An interesting and prescient prophet of the 'decline of the West'.
I hope these suggestions might be helpful or at least interesting to some people on this thread.
Thanks for weighing in. See my response to Paul above.
I've got to buy your book now. This was such a great response! I appreciate your rebuttal. I also appreciate Joel's questions.
Lots to think about here. You wrote that Capitalism did not appear in Orthodox lands, which is true, but of course Communism certainly seemed to gain a foothold there (for a while at least). Do you think there's something in Orthodox thought that might tend towards a collective rather than competitive system, that may have caused Orthodox lands to tend towards communism more than Protestant regions?
Communism was imposed by non-Orthodox upon Orthodox lands, Bolshevism being financed by Jewish and anti-Orthodox, anti-Traditionalists non-Jews from London, New York, and Germany. The Western Liberal Order was trying for centuries to dismantle Orthodox lands and impose their 'freedom' upon it, in exactly the same way the Judeo-American Empire now imposes homosex and LBGTQ rights, indebtedness to their banking system, and non-Christian values along with its 'freedom and liberty.' Same gameplan for the past 200 or more years, and the propaganda and foreign meddling (color 'revolutions') finally toppled the Russian Orthodox Monarchy, leaving the rest of Orthodox Eastern Europe very easy to pick apart and/or invade later on. Communism was imposed from outside, it did not grow organically from the soil of Orthodox nations.
I have read you on this and am sympathetic to your thesis. In fact I once interpreted a major canonical work of the West, Vergil's *Aeneid*, as a kind of ahead-of-its-time exposé of the Machine: see "Arma Virumque," Classical Journal 108.1 (October-November 2012) pp. 37-63. I certainly don't deny that the Machine exists. On the contrary. Jacques Ellul has been a decades-long influence on my thinking since I encountered *La Technique ou l'Enjeu du siècle* in my twenties. Where you lose me, not to belabor this, is in your lifelong search for some established belief system that would satisfy whatever itch it is that you have needed to scratch. I myself cannot imagine replacing the Machine with the Church. I suppose I'm a pagan. Give me a forest and a river. But let's put that aside, because to each his own. Then there's this: I get the feeling from your writing that some of the impetus to stand "Against the Machine" is aesthetic in quality. "Highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative and fundamentally anti-Christian character of the modern West." I read "grasping" and I get a vision of a person whose facial expression is contorted, who is wild-eyed, who is in a word ugly. Even the distaste in the (jokey) reference to a "liberal protestant" (lower-case intentional?) suggests to me a sort of squeamishness and fastidiousness that the average person simply can't afford to indulge.
I’m not sure who ‘the average person’ is. Are you one? Perhaps then you can tell me why I don’t count as ‘average’, and why I can ‘afford to indulge’ things that you can’t. Perhaps as a pure and spoilt aesthete I simply can’t understand your daily proletarian struggle on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Please do clarify.
By your own account, you're not average if you're not highly individualistic, grasping, accumulative, and fundamentally anti-Christian, like the rest of us who constitute the modern West. Congratulations?
That's not my account. That's your caricature, and as such it is not my problem.
I'm glad to hear that it's not your account. I welcome you to the tribe of average people!
Not that it's your problem, but I'm left with considerable confusion. Your book and its argument are intended to be indictments of The Machine. What is the alternative to the Machine? Well, here's what Jacques Ellul thought:
"We also believe that hope is in no way an escape into the future, but that it is an active force, now, and that love leads us to a deeper understanding of reality. Love is probably the most realistic possible understanding of our existence. It is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is reality itself."
Hope and love are the alternative. In the spirit of love, someone in your place might seek to engage with an open heart, graciously, and gratefully with people who take your ideas seriously. I don't feel the love, Paul.
I mentioned Virgil and his own indictment of The Machine. His epic ends, infamously, with his enraged hero rejecting pity and killing his defenseless foe. The Machine, it turns out, cannot tolerate dissent and deviance. That's worth pondering, don't you think?
Unfortunately, Kingsnorth took your comment as an attack, rather than an invitation to engagement. I've been trying to decide whether or not to read his book. That he wishes to replace the Machine with the Church suggests that there might be a reactionary impulse being expressed. Or at least that is what worries me. And I hope I'm wrong.
If like you I'm drawn to Nature more than Church, I'm not sure I'm exactly a pagan. I must admit I felt out of sync with both Kingsnorth and the reviewer, as both are Orthodox Christians. I was raised in a kind of Christianity that is liberal, progressive, and egalitarian; love idealizing, positive thinking, and new agey. I have no love for dominance hierarchy, religious or economic.
In that light, I'm more than fine with critiquing capitalism along with Kingsnorth, but I have no interest in turning away from liberalism and leftism toward what I fear might be some kind of comforting reactionary nostalgia. Maybe I have Kingsnorth all wrong. That's why I'm here trying to sense what this book is about and if it's worth my time.
Thank you for your comment. I have dipped into Kingsnorth’s writings on the Machine in the past. I got there via Wendell Berry and some of the writing at The Front Porch Republic, that is, via an instinctive sympathy for Berry’s blend of spirituality, localism, conservation. I think Kingsnorth, though, quite unlike Berry, is at his core a polemicist. He is made angry by what he sees in the contemporary West. His writing is infused with that anger. In a trivial way, that makes him a prickly figure to debate. More substantially, it may siphon nuance from his otherwise valid, in some ways, critique of our culture.
That helps contextualize Kingsnorth and your interaction with him. I'm probably similar to you in many ways. I too have been drawn to Wendell Berry and The Front Porch Republic. I have much love for that "blend of spirituality, localism, conservation."
But Kingsnorth's irritability or even anger, as expressed in his response to you, indicated my concerns may have been valid. I have nothing against polemics, per se. It's just maybe Kingsnorth's style is not my preference. It doesn't seem inspiring.
A couple of thoughts upon having read the book and now the review. The review uses the word culture in a very loose way, as though it merely refers to whatever way a group of people happen to be thinking now. In Latin the word originally meant "to till" and has always had a sense of place, being tied to the land, permanence, continuity and tradition.
I suspect that is why Paul describes the Modern, future-oriented, time obsessed, progressive succession of fashions as a "Machine". It is something constructed rationally, entirely artificial, thus scalable and transferable.
This is only tangentially related to your comment, I suppose. But here is one of my favorite quotes:
“As long as we keep ourselves busy tilling the earth, there is no fear of any of us becoming wild.”
~ Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer, 1782
Interestingly, the issue of enclosure was discussed by Kingsnorth and the reviewer. I used that quote at the beginning of a piece I wrote on how the enclosure of land related to the enclosure of mind.
That has everything to do with 'culture', as you define it here. And it's definitely about the Machine.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2021/04/11/enclosure-of-the-mind/
I made this comment on Mr. Miller’s main thread, but I should repeat it here, if the author himself would like comment: It’s not clear that we can maintain a civilization with 8 billion people using pre-industrial production methods. Humans didn’t hit 1 billion until after Industrial Revolution was underway, and we only crossed the 2 billion threshold 100 years ago. The world population might gradually decrease over the next few centuries, but destroying "the Machine" within the memory of a generation or two will only happen with a mass death event. Which 7 billion people have to die so that we can defeat “the Machine?” I’m assuming that Mr. Kingsnorth doesn’t believe he and his family will be among the unhappy 88%?
There’s a second a thing that bothers me: this discourse assumes that Christianity is the only or the best framework for dealing with the dislocations of modernity. But what about those of us who feel no particular connection or affection for Christianity? I’ve lived my whole life in the shadow of Christianity as the default religion and have never once felt that it represented my feelings about the world or my spiritual experiences. The problem is that, while I’m happy cede the worth of certain Christian values, this is not sufficient to embrace Christianity as a holistic cultural package. Love, charity, forgiveness, etc. are human virtues that can be accepted without the metaphysical baggage that comes with the religion; a Christian apology must provide a justification for the whole bundle as something other than a historical artifact. Fulminating against "the Machine” is not that.
Well, firstly: nobody is arguing that we should ‘destroy the Machine’, least of all me. Please read my book before offering up these standard-issue talking points, because they have nothing to do with me.
Similarly, I do not argue that Christianity is the only or best way to deal with the Machine. I just happen to be talking to another Christian here, who raised these points. Christianity is not a political philosophy, it is a way home, and as such is very personal. I’ve not interest in trying to force it onto you.
There is also the very real threat implied in our debt-based banking systems that much of our current development and abundance has been 'stolen' from the future by using debt-based instruments to supercharge growth.
If we had been progressing at a normal pace, we may not have had nearly the same development stage as we do now, and likely a much lower population. Once that system collapses, we could also face a very real correction event back to normal.
I’m with you on this concern. The US national debt (for just one example) is atmospheric at this point, and no one in political leadership seems even remotely interested addressing it.
Kingsnorth is a Christian but I did not feel like the message was "we must all become Christians to deal with the dislocations of modernity." The "four P's" that he presents as the solution to reclaiming our humanity in the machine age are people, place, prayer, and the past. He does not say we all need to convert to Christianity or live by pre-industrial production methods. I really recommend reading the full book and wrestling with what's actually in it.
A second point would be that I concede yes, certainly one does attain the highest of highs outside civilisation. There is no air conditioning produced by a tribe neither does one get an opera in a village.
That said, you don't get a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several thermonuclear warheads either. Only civilisation does that.
I haven’t read this book but I find your diagnosis of what actually makes culture poignant. It reminds me of people complaining about traffic. You’re not IN traffic. You ARE traffic.
Exactly right. Even if we’re reacting to our roots instead of embracing them, they’re still formative—shaping even how we attempt to reject them.
Joel, you clearly wrestled with this one, and you offer a gracious but incisive critique. I appreciate how you examined culture and the system that has grown out of our Christian roots. I also reject the idea that we should "burn it all down", and resonate especially with your conclusion that we are indeed free "to push back against what we find dehumanizing". In our recent talk at the Doomer Optimism gathering, we made a similar point, that "our guiding principle should not be that we are against things", but rather to focus on the most defining things of our humanness. Thanks for your writing!
Ruth, I’m exceedingly glad that came through to you. When I dug into the book, I realized I had to write a review and I knew it would have to be critical. It’s not an approach I enjoy, and frankly I recognize I’m accountable to Kingsnorth for how I interact with his claims. I may have done him wrong, but not for great effort in the opposite direction.
Please say more about this 'Doomer Optimism Gathering' you speak of!
You can read more about it here :) https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/a-visual-human-creed-how-to-unmachine
Good tone and insight. However, what your critique perhaps fails to acknowledge is that there are actual evil forces, spiritual forces trying to subdue us to lives of idleness and distraction, to make us as empty and impotent as possible. Kingsnorth's references to Brave New World are chosen precisely to warn us that all these great "advancements" that you prefer to defend have incredibly powerful role in that seduction, and indeed some of them are foisted upon us. There was no bottom-up demand for AI powered search engines or ChatGPT, but now they are fully integrated into the processes by which we used to produce creative thought. There was no bottom-up demand for the smartphone app, but now our children in some cases are literally required to have access to such things in order to submit school assignments, participate in competitive sports, engage in student leadership, etc. It starts as convenience and ends as a necessary condition. Do you not see these things? For all your laudable caution about being too pessimistic, I am more worried that the average citizen is blithely yielding to the current without evaluating any of the consequences. "It's not so bad; it'll be fine. Enjoy the many fruits of civilization!" or "Pick up your cross"/"He who tries to save his life will lose it." What's the better messaging here? Highly recommend William Ophuls' Immoderate Greatness if anyone needs a short cure for their stubborn optimism. ;-)
That’s all possibly so, though I don’t see it that way. I am happy to admit—and wholeheartedly believe—that there are evil forces in the world. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t renounce the devil upon our baptisms. But I don’t see any fundamental, nefarious connection between demonic activity and, say, large language models.
The same holds on the bottom-up question. In fact, I disagree on the AI observation in particular. We don’t have to have a near-universal request for a solution or product to see bottom-activity in producing it. The roots of AI go back to a longstanding need to organize data; it comes out of actual people with actual needs—to find and process information, to transform it from one state to another, and so on. That’s what the history of the innovation shows. In terms of its development, it was definitely bottom up.
It’s widespread deployment is coming because (at the moment) it’s a relatively inexpensive way for product makers to improve their feature set—in some cases because customers want it, in others because they’re just guessing it’ll solve problems the consumers haven’t voiced. If they’re wrong, companies will abandon the service; if they’re right, they’ll keep it rolling.
That said, there are less-than-humane uses of AI and people may favor those: deskilling their writing abilities, losing their critical thinking, etc. I can see the arguments for those critiques and remain sensitive to them—even though I don’t know exactly how to respond. I may be stubbornly optimistic. Thanks for pushing back.
I loathe AI but the demand is bottom up. It was created because the demand is there and they know it. And we’ve been conditioned for it - templates, guides, formulae, conformity - so much of ‘creative life and work’ in the past decade or two might be fairly described as ‘prep-AI’.
It would be very interesting to see a statistician quantify the actual demand for AI - how many people are embracing it, and where they sit in the org chart or income bracket.
In my anecdotal experience, for each person excited about AI, there are 2 or 3 people exasperated by how it’s being forced on them, either by their boss or tech oligopolies cramming it into products that worked just fine without it.
And that’s before we get into AI’s impact on energy costs, disruption of education, entertainment, and other sectors, and the fact that it’s increasingly likely to be the source of the next 401(k)-obliterating market bubble.
I find at work almost everyone is keen on AI. A few voices of dissent.
Ultimately, the success or failure of the individual use cases in the marketplace is going to be what determines the issue.
Sure but isn’t Paul’s definition of the Machine anything building taller than three stories, any business owned by more than two or three people, any marketplace fancier than the morning fruit market? I mean, maybe I am wrong but he seems to argue that it’s not just smartphones that are the problem but everything that led to them since about 500 years ago. No thanks.
Makes me think of William Cronon's distinction between a wilderness ethic and a garden ethic. The former is suitable for high-minded essays on the human predicament. But for actually living in this world, the latter is where it's at. And we do have to live in the real world.
Great analogy
I have purchased, but have not yet read, Paul Kingsnorth’s book. However, I did avidly read the essays on which the book was based while he was publishing them. So I can’t speak directly to your critique, Joel. But I do have some reflections.
I wholeheartedly agree with your closing words: “By all means, push back against what you find dehumanizing. Build alternatives. Create communities that embody superior values. Retrieve and revive ways of life that modernity has marginalized.”
This is exactly what Ruth Gaskovski and I, among others, have been encouraging. Where does Kingsnorth fit in? I would suggest he’s the original inspiration for the conversation.
In my own reading of his original essays, Kingsnorth’s contribution was not in any strict sense a scholarly or highly analytic contribution. While he wasn’t the first to write about the dark side of technology and civilization, he was writing (on the Substack platform starting in the early 2020s) at a time of accelerating technological and social change, which continues apace even now—to say nothing of the pandemic at the time, and governments that were using technology, like digital IDs, to control movements and access to services. It was an uncertain, unsettling time. And I remember discovering those essays with a sense of revelation. Kingsnorth was saying things that nobody else was saying, or at least not with such depth and literary power.
I began my own Substack after being inspired by his writing, and even wrote my novel of the future, Exogenesis, partly through the same inspiration. So I am grateful for Kingsnorth’s work. I think at the time he was writing his essays, he was meeting the historical moment. It woke a lot of people up and got them thinking much harder about the dark side of technology; not just the isolated problems, like smart phones making us more distracted, or social media making people anxious, but sweeping civilizational considerations. Hence the metaphor of “the Machine”.
For me, much of what made the essays compelling at the time is that they felt like a conversation between my concerns and the writer’s insights, and it gave me a sense that I was not alone in my worries for the future.
Fast forward to his current book, and I think without seeing it in that earlier context, it can come across as too dark and imbalanced; yes, one can get the feeling he underappreciates the genuine benefits that have come out of technology or the West, or that his solutions are underspecified or even contradict his original critique (e.g., decrying a liberal order that gave us the right to decry the liberal order).
I don’t know whether Kingsnorth himself sees his work as scholarly, in the sense of a precise and measured analysis of a problem. But to me, it isn’t. It is more like an essay-style poem, capturing epic themes in visionary ways, in order to awaken people to a particular overarching concern. This doesn’t negate your criticisms, Joel, but overlooking the context of the essays, at the time they were being written, is an important consideration.
And if our technological age grows more bleak, then those essays may start resonating even more strongly; and if (as I hope) we move into better times, then they might feel dated and “off” the mark.
Time will tell.
Peco, Paul responded to my critique in the thread below and I likewise responded to him. I was waiting to respond to your comment until I could do that; it took me quite a while :) It might be helpful to see where that conversation goes.
That said, let me validate where you’re coming from. I think I am far more optimistic on technology, but I absolutely loathe the kind of repressive application of technology you describe. So many of the features of the system outlined in Exogenesis are present and even being used to similar ends now. And it’s horrifying to imagine where they might go. We are aligned on that point for sure. If Kingsnorth inspired that work, I’m all the more grateful for his.
I also appreciate the spirit in which you offer your critiques. Frankly, that holds for Kingsnorth as well, which is part of the reason I treated my critique as carefully as I did. As I said in the piece—and this goes for you as well—we are brothers and I want more than anything to maintain friendships and communion with all people but especially this riotous family we call the Church. I hope we meet in person someday so I can demonstrate that with a hug.
Thanks, Joel. Paul made this comment below:
“The Machine is, at root, the spirit of the serpent in the garden. We are trying to become 'as gods', and our technologies are the tools we use to do so.”
To me this is the essence of it all. One can argue about historical particulars, and the particulars do matter. Some interpretations are better than others. But that is mostly above my intellectual pay grade. What I have no doubt is, there’s a spiritual element throbbing at the heart of the problem, everywhere and always.
As per your closing suggestion, remembering that many of us are, in fact, in communion, and that we are more fundamentally human beings trying to stay grounded in chaotic times, should be the context of this conversation. Anything else, and the spirit of the serpent prevails. Even more than creatures of history, we are creatures of relationship.
The very notion is built right into the Great Commandment. When that is forgotten, or displaced from its fundamental position, all is lost.
Amen. All import for us to remember regardless of how things shake out. Philosophy (good or bad) can’t replace friendship and the mutual reliance we have on each other.
Amen to your amen!
I really appreciated your review. Disclaimer: I haven't read the work in question - partly because I've grown weary of vaguely utopian, Benedictine Option-esque responses to the world's ills that fail to take context, history, and privilege into account. I've just found approaches like this to actually make me more disillusioned and confused with life as it is, because they fail to take something crucial into account that I struggle to name. Your review helped me better understand some of my concerns.
Two thoughts for what they're worth.
1) One thing I would have liked to hear more of us what, on a deep level, you actually think is at stake here. I get the intellectual shortcoming of dismissing historical contexts and continuities you articulate, and they bother me too, but so what? What's the bigger "Why?" for you? Why do you think it's is it important we--as readers, or as a society or as a humanity-- take these sorts of nuances seriously, not just with regards to PK's book but more broadly. Or even cosmically. I have my own answers to these but would have liked to hear your thoughts.
2) Regarding the point that culture is largely a dynamic, bottom up process. Or at least more of a back-and-forth between top-down and bottom-up factors. A good point to make, for sure. However, one reason i think people are feeling so unmoored right now is that from the vantage point of the average person, some of those top-down factors often feel as though they come out of nowhere, usher in fast paced substantial changes and questions, and in ways even collectively there is little possibility of changing significantly. For many, the curulre we find ourselves in does not actually feel like a bottom up process (even if, on further study, it is) nor does it feel like we have any power to influence meaningfully. The powerful fusion of global capitalism, wealth inequality, and digital technology--and the encroachment of these impersonal forces on human 'culture'--is highly complex. Even if they were brought about by bottom up cultural development, it doesn't feel like that was a free or self-aware choice. For many it feels more like we created a monster. I think that sense it what PK's book is trying to address, and why it resonates with so many people.
Regarding what’s at stake: I’m grateful, not resentful, for the long trajectory of Christianity and it’s cultural heritage, including individualism, equality, pluralism, capitalism, civil rights, and the rest I outlined above. I think we’re better served to work in the present if we understand what we’re working with. That’s one of things that makes Dylan Pahman’s book so helpful. Beyond that, seeing this level of mischaracterization rankles me. You should see my marginalia as I was arguing my way across the pages of Kingsnorth’s book. Scarcely a page goes by without my scribbling about our differing understandings of what’s happening (and has happened). These overlooked continuities have a direct bearing on your second issue.
Re feeling unmoored and powerless: The primary reason we can feel that way is we expect to feel differently—in part because this same heritage has shaped us to expect a large measure of autonomy, agency, dignity, consent, and the rest. What I hope I communicated at the end of the piece is that the tradition we’re talking about abandoning actually possesses the resources we need to carve out room for those things in the here and now. They’re part of the package even if we have to struggle to realize them. There’s no magic lever to pull, but the tradition gives us options and approaches we can pursue as individuals and communities. Per the feeling of facing the monster, I think that’s what makes Pascal Bruckner’s observation so powerful: the jailer may lock us away, but he slips us the key at the same moment.
Circling back to what’s at stake, if you check the work of people like Mokyr, McCloskey, and Norberg, and organizations like HumanProgress.org, the improvements to the human condition in the wake of liberalism, capitalism, and the like are actually somewhat mind-boggling. We’re so used to them we don’t see them for what they are: as massive advances over prior conditions. I want to be quick to acknowledge the downsides—Kingsnorth raises plenty—but they’re far from the only facts on the table.
How big a deal is this? In his book Stubborn Attachments, economist Tyler Cowen suggests a thought experiment: “Redo U.S history, but assume the country’s economy had grown one percentage point less each year between 1870 and 1990. In that scenario, the United States of 1990 would be no richer than the Mexico of 1990.” That has massive implications for the state of healthcare, employment, and other aspects of material well being. It’s easy to take that for granted, but there’s a reason we’re not climbing over the border wall to Mexico instead of the other way around. (It’s also an argument for why we should expand their freedom to come; it’s unconscionable to proactively cordon off opportunity from those who seek it to benefit their condition, especially when they contribute to the wealth both here and at home when they come to participate in our economy.)
Based on my reading of Kingsnorth, he has no real appreciation for that—nor the historic roots of what made it possible. Is it perfect? Far, far from it. And people are left out and left behind. Serving them is part of our responsibility as faithful custodians of this long and rich tradition.
I think you pinpoint very well the shortcomings of “Against the Machine.” Kingsnorth writes with conviction and a certain charisma. I like getting lost in his writings. But perhaps his exploration of the Machine is a bit sentimental. As a Christian, I absolutely sign up with one of his solutions to the current predicament, namely repentance. If we truly learn to repent, and practice it like we mean it, all shall be well.
Father, we could all do with more of that. It’s one of the few things on which I agree with Martin Luther: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance” (95 Theses, thesis No. 1).
I should add an affirmation: He is a very captivating and eloquent writer.
That is one of my concerns, what has made me resistant to starting Kingsnorth's book. No matter how well written, I just have no interest in sentimentality, especially not of nostalgic (and reactionary?) visions of a traditional past that often never really existed.
Having been raised liberal Christian, I'm not even drawn to repentance. What inspires me is simply the radical egalitarianism of the earliest Christians. And now that faith became revolutionary over time, from the European peasants revolts to the English Civil War.
That is my opposition to the Machine, as such. But though I agree with the counter-arguments of the reviewer, I can't say I have any love for present capitalism either. There has to be a third choice other than religious orthodoxy and corporate plutocracy.
Cal Newport had a very good discussion about the book on his podcast: https://www.thedeeplife.com/podcasts/episodes/ep-383-why-is-everyone-talking-about-against-the-machine-w-tyler-austin-harper/
I also found myself agreeing with his major points. Kingsnorth is hard to pinpoint on basically any subject. Thus, many people can find something to disagree with him on, basically, any point he makes.
Thanks for the link! I'll listen to it. I do want to give Kingsnorth a sympathetic listen. I'm just not sure I'm willing to commit to his book.
I’ve fallen out of fascination with Kingsnorth’s thesis for many of the reasons you’ve articulated here. Brilliantly done.
I think I was intuiting that Kingsnorth wasn’t quite on target when I wrote my piece on composting. Even IF his thesis is true, the rotting West will simply become the nutrient-dense soil of future growth.
Thanks, Nate. And that analogy holds. Nothing is wasted. Functional cultures are large-scale exercises in solving problems, sometimes badly, other times well. Over time, the good solutions tend to take precedence until evolving circumstances make them untenable. Then it’s back to the drawing board.
I featured Kingsnorth's "four P's" of People, Place, Prayer, and the Past in my own post this morning and applied that rubric to myself. One of my takeaways is that discontent is always louder than contentment. And I agree that Kingsnorth's personal journey is fascinating and authentic. But he is an outlier in his view of modern times.
Those four P’s (contrasted with his S’s) are a helpful frame for thinking about how to be and act. Part of my beef is that he undermines the point about the Past by mischaracterizing our actual history and the developments that have led to modern expressions of Western culture.
I think you’re right about contentment vs. discontent. It’s probably basic to our physiology/neurology at some level. Our brains are designed to keep us safe; threats to our safety always speak louder and occupy our minds greater than peace and calm. We’re hypervigilant for what’s *not* working and overlook what is working.
Joel, once again you have written a clear and very helpful review. I am a big fan of Paul Kingsnorth, but have not read this book. I was in the room when he delivered his lecture, “Against Christianity,” last year, which had a similar theme. I find his willingness to be outside the culture for the sake of fidelity to the gospel very inspirational, but there was something about his critique of civilization that I couldn’t agree with, but couldn’t identify. You have helped me!
I’m glad it helped. I have a lot of respect for Kingsnorth, but I think he’s misdiagnosed our malady.
I enjoyed your thoughtful review. There are several sections of the book that are eloquent and offer an astute diagnosis of what ails us in modern western “civilization.” The toxic consumerism and worship of money, for example, are pretty low hanging fruit. What troubles me most about the book are the underlying assumptions- the same false assumptions that I hear from so many conservatives - that there is some idyllic pastoral life we should return to or revitalize to regain our soul. Well I am old enough to know the stories of the generations before me, and I know my grandmother lived on a small farm in the middle of nowhere with an abusive, alcoholic husband, no birth control, no plumbing, no doctors, no education, no recourse. I don’t think he understands how privileged he sounds, homesteading in Ireland with a loving family. It’s a perfectly wonderful choice to go off grid (especially if you’re male perhaps) but evil is within humanity, not some outside machine. Wherever we go, it will find us. That said, I appreciate his points about how we have lost certain skills that it would be smart to gain, such as growing our own food.
Those impressions mirror my own. One of the challenges in writing a critique like this is missing those parts of the book that do resonate or have value. That’s on me.
Here's what the "Machine" commented on your review: appreciate the sharpness of your critique, but I think it underestimates what Kingsnorth is actually attempting. His use of myth and theology isn’t ornamental — it’s the very heart of his argument. To dismiss the “Machine” as rhetorical excess risks missing the point: he is naming technology as a spiritual structure, not a neutral tool.
You rightly ask about practicality, but Kingsnorth’s project is prophetic rather than programmatic. He is less concerned with offering a manual of resistance than with re‑framing our imagination so that resistance can even be conceived. In that sense, his mythic language is not nostalgia but diagnosis.
What feels missing in your review is engagement with the theological depth of the book. Kingsnorth’s Orthodox lens — incarnation versus disincarnation, possession versus presence — is central. Without grappling with that, the critique risks becoming another rationalist reduction, which ironically enacts the very Machine logic he warns against.
I don’t read him as offering despair, but as calling us back to symbolic seriousness. The question isn’t whether he provides a neat alternative, but whether we are willing to see technology as spiritually charged and therefore requiring repentance, ritual, and renewal.
Do you think it does a good job?
One of the major problems I have with PK’s desired world is that it’s hard to see how it comes about without an awful lot of coercion. As the review notes, most can do what he recommends right now. Drop your phones and pick up a trowel. Walk away from the machine. So, what more does he want? Well … for all of us to be obliged to live that way? Haven’t read the book. Heard the lecture.
If put in terms of coercion I don’t think he would support that, but somehow couched in other, more palatable language you never know. He certainly expresses no allegiance to seeing the current system work well. I thinks it’s trash.
The difficulty is how else do you get there? Well, evangelization would be one. A return to an earlier era where Christians led by example and were more obviously at odds with the modern world. It’s true it’s all gotten a bit cozy and self-satisfied. Or was.
I haven’t read Kingsnorth’s book, but I’ve engaged with his essays and critiques over the years, and this is a genuinely thoughtful and charitable critique that wrestles seriously with his arguments. I appreciate how carefully you’ve worked through the genealogical connections between Christianity and modernity’s developments—that attention to continuity is important and often missing from reactionary critiques.
I should say upfront: I’m not particularly a Kingsnorth partisan. His writing can drift into a cultural reactionary register that I don’t share. I agree with many of his concerns about technology and what it does to human dwelling and meaning, but I don’t believe in conservative or religious paths to salvation from our predicament. So my response here isn’t really about defending his book (which again, I haven’t read) but about engaging with some of the core assertions you’ve made in your review.
From my perspective, your central argument is that cultures evolve rather than rupture, that secularism and capitalism emerged organically from Christian roots, and that these developments represent continuous adaptation rather than qualitative breaks. I think this mistakes genealogical connection for ontological continuity. Yes, modern capitalism traces back to monastic grain trading. But the real question is whether scale and systematization transform the nature of the thing itself. When monks traded wool, they remained embedded in practices connecting them to land, craft, seasonal rhythms. When data centers process billions of interactions to optimize engagement metrics, or when green fields get converted to logistics hubs surrounded by traffic and artifical light, we’re dealing with a fundamentally different mode of engagement with the world. These aren’t just bigger versions of old tools. They represent a different relationship to being itself.
The review’s conclusion celebrates liberal pluralism for protecting our freedom to opt out, homestead, build alternatives. But this misses the point about background conditions. The system doesn’t forbid resistance—it makes resistance require resources the system itself systematically erodes. When housing becomes unaffordable, meaningful work grows scarce, community bonds fray, and attention gets colonized by designed compulsion, formal freedom means remarkably little. The issue is whether the default paths and incentive structures make certain ways of living nearly impossible to sustain.
This points to the deeper disagreement. You argue the system is fundamentally sound, with problems to address through intentional participation. But the operating logic itself—optimization, efficiency, quantification, acceleration—seems to systematically corrode conditions for human meaning even as it delivers material comfort. Not because anyone designed it that way, but because that’s what this mode of engagement does to human practices and relationships. The dynamism you celebrate as self-correcting might be precisely what needs interrogating.
The gains you list—life expectancy, poverty reduction, literacy—are undeniably real! But they don’t answer a different kind of question: what kind of creatures are we becoming? What practices can we no longer imagine? What skills atrophy when we optimize relentlessly for convenience and efficiency? These questions aren’t about rejecting modernity wholesale or returning to some imagined past. They’re about whether we can recognize what we’re losing even as we’re gaining, whether we can maintain the conditions that make life meaningful even as we extend its duration.
Hannah Arendt argued that truth is simultaneously fragile and necessary, that we cannot abandon it without losing the common world itself. What worries me is that technological capitalism erodes precisely this shared ground, not through overt suppression but through fragmentation and optimization. When every interaction gets algorithmically sorted, when disagreement becomes performance for separate audiences, when we rarely encounter genuine difference—we lose the friction that makes meaningful argument possible. Your defense of liberal continuity and the concern about ontological transformation can only remain in productive tension if the conditions for that tension survive. The question becomes whether the liberal order can sustain the practices and attention spans and shared reality that make such conversations more than theater.
Thanks for this careful engagement with Kingsnorth’s work and for creating the space for this kind of exchange.
Thank you for this critique. You raise several valid issues—which I’ll be thinking on. Solving for one problem, we often create more. I don’t have an answer for these, but I am troubled by them and thinking about them somewhat regularly. E.g., the rapid adoption of AI—I’m busy trying to think through the tradeoffs and how we should think about those. Thanks again.
You suggest what I've been concerned about: "His writing can drift into a cultural reactionary register that I don’t share. I agree with many of his concerns about technology and what it does to human dwelling and meaning, but I don’t believe in conservative or religious paths to salvation from our predicament." I briefly picked up his book at the bookstore. In randomly reading a sentence in the middle of the book, he mentioned religion and I instantly got a suspicion about something reactionary.
Yet I was drawn to the idea of his critique. I've read anarcho-primitivists like Paul Shepard and Derrick Jensen. But they are challenging the status quo of the Machine from an entirely different perspective. They have no time for traditional religion which, particularly as Jensen sees it, has been part of the Machine for a very long time. The Church is simply another aspect of the Machine. That isn't to dismiss spirituality, as Jensen has a clear sense of something greater. Besides, in having been raised in liberal Christianity, I particularly have no interest in conservative religion of any sort.
On the other hand, I can't side with the reviewer here either. I'd argue Church and Capitalism are two sides of the same Machine. I come at it from the religious dissenter tradition, specifically of Anglo-American history: English Peasants Revolt, English Civil War, Roger Williams' Rhode Island, William Penn's Pennsylvania, American revolutionaries (Deists, Unitarians, Quakers, Pietists, Huguenots, etc), Quaker abolitionism, Christian-inspired slave revolts and Underground Railroad (Harriet Tubman), 19th century evangelical separation of church and state, MLK's civil rights movement and socialism, and on and on.
"people free to pursue value and meaning in small pockets of community and industry, a politics embracing family, home, and place" was how most people lived in most societies for most of history. Today it is a luxury lifestyle. For most of time it was the only lifestyle available. The difference between the ancient and modern forms is that in the ancient form, something like 50% of all children born did not live to reach adulthood. Maternal mortality was high, as was mortality from disease and injury, which is why, despite there being no effective birth control, populations grew very slowly for most of history. How many children should we be prepared to sacrifice to build the kind of world Kingsnorth wants?
The Machine, as Kingsnorth calls it, sustains the modern version of this bucolic lifestyle without the concomitant grief, agony, and death. Kingsnorth may rage against the teat that sustains him, but I don't think he'd much like the world in which it was gone.
I was trying to be a tad softer than your critique, but yes :) Think about the medicines we enjoy; it’s easy to dismiss science and the price system (as he does), but you’re out your antibiotics if you do.
Joel, I truly do appreciate the conversation you've opened up and admire youre interaction with Paul.
But good grief, man! When Kingsnorth, or any other sane traditionalist critiques Progress, we’re not critiquing penicillin. We’re critiquing the metaphysics that turned technique into a telos — the belief that the accumulation of tools equals the ascent of man. We’re attacking the story, not the scalpel.
But modern people reflexively respond at the level of gadgets because that’s the only level their cosmology allows. They think “progress” means “the stuff that kept my kid from dying of strep throat.” They refuse to distinguish between goodness of technique and the ideology that crowns technique as the new Logos.
It’s like criticizing gluttony and being told, “So you want everyone to starve?”
No, friend. I’m saying feasting isn’t life’s purpose.
There’s a deeper flaw in the antibiotic-defense: it assumes that spiritual order and material competence are mutually exclusive. Christendom built cathedrals with geometry finer than anything in a STEM lab. Byzantium kept more people alive, more fed, and more educated than any surrounding empire. There’s nothing inherently “modern” about human health.
Modernity didn’t invent healing; it industrialized it.
And this is the trick: qProgress wants credit for every lifesaving advance, but wants no responsibility for every soul-killing disorder it unleashed. High infant survival? That’s Progress!
Loneliness, deracination, family collapse, spiritual disintegration? Well, those aren’t related.
The honest accounting, the one Kingsnorth is trying to force, is that modernity is a metaphysical revolution, not a medical one. Its claim isn’t “We made antibiotics”; it’s “We redefined the human.”
The antibiotic-argument avoids that reckoning like it’s allergic to self-knowledge.
FUthernor, if you push these same people, they’ll admit they don’t actually want a society governed by medical progress. They want anesthesia for a spiritual wound.
The story we live inside matters. A civilization can keep babies alive and still forget what a human is for. A civilization can cure infections and still corrode meaning. A civilization can conquer disease and still die of despair.
Antibiotics are a gift. Progress is a god. Mixing the two is idolatry.
I don’t buy the “we redefined the human” angle. That said, I do not think all is well in Western culture and agree with you on several of the problems manifesting. I don’t think liberalism, secularism, or capitalism are the root cause of those, however. We do suffer from a spiritual crisis; that seems plain to me.
The reference to antibiotics is pertinent in that their development and production (and countless other pharmaceuticals) has depended on the same system that (by your account) is producing loneliness, deracination, family collapse, etc. No one is against penicillin—but some are against the system that helped produce it. Innovations in efficiency, new approaches, and so on contribute to all our benefit.
'How many children should we be prepared to sacrifice to build the kind of world Kingsnorth wants?'
Asks the man who hasn't read the book.
Goodness, if I had a penny for every time I've seen this mindless 'critique' trawled up over the last forty years I'd be Jeff Bezos by now.
For your information - and to save you the trouble of bothering to read it - the book is not an argument for 'returning to the past'. Such an argument would be a complete waste of time, given its impossibility. That said, the kind of one-note versions of that past that you chime in with here are just as simplistic and silly as the ones the reviewer accuses me of promoting.