We’re All Cooked

A review of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine

Towards the end of Paul Kingsnorth’s new book, he reflects on his first trip to Mt Athos, the monastic republic off the coast of Greece which allows only men to enter so as to temper potential temptation and enable lives of deeper prayer. As a famously disillusioned eco-activist, and recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, he knew the mystical lore of the Holy Mountain; and as one given to extremes, the rugged and ascetic spiritual culture of island drew him in, as it does to many modern pilgrims. But then he saw it: out of the pocket of one of the monk’s flowing black robes came not a leather lestovka or a prayer rope, but the black mirror of a smart phone. I mean, if the monks on Mt Athos are scrolling through TikTok these days, let’s be honest, we’re all cooked.

Paul Kingsnorth’s book, Against the Machine, is less a sociological/philosophical study in the “how did we get here” vein and more an evocative tolling of the De Profundis for the West (read Modernity in all its varied forms) culminating in a call for rebellion. Kingsnorth sees no reason to argue about “culture wars” in a culture that has lost its cultus. We have lost our heart, our spiritual center. The Machine has invaded every aspect of our lives, and it is destroying our humanity.

How does a late-Modern radical respond? Do we organize for our ideology’s sake? Do we “Defend the West?” Do we attempt to “go back” to simpler times? Kingsnorth first thinks we need to understand the depths of the interconnected threat of the Machine before we are able to have any sense of how we might discern what to do about it.

Kingsnorth’s project has obvious similarities to those of MacIntyre and Taylor (who fascinatingly is not mentioned or referenced once). But instead of attempting an exhaustive genealogical diagnosis of Modernity he offers vignettes of what he sees as historical and contemporary signs of cultural and spiritual decay: the Reformation, colonialization and global trade, industrialization in England, Jeff Bezos, AI doom, and the banning of wood fireplace fires (seemingly a stretch but important to his final point). Through all this he develops an understanding of “the Machine” as something like a global matrix of powers and influence that seeks to displace anything that buffers or resists “Progress.”

Now this may be beginning to sound slightly conspiratorial, and the mentions of 5G towers, enforced vaccination, and collusion between the media, state, and NGOs certainly might reasonably trigger red flags for some. The book seems to have something to offend or at least challenge about everyone, but in the end, this is the genius of Kingsnorth’s thought and why he’s an interesting and important voice in our age.

The key takeaway from the book is Kingsnorth’s understanding of “Progress” and what he sees as its banal yet diabolical End. Judging from Kingsnorth’s delivering First Things’ Erasmus Lecture this year, it seems as if he is generally more appealing to conservatives — there is no shortage of attacks in the book on confusions around gender and sexual identity, “chestfeeding” v. motherhood, breakdown of families and national identity. But what makes all this much more interesting is that Kingsnorth sees this Progressive “culture of inversion” as simply part of the deeper problem of global Capitalism, which seeks to decimate all limitations for the sake of endless profit. Self-creation is good business after all! Ideological “Progress,” far from being radical, is simply the “new colonization” led by the West as it seeks to expand potential profitability for shareholders. Families, cultures, religions, limits of all kinds must be done away with as they all support restrictions on endless financial growth. Conservatives may be a bit less enthusiastic about this part! After all, Kingsnorth reminds us of Scruton’s observation that Conservatism is simply a hesitation within Liberalism.

Ultimately, Kingsnorth sees Capitalism and Cultural Progressivism working hand in hand as they seek to replace what he calls the Four Ps (People, Place, Prayer, and Past) with the Four Ss (Sex, Science, Self, and Screen); as the former inherently provide limits and the latter find clever ways to dispose of them. Progressivism and Capitalism, according to Kingsnorth, have the same god and its name is Mammon.

One of the important questions that the tenor of the book begs is in regard to our ideological purities. Are we able to be challenged by a book that may rub us the wrong way and make us uncomfortable? Or do we quickly disregard it as conspiratorial, or reactionary, or crypto-Marxist? Can we de-couple helpful challenges to our often-puritanical ideological frameworks, or do we just want to read things that re-affirm our carefully curated (and settled) tribalisms?

This book functions most profoundly as a wakeup call — perhaps a leftover trait of Kingsnorth’s lapsed activism. I felt myself fluctuating between inspiration to sell it all and start homesteading, to a sense of impending doom at the coming demonic AI apocalypse, to annoyance at his bad takes on Augustine and the Reformation, and ultimately to confusion about how to respond to the mess that we’re in. But even if the book is a bit all over the place, it is nonetheless a helpful thorn in our casually techno-Modernist sides.

Yet still I was left wondering about the place of Christianity in Kingsnorth’s vision. Is it simply a helpful spiritual tradition to enable us to live more radical, anti-establishment, grounded lives? Or does the gospel offer something more? Something that is good news not only to the educated and prudent radicals and the holy high achievers but also to the burned-out Wall Street guy, the disillusioned, screen-addicted activist, the couple just trying to keep their marriage together, the tired son taking care of his elderly father with dementia, the sinner in need of mercy. Maybe as Kingsnorth suggests we do need to “Raindance on our smartphones,” but what if that’s just one more tiresome work of performative “re-enchantment” that seems spiritual but doesn’t engender any real trust in the God who actually shows up in the mess of things — the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and who raised Jesus from the dead. After all, God is not waiting for us to act, he is calling us to wake up to his action in the world.

In the end though Kingsnorth is right. The world that we have created is a mess and we should be honest about it. It is killing our souls. We are all implicated. And it does currently feel a bit like the end of the world, or at least the end of a world. But really, what’s new? Augustine was asking similar questions in City of God when the Visigoths had sacked the Eternal City. Anthony and Benedict had their radical responses; the Christian princes had, well, quite different approaches. Each age has had those who have made peace with the world and those who have rejected it — Christianity has never settled on either side. It remains in some sense ambivalent to the question.

Christianity is not a religion of escape, nor is it a religion of worldly reward. It is instead a religion of pilgrimage. And Kingsnorth offers some helpful tools for pilgrimage: Stop believing the story that the Machine is telling and seek a truer story; return to the Four Ps (People, Place, Prayer, and Past); don’t be afraid of the ascetical; pay attention to the particular place that we inhabit; work on re-growing roots. Whether we are what he calls “raw radicals” who live off the land and fully abandon Modernity and its implications (even the monks on Mt Athos seem to fall short of this approach with their accommodation of tech creep) or “cooked radicals” who live in the Modern world, but who are not of the Modern world — and who make a practice of asking the question: “What or who do the technologies that I use serve?” — one way or another Kingsnorth is calling us to rebellion. But thankfully this is not just another call to cultural or political revolution. Instead, the battle, Kingsnorth explains, will be fought in our hearts and in our homes (hence the necessity of those log burning fireplaces). And he reminds us that “To turn our gaze upwards, to direct it toward true worship: in a nihilistic age, in a world of self-love, this in turn is an act of rebellion.”

So, where to start? Join the rebellion: go to church.