'Modernity is a heresy'
The Machine Sessions, episode four
This week on the Machine Sessions I’m talking to Father Stephen Freeman. Fr Stephen is a retired Orthodox priest from the American south who writes and speaks powerfully about the violence of modernity, and the Christian antidote to it. As I was exploring Christianity at the beginning of my own journey, Fr Stephen was one of the most incisive - not to mention the funniest - voices on the Orthodox scene; one who presented the ancient Christian way as an antidote to the Machine. He remains, in my view, one of the few wise voices on the Internet.
In this episode of The Machine Sessions, we chat about death, America, Oliver Cromwell, AI, capitalism, the Dukes of Hazzard and radical Christian love as an antidote to techno-dystopia.
If you are a paid subscriber to the Abbey of Misrule, you can join us in a forthcoming online event in which I’ll be answering your questions about the book and discussing its themes. You’ll also be entitled to 50% off my online writing course ‘Rewild Your Words’. You just need to order a copy of the book and then fill in this form.
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All the best to you all,
Paul
What you describe as the modern dream of endless control is exactly the “excess of light” that Genesis warns of. Adam’s sin was not sinking into chaos but reaching too high.
Grasping divine knowledge before he was ready. This seizing of the fruit is the same sin as Satan’s rebellion: Wanting to be like God - but on our own terms!
AI, biotech, transhumanism are just later forms of the same move.
Taking what belongs above and dragging it down. The result is always the same descent: thorns, alienation, coverings of death. The machine sells itself as light but what it brings is multiplicity and fragmentation. It isn’t surprising a lot of people find this vision hellish.
The biblical story shows us that what begins as an ascent without God always ends in collapse.
What a gorgeous interview with Fr Stephen Freeman and Yourself, Paul. Such a funny ,down-to Earth, Loving , Humble and Kind Man. This would definitely convert me to Orthodoxy from my Anglican Protestant Denomination, of which I have been Christianed as a Baby and Confirmed as an Adult. As St Augustine said something about "looking in your own back yard!" It made me feel good about being Christian x