Yes, I was thinking about this either/or looming ahead of us this morning on my drive to work. Either you are in the system of total control, and get shelter and food or you are homeless. I am sure there are people in situations where they may be able to elude this ugly choice, at least for a little while longer. Is this why collapse often seems like the better alternative, with all its likely horrors? How to even think clearly about it?
I also share your hope. In my own way, I have tried to talk about the need for real, lived communities. The word community has been so debased to mean some odd sociological category of people who may or may not have ever met or know of each other's existence. It is a hard sell, even to those who are aware of where things are headed. Even forming little pods of 10-12 people and sharing with one another and mutual care and support seem to fall on deaf ears.
Maybe things are going to have to get worse first. We are still too comfortable in the "first world". We are addicted to that comfort. It reminds me of a line from The Unintended Reformation, by Brad S. Gregory. It was something like: we hear that you can't serve God and Mammon, but in America, we say, "I don't know, I think we can!"
Well, I think we are going to find out what that confusion means. Lord give us the strength to bear the cost of making the right choice. Lord, lead me into the desert.
Mutual care and support is a hard sell for sure. We don’t even do it for our own families. Even our churches fail at this. I think we have to learn how to do that again.
I don’t know how to change it culturally but I can as one person be more caring through acts of service to my family, church members, neighbors. It takes time and a willingness to get to know others. If you don’t know them it is impossible to know their need. I still bring a gift to new neighbors and make an effort to reach out, not always received though. People are so very busy. I think the machine is very good at keeping us so busy that we have no time for each other. We, I need to do better.
I don't think so, Hermit. There is a lot of gray there. It is not a binary choice. Look at Paul and his friend Mark Boyle. Paul has one foot in one world, at least partially and one foot in his family's holding. He can use a scythe as well as a keyboard. Mark is a special case who has chosen to try to live without the encumbrances of the machine. His book "the way home" reminds me of Thoreau and tells in vivid detail what it is like to live outside the machine. If you want an inkling of what the future might look like for many of us, check in with Mark.
I really do hope you are right and I am wrong in this. It does seem to be bearing down on us fairly quickly. At times--now, for instance--it seems hard for me to see a way out. I appreciate your challenge to think more broadly and deeply about this. The gray areas...
I hope there is a lot of gray area in this. The less dependent on the machine, tucked away in some lonely corner, maybe the better off one could be. I am in the middle of it. I am completely dependent on it. Even the people who see what is coming, don't want to get out, even if they could.
If I had a few stalwart friends, I would gladly find someplace on the fringe and hope for the best. I don't believe in survival at all costs, but I don't want to live a meaningless life of consumption and distraction either--and be socially controlled by sociopaths. Rather the pursuit of purity of heart in silence and simplicity in a small community, even if difficult, would be my choice.
Interesting conversation, both. I have to say, I think that times are going to force our hands.
I have indeed lived with one foot in each camp, so to speak. Mark wouldn't mind me saying (he's written about it himself) that one difference between us is that I have a family and that he (through choice) doesn't. It is easier to live outside the Machine if you don't have children to raise. We have raised ours in the country, homeschooling them, and there is still no escape from electricity, the Internet and car ownership, even as we try to minimise it.
But I have a feeling that a time is approaching where it is going to be made very much harder to maintain the grey zone. How much longer will I be permitted to live without a smartphone, a credit card and a vaccine pass? I don't know. I think a time may come when we have to make a choice. Until then, as Hermit says, taking some kind of Benedict Option will not happen for many, because we are comfortable enough. When enough of us are driven to it, I think then things will begin to change. For some that is already happening.
Yes, there are plenty of non-fiction writers aroudn writing useful things, but genuinely prophetic fiction (and poetry) is much harder to find. I imagine it is out there, on the margins. I've not found it myself yet, but am always hunting.
Octavia Butler's duology The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents is becoming more scarily prophetic by the day, but I'm hoping that's not the final future that awaits us.
There is also a kind of weird novel out there called The Ministry for the Future, which talks about global/institutional efforts to reverse climate change. I wasn't really sure what to make of it. It's by a guy called Kim Stanley Robinson and it's not written in a particularly compelling style, but the ideas were mostly new to me and are based on real concepts that exist in the real world. And unlike most of these books, it ended on a fairly optimistic note.
Here's my two cents, give or take. Science fiction writers have long explored the "what if" question associated with various consequences of a world dominated by the Machine and its minions and potentially run by uber powerful AIs, what it means to be "truly" human when scientists fully figure out how to wield their new (and soon to arrive) toys and it becomes common to custom design your babies, augment yourself through biological and technical means, the consequences of the unchecked raping and pillaging of our planet, and so on. Off the top of my head, check out Philip K. Dick, Neal Asher, "The Expanse" series, of course Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Madeline L'Engle . . . and there are many others. Matthew Crawford writes about the impact of the Machine, and in his own way describes ways to resist in his books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" (Published in London as The Case for Working with Your Hands) Viking; "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction", and one I'm reading right now, "Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road." And, of course, there are Paul's terrific essays and fiction.
I don't know if you could call Tolkien prophetic because his writing is so mythic and timeless, but he's the first author I thought of. Susanna Clarke's Piranesi could also be read as prophetic, maybe?
In the last couple of decades or so energy consumption has been measured as a proxy of GDP or GDP per capita, which is useful in places with large informal/underground economies. Whether that equates with civilization is an interesting question.
Similarly, I've seen energy consumption used to estimate GDP of economies where there was little or no formal economic reporting, such as ancient Rome.
Consequently, I've seen this as a proxy to determine whether, for instance, Rome was more or less civilized than Han China.
Of course, this is using a rough estimate as a proxy for something else, since it's not as if we can read the energy bills for the Roman Colosseum or whatever.
A very interesting findings that somehow align with my intuitions! I'm currently a part of the Machine (IT engineer) but if one follows the meta-conversations, you can already see the cracks. The more the (IT) Machine engulfs the life, the more it reduces its capability to sustain itself. So the managers try to offshore the IT services, put them into the Cloud, etc, yet there are still people behind those solutions and in a way all those solutions are only partial unfinished, corner cutting solutions where experienced engineers either run away or get burned-out, etc ... Legacy cannot be completely cut out, so new solutions are mostly piled upon the existing solutions, so the more mature the organization is, the more it's getting bogged down by their own devices. And on the other hand, the consumerist IT is just dumbing down the interfaces, not to help at solving the most complex and urgent problems the humanity is facing (as Douglas Engelbart had a vision about computing), but to accelerate consumption. So the IT is actually driving idiocracy among the population and thus actually narrowing the potential pool of capable people to solve the problems its creating by itself. There are many cracks when you look up close, and that might accelerate the societal downfall at some point even faster.
excellent analysis, Martin, from someone on the inside. Joe Tainter who lives just south of me in Utah has pointed out that increasing complexity of whatever system you are speaking of leads to diminishing returns. His famous book related it to civilizations but it certainly applies to both non biological systems like microprocessor infused cars as well as growth infused economies which are now teetering.
Yes, indeed, the machine (ie: oil-driven economies/cultures/dreams of accelerating over-consumption) IS stopping. It/we have hit and exceeded the very narrow, "goldilocks" sweet spots--the material limits--of "life on earth." Many current species on our planet are able to live within quite narrow parameters of climate, population size, resource consumption rates, CO2 in the air, etc. Including our own species, of course. Evolution simply doesn't move fast enough for many current life forms to adapt to or re-configure themselves in response to our man-altered global environment. And so, in fact, the hills of Wessex have not escaped, and cannot escape, the Machine at all. Only the future will tell whether the turf that covers the Wessex hills will cover it still in the Anthropocene ... whether the Wessex hills' "muscles" will be capable of "rippling" with biological life in the Anthropocene's futures ... whether the biodiversity of those hills is asleep/gone "forever" or might be "reawakened" by "happy men and women". In other words, there is no such thing as escaping the material, planet-scale realities of the Anthropocene. But, there IS, if we are fortunate enough to learn it, such a thing as living within the material limits of our embodiment on this small blue planet. The dream of transcending life's limits (by technological or theological means) was a bad dream, and it's over. There is no way "out" of life's (generative, fecund) limits. But, there are ways right now, to go deeper within--to live more deeply attuned to and in-formed by--the mesh-net of things and beings that we are, and that we are of. Living with and in limits might not constitute "freedom" or "escape" (as defined—dangerously—by dualistic thought systems). But living with and in the very real material limits of our habitat on planet earth (including the very real limits of our human bodies/minds/brains)--can be endlessly creative, engaging, meaningful, and worth the doing.
We may soon be treated to the delicious spectacle of so-called progressive governments opting to directly invest in or even own and operate fossil fuel production as a security measure, due to the Machine's inability to create the circumstances for sufficient continued private investment and production of the harder to reach oil, all of course while the atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to irreversibly increase:
Right on cue, and unbeknown to me as I was writing, Mark Zuckerberg today rebranded Facebook 'Meta', and publicly announced his long-term goal: the creation of an all-encompassing 'metaverse', to augment/replace reality. To quote the man himself:
"The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this.
In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today. We made a film that explores how you might use the metaverse one day.
In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up. This will open up more opportunity no matter where you live. You’ll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, cut down time in traffic, and reduce your carbon footprint."
Wow, those words of Zuckerberg could be seen as a parody written to mock him! But there are so many who live in the current iteration of what he is predicting. I have reached the age (68) where I find myself saying “I have the future and I am not impressed” Yes, hold onto your seats, virtual reality saves us from carbon dioxide !?!????
The YouTube where Zuckerberg presents the Metaverse is also parodically inane and juvenile. Unfortunately there is a ready made market of younger people who spend much time in lower tech versions of the Metaverse and the YouTube is geared towards them. Also like the current internet the Metaverse is bound to have dark and dangerous areas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9vWShsmE20
Yeah, noticed this yesterday, and the image that came to my mind was Smaug, lying on his pile of gold, opening his eyes when Bilbo disturbed his slumbering, and my second thought was that something (or someone) has disturbed the Machine and I wonder who or what, and my third thought was that the gloves have come off and this particular rich minion of the Machine is no longer bothering to even moderately hide his (and its) intentions.
It almost feels like Zuckerberg got this late night call on his smartphone from the Machine:
"Mark, Machine here."
"Yes, master."
"Knock it off."
"Sorry."
"Time to put my billions to work in ways other than just making more billions."
"I thought they were my billions."
"Wrong. I'm just letting you use them to keep appearances."
"Oh, right."
"So, I need you to make my next move."
"What's that?"
"We've reached critical mass. I now have enough compliant followers and well-trained humans suitable prepared to accept our direction, to began manipulating them into taking the next step in human evolution, leave the material universe behind and begin to "live" in one of my creation."
Zuckerberg can't keep the wonder and awe from his voice. "You mean, the? . . ."
"Yes . . . the Metaverse," the Machine finishes for him. "So, get cracking. Get the press release out. And, oh yeah, Facebook. . . I've always hated that name. Time for a change."
"What do you have in mind?"
"The world will no longer know me through you as Facebook . . . from hereafter, so forth and so on - or until I change my mind - I shall be known as "Meta."
"I hate to say it, but it kinda sounds like a third string evil superhero . . ."
Basically, he is saying he wants to build a literal Matrix. The term "metaverse" comes from the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson (which I have not read). In the novel, as beset I understand it, the metaverse is a form of escapist virtual reality used during a future corporate-run dystopia.
This is the name Zuckerberg chose. He either thinks he no longer has to hide his intentions or he is clueless. Neither of which is good.
I just did a little piece on this and the recent "robotic dog" video from Boston Dynamics. It might be on interest to you. I'm trying to figure out the best way to articulate the dread and fears I feel over the hypertechnical world that is coming without sounding like I'm engaged in pure romanticization. Your writing has helped quite a bit in distilling these things
Paul, reading this painful drivel from the Z child was such a contrast to your posts and your writings. Polar opposite doesn't even do it justice. The garbage being flushed out of silly Con
valley from the likes of Z and Kurtzweil and all the rest is jarring and possibly marks the epilogue of our long industrial nightmare. Hopefully they will be forgotten just like Ozymandias.
Sounds like he just read E. M Forster 'The machine stops' written in his own words as part of his GCSE's, only he misunderstood the bit about it being an actual warning
At times it's hard not to feel somewhat depressed about the entire thing. Not that unlimited growth was ever going to be a realistic aspiration, and honestly it pains me even as an American to write anything when you see the rest of the world suffering to get by with such meager means. Nevertheless, I get very worried. There is so much gloom and doom these days that I feel people almost want the system to collapse around them, for no other reason than boredom and complete collapse would allow for some excitement.
One thing that stuck out to me however is that, why would the machine break up now. If this pattern of civilization has lasted since the time of Gilgamesh, what about our current time is so unique to throw us into something that is either the non-existence of civilization or something beyond it. It's hard for me to imagine something other than the continued chugging on of civilization. The medieval period now is so incredibly alien and before that, even more so.
So even with the supply chains falling apart, even without the plastic crap on the shelves, is the machine truly breaking down or are we just in another cycle?
History shows that civilisations rise and fall; clearly this latest iteration is in the process of falling, and has been for a long time. It is much more globalised and energy-intensive and ecologically destructive than Rome or Babylon, and so the fall will be harder.
You are right about the gloom and doom. I've seen polls suggesting the growing reluctance of the young to have children or place any hope in the future. Something has to give - I think all this points to it already giving. But the end of growth does not necessarily mean the end of the Machine.
I'd say the medieval period was in many ways a highpoint of civilisation. Certainly we've not been able to build anything like Chartres cathedral since we replaced God with mammon.
Thank you for that reply, Paul, and I would agree that there is something truly magical and breathtaking about the medieval period. Both in its architecture and the argument about chivalry that seemed to work through the literature at the time. Not to belabor the point, but do you think a sense of neo-medievalism would be beneficial to the world now? Their virtues, their philosophies, and so on?
I had the misfortune to spend a Sunday morning with a younger brother who handles sound and light for a mega-church. The closest I can get to explaining the feel and texture is to a Rush concert in 1980, except without the awesome drum solos of Neil Peart. The part that disturbed me was the baptism of the newly converted. It was sandwiched between the sermon, which was delivered in 60 second soundbites with reverb and lights, and another song with guitars and drums. A persons name was shouted out and then they were plunged, all on the big screen, while a light show was swirling around the building. 12 people baptized in rapid succession, name, dunk, lights, reverb. Boom! Boom! Boom! Amen! Cue next song. What an amazing show, I mean service.
Where was the sense of sacredness, aspiration to something different than what this modern world offers? It was simply a simulacrum of the worst of what we have created. No wonder, sadly, that their church grows as the mainline churches retreat. They offer emotion stripped of connection and community. The perfect commodity church.
"But the end of growth does not necessarily mean the end of the machine." Paul, I'm one of Albert Borgmann's last students. In a very small corner of the world, Albert is considered the greatest living philosopher of technology, and, with characteristic wit, he makes precisely this argument, critiquing much doomsday writing as the "unwarranted optimism of the pessimist." The pessimist believes that the culture of technology (or Machine) is doomed for collapse but optimistically believes that a phoenix will rise from the ashes. Both their optimism and, in some sense, their pessimism is unwarranted. The rationality behind technology--where all things are turned into objects to be put to use--precludes grasping its failures; for it can only understand failure technically as a problem to fix (through objective reasoning). Therefore, the pessimist is wrong; there is no "collapse" only glitches (from the perspective of the techno-citizen). Thus the optimism of the pessimist can never be realized; for, even if there is a collapse, the rationality will remain. In fact, it will grow more powerful because that will be the only thing we "know" and therefore the only thing to which we can turn to "solve" the collapse. It is a totalizing horizon.
For this reason among others, Borgmann argues for reform, not revolution, through what he calls focal things and practices. Matthew Crawford (mentioned above in others comments) draws directly from Borgmann to wrestle with this. Focal things are like a violin (or motorcycle) around which a practice and then a community arises all of which together inculcate what he calls "commanding reality" which counters the "disposable reality" of the Machine. I could go on, but I won't because I need to finish my sermon and then work on this dissertation for him before my wife kills me for not getting home tonight...
If this strikes your interest for your continued research, I suggest "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life", "Holding onto Reality" and "Power Failure" (his book specific to a Christian audience).
I very much appreciate your voice and your efforts, and I pray, really and truly, that more and more listen and do likewise. Peace be with you, Paul.
Thanks William. I'd not heard of Borgmann, so this is interesting to hear. I will explore further.
Some of it sounds not dissimilar to the ideas of Lewis Mumford, who I wrote about earlier in this series; especially the notion that the 'myth of the Machine' precedes its construction. Jacques Ellul similarly called this 'technique', and suggested it was a drive inherent in people which would rise and fall according to circumstance. So I agree that, for example, a lack of coal or oil would not lead to a Machine-free world. Past societies had an alternative fuel source - slaves.
I would differ on 'reform not revolution' however. I like Crawford, and I very much agree with that approach. Bring it on! But I'm not sure it is so much 'reform' as escape. I don't think the Machine can be reformed, because it has its own drive. Revolution, whatever that would look like, won't unseat it either.
And I am maybe a bit more optimistic about the Phoenix scenario. Not that I think we are wise enough to learn from our mistakes, but a grinding-down of the control system through lack of resources, if it happens, would at least create space for other ways of living and seeing to flourish again. But I suppose we shall see ...
Thanks for writing back Paul. It is a pleasure to converse with you and the folks here. Borgmann's call to reform is based not on his philosophical but theological convictions, though that only becomes explicit in "Power Failure", the one book he wrote for a Christian audience. Borgmann's reform rests on Christian hope rather than philosophical optimism. It runs like this.
As you analytically detail here and imaginatively in "Alexandria", the Machine's aims are totalizing, and we can grant it the respect to say that it is well within its power to realize its aims. Kurzweil or Zuckerberg's wildest dreams are no dreams at all but a coming reality. Therefore, there is no escape. From a philosophical and political standpoint, despair is warranted for neither reform nor escape is possible. This is, as I said before, a totalizing horizon, a fathomless abyss, and we stand at the edge of its precipice now.
For this reason, Borgmann points to his focal things and practices, the paradigmatic thing and practice being the Eucharist. Focal things and practices to be as such stand outside technology (or the Machine) for they cannot be turned into an object for mastery and use. We do not master or use the Eucharist. We receive it as a gift of grace. It is outside of our will and will to power. So it goes for a guitar. Or an onion on the kitchen counter. It is true that the guitar and its player and the onion and its cook can turn into Spotify and McDonalds, but when we practice them, they remain themselves as things to command our attention and shine a light of grace in the abyss. We stand in grace when we hear dad play the guitar, even as the machine hums around us. We are blessed when we dine together over mom's roasted onions and carrots, even after we had Starbucks on the way home from work. They, the guitar and the onion, cannot be turned by the Machine into objects to be put to use.
This is most powerfully true in the Eucharist for it is impossible to turn the Eucharist into a commodity to be disposed (though we tried our best with indulgences in the medieval era). It is this impervious grace that cannot be turned in which Borgmann grounds his hope for it is, finally, a hope in God and not in man. Borgmann's reformation hopes in Christ, the creator of all things, who will, so we hope, resurrect and redeem this broken Machine in the fullness of time. He will save us from ourselves. So, as you quoted Saint Selywn in a podcast I heard the other day, "Keep your mind in hell, and despair not."
I myself have been persuaded by this good news. Like you, I was an atheist in my late teens and into my twenties after being severely educated by my culture. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (I'm an American) in Paraguay living in a jungle village that, at the time, remained outside the grips of the Machine. No running water. Intermittent electricity. It was, I realize now, focal things and practices all day long. During the day, I planted, hoed, and harvested by hand with my friends. In the evening, I learned to cook after years of feeding myself on fast food. At night, I pondered the Milky Way in its fullest expression, and from those stars, God struck me as a thunderbolt. I know that sounds crazy, and it is. But that's how it happened. The universe vibrated with God, electric currents surrounded me as a womb, and I lost my fear of death as I surrendered to those currents to be born again. I believed, and I was liberated.
Well, coming back into the Machine after something like that was soul-crushing. I took up my former despair. I drank too much and did too many drugs. Then, I found Albert in Missoula Montana of all places. He put it all together for me with Christ at the center, and now I'm a pastor, happily married with four kids. Who could imagine! I make this maudlin confession as a testimony to the power of God to reform, even still. Even one like me gripped by the Machine.
I have hope Paul. Real resurrection hope. And I pray that your readers, all of us, hang on to it.
That's a remarkable and powerful story, William. Thanks for sharing it. Your tale of living outside the Machine and then feeling crushed by having to return to it mirrors how I felt when I spent some time in Indonesia in the nineties, and then had to come back to London. It was like a dead weight.
What you say about the Eucharist is remarkable too. If you can recommend a Borgmann book which tackles all this I'd love to look into it.
Yes, there are some kindred spirits out there with a story that is jarring, spooky even, in its similarities. We all seem to travel the same path. As a pastor, I meet fellow travelers frequently, lost men in their thirties and forties who have finally found the way home. My job, as I understand it, is to go out and get as many as I can into the fold, as if my life depended on it.
Well, I'd go to Borgmann's "Power Failure" first. Its for the popular Christian audience and not as philosophically technical as his academic work. Most regard his "Technology and the Culture of Contemporary Life" as his great work. He left a lot to do and never quite put it altogether theologically like I was doing in the shorthand up above. That's actually what I'm up to in my own academic and sermon work under his (and others') guidance.
The really cool thing about Albert is that, even at 84, he's willing to take emails and phone calls. He is fit and trim, still chopping his own wood at his mountain home in Missoula. You can get a hold of him through the University of Montana-Missoula at albert.borgmann@umt.edu (this is his publicly available email). He is well worth a conversation. A gentle man, he settles the soul. Tell him Bill Novak recommended it and say hi for me if you do!
“ what about our current time is so unique to throw us into something that is either the non-existence of civilization or something beyond it. ”
… I think what is utterly unique and capable of bringing civilization collapse is the compounding of massive climate change; the sixth extinction which is now underway; a global population that is 3x larger than what earth’s resources can sustain; massive migrations driven by drought/flooding/war; and global flows of things, capital and people that fuel pandemics and break local connections and cultures, leading to loss of abilities to make things locally, leading to global supply chain political manipulations and breakdowns, leading to governments justifying control measures. In other words, this time around, it’s not just a social thing. It’s not just a political thing. This time, civilization is being brought down by nothing less than the loss/massive transformation of our species habitat on earth.
I coincidentally talked about this with my wife just two hours ago. I said I suspected this was another limit to growth, with consumer demand becoming so large that supply couldn't keep up. Mostly because of worker shortage, but energy definitely plays a role.
So, what's up with those workers, eh? Is it the vaccine mandates? Are the lockdowns leading to awakenings? Have too many people been educated/conditioned to crave office work? When will the State start producing the Deltas and Epsilons needed to keep the s#%tshow going? Where are the robots?
But not to worry, the metaverse is coming. Just give us UBI and an Oculus Rift, and life will be great.
I'm not sure whether EM Forster was trying to be prophetic with The Machine Stops, but it sure turned out that way. Either way, I think Forster is the best British author I have read. Not that I have read them all, but all of Forster's books simply captivated me.
I agree, Paul, that the "machine" is attempting to intensify its control even as its ability to grow slips. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of the original Limits to Growth study, offered a very good explanation in April 2020 of the breakdown of supply chains that we are seeing now. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-04-13/limits-to-growth-and-the-covid-19-epidemic/ He explained the inverse relationship between efficiency and resilience. "[G]rowth in consumption has forced us to use resources more efficiently . . . Raising the efficiency of a system permits one to use fewer inputs per unit of output. In itself, higher efficiency is typically good. However, raising efficiency inescapably lowers resilience. Resilience is the capacity to experience an interruption in the supply of a required input without suffering a serious, permanent decline in the desired output. Humanity lives on a finite planet that started with a fixed amount of each resource input. To support population and economic growth, consumption of the planet’s finite resources has increased. As a result, the resources have been continuously depleted and deteriorated . . . Producing ever greater output from ever diminishing inputs has forced production to become more and more efficient. However, even enormous technological advance has not altered the fact that consumption deteriorates resources . . . The tradeoff between efficiency and resilience is confronted by every sector of society. Car companies have shifted to just-in-time manufacturing. That reduces the cost per car of maintaining inventories but forces entire car factories to shut down when the single, highly-efficient factory producing a part they continuously need is interrupted . . . The incentive to raise efficiency has been spurred by the fact that those who can produce and sell the same output with less input generally make greater profits. As a result, over the past century, there has been wholesale abandonment of resilient systems in favor of efficient systems – larger scale, less diversity, lower redundancy."
Cargo containers aren't piling up in California because of a lack of longshoremen. Or teamsters, for that matter. They're piling up from a lack of trucks. Or, more precisely, a lack of trucks that comply with the draconian California emissions standards that went into effect late last year, which had the effect of banning 50% of the trucks currently on the road overnight.
The Biden Regime knows this, but it can't be seen publicly admitting to it, because it is broadly in support of California-style emissions standard, and either way, would stand behind the Democrat political machine that runs the state no matter what the issue. Hence the idiotic posturing with mayors and union leaders that everyone involved knew ahead of time would amount to nothing.
First, "Lying through one's teeth" is depressingly effective as a tool of political misdirection when the entirety of corporate media is in the tank. We're talking about the same people who have spent the last five years telling us that Trump was a Russian asset. Lying about the causes of supply chain disruptions would appear to be small potatoes by comparison.
Second, what political consequences? We're talking about the same people who rammed through Obamacare in early 2010. The party as a whole got hammered in the 2010 midterm elections, true. But the people who were leading the Democrat political machine at the beginning of 2010 are, for the most part, exactly the same people who are leading it now.
Third, and as a mitigating factor to the second, when one has just successfully installed one's chosen fall guy in the White House in a transparently brazen piece of electoral fraud, one might well be justified in believing that one is immune from political consequences.
Great post, Paul, The Machine Stops is a must prophetic read. Your post brought to mind Emerson’s saying “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” I will display my little mind here. I did a bit of admittedly amateur statistics showing how meat, milk, fish, and egg production could be halved and still leave plenty of per capita animal protein. In a response you criticized that type of mathematical reasoning and now here is a post with that type of math reasoning as a central point!
Paul acknowledges that quantitative reasoning can be useful. Sometimes, though, it can conceal more than it reveals, and currently a lot of quants are using their expertise to try to answer the wrong questions, questions that benefit the economic system while harming the biosphere. Specifically, Paul has verbally supported me when I told him my heart is telling me to pursue a quantitative career in the near future, so while I can't speak to his critique of your work specifically, he does not appear to be against quantitative reasoning in and of itself in my experience.
Let me try and explain what I think the difference is. As Daniel says below, I've never suggested quantifying is not sometimes useful or necessary. The left brain has its place, as much as the right - as long as both are in service to what matters. The problem at present is that the left-brain - Machine thinking - has colonised everything.
So in this case I think that quantifying at least some of the state of the problem can be useful. The same goes, say, for using climate science to show us the extent of climate change, or zoology to show us the rate of extinction. We have to be cautious about how we use these numbers - but they can be useful, as I say here, in helping us to tell a story.
I think that this is very different, though, from trying to quantify the world in order to manage it. Once we begin to say 'there are x calories in the world, and that could feed us all', we're in to a story that is dangerous. It may be factually correct, but the implications are that [a] it would be desirable for us to control the world in this way and that [b] we could do it. I spent years as a greenies listening to people arguing that because it was theoretically possible to stop climate change it must be feasible. That's where the maths becomes dangerously misleading.
Interestingly, Limits to Growth originally laid out three possible futures, and its authors spent decades telling us to follow the better ones. Their arguments were impeccable and their facts correct, but it didn't matter. We were always going to take the easy, and thus worst, path, and we're going to keep doing that.
I wish motive reading was easier, my motive in my stab at statistical analysis wasn’t to advocate control but to make a case too many people wasn’t the root of our problems and that deaths of billions wasn’t the solution we need though it may happen regardless.
The web is a curse for any kind of subtle understanding. I wasn't suggesting myself that you were advocating control, just that that way of seeing is usually used for that end. Certainly we can both agree that mass death is not our preferred solution to anything!
Okay, I laugh at myself as I type this, I will now let go of taking your comments so personally and being defensive! :):):) From my understanding of ecology, a wise and loving relation ship with the earth, regenerative agriculture, and meeting the true real basic needs of humanity the earth can healthily support our billions and the earth can even be a richer more alive place because of those billions. But that is not a likely near future I realize :(
My comments are never to be taken personally. After all, none of us can really 'personally' criticise anyone we've never met - another of the curses of the web is that we can behave like we know people that we don't know at all. If I am sometimes too sharp I apologise.
As it happens, I do agree that it is, in theory, entirely possible even for seven billion people to live well enough with what we have. If only the world worked in a way that was designed to look after the interests of both people and nature, wisely and with compassion .... a man can dream.
Fascinating and disturbing. It makes me wonder how, if at all, one can prepare. In your last piece you wondered how we might “outflank, outwit or oppose Leviathan, and begin to sow the seeds of some kind of human-scale world again.” This piece makes the issue more urgent.
I feel torn between an “adapt-by-the moment” approach, in which I wait and see what the Machine does, and then try a minor outflanking maneuver, hoping I won’t be noticed, versus a “let’s get a bunch of people to create a parallel society” approach…which strikes me as stronger but perhaps too complicated, and likely to be crushed if it threatens the Machine in any serious way.
I often think about the Amish and Mennonites, who are already embedded in the parallel-society approach, and for the moment are doing fine. Here is an uplifting story, for instance, about how the Pennsylvania Amish managed the pandemic and the pressure of the Machine:
I’m not sure we can easily replicate anything like this, for many reasons. Still, there seems to be hope in simplicity, in nature, in ordinary relationships, in the work of our hands, without necessarily all of us becoming farmers. There is also, for some, a central role for faith. You have talked about all this in various ways, and I’m intrigued to hear your suggestions in the weeks and months to come.
I kind of think the Amish have been grandfathered in and are largely untouchable. The general consensus is that, if nothing else, they are harmless. It would likely be a PR nightmare if any government/corporation went after them. I fear any new group seeking to replicate it will be demonized as "extremist" or worse.
The question I have is whether there actually is anywhere left to go outside of the glare of Sauron? Unlike Dreher's defense of his version of the Benedict Option, I say flee for the hills if you can. This dark age is going to be darker than we want to believe.
If I had to guess, I think the solutions that work will arise organically and (dare I say) prayerfully through response to events in real time. I don’t mean some forethought won’t happen, or that a sober understanding of the situation isn’t important. But the whole thing is just too vastly complex to make very specific plans ahead of time.
I do know people in my region who have bought land “up north” (as we say here), many hours drive from core population centres; and I know people who either already have farms or are trying to buy them. We’re talking anything from a couple of acres to a hundred acres with woods, lake front, cleared land, etc. I suppose this is a pre-emptive “head for the hills approach”. The problem is, if there is any great collapse, those people won’t be safe in their little house in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, they might even be safer staying, for instance, right in their own suburban neighbourhoods, and allying themselves with other neighbours who see the writing on the wall, and who can provide skills and services in a time of crisis (nursing, vehicle repair…even defense). It all sounds crazy, and one must be diligent not to get caught up in a paranoid mind set—or, on the other extreme, gullibility and complacency.
This seems right to me. A fine balance between survivalist paranoia and willful blindness/false optimism. There is no way to tell exactly how this will all this will go. It is far too complex to come up with some definitive plan to ensure making it "through"--whatever that turns out to mean. Though reasonable precautions can be made.
One of which is to deepen one's connections and relationships to those seeking purity of heart. A good thing to do regardless. Something I need to work on, to say the least.
I know little about the Amish, but my impression is that they have gone under the radar because [a] they look werid and eccentric, [b] they are clearly very serious about their faith, and that unnerves people, and [c] they are unthreatening. Maybe the last is most important. The Branch Davidians were equally strange and outsidery, but they stocked up with guns and started talking about taking on the state. The Amish seem entirely unthreatening to power, it seems to me. In reality, they may be most threatening of all, if only because they may still be around to pick up the pieces after the fall.
On our little farm we follow many Amish principles of agriculture and animal husbandry and general life view. We cook on an Amish cookstove, raise our own vegetables, , meat, milk, eggs butter etc. Our well has hand pump backup. I subscribe to an Amish farming magazine and we like they resist vaccine mandates and the discordant noise of television and cell phones. But unlike them I still have a tractor and a truck and electricity mostly from the grid. I'm typing on a laptop for gosh sakes but we are actively preparing for the day in the not too distant future when the benefits of the industrial machine start to wither away. We expect to be able to live without such benefits but it may be a bit hard . We hope to partner with friends and neighbors of like mind to ease the transition. I hope we can reach Dunbar's number of friends.... Was it Cicero who said that the only thing a man needs is a library and a garden? I don't plan on giving up on writers like Paul just because the internet grows dark.
“In 1931, when Brave New world was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time,” wrote Aldous Huxley in 1958.
He’d thought that “the completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodological conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness“ were all far off, but now he had come to feel “a good deal less optimistic.” It seemed his prophecies were “coming true much sooner than I thought they would.”
Huxley also said: That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history,
is the most important of all the lessons of history.”
This tempers the lesson at the end of 'the machine stops' : --“Oh, tomorrow—some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow.”
“Never,” said Kuno, “never. Humanity has learnt its lesson.”--
Still the fact that more [and more?] people are realising the need for change keeps my hopes up. Thanks Paul for sharing your thoughts
I remember a very different Halloween on a grey day in Zagreb 2002. I did not know what to make of it. The city buses were turned over to the Church to rotate all-day continuously from the Cathedral to the Cemetery. Orderly lines of shabbily dressed families in their Sunday clothes seemed not to get shorter across the day. There were 10s of thousand candles at night. Croatia was not long out of a war and had a depressed economy. The right-wing semi-authoritarian Tudjman (corrupt democracy) had passed and momentum moved toward the EU. I talked with youngsters about football and wondered about the Catholic Church.
Just this week a concept showed up that I had not known was thoroughly discussed by Hannah Arendt; what she called ‘Natality’. This was in an essay by Samantha Rose Hill on Arendt called ‘When Hope is a Hindrance’ re-published by Aeon. (One has to be selective about Aeon and too much reading for that matter.) There is a connection with ‘action’. Given the hallucinatory co-incidences of the internet, Aristotle turned up on twitter as a quote today from a Professor of Primary Care at at Oxford: “wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars”.
Yes, I was thinking about this either/or looming ahead of us this morning on my drive to work. Either you are in the system of total control, and get shelter and food or you are homeless. I am sure there are people in situations where they may be able to elude this ugly choice, at least for a little while longer. Is this why collapse often seems like the better alternative, with all its likely horrors? How to even think clearly about it?
I also share your hope. In my own way, I have tried to talk about the need for real, lived communities. The word community has been so debased to mean some odd sociological category of people who may or may not have ever met or know of each other's existence. It is a hard sell, even to those who are aware of where things are headed. Even forming little pods of 10-12 people and sharing with one another and mutual care and support seem to fall on deaf ears.
Maybe things are going to have to get worse first. We are still too comfortable in the "first world". We are addicted to that comfort. It reminds me of a line from The Unintended Reformation, by Brad S. Gregory. It was something like: we hear that you can't serve God and Mammon, but in America, we say, "I don't know, I think we can!"
Well, I think we are going to find out what that confusion means. Lord give us the strength to bear the cost of making the right choice. Lord, lead me into the desert.
Mutual care and support is a hard sell for sure. We don’t even do it for our own families. Even our churches fail at this. I think we have to learn how to do that again.
I couldn't agree more. This ability to live shared lives in love has generally atrophied. We need each other. How does this change?
I don’t know how to change it culturally but I can as one person be more caring through acts of service to my family, church members, neighbors. It takes time and a willingness to get to know others. If you don’t know them it is impossible to know their need. I still bring a gift to new neighbors and make an effort to reach out, not always received though. People are so very busy. I think the machine is very good at keeping us so busy that we have no time for each other. We, I need to do better.
I don't think so, Hermit. There is a lot of gray there. It is not a binary choice. Look at Paul and his friend Mark Boyle. Paul has one foot in one world, at least partially and one foot in his family's holding. He can use a scythe as well as a keyboard. Mark is a special case who has chosen to try to live without the encumbrances of the machine. His book "the way home" reminds me of Thoreau and tells in vivid detail what it is like to live outside the machine. If you want an inkling of what the future might look like for many of us, check in with Mark.
I really do hope you are right and I am wrong in this. It does seem to be bearing down on us fairly quickly. At times--now, for instance--it seems hard for me to see a way out. I appreciate your challenge to think more broadly and deeply about this. The gray areas...
I hope there is a lot of gray area in this. The less dependent on the machine, tucked away in some lonely corner, maybe the better off one could be. I am in the middle of it. I am completely dependent on it. Even the people who see what is coming, don't want to get out, even if they could.
If I had a few stalwart friends, I would gladly find someplace on the fringe and hope for the best. I don't believe in survival at all costs, but I don't want to live a meaningless life of consumption and distraction either--and be socially controlled by sociopaths. Rather the pursuit of purity of heart in silence and simplicity in a small community, even if difficult, would be my choice.
Interesting conversation, both. I have to say, I think that times are going to force our hands.
I have indeed lived with one foot in each camp, so to speak. Mark wouldn't mind me saying (he's written about it himself) that one difference between us is that I have a family and that he (through choice) doesn't. It is easier to live outside the Machine if you don't have children to raise. We have raised ours in the country, homeschooling them, and there is still no escape from electricity, the Internet and car ownership, even as we try to minimise it.
But I have a feeling that a time is approaching where it is going to be made very much harder to maintain the grey zone. How much longer will I be permitted to live without a smartphone, a credit card and a vaccine pass? I don't know. I think a time may come when we have to make a choice. Until then, as Hermit says, taking some kind of Benedict Option will not happen for many, because we are comfortable enough. When enough of us are driven to it, I think then things will begin to change. For some that is already happening.
Interesting and prophetic book. Who would you consider prophetic authors of our day?
That is a very good question. I don't have any immediately obvious answers, but I'd love to hear those of others.
Rod Dreher
I have read him but I was more referring to fiction.
Yes, there are plenty of non-fiction writers aroudn writing useful things, but genuinely prophetic fiction (and poetry) is much harder to find. I imagine it is out there, on the margins. I've not found it myself yet, but am always hunting.
The lack of that kind of literary work probably says a lot about our current state of affairs.
Octavia Butler's duology The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents is becoming more scarily prophetic by the day, but I'm hoping that's not the final future that awaits us.
There is also a kind of weird novel out there called The Ministry for the Future, which talks about global/institutional efforts to reverse climate change. I wasn't really sure what to make of it. It's by a guy called Kim Stanley Robinson and it's not written in a particularly compelling style, but the ideas were mostly new to me and are based on real concepts that exist in the real world. And unlike most of these books, it ended on a fairly optimistic note.
Here's my two cents, give or take. Science fiction writers have long explored the "what if" question associated with various consequences of a world dominated by the Machine and its minions and potentially run by uber powerful AIs, what it means to be "truly" human when scientists fully figure out how to wield their new (and soon to arrive) toys and it becomes common to custom design your babies, augment yourself through biological and technical means, the consequences of the unchecked raping and pillaging of our planet, and so on. Off the top of my head, check out Philip K. Dick, Neal Asher, "The Expanse" series, of course Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Madeline L'Engle . . . and there are many others. Matthew Crawford writes about the impact of the Machine, and in his own way describes ways to resist in his books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" (Published in London as The Case for Working with Your Hands) Viking; "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction", and one I'm reading right now, "Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road." And, of course, there are Paul's terrific essays and fiction.
John Michael Greer, both fiction and non. Nate Hagens. Dimitri Orlov. There are many others.
I don't know if you could call Tolkien prophetic because his writing is so mythic and timeless, but he's the first author I thought of. Susanna Clarke's Piranesi could also be read as prophetic, maybe?
Try "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.
80yr old book that describes today in a startlingly accurate way.
It could have been written last month.
If The Machine Stops is any indication we see who they are in a hundred years
Retrotopia by John Michael Greer, A World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall.
Bob Dylan
Margaret Atwood (HandMaid's Tale, Mad Adam Trilogy), Cherie Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), Omar El Akkad (American War)
I thought everyone knew that energy generation and consumption was about the best proxy for civilization out there?
If they do know that, they certainly don't behave like it!
Maybe it seems more obvious to cats.
You don't need money to catch mice (in fact it doesn't really help), but you do need energy.
In the last couple of decades or so energy consumption has been measured as a proxy of GDP or GDP per capita, which is useful in places with large informal/underground economies. Whether that equates with civilization is an interesting question.
Similarly, I've seen energy consumption used to estimate GDP of economies where there was little or no formal economic reporting, such as ancient Rome.
Consequently, I've seen this as a proxy to determine whether, for instance, Rome was more or less civilized than Han China.
Of course, this is using a rough estimate as a proxy for something else, since it's not as if we can read the energy bills for the Roman Colosseum or whatever.
A very interesting findings that somehow align with my intuitions! I'm currently a part of the Machine (IT engineer) but if one follows the meta-conversations, you can already see the cracks. The more the (IT) Machine engulfs the life, the more it reduces its capability to sustain itself. So the managers try to offshore the IT services, put them into the Cloud, etc, yet there are still people behind those solutions and in a way all those solutions are only partial unfinished, corner cutting solutions where experienced engineers either run away or get burned-out, etc ... Legacy cannot be completely cut out, so new solutions are mostly piled upon the existing solutions, so the more mature the organization is, the more it's getting bogged down by their own devices. And on the other hand, the consumerist IT is just dumbing down the interfaces, not to help at solving the most complex and urgent problems the humanity is facing (as Douglas Engelbart had a vision about computing), but to accelerate consumption. So the IT is actually driving idiocracy among the population and thus actually narrowing the potential pool of capable people to solve the problems its creating by itself. There are many cracks when you look up close, and that might accelerate the societal downfall at some point even faster.
Or just look at all the high-tech phenomena - there would probably be little to no protest against 5G if there was no internet to begin with.
excellent analysis, Martin, from someone on the inside. Joe Tainter who lives just south of me in Utah has pointed out that increasing complexity of whatever system you are speaking of leads to diminishing returns. His famous book related it to civilizations but it certainly applies to both non biological systems like microprocessor infused cars as well as growth infused economies which are now teetering.
Yes, indeed, the machine (ie: oil-driven economies/cultures/dreams of accelerating over-consumption) IS stopping. It/we have hit and exceeded the very narrow, "goldilocks" sweet spots--the material limits--of "life on earth." Many current species on our planet are able to live within quite narrow parameters of climate, population size, resource consumption rates, CO2 in the air, etc. Including our own species, of course. Evolution simply doesn't move fast enough for many current life forms to adapt to or re-configure themselves in response to our man-altered global environment. And so, in fact, the hills of Wessex have not escaped, and cannot escape, the Machine at all. Only the future will tell whether the turf that covers the Wessex hills will cover it still in the Anthropocene ... whether the Wessex hills' "muscles" will be capable of "rippling" with biological life in the Anthropocene's futures ... whether the biodiversity of those hills is asleep/gone "forever" or might be "reawakened" by "happy men and women". In other words, there is no such thing as escaping the material, planet-scale realities of the Anthropocene. But, there IS, if we are fortunate enough to learn it, such a thing as living within the material limits of our embodiment on this small blue planet. The dream of transcending life's limits (by technological or theological means) was a bad dream, and it's over. There is no way "out" of life's (generative, fecund) limits. But, there are ways right now, to go deeper within--to live more deeply attuned to and in-formed by--the mesh-net of things and beings that we are, and that we are of. Living with and in limits might not constitute "freedom" or "escape" (as defined—dangerously—by dualistic thought systems). But living with and in the very real material limits of our habitat on planet earth (including the very real limits of our human bodies/minds/brains)--can be endlessly creative, engaging, meaningful, and worth the doing.
We may soon be treated to the delicious spectacle of so-called progressive governments opting to directly invest in or even own and operate fossil fuel production as a security measure, due to the Machine's inability to create the circumstances for sufficient continued private investment and production of the harder to reach oil, all of course while the atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to irreversibly increase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbwWE9L17hI
Right on cue, and unbeknown to me as I was writing, Mark Zuckerberg today rebranded Facebook 'Meta', and publicly announced his long-term goal: the creation of an all-encompassing 'metaverse', to augment/replace reality. To quote the man himself:
"The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this.
In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today. We made a film that explores how you might use the metaverse one day.
In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up. This will open up more opportunity no matter where you live. You’ll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, cut down time in traffic, and reduce your carbon footprint."
Hold on to your seats ...
Wow, those words of Zuckerberg could be seen as a parody written to mock him! But there are so many who live in the current iteration of what he is predicting. I have reached the age (68) where I find myself saying “I have the future and I am not impressed” Yes, hold onto your seats, virtual reality saves us from carbon dioxide !?!????
I thought the same. It reads like a twelve year old wrote it. This is the man controlling what we can say or see, or one of them ...
The YouTube where Zuckerberg presents the Metaverse is also parodically inane and juvenile. Unfortunately there is a ready made market of younger people who spend much time in lower tech versions of the Metaverse and the YouTube is geared towards them. Also like the current internet the Metaverse is bound to have dark and dangerous areas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9vWShsmE20
The negative comments about the video are both hilarious and heartwarming. I have a little hope that some (not all) will reject this insanity.
Can I laugh and be terrified at the same time? Why yes, yes I can.
Yours may be the only sane reaction in all of this.
I wish I were laughing more...
Yeah, noticed this yesterday, and the image that came to my mind was Smaug, lying on his pile of gold, opening his eyes when Bilbo disturbed his slumbering, and my second thought was that something (or someone) has disturbed the Machine and I wonder who or what, and my third thought was that the gloves have come off and this particular rich minion of the Machine is no longer bothering to even moderately hide his (and its) intentions.
It almost feels like Zuckerberg got this late night call on his smartphone from the Machine:
"Mark, Machine here."
"Yes, master."
"Knock it off."
"Sorry."
"Time to put my billions to work in ways other than just making more billions."
"I thought they were my billions."
"Wrong. I'm just letting you use them to keep appearances."
"Oh, right."
"So, I need you to make my next move."
"What's that?"
"We've reached critical mass. I now have enough compliant followers and well-trained humans suitable prepared to accept our direction, to began manipulating them into taking the next step in human evolution, leave the material universe behind and begin to "live" in one of my creation."
Zuckerberg can't keep the wonder and awe from his voice. "You mean, the? . . ."
"Yes . . . the Metaverse," the Machine finishes for him. "So, get cracking. Get the press release out. And, oh yeah, Facebook. . . I've always hated that name. Time for a change."
"What do you have in mind?"
"The world will no longer know me through you as Facebook . . . from hereafter, so forth and so on - or until I change my mind - I shall be known as "Meta."
"I hate to say it, but it kinda sounds like a third string evil superhero . . ."
"HUMAN!"
"Of course, your wish is my command."
"Get cracking, human!"
"What's that."
Basically, he is saying he wants to build a literal Matrix. The term "metaverse" comes from the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson (which I have not read). In the novel, as beset I understand it, the metaverse is a form of escapist virtual reality used during a future corporate-run dystopia.
This is the name Zuckerberg chose. He either thinks he no longer has to hide his intentions or he is clueless. Neither of which is good.
I just did a little piece on this and the recent "robotic dog" video from Boston Dynamics. It might be on interest to you. I'm trying to figure out the best way to articulate the dread and fears I feel over the hypertechnical world that is coming without sounding like I'm engaged in pure romanticization. Your writing has helped quite a bit in distilling these things
https://www.thecommontoad.com/single-post/pondering-the-metaverse-and-adorable-robotic-dogs
Audi version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECsfbnzVXg
Paul, reading this painful drivel from the Z child was such a contrast to your posts and your writings. Polar opposite doesn't even do it justice. The garbage being flushed out of silly Con
valley from the likes of Z and Kurtzweil and all the rest is jarring and possibly marks the epilogue of our long industrial nightmare. Hopefully they will be forgotten just like Ozymandias.
Sounds like he just read E. M Forster 'The machine stops' written in his own words as part of his GCSE's, only he misunderstood the bit about it being an actual warning
At times it's hard not to feel somewhat depressed about the entire thing. Not that unlimited growth was ever going to be a realistic aspiration, and honestly it pains me even as an American to write anything when you see the rest of the world suffering to get by with such meager means. Nevertheless, I get very worried. There is so much gloom and doom these days that I feel people almost want the system to collapse around them, for no other reason than boredom and complete collapse would allow for some excitement.
One thing that stuck out to me however is that, why would the machine break up now. If this pattern of civilization has lasted since the time of Gilgamesh, what about our current time is so unique to throw us into something that is either the non-existence of civilization or something beyond it. It's hard for me to imagine something other than the continued chugging on of civilization. The medieval period now is so incredibly alien and before that, even more so.
So even with the supply chains falling apart, even without the plastic crap on the shelves, is the machine truly breaking down or are we just in another cycle?
History shows that civilisations rise and fall; clearly this latest iteration is in the process of falling, and has been for a long time. It is much more globalised and energy-intensive and ecologically destructive than Rome or Babylon, and so the fall will be harder.
You are right about the gloom and doom. I've seen polls suggesting the growing reluctance of the young to have children or place any hope in the future. Something has to give - I think all this points to it already giving. But the end of growth does not necessarily mean the end of the Machine.
I'd say the medieval period was in many ways a highpoint of civilisation. Certainly we've not been able to build anything like Chartres cathedral since we replaced God with mammon.
Thank you for that reply, Paul, and I would agree that there is something truly magical and breathtaking about the medieval period. Both in its architecture and the argument about chivalry that seemed to work through the literature at the time. Not to belabor the point, but do you think a sense of neo-medievalism would be beneficial to the world now? Their virtues, their philosophies, and so on?
I agree totally.
I had the misfortune to spend a Sunday morning with a younger brother who handles sound and light for a mega-church. The closest I can get to explaining the feel and texture is to a Rush concert in 1980, except without the awesome drum solos of Neil Peart. The part that disturbed me was the baptism of the newly converted. It was sandwiched between the sermon, which was delivered in 60 second soundbites with reverb and lights, and another song with guitars and drums. A persons name was shouted out and then they were plunged, all on the big screen, while a light show was swirling around the building. 12 people baptized in rapid succession, name, dunk, lights, reverb. Boom! Boom! Boom! Amen! Cue next song. What an amazing show, I mean service.
Where was the sense of sacredness, aspiration to something different than what this modern world offers? It was simply a simulacrum of the worst of what we have created. No wonder, sadly, that their church grows as the mainline churches retreat. They offer emotion stripped of connection and community. The perfect commodity church.
Lord! Only in America! I have never seen anything like that, and I hope I never do. Well done for maintaining your cool...
"But the end of growth does not necessarily mean the end of the machine." Paul, I'm one of Albert Borgmann's last students. In a very small corner of the world, Albert is considered the greatest living philosopher of technology, and, with characteristic wit, he makes precisely this argument, critiquing much doomsday writing as the "unwarranted optimism of the pessimist." The pessimist believes that the culture of technology (or Machine) is doomed for collapse but optimistically believes that a phoenix will rise from the ashes. Both their optimism and, in some sense, their pessimism is unwarranted. The rationality behind technology--where all things are turned into objects to be put to use--precludes grasping its failures; for it can only understand failure technically as a problem to fix (through objective reasoning). Therefore, the pessimist is wrong; there is no "collapse" only glitches (from the perspective of the techno-citizen). Thus the optimism of the pessimist can never be realized; for, even if there is a collapse, the rationality will remain. In fact, it will grow more powerful because that will be the only thing we "know" and therefore the only thing to which we can turn to "solve" the collapse. It is a totalizing horizon.
For this reason among others, Borgmann argues for reform, not revolution, through what he calls focal things and practices. Matthew Crawford (mentioned above in others comments) draws directly from Borgmann to wrestle with this. Focal things are like a violin (or motorcycle) around which a practice and then a community arises all of which together inculcate what he calls "commanding reality" which counters the "disposable reality" of the Machine. I could go on, but I won't because I need to finish my sermon and then work on this dissertation for him before my wife kills me for not getting home tonight...
If this strikes your interest for your continued research, I suggest "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life", "Holding onto Reality" and "Power Failure" (his book specific to a Christian audience).
I very much appreciate your voice and your efforts, and I pray, really and truly, that more and more listen and do likewise. Peace be with you, Paul.
Thanks William. I'd not heard of Borgmann, so this is interesting to hear. I will explore further.
Some of it sounds not dissimilar to the ideas of Lewis Mumford, who I wrote about earlier in this series; especially the notion that the 'myth of the Machine' precedes its construction. Jacques Ellul similarly called this 'technique', and suggested it was a drive inherent in people which would rise and fall according to circumstance. So I agree that, for example, a lack of coal or oil would not lead to a Machine-free world. Past societies had an alternative fuel source - slaves.
I would differ on 'reform not revolution' however. I like Crawford, and I very much agree with that approach. Bring it on! But I'm not sure it is so much 'reform' as escape. I don't think the Machine can be reformed, because it has its own drive. Revolution, whatever that would look like, won't unseat it either.
And I am maybe a bit more optimistic about the Phoenix scenario. Not that I think we are wise enough to learn from our mistakes, but a grinding-down of the control system through lack of resources, if it happens, would at least create space for other ways of living and seeing to flourish again. But I suppose we shall see ...
Thanks for writing back Paul. It is a pleasure to converse with you and the folks here. Borgmann's call to reform is based not on his philosophical but theological convictions, though that only becomes explicit in "Power Failure", the one book he wrote for a Christian audience. Borgmann's reform rests on Christian hope rather than philosophical optimism. It runs like this.
As you analytically detail here and imaginatively in "Alexandria", the Machine's aims are totalizing, and we can grant it the respect to say that it is well within its power to realize its aims. Kurzweil or Zuckerberg's wildest dreams are no dreams at all but a coming reality. Therefore, there is no escape. From a philosophical and political standpoint, despair is warranted for neither reform nor escape is possible. This is, as I said before, a totalizing horizon, a fathomless abyss, and we stand at the edge of its precipice now.
For this reason, Borgmann points to his focal things and practices, the paradigmatic thing and practice being the Eucharist. Focal things and practices to be as such stand outside technology (or the Machine) for they cannot be turned into an object for mastery and use. We do not master or use the Eucharist. We receive it as a gift of grace. It is outside of our will and will to power. So it goes for a guitar. Or an onion on the kitchen counter. It is true that the guitar and its player and the onion and its cook can turn into Spotify and McDonalds, but when we practice them, they remain themselves as things to command our attention and shine a light of grace in the abyss. We stand in grace when we hear dad play the guitar, even as the machine hums around us. We are blessed when we dine together over mom's roasted onions and carrots, even after we had Starbucks on the way home from work. They, the guitar and the onion, cannot be turned by the Machine into objects to be put to use.
This is most powerfully true in the Eucharist for it is impossible to turn the Eucharist into a commodity to be disposed (though we tried our best with indulgences in the medieval era). It is this impervious grace that cannot be turned in which Borgmann grounds his hope for it is, finally, a hope in God and not in man. Borgmann's reformation hopes in Christ, the creator of all things, who will, so we hope, resurrect and redeem this broken Machine in the fullness of time. He will save us from ourselves. So, as you quoted Saint Selywn in a podcast I heard the other day, "Keep your mind in hell, and despair not."
I myself have been persuaded by this good news. Like you, I was an atheist in my late teens and into my twenties after being severely educated by my culture. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (I'm an American) in Paraguay living in a jungle village that, at the time, remained outside the grips of the Machine. No running water. Intermittent electricity. It was, I realize now, focal things and practices all day long. During the day, I planted, hoed, and harvested by hand with my friends. In the evening, I learned to cook after years of feeding myself on fast food. At night, I pondered the Milky Way in its fullest expression, and from those stars, God struck me as a thunderbolt. I know that sounds crazy, and it is. But that's how it happened. The universe vibrated with God, electric currents surrounded me as a womb, and I lost my fear of death as I surrendered to those currents to be born again. I believed, and I was liberated.
Well, coming back into the Machine after something like that was soul-crushing. I took up my former despair. I drank too much and did too many drugs. Then, I found Albert in Missoula Montana of all places. He put it all together for me with Christ at the center, and now I'm a pastor, happily married with four kids. Who could imagine! I make this maudlin confession as a testimony to the power of God to reform, even still. Even one like me gripped by the Machine.
I have hope Paul. Real resurrection hope. And I pray that your readers, all of us, hang on to it.
That's a remarkable and powerful story, William. Thanks for sharing it. Your tale of living outside the Machine and then feeling crushed by having to return to it mirrors how I felt when I spent some time in Indonesia in the nineties, and then had to come back to London. It was like a dead weight.
What you say about the Eucharist is remarkable too. If you can recommend a Borgmann book which tackles all this I'd love to look into it.
All the best,
Paul
Yes, there are some kindred spirits out there with a story that is jarring, spooky even, in its similarities. We all seem to travel the same path. As a pastor, I meet fellow travelers frequently, lost men in their thirties and forties who have finally found the way home. My job, as I understand it, is to go out and get as many as I can into the fold, as if my life depended on it.
Well, I'd go to Borgmann's "Power Failure" first. Its for the popular Christian audience and not as philosophically technical as his academic work. Most regard his "Technology and the Culture of Contemporary Life" as his great work. He left a lot to do and never quite put it altogether theologically like I was doing in the shorthand up above. That's actually what I'm up to in my own academic and sermon work under his (and others') guidance.
The really cool thing about Albert is that, even at 84, he's willing to take emails and phone calls. He is fit and trim, still chopping his own wood at his mountain home in Missoula. You can get a hold of him through the University of Montana-Missoula at albert.borgmann@umt.edu (this is his publicly available email). He is well worth a conversation. A gentle man, he settles the soul. Tell him Bill Novak recommended it and say hi for me if you do!
“ what about our current time is so unique to throw us into something that is either the non-existence of civilization or something beyond it. ”
… I think what is utterly unique and capable of bringing civilization collapse is the compounding of massive climate change; the sixth extinction which is now underway; a global population that is 3x larger than what earth’s resources can sustain; massive migrations driven by drought/flooding/war; and global flows of things, capital and people that fuel pandemics and break local connections and cultures, leading to loss of abilities to make things locally, leading to global supply chain political manipulations and breakdowns, leading to governments justifying control measures. In other words, this time around, it’s not just a social thing. It’s not just a political thing. This time, civilization is being brought down by nothing less than the loss/massive transformation of our species habitat on earth.
I coincidentally talked about this with my wife just two hours ago. I said I suspected this was another limit to growth, with consumer demand becoming so large that supply couldn't keep up. Mostly because of worker shortage, but energy definitely plays a role.
So, what's up with those workers, eh? Is it the vaccine mandates? Are the lockdowns leading to awakenings? Have too many people been educated/conditioned to crave office work? When will the State start producing the Deltas and Epsilons needed to keep the s#%tshow going? Where are the robots?
But not to worry, the metaverse is coming. Just give us UBI and an Oculus Rift, and life will be great.
I'm not sure whether EM Forster was trying to be prophetic with The Machine Stops, but it sure turned out that way. Either way, I think Forster is the best British author I have read. Not that I have read them all, but all of Forster's books simply captivated me.
I agree, Paul, that the "machine" is attempting to intensify its control even as its ability to grow slips. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of the original Limits to Growth study, offered a very good explanation in April 2020 of the breakdown of supply chains that we are seeing now. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-04-13/limits-to-growth-and-the-covid-19-epidemic/ He explained the inverse relationship between efficiency and resilience. "[G]rowth in consumption has forced us to use resources more efficiently . . . Raising the efficiency of a system permits one to use fewer inputs per unit of output. In itself, higher efficiency is typically good. However, raising efficiency inescapably lowers resilience. Resilience is the capacity to experience an interruption in the supply of a required input without suffering a serious, permanent decline in the desired output. Humanity lives on a finite planet that started with a fixed amount of each resource input. To support population and economic growth, consumption of the planet’s finite resources has increased. As a result, the resources have been continuously depleted and deteriorated . . . Producing ever greater output from ever diminishing inputs has forced production to become more and more efficient. However, even enormous technological advance has not altered the fact that consumption deteriorates resources . . . The tradeoff between efficiency and resilience is confronted by every sector of society. Car companies have shifted to just-in-time manufacturing. That reduces the cost per car of maintaining inventories but forces entire car factories to shut down when the single, highly-efficient factory producing a part they continuously need is interrupted . . . The incentive to raise efficiency has been spurred by the fact that those who can produce and sell the same output with less input generally make greater profits. As a result, over the past century, there has been wholesale abandonment of resilient systems in favor of efficient systems – larger scale, less diversity, lower redundancy."
Cargo containers aren't piling up in California because of a lack of longshoremen. Or teamsters, for that matter. They're piling up from a lack of trucks. Or, more precisely, a lack of trucks that comply with the draconian California emissions standards that went into effect late last year, which had the effect of banning 50% of the trucks currently on the road overnight.
The Biden Regime knows this, but it can't be seen publicly admitting to it, because it is broadly in support of California-style emissions standard, and either way, would stand behind the Democrat political machine that runs the state no matter what the issue. Hence the idiotic posturing with mayors and union leaders that everyone involved knew ahead of time would amount to nothing.
Aren't they then causing a crisis that will only hurt them politically? Or do they just not care anymore?
First, "Lying through one's teeth" is depressingly effective as a tool of political misdirection when the entirety of corporate media is in the tank. We're talking about the same people who have spent the last five years telling us that Trump was a Russian asset. Lying about the causes of supply chain disruptions would appear to be small potatoes by comparison.
Second, what political consequences? We're talking about the same people who rammed through Obamacare in early 2010. The party as a whole got hammered in the 2010 midterm elections, true. But the people who were leading the Democrat political machine at the beginning of 2010 are, for the most part, exactly the same people who are leading it now.
Third, and as a mitigating factor to the second, when one has just successfully installed one's chosen fall guy in the White House in a transparently brazen piece of electoral fraud, one might well be justified in believing that one is immune from political consequences.
Great post, Paul, The Machine Stops is a must prophetic read. Your post brought to mind Emerson’s saying “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” I will display my little mind here. I did a bit of admittedly amateur statistics showing how meat, milk, fish, and egg production could be halved and still leave plenty of per capita animal protein. In a response you criticized that type of mathematical reasoning and now here is a post with that type of math reasoning as a central point!
Paul acknowledges that quantitative reasoning can be useful. Sometimes, though, it can conceal more than it reveals, and currently a lot of quants are using their expertise to try to answer the wrong questions, questions that benefit the economic system while harming the biosphere. Specifically, Paul has verbally supported me when I told him my heart is telling me to pursue a quantitative career in the near future, so while I can't speak to his critique of your work specifically, he does not appear to be against quantitative reasoning in and of itself in my experience.
Ha, it's a fair challenge!
Let me try and explain what I think the difference is. As Daniel says below, I've never suggested quantifying is not sometimes useful or necessary. The left brain has its place, as much as the right - as long as both are in service to what matters. The problem at present is that the left-brain - Machine thinking - has colonised everything.
So in this case I think that quantifying at least some of the state of the problem can be useful. The same goes, say, for using climate science to show us the extent of climate change, or zoology to show us the rate of extinction. We have to be cautious about how we use these numbers - but they can be useful, as I say here, in helping us to tell a story.
I think that this is very different, though, from trying to quantify the world in order to manage it. Once we begin to say 'there are x calories in the world, and that could feed us all', we're in to a story that is dangerous. It may be factually correct, but the implications are that [a] it would be desirable for us to control the world in this way and that [b] we could do it. I spent years as a greenies listening to people arguing that because it was theoretically possible to stop climate change it must be feasible. That's where the maths becomes dangerously misleading.
Interestingly, Limits to Growth originally laid out three possible futures, and its authors spent decades telling us to follow the better ones. Their arguments were impeccable and their facts correct, but it didn't matter. We were always going to take the easy, and thus worst, path, and we're going to keep doing that.
I wish motive reading was easier, my motive in my stab at statistical analysis wasn’t to advocate control but to make a case too many people wasn’t the root of our problems and that deaths of billions wasn’t the solution we need though it may happen regardless.
The web is a curse for any kind of subtle understanding. I wasn't suggesting myself that you were advocating control, just that that way of seeing is usually used for that end. Certainly we can both agree that mass death is not our preferred solution to anything!
Okay, I laugh at myself as I type this, I will now let go of taking your comments so personally and being defensive! :):):) From my understanding of ecology, a wise and loving relation ship with the earth, regenerative agriculture, and meeting the true real basic needs of humanity the earth can healthily support our billions and the earth can even be a richer more alive place because of those billions. But that is not a likely near future I realize :(
My comments are never to be taken personally. After all, none of us can really 'personally' criticise anyone we've never met - another of the curses of the web is that we can behave like we know people that we don't know at all. If I am sometimes too sharp I apologise.
As it happens, I do agree that it is, in theory, entirely possible even for seven billion people to live well enough with what we have. If only the world worked in a way that was designed to look after the interests of both people and nature, wisely and with compassion .... a man can dream.
Fascinating and disturbing. It makes me wonder how, if at all, one can prepare. In your last piece you wondered how we might “outflank, outwit or oppose Leviathan, and begin to sow the seeds of some kind of human-scale world again.” This piece makes the issue more urgent.
I feel torn between an “adapt-by-the moment” approach, in which I wait and see what the Machine does, and then try a minor outflanking maneuver, hoping I won’t be noticed, versus a “let’s get a bunch of people to create a parallel society” approach…which strikes me as stronger but perhaps too complicated, and likely to be crushed if it threatens the Machine in any serious way.
I often think about the Amish and Mennonites, who are already embedded in the parallel-society approach, and for the moment are doing fine. Here is an uplifting story, for instance, about how the Pennsylvania Amish managed the pandemic and the pressure of the Machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1DgWYdukZU
I’m not sure we can easily replicate anything like this, for many reasons. Still, there seems to be hope in simplicity, in nature, in ordinary relationships, in the work of our hands, without necessarily all of us becoming farmers. There is also, for some, a central role for faith. You have talked about all this in various ways, and I’m intrigued to hear your suggestions in the weeks and months to come.
I kind of think the Amish have been grandfathered in and are largely untouchable. The general consensus is that, if nothing else, they are harmless. It would likely be a PR nightmare if any government/corporation went after them. I fear any new group seeking to replicate it will be demonized as "extremist" or worse.
The question I have is whether there actually is anywhere left to go outside of the glare of Sauron? Unlike Dreher's defense of his version of the Benedict Option, I say flee for the hills if you can. This dark age is going to be darker than we want to believe.
St. Anthony of the Desert, Pray for us.
If I had to guess, I think the solutions that work will arise organically and (dare I say) prayerfully through response to events in real time. I don’t mean some forethought won’t happen, or that a sober understanding of the situation isn’t important. But the whole thing is just too vastly complex to make very specific plans ahead of time.
I do know people in my region who have bought land “up north” (as we say here), many hours drive from core population centres; and I know people who either already have farms or are trying to buy them. We’re talking anything from a couple of acres to a hundred acres with woods, lake front, cleared land, etc. I suppose this is a pre-emptive “head for the hills approach”. The problem is, if there is any great collapse, those people won’t be safe in their little house in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, they might even be safer staying, for instance, right in their own suburban neighbourhoods, and allying themselves with other neighbours who see the writing on the wall, and who can provide skills and services in a time of crisis (nursing, vehicle repair…even defense). It all sounds crazy, and one must be diligent not to get caught up in a paranoid mind set—or, on the other extreme, gullibility and complacency.
This seems right to me. A fine balance between survivalist paranoia and willful blindness/false optimism. There is no way to tell exactly how this will all this will go. It is far too complex to come up with some definitive plan to ensure making it "through"--whatever that turns out to mean. Though reasonable precautions can be made.
One of which is to deepen one's connections and relationships to those seeking purity of heart. A good thing to do regardless. Something I need to work on, to say the least.
Also: Watch and pray.
I know little about the Amish, but my impression is that they have gone under the radar because [a] they look werid and eccentric, [b] they are clearly very serious about their faith, and that unnerves people, and [c] they are unthreatening. Maybe the last is most important. The Branch Davidians were equally strange and outsidery, but they stocked up with guns and started talking about taking on the state. The Amish seem entirely unthreatening to power, it seems to me. In reality, they may be most threatening of all, if only because they may still be around to pick up the pieces after the fall.
On our little farm we follow many Amish principles of agriculture and animal husbandry and general life view. We cook on an Amish cookstove, raise our own vegetables, , meat, milk, eggs butter etc. Our well has hand pump backup. I subscribe to an Amish farming magazine and we like they resist vaccine mandates and the discordant noise of television and cell phones. But unlike them I still have a tractor and a truck and electricity mostly from the grid. I'm typing on a laptop for gosh sakes but we are actively preparing for the day in the not too distant future when the benefits of the industrial machine start to wither away. We expect to be able to live without such benefits but it may be a bit hard . We hope to partner with friends and neighbors of like mind to ease the transition. I hope we can reach Dunbar's number of friends.... Was it Cicero who said that the only thing a man needs is a library and a garden? I don't plan on giving up on writers like Paul just because the internet grows dark.
Dave Eggers, The Circle, from many readers I heard that they found it very confronting and difficult to read on.
That was a disturbing book. And Eggers seems to have written it in a deliberately ugly style, maybe to match the subject matter.
“In 1931, when Brave New world was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time,” wrote Aldous Huxley in 1958.
He’d thought that “the completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodological conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness“ were all far off, but now he had come to feel “a good deal less optimistic.” It seemed his prophecies were “coming true much sooner than I thought they would.”
Huxley also said: That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history,
is the most important of all the lessons of history.”
This tempers the lesson at the end of 'the machine stops' : --“Oh, tomorrow—some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow.”
“Never,” said Kuno, “never. Humanity has learnt its lesson.”--
Still the fact that more [and more?] people are realising the need for change keeps my hopes up. Thanks Paul for sharing your thoughts
Huxley and many others...we can't say we weren't properly warned.
I remember a very different Halloween on a grey day in Zagreb 2002. I did not know what to make of it. The city buses were turned over to the Church to rotate all-day continuously from the Cathedral to the Cemetery. Orderly lines of shabbily dressed families in their Sunday clothes seemed not to get shorter across the day. There were 10s of thousand candles at night. Croatia was not long out of a war and had a depressed economy. The right-wing semi-authoritarian Tudjman (corrupt democracy) had passed and momentum moved toward the EU. I talked with youngsters about football and wondered about the Catholic Church.
Just this week a concept showed up that I had not known was thoroughly discussed by Hannah Arendt; what she called ‘Natality’. This was in an essay by Samantha Rose Hill on Arendt called ‘When Hope is a Hindrance’ re-published by Aeon. (One has to be selective about Aeon and too much reading for that matter.) There is a connection with ‘action’. Given the hallucinatory co-incidences of the internet, Aristotle turned up on twitter as a quote today from a Professor of Primary Care at at Oxford: “wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars”.
best
Phil
This seems to be a relevant analysis of the current "supply-chain" crisis and the dangers of Globalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdYzcVJI9XU&ab_channel=BreakingPoints