Book review: "Against the Machine" by Paul Kingsnorth
I think that we need intelligent critiques and analyses of the current sprawling tentacles of The Machine. Especially the ones that aren't based in the modernist or postmodernist mindsets, because The Machine is in itself based in the "praise the science" mindset, providing various "solutions" to our health problems, communication gaps, and environment's perceived crudeness.
One can see that such attempts are made from various other sides. Recently, we've heard that Pope Leo XIV is trying to talk with some tech bros about how to proceed with care in replacing society's bullshit jobs with LLMs' token burning, and temper their enthusiasm a bit in doing so. I wouldn't bet that they will listen to him, but still, it's a move.
As one might know, Paul Kingsnorth is attacking that hill from a slightly different angle. He's a convert to Orthodox Church since (at least) a few years back, lives in the Irish countryside, and has a history with so-called Green movements, which I think he's outgrown and/or got tired of.
He's an intelligent writer and thinker, who've seen much, fought much, and which probably doesn't need an explanation about why someone would like to drop the smartphone dependency from his life. That's enough to spark my interest about what he has to say on the issue of The Machine.
One thing that stands out early in the book is that it's heavy on quotations. That's not a bad thing in itself, as it's good to stand on giants' shoulders from time to time, but it quickly gets tiring. Look, I'm all ears for Ellul, Weil and Schumacher, but in the end, I would like to know the author's stance on some of the things that the big figures have described a long time ago, not re-read them.
What's worse, some of the quotations are used to induce some kind of a bad trip in a reader. At some point, we are presented with quotes from various people who live inside the tech bubble and/or their job is to sell this vision of "tech paradise" to us. I don't really believe that's a convincing way of approaching the subject by the author.
First of all, maybe Paul needs at least a month of internship at the Big G to realize that most of corporate communication of any kind is basically bullshit. It's made so that the stakeholders get their saliva circulating and send the monies, or the people who follow the news get a topic for their water cooler talks. The future will not look like they say. I don't mean to say that it will look particularly good, but let me just say they are no futurists.
So I was quite tired at one hand, and disappointed on the other, that we are presented with some horror quotes about the future, just so that the chapter could end on a "Brace Yourselves" kind of cliffhanger. And there was more than one instance of a chapter ending like this. It gets old pretty quickly.
Speaking of chapters, there are a lot of them. It's not bad per se, but what the book is lacking is some kind of coherency. At some points while reading, I couldn't really say what the writing is trying to tell me. Is the author just venting some kind of internal anger at me? why this quote goes on and on, and what will be the conclusion from it? Where am I in the book, in the middle, or is it ending already? If this is written by a Christian, where's the Christian love in all of this?
Maybe that's just a Substack attributes peeking in, but it felt like a bunch of articles more than a book. Which, again, I wouldn't mind if, for example, each of them would attack a different angle of the The Machine that we are living in. But they mostly don't. Chapters start by some anecdote, then it is connected to some bigger idea, just to end on some kind of rant or horror-ish screamer type of ending. I think I would pass on the book if I weren't really already interested in what the author has to say about the issue that we are all living through, having read some of his earlier work.
It's hard to say who is the target of this book. People who see the problem with the sprawling technology might at least get some new author names to read because of heavy quotation usage. People who are new to the topic, or feel that it starts to be too much in terms of their car driving itself, might get a really nice starting point, but it's hard to approve of book's fear-based approach in this case. Christians might like some references to God and Tradition, which are not really stated in a direct way most of the time anyway. Maybe it's to not scare more secularly oriented people, but I feel they will still probably balk at the mentions of things like these.
Despite that, even though I would call Paul a poet and philosopher at heart, the book provide some solutions to the problem described in it. The answer seems to lie in the 4S framework: Small, Slow, Simple, Sacred. Which is okay if you already know the advantages of minimalism, or you are wary of new inventions in general, or place your family, roots or God first in your heart. If you are SJ, or have Purple/Blue values tendencies, you will probably nod in agreement for this solution.
If you don't, I guess it will be hard for you to even finish this book. Not because it's so bad, but it won't align with your view of the world, or the solution to fixing The Machine's wreckage will not feel plausible to you. I would like to be wrong here.
It might at least be an entertaining read for some, but I truly don't believe that Paul Kingsnorth is in it for the entertainment stuff. I really believe he wants to share some of his fears in order to broaden our perspective, and maybe give us some of his solutions for fighting the metacrisis that we are all, consciously or not, experiencing. It's a really worthwhile mission in today's world, but, sadly, I don't think this is the framework under which we can unite ourselves.
Personally, I will also probably pass on the rain-dancing thing.