Against the Machine

Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth. Thesis (ISBN: 9780593850633) 2025.

Summary: An account of the rise of techno-capitalism and the threat it poses to humanity and to the Earth.

“What Progress wants is to replace us.

“Perhaps the last remaining question is whether we will let it.”

That stark concluding heading and sentence in a chapter titled “What Progress Wants” stopped me dead in my tracks. It explained the urgency behind Paul Kingsnorth’s cultural and historical analysis in Against the Machine. He believes the advance of what he calls “the Machine,” the culturally embedded expression of techno-capitalism marks the death of a culture, threatens humanity, as well as the earth.

Kingsnorth refers to himself at points as a Luddite. But these are not the stark ravings of a mad man. Rather, he offer a thoughtful piece of cultural analysis drawing upon a range of voices from Simone Weil, Lewis Mumford, and Jacques Ellul and many others. But first, what does he mean by “the Machine”? This statement captures the essence:

“This then is the Machine. It is not simply the sum total of various individual technologies we have cleverly managed to rustle up–cars, laptops, robot mowers, and the rest. In fact, such ‘technics’, as Mumford calls them, are the product of the Machine, not its essence. The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us, made concrete by power and circumstance, which coalesces in a huge agglomeration of power, control, and ambition” (p. 37).

In part one of the book, Kingsnorth explores our need for roots and how the Machine has uprooted us from both nature and culture. Our “culture wars” are symptomatic of that rootlessness, Part two traces how the Machine evolved, particularly in the “disenchantment” of Enlightenment science, the rise of the cosmopolis, and the driving force of want.

Part three lays out the aspects of life Machine culture is eroding. He contrasts four “P’s” of traditional culture with four “S’s” of Machine culture

Past. Where a culture comes from vs.

Science. Where we come from, a non-mythic story.

People. Who a culture is. A sense of being ‘a people.” vs.

The Self. Who we are. The highest good is the self.

Place. Where a culture is. Nature in its local, particular manifestation vs.

Sex. What we do. A means of sacral pleasure and affirmation of individual identity (“sexuality”).

Prayer. Where a culture is going. Its religious tradition, relating to God or the gods. vs.

The Screen. Where we are going, both as distraction and interface for a post-human reality.

Finally, part four turns to the choice we face. He argues that the way of seeing that he calls “The West,” that gave birth to the machine must die. He calls for a kind of asceticism, either “cooked” (moderated) or “raw” (radical) with regard to technology. However, he doesn’t entertain “a two-edged sword” view. The Machine, as he’s construed it is destructive of both humanity and culture. He doesn’t believe we can escape the Machine, but he calls for a different vision that once again embraces the four “P’s” of past, people, place, and prayer. He speaks of building alternative communities in language reminiscent of Ron Dreher’s The Benedict Option. In his home in western Ireland, he is attempting to live out his ideas.

I had a couple responses as I read. Firstly, I was struck by his references to Weil, Mumford, and Ellul. He really wasn’t saying anything they had not already said, only chronicling how their ideas had played out. My generation was reading these thinkers fifty years ago–at least a few of us! I wonder why we didn’t pay them heed!

Secondly, it is interesting to me that Paul Kingsnorth is a recent convert (2020) to Christianity. His vision of the “two ways” starkly delineates the idolatry of techno-capitalism that leads to death and the four “P’s” that lead to life. His book, I believe, is a prophetic word to Christians as well as the wider culture caught up in the captivities of a dying culture, epitomized by the Machine. Will we turn back to what he calls “the eternal things” or will we let the Machine replace us?