Review of Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘Against the Machine’

How long can a plant live once it has been uprooted? Days? Weeks? There are various factors that might lead to longer or shorter survival times, but the one thing that is certain is that unless quick and decisive action is taken, the plant will eventually die.

How long can a people live once they have been uprooted? This is the question posed near the beginning of Paul Kingsnorth’s book, Against the Machine. This quote pretty well captures the tone of the book:

“When a plant is uprooted, it withers and then dies. When the same happens to a person, or a people, or a planetful of both, the result is the same. Our crisis comes, I think, from our being unable to admit what on some level we know to be true: that we in the West are living inside an obsolete story. Our culture is not in danger of dying; it is already dead, and we are in denial. This, now, is the reality we have to wrestle with—and transcend.”

I don’t say this lightly. Very few non-fiction books have affected me at a deeper level than this book. It was sobering, maddening, depressing, and weirdly therapeutic all at the same time. Some of that is no doubt related to Kingsnorth’s mastery of compelling prose, but more than the style, it was the substance of the book that made such a visceral impact.

“Very few non-fiction books have affected me at a deeper level than this book.”

The book begins with two contrasting epigraphs offering two perspectives on the same reality. These quotes set the tone for the book. The first is from American novelist Wendell Berry: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” On the next page, he offers this quote from the famous British science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. “It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him.”

Both of these quotes are reflections on a transformed cultural landscape. To Berry, this landscape is a technological wasteland absorbing what was left of our humanity. To Clarke, this landscape holds all of the promise of a new Eden where humans, set free with the godlike powers of technology create our own God presumably in our own image. 

Kingsnorth spends the next 300 pages arguing that both quotes contain some truth. In a way, Clarke is right. We have created wonders of efficiency and power, overshadowing heaven with our digital Tower of Babel. What need do we have of God in an age of AI? In a more important way, Berry is also right. In our hubris, we have sown the seeds of our own destruction. We haven’t made gods in our image. We have made idols that are conforming us to their image. The most pressing question that humans will have to answer now and in the future is whether we will continue to be fully human or we will be absorbed into the machine.

Many who will read this book already feel the reality of Berry’s observation pressing down on them even if they aren’t quite able to express it. We live in a time of wealth and comfort unparalleled in all human history. In many respects, things have never been better. We have easy access to clean water and nourishing food. We carry the collective knowledge of mankind on a device that fits easily in our pockets. Despite persistent efforts from some media outlets to stir up anxiety, the chances of widespread catastrophe and war seem as remote as ever. Many of the physical ailments and diseases which took so many millions of lives in the past have been rendered largely harmless. Yet, something still feels terribly, horribly off. There’s a general sense of unease that no amount of affluence or entertainment can pacify.

Unsettled and Uprooted

Kingsnorth exposes and explains the source of this unease. We are living through what he labels at one point “the Great Unsettling.” This is “a time and place where nothing seems to be solid, comforting, or even real.” This unsettling is a consequence of being uprooted. In one section of the book, Kingsnorth outlines four essential values that provided roots for older societies. These values are

1. a past, or a shared sense of history or ancestry,
2. a people, or a shared group identity that informed individual identity,
3. a place, or an almost sacred connection to a particular location in nature, and
4. a prayer, or a religious tradition which relates a people to the sacred order.

Each one of these four cultural values have been replaced by a global anticulture which promotes

1. science as the only story capable of describing where we’ve come from,
2. the self is the source of our identity,
3. sex is the highest means of sacred pleasure, and
4. the screen is our main interface with “reality.”

This anticulture results in the mass experience of uprootedness. We are now a people who live within the ruins of a once great, but completely alien, civilization.

“We are now a people who live within the ruins of a once great, but completely alien, civilization.”

This anticulture is reinforced and spread by means of “the machine.” Kingsnorth defines and describes the machine in various ways throughout the book. Those who are familiar with Jacques Ellul’s work will see some similarities between Kingsnorth’s machine and Ellul’s “technique.” This describes a phenomenon where efficiency and control become dominant cultural values. These values are promoted by technology, but they are about more than just technology. These values are really about a changed worldview in which human values become machine values. These values are often hidden behind political euphemisms like progress, diversity, liberalism, or even conservatism but these labels are always defined by the machine, and so our “progress” is only in the direction of the machine and our conservatism is only in service of conserving the machine.

Uprooted from the sacred order, from our past, from nature, from community, from even the grittiness of life, human beings can’t escape the feeling that we are becoming more and more artificial—like we are being processed and packaged by powers that are greater than we can imagine or control.

I know this sounds kind of heady and more than a little depressing. If that’s the case, then I think Kingsnorth accomplished his goal. He didn’t write this book to make us feel better. He wrote this book to make us feel in a profound way the reality of our situation. This book is like Neo’s red pill in The Matrix. Once you read it, you won’t see the world in the same way again.

Too Pessimistic?

This is a book that is well worth reading, but my main criticism of the book is that I couldn’t help but wonder if the deep pessimism of the book is completely warranted. Kingsnorth sees dark clouds everywhere. Even those things in our culture that might cause us to rejoice in gratitude and hope are deceptive. What we dubiously call progress is just the Machine in disguise. As an example, Kingsnorth’s chapter on artificial intelligence might cause you to lose some sleep. He believes that artificial intelligence is literally demonic. Now, I also harbor deep concerns about artificial intelligence, but his analysis borders on hysterical. He fails to even consider more positive outcomes and applications for this technology.

Kingsnorth would benefit from a more nuanced theology of technology. He is a self-professed Luddite who has relocated his family as off the grid as possible. This bias—and even paranoia—against technology has clouded his analysis. While I can appreciate the legitimate concerns regarding the ways that technology reshapes us into its image, I believe that technological innovation can be biblically and theologically defended as a good thing. God created us with a mandate to be fruitful and multiply and to responsibly rule over the things that He has made. Technological innovation is a natural byproduct of mankind’s God-given capacity for creativity, problem-solving, and rational thought. We know that these capacities have been broken by sin which is why we have never really escaped the temptation of Babel to use our innovation to eclipse God rather than to honor God, but the brokenness of technological innovation doesn’t render all technological innovation as irredeemably negative or idolatrous.

“We know that these capacities have been broken by sin which is why we have never really escaped the temptation of Babel to use our innovation to eclipse God rather than to honor God, but the brokenness of technological innovation doesn’t render all technological innovation as irredeemably negative or idolatrous.”

There is a healthy balance to be found between worshipping the machine and running to the hills and becoming Amish. Maybe I’m conceding too much, but my response to the book is to be wise about the power of the machine. Wisdom is a commitment that rejects both uninformed naivete and anxious paranoia.