The novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth discussed his book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity in a conversation with the host of Socrates in the City. The Washington Post has described Kingsnorth as "furiously gifted." The psychiatrist and author Ian McGilchrist has called the book "the most powerful and important book I've read in years." McGilchrist wrote that it "should be required reading not only for politicians, technocrats, teachers, and all who help shape our world, but for every still living soul in this terrifying age of the machine."

The Book's Thesis

Kingsnorth described the book as the product of roughly 30 years of work. It began with an intuition he has held since boyhood: that the values of the modern world are broken, and that human-scale culture, the natural world, and something essential in humanity are being replaced by something technocratic.

He argued that over the last few hundred years in the Western world, a particular system of thinking has emerged. This system views the Earth as a mechanism rather than an organism. It has replaced a Christian worldview with what Kingsnorth called a theology of technical progress. He described this as a revolutionary change in human history.

In his account, the process has moved through three stages:

1. A war against nature.
2. A war against human nature.
3. The current shift, in which people are controlled by technologies they cannot escape, and in which artificial intelligence, the supposed uploading of minds, and superhuman intelligences are being pursued.

Kingsnorth characterized the book as an exploration rather than a thesis. Its central questions are: What is happening? Is something wrong? Where did it originate? Where does it lead if it continues? What can be done if the direction is rejected?

He uses the term "the machine" for this system. The term was used earlier by Mary Shelley, George Orwell, and D.H. Lawrence to describe the sense of a force closing in on human life since the Industrial Revolution. Kingsnorth noted that the book quotes these writers.

Origins: From Essays to a Book

Kingsnorth's earlier work addresses the same question. He has published three novels, several poetry collections, and travel books examining the effects of globalization. He has also written a book on local culture in England, where he grew up, and on how that culture was being displaced by globalization.

He began writing the essays that became the book on Substack during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic intensified his interest in how technology can be used to control mass populations. He also examined the culture war of that period and asked what the culture being defended actually consisted of.

Technology and the Acceleration of Change

Kingsnorth argued that the present situation represents the end point of trends that have been building for a long time. Twentieth-century science fiction anticipated many of them, including intelligent machines, life in space, and people controlled by their technology.

He said that over the past 5 to 10 years, the pace of change has accelerated. Most people now carry a phone, and digital connectivity is almost unavoidable. Kingsnorth said that it is "impossible to live without the internet."

He identified several consequences of this shift:

• Loss of shared reality. People can no longer reliably determine whether a film, a voice on the phone, or a person is real or produced by AI.
• Generational divide. Kingsnorth and the host were old enough to remember life before the internet. Their children were not. Kingsnorth argued that people raised entirely with digital technology have difficulty understanding what reality is.
• Machines modeled on gods. Kingsnorth said that the developers of these systems describe the goal in godlike terms.

He noted that the 1960s produced films about the mechanization of culture and the worker as a "cog." At that time, however, such concerns remained largely theoretical. In his view, the present situation has made them inescapable.

Two Views of Human Nature

Kingsnorth presented the debate over technology as rooted in a single question: what is a human being?

He referred to a line from C.S. Lewis: "human nature will be the last part of nature to fall to man, and the battle will then have been won. The question is who precisely would have won it." Kingsnorth described Lewis's That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man as anticipating the present situation. He also named Perelandra, the second novel in Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, as depicting the "unman," or the process of becoming less than human.

The host argued that the transhumanist position depends on how humanity is defined:

• If a human being is made in the image of God, then attempting to replace humanity is inherently evil, destructive, or foolish.
• If humanity is an imperfect product of evolution, then improving it is logical. The reasoning is that if the technology exists, people should be spared suffering and given the possibility of living indefinitely.

Kingsnorth said that he has a "strange faith" that people wish to remain human.

The host also argued that inhumanity is only a bad thing if humanity is defined as good. Without an agreed definition of what a human is, or agreement on whether humanity is good, the debate remains unresolved.

Transhumanism and Its Aims

Kingsnorth described transhumanism as a movement that regards humanity as a stage to be transcended. Its proponents speak openly of humanity as an evolutionary stage. They expect the next stage to be silicon-based rather than carbon-based, more efficient, and capable of greater technological achievement. In this view, creating successors that surpass humans is "evolution in action."

He cited transhumanist Zoltan Istvan, who founded a transhumanist party and ran for president. Kingsnorth said that Istvan told him there is a moral duty to replace nature with technology so that everyone can live forever and no one suffers. Kingsnorth called this view extremely hubristic and also moralistic. In his assessment, many proponents see it as a means of reducing suffering rather than a commercial project.

Theological Language in Silicon Valley

Kingsnorth said that many technology leaders use openly theological language. He cited the following examples:

• Ray Kurzweil, of Google and a prominent advocate of the singularity, was asked whether God exists. He answered, "Not yet."
• Ezra Klein of The New York Times asked AI developers why they continue to build a technology they warn is dangerous. According to Klein, the developers could not answer directly but said they felt obligated to introduce this new intelligence to the world.

Kingsnorth said these statements suggest a sense of summoning something. He noted that the developers do not describe their work as selling their soul to the devil, though he said the underlying feeling is similar.

He also expressed a view on the internet. He said he sometimes regards it as a giant Ouija board that summons things through its nodes. He stated that he does not know the answer to the question of the spiritual implications of digital technology. The book includes two chapters on the subject.

Fragmentation of the Human Person

The host described the processes in Kingsnorth's book as attempts to fragment and atomize people. In this reading, a person created by God is irreducible and has a soul, but technology turns people into a collection of connected parts rather than an integrated whole. Kingsnorth agreed that the process involves unraveling.

He argued that the current technological system presents a "bait and switch." It promises to make people more fully human but reduces their humanity by fragmenting their attention and separating them from nature.

He cited the following patterns:

• Many people spend 9 to 10 hours a day on their phones.
• Children receive screens from about age two, and their average screen time is high.
• People in cities no longer look into the eyes of others, learn to speak face to face, or share meals at a table.

The Four Ps

Kingsnorth proposed a framework for defining a living human culture. He compared it to the four legs of a table on which culture rests.

Kingsnorth said that every real human culture, in his view, rests on these four elements. He argued that technology undermines each of them:

• It removes people from nature and places them before screens, often in megacities surrounded by other screens.
• It diverts attention from God. He said prayer and contemplation are impossible for a mind "fragmented by 5 hours on a smartphone."
• It breaks continuity with the past, leaving people with no sense of inheritance.

Kingsnorth also stressed the importance of place, because roots in a particular location connect people to a home their children will inherit.

He said the system is marketed as connection, through video calls with people across the world and constant access to news. In his view, it is disconnection, because it removes people from physical, real-world activity. He said it offers a fuller version of humanity while uprooting the elements that make human life meaningful.

Utopianism and Historical Precedent

The host described the system as a form of utopianism that echoes the Tower of Babel. People attempt to reach heaven by their own means and to achieve a kind of divinity. Kingsnorth agreed. He said that utopian promises have repeatedly ended in violent catastrophe rather than the promised paradise.

He traced the pattern through several periods:

• The French Revolution promised to erase the past and remake society.
• Twentieth-century revolutions, including Marxist and Bolshevik revolutions and fascist and Nazi regimes, attempted to create utopias on Earth. They produced gulags, death camps, and the massacre of peasants in the Vendée. Kingsnorth said that all of them failed and that millions died.
• Technology is, in his view, the next stage. He described transhumanists who say openly that nature must be replaced by technology, because nature, human life, and death are unjust, and that technology could rebuild the world into a paradise where no one falls ill and people live forever.

Kingsnorth said these ideas recast the Christian story as a technological one. The Christian hope of a kingdom of heaven becomes a project to create paradise on Earth, and the upload of minds becomes a "silicon heaven."

He noted that William F. Buckley popularized the phrase "immanentize the eschaton," which describes the attempt to bring the end of history into the present world. Kingsnorth said this process is now occurring through technology for the first time.

Kingsnorth argued that the developers of these systems do not seem to consider that the outcome may be negative. He also noted that the public has rarely been asked whether it wants a world in which a smartphone is necessary. He said the technology was launched, and people were drawn into it. Those who resist can do so for a time, but the system gradually pulls them along.

The Developers' Warnings

Kingsnorth pointed to a contradiction in the AI field. Many of the people building the systems are also warning about them.

He cited Geoffrey Hinton, described as the British godfather of AI and one of its early developers. In an interview about a week or two before the conversation, Hinton said he believed AI had a 20% chance of causing total human extinction. Kingsnorth said Hinton expressed this view in a polite, understated manner.

Kingsnorth compared the situation to the Oppenheimer case. He argued that the developers help bring the technology into the world and then warn that it could destroy everyone. He also said that some AI developers have called for a moratorium on AI. In his view, they feel that the technology is already beyond their control.

Limits, Transgression, and the Religion of Progress

Kingsnorth identified refusal to accept limits as a central theme of the book and of modernity. He said the narrative of progress holds that all limits can be broken. Cultural limits, physical limits, and the limits nature places on human life are all treated as obstacles to overcome.

He argued that some technology leaders have made this principle into a faith. In his view, they treat transgression and rebellion as good in themselves, without evidence. He described this as a Promethean impulse, or what might be called Luciferian. He said it reflects a desire to supplant God, which he linked to the story of Genesis and the idea of being "as gods."

He noted that the impulse behind technology is ancient, even though the tools are new. Genesis contains the desire to choose to be as gods. Greek myth includes Prometheus. Creation myths in many cultures describe humans attempting to rebel against gods and replace them. What is new is the capacity to act on this desire at scale. Kingsnorth compared the present effort to a digital Tower of Babel.

He cited Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote that "it may be that our purpose on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him." Kingsnorth said this idea captures the worldview of Silicon Valley. He concluded that the end point of this rebellion against nature, human nature, and culture is an attempt to replace God. He described it as radically new and also the oldest impulse. In his view, it will probably be scattered like earlier attempts, though he did not say when.

The host expressed concern about the hubris and lack of reflection among technology leaders. Kingsnorth agreed that these leaders appear intoxicated by their own abilities.

The Secular Worldview

Kingsnorth argued that many technology leaders are the heirs of the modern revolution. They hold that scientific progress, rational thought, and utopian aims have replaced religious superstition. He said they reject religious claims because science cannot demonstrate them. What remains, in his view, is a materialist conception of the world as a resource to manage. He said that people who hold this view may feel a duty to manage the entire world, including recreating nature, preventing aging, and preventing death.

He contrasted this with the Christian account, in which some suffering is necessary for people to struggle against and grow. He argued that imperfect, fallen people cannot build a perfect world, and that the historical record already shows this.

Capitalism, Concentration of Power, and Distributism

The host said that capitalism can be harmful but need not be if its limits are recognized. Kingsnorth disagreed. He traced the origins of capitalism in England to the enclosures of the eighteenth century. In his account, common land was taken and enclosed in the hands of a few. The rest of the population had to move into factories. His own ancestors experienced this.

He argued that this process produced a concentration of power and wealth. This concentration, in turn, produced the global system that exists today, which expanded through the colonies. He said that the technologies of the present could not have been developed without this concentration. He described the insatiable desire for more as the core of the worst of the capitalist project.

The host responded that capitalism is a broad term and that its meaning depends on context. Kingsnorth accepted that his view differs from the host's.

Kingsnorth described himself as a Chestertonian distributist. He does not object to markets, trade, or making and selling goods. He objects to the concentration of power and wealth.

What Distributism Proposes

Kingsnorth gave the following account of distributism, developed by G.K. Chesterton and his friend Hilaire Belloc:

• Chesterton was a paradoxical English writer who converted to Catholicism. He wrote during the rise of Bolshevism and the communist revolution.
• Chesterton held that both communism and capitalism are oppressive. Communism creates an overpowerful state that crushes individuals in the name of equality. Capitalism concentrates land ownership and creates corporations that destroy local economies, such as small-town economies, through large supermarkets and trading systems that crush small farmers.
• Distributism proposes distributing land, which Chesterton regarded as the source of power, equally among the population. Kingsnorth paraphrased the idea as "three acres and a cow" for everyone. Each person would then be free to use the land as they wish.
• The aim is to localize economic power as well as political power. Kingsnorth described the proposal as partly a thought experiment and said it may never be realized.

Kingsnorth said that most human societies before the modern era existed in a form similar to this. Property was not always distributed equally, but there were no large centralized states and no world-spanning corporations. Trade took place locally, and governments existed but had far less reach. He said the most powerful medieval tyrannical monarch in England had nothing approaching the power that modern democratic governments hold to survey, tax, monitor, and control citizens, or to draw them into armies and prisons.

Kingsnorth said he opposes both capitalism and the European Union, as well as overmighty states. He identified localism as the principle that has guided him throughout his political life. He argued that the solution to these problems is to bring decisions to the local level, from the village to the community. Power, in his view, is greatest when people govern themselves. He said that the tendency of both capitalism and the state is toward the center.

The host said that the American Founders understood this danger. Writing a book on the American Revolution, the host noted that the Founders wanted to keep government as local as possible and built buffers, checks, and balances to guard against federal power. The host argued that the United States has been failing in this effort and that federal government has grown to a size that resembles "a parasite that's bigger than the host." Kingsnorth agreed with the preference for smaller and more local government.

Globalization and the Nation

Kingsnorth and the host discussed the shift toward globalization and the rejection of national loyalty. The host noted a common claim that patriotism is Hitlerian and that Hitler invented nationalism. The host argued that George Washington loved his country and was in many ways the opposite of Hitler.

Kingsnorth distinguished between "hearth and home" and "blood and soil." He said that the two are very different. He acknowledged that the twentieth century's nationalist movements show how loyalty can go wrong, but argued that people have stopped discussing how it can go right. He said that Nazism and fascism remain a source of extreme caution in contemporary public discussion.

He described Nazism and fascism as machine ideologies: centralized, industrialized, technologized, oppressive, top-down systems that attempted to impose a racial or nationalist utopia. He contrasted them with the local attachment described by Wendell Berry and with Jefferson's version of American identity.

Kingsnorth linked the rise of global capitalism to globalization. He said the book compares corporate capitalism with radical left progressivism and argues that both are utopian ideologies that lead to the same place. In his view, neither a strong centralized government, whether fascist or communist, nor an unaccountable set of giant corporations is a desirable form of governance.

The Cost of Localization

Kingsnorth acknowledged that localization requires sacrifice. The conveniences of the system include cheap goods and ease. He gave two examples: t-shirts manufactured in a Bangladeshi sweatshop for about 50 pence, and iPhones containing cobalt mined by African children. Rejecting the global system would require people to accept less convenience. He said a simpler, less technological life would involve more work and probably more fulfillment and power.

He argued that giving people power requires them to use it responsibly. He said that it is currently easier to let companies and governments do everything and provide goods in return. Taking responsibility would require decisions about what people want and do not want. He called this difficult but probably necessary.

The host cited Benjamin Franklin's answer when asked, after the Constitutional Convention, whether the delegates had produced a monarchy or a republic: "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." The host said that keeping the republic requires effort, and that without it, the result is tyranny.

Meaning, Patriotism, and Religion

Kingsnorth read a sentence from his book stating that patriotism, Christianity, cultural conservatism, sexual modesty, a mild nostalgia for the English countryside, and an appreciation of canonical novels are "more or less verboten" and that the attitude toward them "is rapidly hardening." The host noted that the hostility has developed over decades, beginning in a major way in the 1920s, and that many people now appear certain these things are bad.

Kingsnorth described the modern revolution as a revolt against what was traditionally regarded as good, which in the West means Christian values and particular understandings of place and culture.

He said that he has observed a shift since writing the book. He cited a growing number of people, especially young men, returning to church. He said readers write to him about a crisis of meaning and ask what the purpose of anything is. He said he is not certain how long the trend will last. He also cautioned against idealizing nations, patriotism, or the church, because doing so obscures the reality of their failings.

He argued that the political left and right each have a version of the revolution that strips away meaning. On the right, the vehicle is global capitalism. On the left, it is a progressivism that seeks to dismantle and disengage from everything traditional. In his view, both are a war against rooted, normal human life.

Deconstruction Without Replacement

Kingsnorth argued that the deconstructionist and postmodern worldview is effective at questioning and taking things apart, but has no positive vision to put in their place. He said that the question "What have you got instead?" is unanswered. If people are told not to be rooted in place, the alternative offered is the machine: a globalized technocratic vision moving toward "silicon perfection," which he described as inhuman.

He said that most people engaged in left or capitalist-right politics are not trying to push society in this direction. Nevertheless, he argued, the endpoint of a society in which everything is deconstructed is that nothing remains. People are left exposed to the technocracy that replaces it. He said that people are now beginning to ask whether they should have deconstructed everything and whether they need to rebuild.

Kingsnorth connected this to the definition of the human. He noted that people have always regarded the inhuman as bad, but that this judgment requires a positive definition of the human. The question, he said, is whether humans are created in the image of God, loved by God, or nothing. The alternative is that humans are machines that can be changed.

He described the transhumanist movement as one that does not believe a fixed human nature exists. In his assessment, the present situation is a war on the human. For a person who believes human beings are made in the image of God, he argued, this war is also a war on God and on what God loves. He connected this to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He described the conflict as an attempt to unmake what God has made.

Evolution and Meaning

The host and Kingsnorth discussed the transhumanist account of evolution as a story of progress. Kingsnorth argued that this view misreads Darwin. He said the theory of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace holds that creatures evolve by filling ecological niches. In this account, there is neither good nor bad. Organisms adapt to their environment, and this adaptation does not inherently improve them.

He said that a progressive reading, one that assumes motion toward perfection, has been applied to Darwin's theory. Technology is then presented as the means of accelerating and improving that motion. He argued that this reading raises the question of whether humans can evolve morally or ethically, or whether they remain fundamentally the same as in earlier millennia, with better machines.

Kingsnorth said that the question underlying technology, capitalism, politics, and AI is the same: what does it mean to be a human being? He said that the answer determines whether a person takes a stance against the machine or in favor of it. A Christian who believes humans are made in the image of God, he argued, must take a clear stance against those who expect humanity to be replaced.

The host argued that those who deny anything transcendent about human beings must accept that nothing is immoral. Under that premise, the host said, Chinese communist murders of political prisoners and the harvesting of their organs would have no moral meaning. Kingsnorth said that proponents of this view are not usually honest about this consequence.

Kingsnorth observed that many revolutionary movements grew from Christian roots. He argued that Marxism, for example, carries the Christian idea that all human life is valuable and equal, but removes its transcendent basis. When this is turned into politics, he said, the result is a belief that the present is imperfect and must be made perfect. That belief can justify revolution, violence, and the labeling of people as enemies, such as the term "kulaks."

He said that the solution begins at the human scale. In the Christian view, a person begins with the neighbor, whom Christ commands people to love. Kingsnorth argued that a person who loves the individual whose eyes they see cannot liquidate masses of people in the name of abstractions. Dealing in large abstract systems that promise perfection, he said, leads toward tyranny. Relating to actual people at a local level is, in his view, the only way to avoid this outcome in an imperfect world.

The host cited Paul Johnson's Intellectuals, which makes this argument repeatedly. Johnson describes thinkers who preached love of mankind but treated their families badly. Kingsnorth said that the temptation of ideas affects everyone and that practicing Christianity in daily life is much harder than holding a grand idea.

Kingsnorth's Path to Christianity

Kingsnorth described a long spiritual journey. He grew up without a Christian or religious family. As a child, he developed a profound love of nature and had experiences that he later described in Wordsworthian terms. He came to regard these experiences as encounters with God in creation.

As a young man, he was an environmental activist, seeking to protect what he saw as the sacred in creation from the machine. He concluded, after examining politics, ideology, and economics, that the underlying question was spiritual: what it means to be human and what the earth is.

He became a Buddhist for a period, which he said taught him a great deal, but he felt something was missing. He said that the missing element was God. He then explored nature paganism.

About six or seven years before the conversation, he had a series of experiences that led him toward the Christian church. He described these experiences as forcing him, in a manner similar to C.S. Lewis, against his will toward Christ. He wrote about this in "The Cross and the Machine," published in First Things.

He said that as he came to understand the Christian story as it actually is, rather than as he had assumed it to be, the account made much more sense to him. He described its central claim as the view that humanity is in rebellion against God, has always been, and has a path home through what Christ does and says. He said this account matches the situation of the modern world, which he described as constant rebellion against God, against human nature, and against creation.

Kingsnorth said he entered the Christian church five or six years before the conversation. He described the experience as revelatory. He said he is drawn to the apocalypse, meaning the unveiling or revelation that the Greek word implies. He argued that the present is an apocalyptic time because many things are being revealed about what humanity is doing. For a Christian, he said, the response to revelation is clear.

Kingsnorth said that becoming a Christian in practice requires effort. The host added that many people who claim the name do not act on it. The host also noted that people who propagate the most destructive ideas have sometimes believed they were acting as Christians. Kingsnorth agreed and said that the church has struggled for 2,000 years to define what it means to be a Christian. He also observed that Christians have committed evil acts in the name of Christianity.

The host said that the core of the faith is humility. Kingsnorth agreed that it is difficult but described it as a daily effort. He said the work of becoming a Christian is a constant struggle against oneself.

Poetry, Nature, and the Church

The host quoted William Wordsworth's sonnet "The world is too much with us," which an acquaintance had sent that morning. The host cited the opening lines, "The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers," and the lines "Great God! I'd rather be / A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn," and linked the poem to C.S. Lewis and to the classical pagan appreciation of nature.

Kingsnorth said that one reason he initially rejected Christianity was his belief that it had no sense of nature or love for creation. He said this view is untrue at the root of the faith, although it describes some of its manifestations. He said he turned to paganism because he felt alienated from nature and wanted a spiritual path that says nature is alive. He said his next book will address this subject.

He argued that Christianity must be alive, with a love of creation as strong as its love of God. In his view, that love should lead it to criticize the machine society being built. The faith should convey the beauty and power of creation, the potential of people at their best, and the value of the world that technology consumes. He said that the church often fails to do this and instead becomes political, dry, or intellectual, which alienates people. He argued that this was not the case for the desert fathers or the apostles, and that the root of Christianity is a vision of a renewed world.

Kingsnorth described C.S. Lewis as a pagan in the sense that Lewis drew on the classical world's love of nature and wildness. He said that a Christian who loses this vision misses part of the world. He argued that Christianity lost sight of its purpose when it allied itself with power, became oppressive and tedious, and drove away people, including himself in his youth, who felt that it had nothing to do with the God they encountered in the mountains.

The host concluded that God can be seen in the forest and on the mountains, and that the same God must be visible in the church.