Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity - review

 

DOOMSDAY IS SUCH A RELIEF!

W.D. James reviews Paul Kingsnorth’s new book.

Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity is one of the books we’ve been needing.

The book is the record of a personal journey toward a reckoning with Western modernity and the polycrisis it has engendered. Kingsnorth adopts the term, ‘The Machine,’ to identify the origin of that crisis and all it now encompasses. The book is less original contribution (though it does make that) than the outlining of a tradition of anti-Machine thinking and the account of a personal journey into that tradition to attempt to make sense of the world we now inhabit.

It is useful for presenting the issue in a broad outline which is good for facilitating decision making: are you basically on board with the interpretation or not? I, for one, am largely with him. Even if you are not, understanding why not should still be helpful in the work of clarifying the contemporary. Another strength is a needed emphasis on askesis (asceticism; self-discipline) as a major part of our personal and collective response. Finally, his ‘doable’ prescriptions point in the direction of a hopeful response.

Criticisms

However, my view of the work is not without criticism. As I intend this to be a basically positive review, I will deal with my criticisms upfront and get them out of the way.

Against the Machine will not convert a lot of skeptics to the basic picture Kingsnorth lays out. Though it draws on a number of philosophers, it is neither a philosophical nor strictly theoretical text. There are a number of significant points the author makes which I wish he had nailed down a bit more conclusively. Also, it is noticeable that major strands of anti-technological thinking are absent: especially any reference to Heidegger, the broader German critical tradition, and contemporary Chinese philosophy of technology. To a large extent, I think this is due to the decision to present the ideas as personal reflections (each chapter begins with an account of a personal experience). So, to that extent, it’s simply a trade-off which all authors make when choosing their approach. The absences also seem like a conscious choice. That is perhaps more questionable, but there is more than a wealth of material and thinkers that are drawn upon, so, again, one makes one’s choices.

The absence of any mention of Ernst Jünger seems like a more problematic issue. His conceptions of ‘the forest rebel’ and ‘the anarch’ would fit in well with Kingsnorth’s attempts to formulate a path forward. Further, Jünger is strong where Kingsnorth is comparatively weak (and the reverse could also be said). Specifically, Jünger’s exploration of the spiritual aspects of rebellion against technocracy could have added depth to the analysis.

Also significantly, Kingsnorth seems to have chosen to position himself largely as a sort of conservative. That’s fine, but it leads him to an unnuanced view of the historical left. Given the contemporary abysmal condition of leftist thought, that is understandable. However, it leads him to miss two potential sources of fruitful thought. First, he equates all socialist thought with statist versions of that vision. Given that he is critical of capitalism throughout, one senses that the more bottom-up form of socialist thought of people like William Morris and even Pope Benedict XVI’s appreciation of democratic socialism could be helpful.

Secondly, he significantly mischaracterizes the counterculture of the 1960s. Though he qualifies this somewhat in the last chapter of the book, he largely adopts the popular contemporary rightwing view that the 60s represents a continuation and deepening of the general problems of modernity (possibly he takes this view from people like Roger Scruton). That is not exactly wrong, but it is a partial picture and in such times one would do well to be a bit more thorough and nuanced. For instance, nearly 60 years ago, Theodore Roszak, in The Making of a Counter-Culture (1969), presents the youth ‘counterculture’ (a term he apparently coined) as primarily motivated by concerns very similar to Kingsnorth’s. Roszak himself does a nice job of articulating the intellectual sources of that movement, which includes several Kingsnorth would benefit from acquainting himself with. Further, Kingsnorth several times brings up the positive role of traditional folk music. He would understand the potential role of that better if he weren’t somewhat ideologically blinded to these strands of thought.

A final substantive criticism is that, due to his fear of ‘revolution’ (not ungrounded), he rules out direct assaults on the Machine. “The Machine cannot be fought head-on…,” he asserts (p. 289). Given the prospective large-scale social and economic crises soon to be wrought by AI and AI-integrated robotics (to mention just one crisis), something like syndicalism (and socialism and anarchism more broadly) seem to have a bright near-term future to me. Further, drawing on movements like the Luddites (whom he discusses positively and at length), sabotage does not seem to be theoretically off the table. Of course, one can get into trouble stating such obvious facts, but I’m not sure we have the moral luxury of not stating them.

The Machine

Kingsnorth, understandably, has a bit of trouble nailing down exactly what ‘the Machine’ is. That’s because, as he elucidates, it is not one thing (at least conceptually). On the one hand it is the global web of interconnected technologies, especially digital technologies, which aims to create a “Total System.” It is also something within us: the impulse toward control, dominance, and greed. It is also a worldview, what he is happy to simply term ‘modernity.’ Finally, it is something spiritual. It is all these at once, but if the last one holds, that is probably its essence and the other aspects are simply manifestations of that spirit at different levels.

He characterizes it as “This triumph of the mechanical over the natural, the planned over the organic, the centralized over the local, the system over the individual and the community….” (p. xvi). Anyway, at this late date, I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble formulating a sense of what he means.

Provocatively, he asserts: “…some force has been unleashed in our world which we are struggling to contend with” (pp. xvi-xvii). Clearly, he thinks of this as something more than a discrete phenomenon. It is something virtually all-encompassing.

“We should simply call this process modernity,” he says, “which is not a time period so much as a story we tell ourselves. But I prefer to call it the Machine…” (p. 18). Amen, brother! He does certainly get that whatever it is exactly, it represents a fundamental reorientation of humans to nature or reality which has been characteristic of Western history for the past 4 or 5 centuries.

Following Oswald Spengler, he also speaks of it as “the Faustian fire.” The temptation to become as gods. He manages to see the roots of this modern Western stance in certain tendencies of medieval theology. However, he never uses the term ‘nominalism.” Why not? I can’t for the life of me figure that out. Ultimately, his account is not a metaphysical one. When I noted that his was one of the books we’ve been needing I was thinking another is a clear, concise, metaphysical account of the same phenomenon updated to our current situation and a third might be something like a political program.

This extension of the mechanical vision and the avaricious will to all of reality (for there is no internal limit to the process) leaves no room for either humanity nor the forests and the oceans to survive – we will use up everything, including ourselves, by the logic of the case as everything is turned into grist for the techno-capitalistic mill.

Ultimately the Machine aims at the “abolition of home;” (p. 183) the end of transcendence and the uprooting of everything – all must be absorbed within and used by the Machine. In fact, the Machine is a spiritual (or, perhaps better, anti-spiritual) reality on Kingsnorth’s view.

The Anti-Machine Tradition

A real strength of the book is as a resource for connecting to a wealth of other thinkers whom we are in dire need of approaching yet again, with our current tasks in mind.

On Kingsnorth’s telling, the West was Christendom and then the Enlightenment came along. It set in process the modern revolutions – intellectual, cultural, social, and political, all of which destroy sacred order. As a result of the destruction of everything that could be considered genuinely cultural, we “commodify the ruins” and become the slaves of wealth and “worshippers of the self” (p. 11).

This leads to one of his more controversial positions. “We are not,” he wants to insist, “in an existential fight for the future of ‘Western civilization’. Western civilization is already dead…”. (p. 12) Hence, the culture war is merely a symptom of our situation, not the main issue.

Following René Guénon, he is happy to present the modern West as representing the Kali Yuga, the anti-spiritual condition, par excellence. In fact, Guénon seems to be his main spiritual guide throughout. The main empirical guide is Lewis Mumford, whose analysis of the ‘mega-machine’ provides the central analytical concept. These two inform everything in the book.

Additional guides include Simone Weil (the need for roots), Oswald Spengler (civilizational decay), GK Chesterton (for a picture of a healthy society), Ned Ludd (for, well, Luddism), Karl Marx (strictly as an analyst of capitalism, not a prescriber of socialism), Jacques Ellul (for an understanding of Technique), Christopher Lasch (for an understanding of our horrible elites – Lasch is way under read these days), Augusto Del Noce (for an understanding of the anti-transcendent aspect of modernity), Ian McGilchrist (for a cognitive and imaginal analysis of our illness), Craig Calhoun (whose The Question of Class Struggle provides a non-Marxist view of radical politics he is nearly willing to adopt as his own), James C. Scott (whom he looks to for models of society operating outside of structures of domination), and John Moriarity (whose odd mystical philosophy he sees great hope in). And there are plenty of others.

For the most part this seems like a great list of characters. I probably am not ready to try to get something of worth out of Moriarity yet, but Calhoun sounded great, and I didn’t know him, so I ordered a very expensive copy, in ‘acceptable’ shape (it seems to have been out of print for some time), from some bookshop in England – which I am now working my way through. Fortunately the ‘acceptable’ reflected a couple of library marks on the jacket; the pages are crisp and clean. One cannot underestimate the value of someone linking together a tradition of thought that so happens to be essential to our current situation.

It is worth noting that Kingsnorth’s ‘reactionary radicalism’ (the label he adopts form Calhoun) is structurally similar to my own ‘egalitarian anti-modernism’ and Paul Cudenec’s ‘organic radicalism.’ All look toward a more organic, and sacral, pre-modern inspiration on the one hand, coupled with a radical response to the disorders of modernity on the other. Further, all are critical of modern political centralization.

Doomerism

In a key insight, Kingsnorth realizes that the Machine possesses its own “telos”. Since the Machine is not a natural kind (species), I would qualify that as ‘dark telos’ or something along those lines. I don’t think he would disagree.

He notes that modernity is a Machine for destroying all limits. Everything is reduced to matter, to quantity, to resource, to commodity.

Surely, once we sense its inner, totalizing logic, we can just reject it, eh? Yet, Kingsnorth observes that “The Machine, at some level, is popular. There will be no popular revolution against it.” (p. 119). As it prepares to use us utterly up, it at the same times aims to provide every sensual pleasure. There is a contradiction. I’m not at all sure that Kingsnorth is correct on this. Of course he is at some level. As long as the material comforts keep coming, most will acquiesce. But what happens when Artificial Intelligence throws hundreds of millions into unemployment in the near future? What happens when many of those are highly educated people who had done what they were supposed to have done to be guaranteed a comfy spot in the system? I think at that point all bets are off. I think Kingsnorth is right that we’re all about to be royally screwed (technologically, socially, culturally, environmentally). However, I think he underestimates how pissed-off that might make people and how vulnerable a system that depends on huge, identifiable, server-farms may be.

His shorthand for the things he is for and which we would do well to recover is The Four Ps: Past (history and ancestry; rootedness), People (a culture, sense of being a people), Place (nature in its local manifestation), and Prayer (religious tradition) (p. 131).

These, he argues, are assaulted by The Four Ss: Science (with its non-mythic story and reduction of all of reality to the measurable and quantitative), Self (the new highest good which ironically both wields technology to make the world as it likes but also applies that technology to itself with the promise of a post-human immortality), Sex (sacral pleasure and affirmation of individual identity), and Screen (mediated, hyper-, reality) (p. 133).

With the Four Ps having been overcome by the Four Ss, we are no longer ‘the West;’ we in fact have no existing culture. We are best thought of as the ‘not-West’ (p. 140). In this non-cultural present we are left with “the progressive left” ideology wed to corporations and global power: equality (the traditional North Star of the left) has been traded for equal “market access” (p. 153).

To the extent that he offers a positive political response, it is rooted in Calhoun’s ideas. He observes that the counter to the progressivist-corporate complex is a localized “populism.” While he may well be positive toward current populist movements, it seems he means that as the concept was developed by Calhoun. In The Question of Class Struggle, he begins with: “The most widespread, powerful, and radical social movements in the modern world have been of a type we may call ‘populist.’ They have been born and nurtured of attachments to tradition and community; they have seen an intimate connection between the immediate and local motivations of their actions and the less clear but larger and more lasting results at which they aimed” (Calhoun, p. vii). There is a lot I like in Against the Machine, but I’m sensing getting turned on to this work that I was not familiar with is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Post-humanism and techno-optimist advocates of the singularity are also a prime target for Kingsnorth. He presents post-humanism as the religion of the Machine; the internet of Things and Bodies is the New Jerusalem of this crowd. He quotes one of them as saying “we are making God.” Yes, well… In response he does not hesitate to call the iteration of the Machine taking form in our digital age as a “golem;” a demon, and an “Anti-Christ.”Forebodingly, he warns “Something is coming. Be ready” (p. 261).

Humorously, I think, he laments: “Perhaps I would be more popular if I could remain reasonable about all this” (p 243). Yes, ‘doomer’ is the latest pejorative. But, if you’re paying attention….

Prescription

So, the Machine is inexorably grinding up the planet, enslaving us, assimilating us, and once it finishes creating the internet of things and bodies, it will probably reveal itself to be the incarnation of a demon or the Anti-Christ.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

So, what is to be done?

I really appreciated the final section of Against the Machine, where he gets down to the prescription.

How does one face DOOM?

He’s remarkably humble and down to earth. Basically, rebuild the Four Ps. Start, he says, by “learning to be adults again: building families and communities” (p. 147).

“To me, the dissolution of the modern nation-state into smaller, more anarchic, less centralized units would be welcome,’ he opines (p. 205). I suppose that would be the work of reactionary radicalism. He is not specific there, but that leaves some work for the rest of us to do, or at least theorize. He does borrow Calhoun’s terminology of presenting this as the project of creating a “moral economy,” the antithesis of the Machine, in which economic and social decisions are made based on human well-being, not the insatiable logic of the technological and capitalist Machine (p. 280).

Further, we need to create a faith “appropriate to the times” (p. 237). Not sure exactly what that means, but sounds like a good idea.

A la McGilchrist, we need to recover cognitive and cultural balance through imagination, counter-revolution, and rebuilding a culture from the roots up.

Drawing on James C. Scott, he develops a view of local communities that have avoided assimilation into states as possible models of how to remain disentangled with the Machine. These communities have engaged in “deliberate ‘self-barbarization’” (p. 290). If we engage in that process, we must choose between being “cooked” or “raw” ascetics. The ‘asceticism’ here is that of withdrawing from the Machine – no easy feat! Raw ascetics are those who go all the way outside. Minimal connectivity, ruthless self-sufficiency – think living in a hut you built and growing or foraging your food. The cooked ascetic has mentally and spiritually separated themselves and set some limits to their incorporation into the Machine, but to some extent remain within it and to an extent appear as if though they are fully integrated – ‘nothing to see here Mr. Machine!’ That is probably the most viable option for most of us in the heart of Machine territory.

Ultimately, to the extent we depart the Machine, it becomes a question of “…learning how to be indigenous again in the age of the Machine” (p. 312). That is, as my native and native-connected associates put it, how to be a human being again. Just a plain old human being.

Though mostly disparaging of the 1960s’ counterculture, Kingsnorth does raise the question of a counterculture, understanding that this will be essential as we move forward. But, again, he is not detailed about what a contemporary anti-Machine counterculture would look like. Bet it includes Bluegrass music though! Bet it also entails askesis in the form of anti-materialism. In fact, I bet it looks a lot like the 60s’ counterculture on its positive side with the 60s transgressive aspects replaced with their opposite – a recovery of limits, commitments, and virtue. Yep, bet that is what a viable anti-Machine counterculture looks like.

What struck me, personally, as most significant though, was that facing up to how disastrous our current situation is can be oddly liberating. Kingsnorth observes, “If we don’t have an endgame – ‘saving the world’, say – then everything gets easier” (p. 316). Think of it this way; if there was just this one thing that threatened our existence and our humanity, how would we justify not devoting our whole attention and every effort to rigorously confronting it? That could be stressful. Given the number, magnitude, and strength of the forces that confront us, it oddly becomes simpler. What can we do really? Nothing that is guaranteed of success. We’re probably done for, so what are we to do? Be human. Stubbornly and militantly human. That I can start to wrap my mind around. I felt a sense of relief in him simply stating that.

According to Kingsnorth, the goods we are left to quest after are the same goods we have always had to quest after, when we had our senses about us: “Human community, roots in nature, connection to God, memories passed down and on. These are the eternal things” (p. 317). Yes, indeed! I think I even know where to start.

Being quite unorthodox, I’ll be using Against the Machine in my ‘Dystopia’ class in the Spring and working through it with a group of students.

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