Kati- It is clear that our use of technology changes us in various ways, many of them troubling. I have to wonder if they do so in ways that make it more difficult to foster the habits and virtues that would enable us to live outside of it. For example, the more we are online (in the comments sections!) the more we practice habits that make it less likely to have the slow attentiveness to nature and cultivation. Or to the type of attention needed to foster stable relationships, etc. I am speculating here, and there does seem to be a strong correlation going on.
I am a Gen-Xer and grew up on TV. The types of training and experience with fixing things, building things and growing things was almost entirely absent...but I can quote the Simpson's like sacred text! As can many of my peers.
Some have opted out. I would like to as well, but here I am on the internet "philosophizing" about it. And I enjoy doing so, even as the opportunity to live a fuller life slips away from me. I don't think I am the only one in this situation.
So glad! Please keep us in prayer here in the Maritime provinces of Canada as we deal with the devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona. Nearly our entire province of Prince Edward Island lost power, and due to so many downed lines and trees, it will take much longer than usual to restore it. We are in the countryside at a rental, having just sold our house. Thankfully a family member with a generator lives nearby and gas is now available and plentiful. Getting an up close and personal look at The Machine rumbling back to life, despite the lack of preparedness at many levels by emergency measures organizations. It’s all confirming our decision to move toward a more sustainable way of living. Not even having a ready source of water at our rented cottage is sobering indeed...
Excellent interview in Mere Orthodoxy. I think the length speaks to the depth of the resonance of what you are saying. The interviewer was truly sympathetic to your view on things. It is good that it is getting out there in various ways. This will only grow.
well, here in Labrador, I was disturbed to notice that I had missed it last Wednesday..... the digital overlords must be working in my favour.... Wednesday it is!
Regarding your interview with Mere Orthodoxy, of which I enjoyed and agreed with most of, I have one question. If a I get rid of my smart phone how am I supposed to read your Substack essays and watch your Livestream lectures and interviews?
Bill- This is the irony, isn't it? The only way we could have this kind of conversation with people from all around the world is the same thing that seems to be doing so much damage to living a human life. I have narrowed my internet use to *mostly* substack, but does that really change anything? I don't think so, not fundamentally. It seems like one big tangle. -Jack
In addition to the technology being designed to compel use/addiction, I think there are other elements involved as well.
Decades ago, when the Internet was still in its cradle, I was introduced to IRC chat (shows you how old I am). When I eventually spoke/met in person with people I had been chatting to, they always commented on how I was the same in real life as I was on IRC chat.
At first, I was both baffled and amused by these comments, since I had no Idea how to be anything other than Brian. In New York, we have a radio station 1010 WINS, which has as its motto: "We're all news, the time." I adapted it, and used to say: "I'm all Brian, all the time."
But then I came to the realization that on IRC chat people displayed sides/aspects of themselves that they did not show elsewhere. When chatting, they let out sides of themselves that did not usually emerge in day-to-day situations. Further reflection led to the reinforcement of an idea I had held for long time: Western culture encourages people to behave differently in different circumstances--especially with regard to ethical conduct. A person could be one way in chat, and another way on the phone, and yet a third way in person. Ethics were fungible, and subject to pragmatic negotiation.
Technology and social media provided further impetuses/avenues for a person to fracture their identity and their ethical behavior (also augmented by the public/private dichotomy. While it is true that some things are properly public and some private, it was a step too far, in my opinion, when public ethics and private ethics diverged).
This is a very good observation, and goes a long way towards explaining much of the online culture war, I think. I've long been flabbergasted by how abusive people will be online (I've done it myself in the past.) We can do it to pixels in a way we would not do it face to face to people. The technology, disembodied, encourages and then monetises this.
Well, I don't have a phone and I still manage to write them.
But yes, it's a compromise. We have to decide where our lines are. Mine forbids phones. If we don't take a stand, which requires some sacrifice, we are lost.
To the neuron, the thoughts of the mind are incomprehensible - inputs reach a threshold, then it fires out a signal, blind to its implications. Online society has turned us into the neurons of the hive mind. One could suppose that the thoughts of the hive mind are it’s memes, narratives, sub-cultures, ideologies. But I suspect it’s true thoughts cannot be comprehended fully at the level of the neuron.
If it was a coincidence.... then for how long can we expect the machine to allow you to go on with your subversive activities? It is still too clumsy to detect you but always improving.
After listening to your talk and reading Peter's essay (Pilgrims in the Machine), I don't think it will disappear. We will know when you start telling us that you've had an epiphany and you suggest we all get smart phones and stop being paranoid about digital currency. You'll say you've come to a more nuanced view of technology and it's merits. Then we'll know they've silenced the real Paul Kingsnorth and used all his writing and online speaking to synthesize an AI bot that can look and sound like him with a slightly new message. Oh the Horrors!!
Well, the age of the really effective deepfake is just around the corner. I'm sure it won't be hard to create an AI-directed film of me saying all of those things. At least you now know to look our for it ;-)
Re Mere Orthodoxy interview and the poetry of David Jones, your writing has often made me think of two Jones poems in particular, The Tribune's Visitation and The Tutelar of the Place. The Tribune is the voice and embodiment of the Machine. More than that, he's a mystic of the Machine - a true believer, a psychopath, but oddly - for myself at any rate - quite a likeable and noble character. The Tutelar is the guardian and protectress of the local and the grounded, of everything precious and dear. It's a phenomenally beautiful poem - makes me cry, to be honest - and you can find both poems, one after the other in the slim volume called The Sleeping Lord ...
'... In all times of Gleichschaltung, in the days of the central economies, set up the hedges of illusion round some remnant of us, twine the wattles of mist, white-web a Gwydion-hedge
like fog on the bryniau
against the commissioners
and assessors bearing the writs of the Ram to square the world-floor and number the tribes and write down the secret things and take away the diversities by which we are, by which we call on your name, sweet Jill of the demarcations
Paul, the talk was amazing, thank you! I listened live, but was unable to post a comment on YouTube. So I'll try here. I listened to your talk while weeding carrot beds, your dire warnings in my plastic headphones drowning out the joyful song of a mockingbird. Yes, I'm a hypocrite and the irony is delicious and all that, but as a practical matter, how important and feasible do you think it is to create our own new networks? Is Substack enough of a parallel institution? Or should we have a goal of extricating ourselves from the digital world completely? It seems scary to do that without a replacement that has a global reach. My parents were a part of the counterculture of the 60's, and it seems like so much of that power (for good or ill) grew from the concerts, the protests, the communes... all of the organic, seething, non-rational interactions of flesh and blood humans. Do you see anything like that on our horizon?
Paul, an excellent talk, and I'll watch it again with the children. I need to read Francis Bacon again - I'd perhaps naively just read him as a Christian thinker. You prompted me to think of this passage from Isaiah 44 - and to wonder when we make and then worship an idol whether we tend to be worshipping ourselves. Yet Paul tells us that behind every idol there's something else entirely (1 Corinthians 10:19-20).
9 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. ... 12 The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. 14 He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” 17 And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
Well, I surely wasn't expecting the title of the talk to be so literal... That was quite scary!
I do believe the work you're doing is very valuable and important. Seeing you deliver this talk while gasping for breath and summoning strength to speak about these things in front of a camera was a powerful experience. It's not easy being a prophet, eh?
After reading your last post about globalism, I meant to write (but had a little technological mishap) that, partly because of reading your essays, I've come to see all of Modernity as a project that's coming to its final fruition just about now - that, rather than a gradual development, the chance outcome of different social moments that didn't have from the beginning a clear direction of travel but just happened to add up to this.
Anyhow, it is looking more and more like a question of spiritual warfare. So, just in case you're considering going silent online, as you seem to have suggested near the end, allow me to compel you not to. Your ranks need you!
'Thank you' might be the wrong term under the circumstances.
Kati- It is clear that our use of technology changes us in various ways, many of them troubling. I have to wonder if they do so in ways that make it more difficult to foster the habits and virtues that would enable us to live outside of it. For example, the more we are online (in the comments sections!) the more we practice habits that make it less likely to have the slow attentiveness to nature and cultivation. Or to the type of attention needed to foster stable relationships, etc. I am speculating here, and there does seem to be a strong correlation going on.
I am a Gen-Xer and grew up on TV. The types of training and experience with fixing things, building things and growing things was almost entirely absent...but I can quote the Simpson's like sacred text! As can many of my peers.
Some have opted out. I would like to as well, but here I am on the internet "philosophizing" about it. And I enjoy doing so, even as the opportunity to live a fuller life slips away from me. I don't think I am the only one in this situation.
For what it's worth. -Jack
I can’t tune in live, unfortunately, but I’d love to listen to the recording of this later. I assume that will be available?
Yes, it will be recorded, so should be available after the event.
Thank you!
So glad! Please keep us in prayer here in the Maritime provinces of Canada as we deal with the devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona. Nearly our entire province of Prince Edward Island lost power, and due to so many downed lines and trees, it will take much longer than usual to restore it. We are in the countryside at a rental, having just sold our house. Thankfully a family member with a generator lives nearby and gas is now available and plentiful. Getting an up close and personal look at The Machine rumbling back to life, despite the lack of preparedness at many levels by emergency measures organizations. It’s all confirming our decision to move toward a more sustainable way of living. Not even having a ready source of water at our rented cottage is sobering indeed...
Would also be great to be able to go back to it in written form, if possible.
Excellent interview in Mere Orthodoxy. I think the length speaks to the depth of the resonance of what you are saying. The interviewer was truly sympathetic to your view on things. It is good that it is getting out there in various ways. This will only grow.
I just keep thinking of C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”…
well, here in Labrador, I was disturbed to notice that I had missed it last Wednesday..... the digital overlords must be working in my favour.... Wednesday it is!
Thursday! Sorry, date change. See you there perhaps.
My intuition says me: this is no coincidence
Af some crucial points in my life, this happened too
Too obvious
However, keep strong, our light Ana spirit is so much stronger
Rambling is beautiful
We’re all born with a right to roam :)
Regarding your interview with Mere Orthodoxy, of which I enjoyed and agreed with most of, I have one question. If a I get rid of my smart phone how am I supposed to read your Substack essays and watch your Livestream lectures and interviews?
Bill- This is the irony, isn't it? The only way we could have this kind of conversation with people from all around the world is the same thing that seems to be doing so much damage to living a human life. I have narrowed my internet use to *mostly* substack, but does that really change anything? I don't think so, not fundamentally. It seems like one big tangle. -Jack
In addition to the technology being designed to compel use/addiction, I think there are other elements involved as well.
Decades ago, when the Internet was still in its cradle, I was introduced to IRC chat (shows you how old I am). When I eventually spoke/met in person with people I had been chatting to, they always commented on how I was the same in real life as I was on IRC chat.
At first, I was both baffled and amused by these comments, since I had no Idea how to be anything other than Brian. In New York, we have a radio station 1010 WINS, which has as its motto: "We're all news, the time." I adapted it, and used to say: "I'm all Brian, all the time."
But then I came to the realization that on IRC chat people displayed sides/aspects of themselves that they did not show elsewhere. When chatting, they let out sides of themselves that did not usually emerge in day-to-day situations. Further reflection led to the reinforcement of an idea I had held for long time: Western culture encourages people to behave differently in different circumstances--especially with regard to ethical conduct. A person could be one way in chat, and another way on the phone, and yet a third way in person. Ethics were fungible, and subject to pragmatic negotiation.
Technology and social media provided further impetuses/avenues for a person to fracture their identity and their ethical behavior (also augmented by the public/private dichotomy. While it is true that some things are properly public and some private, it was a step too far, in my opinion, when public ethics and private ethics diverged).
This is a very good observation, and goes a long way towards explaining much of the online culture war, I think. I've long been flabbergasted by how abusive people will be online (I've done it myself in the past.) We can do it to pixels in a way we would not do it face to face to people. The technology, disembodied, encourages and then monetises this.
Well, I don't have a phone and I still manage to write them.
But yes, it's a compromise. We have to decide where our lines are. Mine forbids phones. If we don't take a stand, which requires some sacrifice, we are lost.
To the neuron, the thoughts of the mind are incomprehensible - inputs reach a threshold, then it fires out a signal, blind to its implications. Online society has turned us into the neurons of the hive mind. One could suppose that the thoughts of the hive mind are it’s memes, narratives, sub-cultures, ideologies. But I suspect it’s true thoughts cannot be comprehended fully at the level of the neuron.
If it was a coincidence.... then for how long can we expect the machine to allow you to go on with your subversive activities? It is still too clumsy to detect you but always improving.
Watch this space. When it disappears, you have your answer ;-)
After listening to your talk and reading Peter's essay (Pilgrims in the Machine), I don't think it will disappear. We will know when you start telling us that you've had an epiphany and you suggest we all get smart phones and stop being paranoid about digital currency. You'll say you've come to a more nuanced view of technology and it's merits. Then we'll know they've silenced the real Paul Kingsnorth and used all his writing and online speaking to synthesize an AI bot that can look and sound like him with a slightly new message. Oh the Horrors!!
Well, the age of the really effective deepfake is just around the corner. I'm sure it won't be hard to create an AI-directed film of me saying all of those things. At least you now know to look our for it ;-)
Re Mere Orthodoxy interview and the poetry of David Jones, your writing has often made me think of two Jones poems in particular, The Tribune's Visitation and The Tutelar of the Place. The Tribune is the voice and embodiment of the Machine. More than that, he's a mystic of the Machine - a true believer, a psychopath, but oddly - for myself at any rate - quite a likeable and noble character. The Tutelar is the guardian and protectress of the local and the grounded, of everything precious and dear. It's a phenomenally beautiful poem - makes me cry, to be honest - and you can find both poems, one after the other in the slim volume called The Sleeping Lord ...
'... In all times of Gleichschaltung, in the days of the central economies, set up the hedges of illusion round some remnant of us, twine the wattles of mist, white-web a Gwydion-hedge
like fog on the bryniau
against the commissioners
and assessors bearing the writs of the Ram to square the world-floor and number the tribes and write down the secret things and take away the diversities by which we are, by which we call on your name, sweet Jill of the demarcations
arc of differences
tower of individuation
queen of the minivers ...'
Brilliant talk just now, Paul. As ever, thank you for your insight and willingness to call out these pernicious and infernal forces.
Paul, the talk was amazing, thank you! I listened live, but was unable to post a comment on YouTube. So I'll try here. I listened to your talk while weeding carrot beds, your dire warnings in my plastic headphones drowning out the joyful song of a mockingbird. Yes, I'm a hypocrite and the irony is delicious and all that, but as a practical matter, how important and feasible do you think it is to create our own new networks? Is Substack enough of a parallel institution? Or should we have a goal of extricating ourselves from the digital world completely? It seems scary to do that without a replacement that has a global reach. My parents were a part of the counterculture of the 60's, and it seems like so much of that power (for good or ill) grew from the concerts, the protests, the communes... all of the organic, seething, non-rational interactions of flesh and blood humans. Do you see anything like that on our horizon?
Paul, an excellent talk, and I'll watch it again with the children. I need to read Francis Bacon again - I'd perhaps naively just read him as a Christian thinker. You prompted me to think of this passage from Isaiah 44 - and to wonder when we make and then worship an idol whether we tend to be worshipping ourselves. Yet Paul tells us that behind every idol there's something else entirely (1 Corinthians 10:19-20).
9 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. ... 12 The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. 14 He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” 17 And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
Well, I surely wasn't expecting the title of the talk to be so literal... That was quite scary!
I do believe the work you're doing is very valuable and important. Seeing you deliver this talk while gasping for breath and summoning strength to speak about these things in front of a camera was a powerful experience. It's not easy being a prophet, eh?
After reading your last post about globalism, I meant to write (but had a little technological mishap) that, partly because of reading your essays, I've come to see all of Modernity as a project that's coming to its final fruition just about now - that, rather than a gradual development, the chance outcome of different social moments that didn't have from the beginning a clear direction of travel but just happened to add up to this.
Anyhow, it is looking more and more like a question of spiritual warfare. So, just in case you're considering going silent online, as you seem to have suggested near the end, allow me to compel you not to. Your ranks need you!
Warm regards from Spain!
I appreciate that. Thank you! The inner battle between the desire to go silent and keep writing is mostly daily for me. But here I still am ...