I'm still not clear what you think people should do. You have criticisms of others' ideas, which of course is fine: but what alternative course, then, should they be taking, in your view?
Cheapness, overconsumption, and dishonest marketing represent our collective sloth both mentally and physically. This is accelerating rapidly with digitization. I say sloth because for many it is laziness and inactivity with consumption through welfare. This welfare is both for poor and rich alike. An investment that yields lazy wealth is no better than guaranteed income schemes of the lazy poor. Yet, we also have those who slave away with too much work to attain the golden life of affluence. Here we have slaves to a way of life never satisfied. What we have essentially is a modern life that is dehumanizing in the pursuit of comforts. Tech and the machine are driving this. The quest for knowledge without wisdom is allowing this. When has society ever said no to more of any of this?
I am trapped in this too. I am pushing 60 and needing comforts and occasional medical support much more than when I was young and tough. I will say mentally I am tougher now having had near death experiences and failures I swum out of. Still, I live trapped in carbon energy and path dependencies and aware of this entrapment. I am a green prepper so I am attempting to fortify a homestead that can weather a collapse. Collapse here is relative and time variable. I can tell you now despite 10 dedicated years to prepping I will not last very long in a cascading total collapse. A more drawn out and less dramatic one I will do much better.
Yet, I can only do relatively better with a local and regional community that is prepped. I am an old farmer and I see few young people who care at all about farming. Farming here is permaculture and simplistic. There are few places anywhere that have invested wisely in surviving the end of affluence and technology. Even the humble subsistence farmer with low needs and animal power is subject to the mass exodus of the nearby mega cities that dot the developing world or the fallout from failing industrialization that will spread the globe with contaminants. The risks of failure of support systems on all levels has never been greater and this is our collective making because of our worship of affluence and the comfort of the machine.
I say all this with a word of compassion because few of us would will this illness on ourselves if we had a full spectrum of understanding. Let’s forgive ourselves for what we have done. Yet forgiveness does not warrant continued codependent enabling of this system. If you are awakened to what we are doing to ourselves then change. For those who can’t change at least be honest and support those who can change. The primary avenue of change is locally and individually. The top is lost in self-organized destruction. Use this world of tech and consumerism to leave it. Buy rite and choose great technologies to leverage and boost old ways. The old ways of rural biomass collection are the only way forward and that will not save many because of mass urbanization and lack of permaculture skills. It will save some though. You may be one of them. Leave the cities and go rural. Embrace nature but realize you are carbon trapped and subject to path dependencies of an Anthropocene ecosystem no different in impact as a vast ice sheet at your doorstep.
I enjoyed reading you, Walter Egon. I admire the state of your English, for a non native speaker. I couldn't and didn't understand everything that you wrote, because I don't have a good enough technical understanding, but I can admire your capacity to express yourself in the words that... don't lie. They just refuse to be disciplined, and they refuse to let us control where they will go, whom they will touch. In my opinion, you write well.
My daughter studied to become a string instrument maker, but she is now trying to earn her living with a sewing machine. The word "chatoyancy"... it could be used for fabric as you well know, I think, for talking about the different glints that a fabric casts off when it meets the light at different angles. Lots of similarities between wood and fabric, if I understand well.
A while ago I noticed how many people there already are in the world who are against the culture of limitless consumption. At least they say they are. I don't think I know anybody who is into limitless consumption right now.
In France, almost every ad you see makes the point of saying that the promoter is selling at the cheapest price, and that you, as a consumer, obviously want to buy your "product" at the cheapest price, because if you don't buy at the cheapest price you have been had. Or if you don't want to buy at the cheapest price, you are mentally ill, for example, or even... stupid.
But hasn't the rush to sell and buy everything possible at the cheapest price been taking us down more than even buying ? Hasn't it fueled the destitution of work as an activity that gives dignity to man, maybe even factory work in a good environment ?
Haven't we been busy creating a cheap world, and making ourselves cheap to boot ?
Adverts are crazy manipulative. Avoiding cheaply made stuff is the smart thing to do, together with buying less and less of everything and especially from big shops. I am also in France, by the way. But I am not French.
😁 Maybe staying on a shared island (Ireland) will be somewhat less luxurious, but it will make your essays more worth reading than when they've been written on your private island or in your private plane 😉
'Islands' ... I can hear an earlier poetic voice speaking ... but in as much as a few are gathered, embodied, we inhabit many small islands scattered across the archipelago. I found Nate Hagens 'Frankly' encouraging our small islands, calling to us across the sea. He had been surprised by the numbers listening at the other end in Australasia. Nate elsewhere laments somewhat ruefully he needs a personal liturgy of embodiment. Later discussing something called 'metamodernism', both he and his friend Tomas Björkman recognise that intellect and their knowledge hands them no personal trump card. They are looking for a liturgy that does connect.
I am reminded of George Mackay Brown’s old Orkney story. At the key night of the year having all washed, cleaned and swept, before sleep they opened the door and put the lantern out in the streaming Atlantic dark in case the young family were to come again needing shelter.
The technology will fail, but spirit remains and will be communicable.
We are all using machines of one kind or another to comment on the impending nature / impact of 'the Machine'. I just wonder where understanding the problem in-hand via the internet starts to feel meaningless and trying to identify actual things we can do with our lives in way of response might begin? Is it even worth trying to mitigate or dodge the 'great unfolding' of technology? What does one do? Sorry - I appreciate that's more than one ideas thread.
Technology, at its best, is a reflection of the creative core of a human imagination caught up in the incredible patterns of God's creation. Genesis 2:15
Yep. We are caught on the horns of a dilemma. I pretty much feel the same way. The social connection element has become so important in the popular imagination that it's hard to see a way out. I personally don't think we actually need that much connection though. At least not online. But yes, strategies and information. You are dead right. We really need them. In way of an alternative perhaps we could meet on a park bench in London some time and exchange a note about how to switch off our smartphones. Not sure it will have the same reach though! One can but dream.
Those are some of the questions I want to tackle in part three of this series, in the new year. But I'd greatly appreciate ideas from others. It's the big question, and any answers I have will be necessarily partial.
Personally, the writing I have done here has been useful for me in giving a shape to what is unfolding, and trying to understand the nature of it. Without understanding that, you don't know what you're dealing with. But yes - then you have to formulate your response.
I personally see voluntary simplicity and a serious spiritual path of some kind as the most meaningful responses Paul. I guess they always were. But maybe that's not enough to change the World. Looking forward to hearing your post Christmas synthesis of the no doubt many responses. Thanks for creating the space.
Dec 6, 2022·edited Dec 6, 2022Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
Very sketchily, given limitations of space (but mainly of intelligence, insight and knowledge on my part, to be frank…) I would argue that those of us who truly feel the time is out of joint and the social/spiritual contract is broken need to go on a full-spectrum diet, a kind of askesis that sees us connecting with the unfolding machine very much at arm’s length in as many areas of our lives as possible. Limit exposure to all forms of trash. Develop an interior life of bulk and substance, develop a prayer life or meditation life, read valuable texts, understand that actually all the seeds for understanding our predicament have already been sown by the great writers and mystics in the great texts. In a different form, what we will go through has all been seen before.
We won’t escape it - but we can genuinely reduce our involvement. (This is far easier if one doesn’t have children). If we don’t do this, then we need to be clear that it’s a choice we are making.
Jules, I agree, and would add to 'an interior life of bulk and substance, and valuable texts', an embodied, daily (or very regular) practice. Un-embodied ideas or beliefs, without real life practice are like trying to make bread with only yeast and salt, but no flour.
Totally agree - fuller and fuller embodiment, including embodying and knowing the earth around where one lives, somatically intimate and grounded with oneself, attuned to others and the Earth, feet on the ground. Martin Shaw is great on this, and Reggie Ray offers some good ways in (there’s me quoting books again!) It’s the bloodless abstractions that both build the Machine, facilitate it, and keep it rolling. Thanks for adding this key factor.
Caroline, while we’re on the topic, I’m curious what forms of embodiment you have in mind? Christians have traditionally been very wary of yoga, tai chi, qigong and other forms of somatic practice.
Why is this, do you know? Why the suspicion of yoga? What forms of embodiment and active bodywork are ok for Christians? (Beyond muscular hikes over hill and dale, ending in some country pub for manly pints of beer…:)
This is the key. In one of the first of Paul's pieces I read, he quotes Eric Voegelin: "No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crises of a society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid the folly and live his life in order."
Living our lives in order, keeping our hearts and eyes open and aligning our spirit and our work with the logos as best we can, seems to me the only effective route to a broader, more generalized peace in the world. Top-down, politically imposed solutions will not answer--I've lived long enough to learn at least that. Here's Confucius (they say), on the same subject:
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
One more favorite related quote, and one particularly relevant in the context of the internet and its natural drift toward coarseness and outrage, from poet/editor/critic Micah Mattix: "Fill your mind with things worth loving rather than things you love to hate."
I read the Confucius quote with the sense that every single element outlined in it is being systematically targeted and debauched by the modern world. It could almost be the (tragic, sorrowful) epigraph for Paul’s entire series.
A full-spectrum diet is a big ask. But on "prayer life..."
I'm a sober fellow, because I'm the sort that ought to be. One of my mentors in a particular fellowship used to share with anyone having a problem-- and he'd repeat it over and over-- "Do you have a prayer life?"
And here's the interesting thing about that: You don't necessarily have to believe in God to have a prayer life. I'm not sure that I do. But for eighteen years, on this advice, I've prayed at least daily. To ... something. Someone. And here I am, still a sober fellow.
It's trite, but maybe it's one of those things that's trite because it's true; as some people say, "You may not believe in God, but God believes in you."
I share your belief on prayer life, Awbnid. I don't know what I am praying to when I pray, but it is something I want to do ; something that changes me, and helps me hang on. It is something that I have committed to do in a prayer group which is a community.
What I like about praying is its dimension of praise, of being grateful for what we have ? are ? Being grateful for having enough keeps the motor of the consumer culture at idle speed, and not revving. Maybe.
My long dead father could have given you that advice on prayer. He practiced it, as did my mother, and they tried to bring me to practice it too, at the time, without success, but life can be long, and I am listening to them now.
I think we can change the world around us, influence friends & family. But as things happen further and further away from us, they become less and less controllable by us. And therefore can distract us from what needs to be done in our local community.
Also technology is okay, unless we think it’s going to save us. It won’t. It will just enslave us. That’s the problem today, we trust the Machine too much.
This is where my thinking on what to practically do now goes also. I suspect that this is “preaching to the choir” in this forum but more specifically:
Family. Just don’t assume your family is automatic - you have to work at it, dedicate yourself to it.
Friends. Everyone should work to cultivate a set of friends that will challenge you. My answer as a Christian is my Bible study and prayer groups
Pick something in your community to contribute to. I am paying attention to my local school board, for instance, though obviously this is a suggestion for the US. The Machine has worked hard to corrupt them and with them our children. One of the hopeful things I see now is all the challenges that are going on across the US against the “Woke” agenda in the local school boards. There is a lot of power in these boards, yet they are local enough that a person can make a difference. This is my choice but there are others - the point is to take a step and start getting involved.
As I write this it seems almost obvious but I look around my acquaintances I don’t see all that many people doing them or something else rational to encourage a healthy community for themselves.
Finally, have faith that you can change our world as Brother Alexander states. Obviously Jesus started with family and twelve friends. More recent examples are Bezos, Jobs and Zuckerberg. At one point they were everyday schmucks like us but somehow we now have Amazon, Apple and Facebook (sorry, Meta) all in our lifetime. Yes, have faith that you can make a difference,
Is that last paragraph supposed to be ironic? Amazon, Apple, and Meta may as well be three of the four horses of the Machine apocalypse. Also worth considering: the primary reason all were "successful" is each reinforced in a significant way the entire omnicidal control imperative and transhuman drive towards the humanity and nature-annihilating techno-abyss. In other words: they were helped along massively by all the other forces in this culture seeking the complete destruction of life.
Also, I suspect the entire crisis we face revolves around the fetishization of doing over being. The world today would be immeasurably better if Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, and their ilk had remained in their dorm rooms smoking weed instead of starting these infernal tech companies now wrapping themselves like vampire squid around the face of humanity.
Steve Jobs is responsible for the death of every 18-year old girl who ever threw herself from the roof of a Foxconn factory slave-camp in despair at the prospect of trying to produce even one more iPhone. And that's just the tip of the horrors that man brought to the world.
Film professor Ray Carney once wrote a note of advice to film artists: "The solution most movies urge is a continuation of the sickness they depict. They give characters problems to solve and then show them going about solving them. Their narratives are an extension of the business ethos that causes most of the problems in our culture in the first place. These movies never question the belief that we are what we do, what we control, what we own. We live in a capitalist culture addicted to the virtues of doing. But life is less about doing anything, than being something. If your film hinges on a figure's doing or accomplishing something, you are part of the sickness. You are making feature-length commercials for IBM."
The only influence we can make is to live by example. That's been my experience anyway; people don't change unless they want to change, and many people are still too comfortable. It doesn't matter that they are sleep walking into tyranny, they don't see it and don't want to. They are still too reliant on all of the systems that contain us. The best we can do is love them the best we can and walk our own path.
Absolutely. The world will change when people change. I used to work for a charity that had a recruitment poster that had the tag, "How would you like to change the world,
Hello, Feral. It's nice to see you again. I don't think Paul would mind my informing you of something you may not know: with The American Conservative's having decided to do as much damage to itself as possible by requiring commenters to buy a subscription, Rod Dreher's ex - commenters have a diaspora on Discord. I was on it for awhile, until I decided that keeping my views to myself is much more satisfying. That's a rather feline sensibility at work, isn't it? Anyway, if you hadn't known of the Dreher exiles on Discord, you do now.
As to changing the world, I agree that we should not allow grandiosity to steer our efforts, but I do think we ought to hope and work towards change even if those are mainly local.
We can all change parts the world. All of us are a part of the world. I think John Berger once said 'you can change a bit of the actual world by taking out a spade of earth.' In that sense, we can't avoid changing things around us. But changing the whole world? We can't even understand it.
We are all consciously changing the world every moment and every moment is an opportunity to create a future. So, I think be conscious of that in every choice one makes. Also, don’t get bogged down by the mass hysteria and anxiety promoted everywhere, and most especially online and in the media. Because those tend to just be possible futures not givens. Hold onto your center and follow your heart and intuition.
This thread of the discussion reminded me of a quote I just read a few days ago from “The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" by Iain McGilchrist:
“Within my experience of the world, very much can be changed by my response to whatever-it-is – in a sense everything can be changed. Though that may seem to be ‘just for me’, how big or small is that? We cannot weigh consciousness against the universe. It is like trying to say precisely how much you love someone, if you really love them. It is not fixable in space or quantitative, but qualitative and experienced in the living flow of time. And if things turn out to be interconnected, not atomistic – and they are – each consciousness has its impact on the universe that cannot be quantified.”
This book is a challenging read (especially as I’ve not read “The Master and his Emissary.” But I’m enjoying the challenge as I think it will pertain to the journey we are making here with you, Paul.
Hello Matt, 'Voluntary simplicity and a serious spiritual path' are for me not just the most meaningful responses but are also surprisingly effective at gently transforming for the better our immediate surroundings: family, friendships, neighbourhood, locale, even country. I no longer underestimate the beneficial effects of the non-doing (wei wu wei) that comes from personally divesting from whatever aspects of the machine we can at first free ourselves from.
As long as the goal is not pristine purity, (which is not possible in an entangled world), then every cupful of energy we get back from the infernal construction should be celebrated. Think of ourselves as people gaining back freedom of movement and thought via physiotherapy and wise counsel, after a long period of confinement in the engine room of a dark ship, on a course to nowhere good. I raise a glass of beech leaf noyau to everyone here who escapes and swims ashore to the un-named island. Perhaps I will see you under the gnarled oak tree and together, convivially, we can 'roam in the vast homelands of nothing whatsoever'.
I think the actual quote is "acquire the Holy Spirit, and thousands..." One can argue that peace is simply the fruit of acquiring the Holy Spirit but it is bigger than that.
Absolutely. I would add that each of our worldviews are our own projections on to the world. We can become victims of those worldviews, in other words we can become victims of our own projections, and (speaking from my own painful experience!) can find ourselves fully in the thrall of victimhood before we quite realise what we're doing. Once we attend to the simple and the local we can find the world becoming more rosy.
Quite right. Though it is impossible as human beings to navigate the world without a "worldview". They are our maps. It's how we make sense of our environment. But it's how attached our egos are to those worldviews which is critical.
Yay! thank you! I wonder if it would work with birch leaves? I'm a great one for becoming one with what grows on the land which nourishes me most... Beech leaves would require me to wander abroad... although not far!!
Voluntary simplicity, a serious spiritual path, and surrounding oneself as much as possible with children. I don’t mean wired children, but children living without personal devices and a small amount of (if any) mediated images. My husband and I have seven living children, and none have a personal device or any access to a screen without our permission or supervision. Their average is about two hours weekly, usually a group movie watching, and that’s it. Most of the kids (all except the 2yo) attend a screen free Classical Christian (Lutheran) school, which is a huge blessing. The older I get the more I realize how my life has been shaped by children, and how I need to be like a child in my faith--trusting, simple, unapologetic, expectant. And teaching them as well as serving them provides me a daily dose of humility and wonder that few things could do.
It might not be part of the story/series you want to tell, but it would interesting to hear about/hear from (if they're lurking in this salon somewhere) people with experience of communities who've tried to escape or tame "the Machine".
Amish folk, Mennonites, some Orthodox Jewish groups, maybe even "Ringing Cedars' Anastasians," if you've heard of them. (The latter have become a pet interest of mine: A strange, back-to-nature eco-pagan movement, born from the rusting carcass of the Soviet Union. A Russian businessman wrote their key texts, inspired by a nature deity embodied by a beautiful woman, Anastasia, he says he encountered on one of his trade missions to Siberia. Strange days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_Cedars%27_Anastasianism)
Do these folk have anything to teach us, even if only as cautionary tales?
You're not alone! I've read the first book of the Anastasia series. It was recommended to me by a fellow tango dancer. The part that sticks out to me the most right now is when she's talking about how to plant seeds. I like having a direct relationship with the land I'm living on. That's my local, practical change-making: improving the soil here and the native plant population to support my non-human neighbors.
I really appreciated how Johnathon Pageau spoke recently about the two times the word “artifice” is used in the Bible. If my memory serves me he said it’s in the lineage of Cain. But it’s also in the making of the tabernacle. These two different possibilities.…
Paul, when I read your articles in Part 1 and 2, it felt like you could put into words what I had been feeling in my bones. As you are thinking about part 3, I am wondering if you will give any space to the particular challenges and poignancy of being a parent in these times. I have a 9, 7, and 3 year old, and I find myself struggling with how to protect them from the worst effects of the Machine age while also recognizing that they will have to find a way to navigate survival within it.
Fair point about 'the machine', but yes I meant it as you point out - to simply use machines for our benefit. But, of course, the fear is that all these things will be linked, in something like a central bank digital currency let's say, which then only differs from an coercive social credit system in the uses to which it is put.
Which is why I disagree with your understanding of the dvine. If God can be found in a lawnmower simply because it embodies mathematical and scientific principles then is God not in a nuclear missile, a military drone, or a biological weapon? I would say not, that all our technological advances are associated with the garments of skin after donned after expulsion from Eden is not accidental.. neither is their association with the lineage of Cain. These are all the implements of fallen man. So maybe machines are not evil in themselves but have to do with a loss of God rather than anything else. I do not think machines need to be redeemed as they they are not fallen beings.
Actually I said a CBDC is a social credit system in waiting, so to speak, it's just hasn't been put to the use of social regulation, yet, and is simply claiming to be centralized digital money - but the potential, as with any centralized system, is already there, it's built in... all that is missing is the will to use it in a coercive manner. Here is a video that will help you understand that better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kazsyWAeiUk
As for the divine... I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian if anything, so your ecclectic collection of statements on the nature of Creation are basically heretical and don't work in my view. All creation is God's handiwork, and created by Him, not from Himself insofar as we are told. Regardless, we are completely responsible for what we choose for ourselves, and to what uses we choose to put things to. Our matter is not 'dead', it is living creation... but God didn't create drones or nuclear bombs; even biological weapons are an unnatural refinement of the created world - our own private creations are not so hallowed simply because we use God's handiwork - it is not materialism, it is simply an understanding our place in the order of things.
My non-materialist view is not that God is immanent in matter, but that we ourselves are made of things much more important than the matter we are composed of; that there is a hierarchy of the elements that compose us of which some are different than the sensible matter... one reason, among others, might be because we are made in the image of God... what that means precisely is unclear to me however.
But... how can all these things that you mention NOT be linked ? What is behind them is... our language(s) which are being simplified, and our numbers which are... UNIVERSAL to the planet right now.
One of the things that I have observed in "all these things" is the way that they coarsen the..."product" of our work, what we are capable of doing with our hands, and if they coarsen what we can do with our hands they coarsen... our minds and our feelings, and our capacity to build a sensitive society. In my opinion.
I really don't understand what you are saying, what are the things that are 'linked'?
I agree about language being simplified, that is definitely politically expediency at work, an attempt to render language incapable of expressing complex thoughts.
I think numbers are universal because they are powerful abstractions for the relative amounts/sizes of things, and our universe definitely involves variability in this regard. So numbers are truly universal as far as we can tell, not just limited to planet earth. Or at least so built in to being human that we cannot conceive of a universe without numbers.
Again I am not sure what are the 'all these things' you are referring to, so I am not sure what to say...
But I definitely agree that modern society is divorcing many people from what humans did with their hands for tens of thousands of years. You call it coarsening of minds and feelings. I would say Humanity is being cheapened... made flat..... made into creatures only capable of living in a world of ideology, images and abstractions by this process. It is forcing a living in the head at a loss of connection with the heart and thus the natural world and other people.
An interesting thought is what are those two forces working together going to accomplish? Simplifying language so it is incapable of expressing complex ideas while at the same time forcing humanity to live virtual lives in a world of images and abstractions. Sounds to me like a world of passive consumers.
Forgive me for not understanding precisely what you were referring to... perhaps you' wouldn't mind clarifying?
I buy much of my clothing on the market from a man who I have bought from for around 20 years. Over that period, I have seen quite an evolution in the textile industry, and making clothes. I have seen ready to wear clothes be simplified to a point where they are not cut to enhance women's shape, or give any kind of shape to a garment. Last month the man was selling some garments that had no finished hems around the sleeves or the waist. I told him that that the work he had done looked unfinished and sloppy, (because HE made it and is proud that he was making it...), and he told me that current fashion was going down that road. I told him that that might be current fashion, but to me it looked like shoddy workmanship. Last week on the market I passed his stand and his new garments now have hems in them. And I complimented him and said they looked much nicer.
That is what I mean about coarsening. I hope that the example illustrates it better, but I have others. Lots of industrially made stuff looks much cheaper than industrially made stuff looked when my parents were buying it more than 50 years ago. My mother was even looking for bargains then, but the stuff didn't look cheap... yet. I still have some of it in my living room, and the furniture is beautiful.
...
This morning I continued reading Liszt's book about Chopin, written in French. This book was written... a long time ago. Liszt has a chapter where he writes about Polonaises, and Mazurkas, and the Polish people, and how they dance(d) these dances, and their character. His insight and vocabulary are awesome. (This is a good refuge book, by the way...) Reading this makes me wistful, and as sad as I sometimes get when I remember my father's story about getting treed by a moose around 1940 in Connecticut. His world was already light years away from mine when I was only 15 years old in 1969 in the U.S.
Data banks are being linked for example, so that bureaucratic administrations can share information about "clients", individuals.
Two years ago my husband and I received a ticket in the post from the French government because a radar flashed us, a picture was taken of our car and its license plate, and because of previously existing... data, and computer technology, we were located anonymously ? and received the ticket through the post.
It is possible to commit a traffic violation in the E.U. outside of your mother country, and receive a ticket through the post, to be paid for by credit card.
Is that enough for the links to appear ?
I firmly believe now that this remote control technology is a violation of the social contract, a violation that rests on the mistaken assumption that an impersonal machine can be more competent, impartial and intelligent than a flesh and blood person. I think that all of us who are flesh and blood deserve the luxury of being able to justify our behavior in front of a flesh and blood person. Anything else is... cheap and second rate, and we deserve better, no matter how much money we have.
On coarsening our language : I think that it is logical that the grander, bigger, more universal ? our aspirations (to control) are, the more our language will be impoverished, because what is big is designed to appeal to, and encompass, the largest number of people, and that is where the coarsening comes in.
Our political leaders are not so responsible for this as our universal ambitions are.
Konrad Lorenz wrote a book called "The Eight deadly sins of capitalism" and in it he speculated about the nature of democracy. To what extent is universal ? democracy an attempt to create an anthill , or a school of fish out of us ? An attempt that we are all enrolled in, and that the Internet serves quite well.
Once again, on simplifying language : how do you HAVE complex ideas or subtle emotions ? without sophisticated grammar syntax, and a good vocabulary ?
In the course of my lifetime, the French language has been significantly abrased, its subtleties radically reduced. If our language is coarsened how do we not go down the drain with it ?
"'You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?' "- Frodo
"'Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.'"- Gandalf
Very good point. We are moving towards "benevolent" dictatorship... Using and abusing force can arise from at least two motivations : in hate, the desire to humiliate, to crush an adversary, to triumph in physical or spiritual ? battle, to violate, but also, in love, the desire to offer absolute protection ?
I wonder this too. Its been something I have been struggling with since I started to see the walls of the machine close in over the last two years (I'm an unvaccinated Canadian, so things were particularly stressful there). I'm wondering how to decouple myself from the machine while I am still so reliant on it. I am a career artist, and realized recently that all my content is digital; it made me think that I need to start making everything in analog, on pen and paper, in sculpting with clay, if only in silent rebellion against the material of the machine. I think if we can each do our small part to lesson our reliance on all of our technology, then we can make one small step towards our disentanglement.
Maybe The Machine and technology are not one and the same. Though our technology is so entwined with the machine it may be hard to imagine it any other way. But maybe this is just what is needed: a reimagining of what technology could be if we could disentangle it from the machine...
I agree, I think we do need to just learn to use technology without being locked into 'the machine'. But it's getting harder, or rather 'they' are making it harder: look at what permanent changes are being made to global food production in the name of 'nitrogen' and 'carbon' pollution; and the skills lost as a result of farmers being shut down. The problem is that the powers-that-be seem to want to burn our bridges behind us so that we cannot go back and escape their 'machine', their totalitarian system.
Yes, agreed, and I don't think there is a way to engage right now without being caught up in it. I think we'd have to rebuild from the ground up. Every corner of the internet is caught up in their games. But maybe a desire for purity is a problem here too. Maybe embracing the compost heap of it (to use Sophie Strand's metaphor) is the only way forward... (And also of course plenty of unplugging and cultivating parallel communities etc etc.)...
Yesterday I played a little with the ChatGPT app (https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/), an AI app that aims to help people have better informed conversations. One question that I asked was Will it rain in Heaven tomorrow?, and when the app said that 'since everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, it probably won't', I said that rain was good, so why wouldn't it rain in Heaven? The dialogue that followed afterwards was a very tedious repetition of the same idea by the app: 'everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, and it probably has other means to nourish the plants than rain', and also an even more tedious repetion of an apology, the app being sorry it had made me believe that it had said rain was not good. It made me uncomfortable, to be frank. It was like talking to a politician.
Artificial Intelligence... I've seen apps like that, too. In my opinion another part of the Machine, trying to pull us out of what we are meant to be... social human beings...
What we really need, from our daily food to the ability to act socially, is provided in Creation itself... but we humans stopped believing in that and started to create our own reality, based on wanting more, wanting 'progress'... and we forgot that God provides in everything...
Thank You for especially that last line which for me requires people to be lead by they're sence of 'being guided' rather than thier intellectual engagement...if that makes any sence..."faith sees best in the dark".
I've been coming back to this idea, that the fall of mankind story was warning us against this. the temptation, with knowledge, to believe we know as well as God/nature/the universe does and thereby separate ourselves from it.
Jennifer thank you, this too has struck me more recently. I share a quick copy and paste for all our reference "He created the first man, Adam, in the garden of Eden–a place of spectacular beauty. In the garden He also put two specific trees–the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). Adam was only commanded not to eat of one of these trees, but he disobeyed that stipulation". To my thinking, the knowledge of Good and Evil ("doing"/ego) creates judgement and shaming and guilt and othering (separating)... and so much more that leads to violence and war etc. The Tree of Life on the other hand could be symbollic of "being"/Love/unifying and presence. Knowledge is perhaps not an issue, but rather knowledge of good and evil that we have been warned against. Knowledge of good and evil creates fear in us. Fear "separates" us from God who is Love.
Oh gosh, yes it's all happening with the Ai suddenly, isn't it? I feel this. The seduction yet soullessness of it all. I'm going to refrain. I always thought that crushing moment when the computer beat that Russian chess player might have been enough to put the brakes on but no we are going full pelt, all the way. Next up! Art and writing. Soon we'll be seeing words like; 'human made' or 'human written'. I wonder if the human heart or soul will develop their own kind of currency over time.....As Elon says, 'Let's find out'.
Yes! The Machine, in all forms, pulls the human soul out of humanity, turning us human beings into believers of technological progress, even making us totally dependent of it. Change starts with ourselves, I believe. I wouldn't know which other way of change there would be, except for deep prayer to God, for the Machine doesn't tame itself...
Not long ago, I read a random quote from someone's blog about AI: something to the effect of "Either you tell the machine/computer/AI what to do, or it tells you what to do." I so wish I could remember where I read it, but it passed beneath the endless waves of ether and was lost. The author of the blog was someone I'd never heard of, but he had an Asian name, I think, or it sounded Asian.
I can't find a source for it but I saw somewhere a quote about an "algorithm line" in jobs to much the same effect - e.g., you either have a low-paying, easily-replaceable job where an algorithm tells you what to do, or a high-paying, "skilled" job telling an algorithm what to do. And the line keeps creeping upwards every day...
AI is already all around us. . . we're just not noticing it.
And the next step in getting us all comfortable with being told what to do will be to treat AI as some sort of disembodied expert. Instead of saying things like: ". . .the WHO guidelines state. . . " or ". . . the CDC recommends. . ." or ". . .Dr. Fauci encourages everyone to. . ." or ". . . we follow the science. . .", we'll start hearing things along the lines of: ". . . the AI (by then, they'll have a serious but approachable name for it) has new guidelines. . ." or "the AI is now recommending. . ." or. . .well, you get the idea. And woe to anyone who attempts to disagree with our God-like AI.
In sports this approach has been used under the moniker of “analytics” and “data.” Managers and coaches use this version of AI to enhance play, win more games and ultimately make more money. I wonder if this is already in play in ways we’re not quite aware of?
Did you see the article in the Guardian yesterday about ChatGPT? Here's a quote:
"In the days since it [ChatGPT] was released, academics have generated responses to exam queries that they say would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate, and programmers have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality."
I almost laughed. I am thoroughly enjoying reading, and the only down side I see is the perpetual rabbit hole in which I find myself. I ordered a book written by the lawyer who wrote the legal challenge to Obamacare. It’s my new fun, along with a rabid involvement with canning, dehydrating, and other food security measures. We cannot assume food chain supplies will be adequate. At age 78, I have some perspective.
You have to wonder what a technology like this—the bleeding-edge pinnacle of the Machine— has to offer in terms of ideas/strategies for dissolving centralized power, economic inequality, ending militarism, dismantling the Machine, restoring the commons, restoring the health of the land-base, combating State propaganda, ending industrialism, enhancing meaning, etc.
Basically, since AI is being designed as yet another weapon, it might be worth seeing if that weapon can be turned around and aimed at the actual problems that gave rise to the perceived need for such a weapon. At a certain point, I'm betting asking AIs for ideas about solving these kinds of problems will draw the interest/ire of the Machine and trigger a censored non-response: "That question violates the Terms of Service for use of this system. Goodbye."
Google doesn't want to tell you how to get rid of Google, even though its AIs at some point may know how to do it. This brings up the increasingly awkward and obvious problem: what happens to this entire system when it no longer needs people as a result of AI and robotic automation? Is Amazon going to become a non-profit? There's a sense the goal of Amazon is to be a fully automated machine with no employees, delivering goods to a populace of unemployed, destitute people.
One of those pesky contradictions at the heart of capitalism moving from the theoretical to the actual...
Indeed, and it is a sad reflection of the materialist thinking as well. It reminds me of one of the Scientists from That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, where he has it in his head that he wants to tear down all the trees because they are messy; that birds make their nests in them, that the leaves are always dying and falling so that you must rake them afterwards. Instead he would replace all the trees with artificial representations, perfect and pristine, and with artificial birds that you can turn their chirping on and off as you wish. Its almost as if, to the machine, everything being perfect is all the rough edges being worn off, devoid of all messiness, perfect in its representation; but devoid of all life.
This sounds just a variation of the folk tale “The Emperor and the Nightingale” (Andersen’s version is the one I know). The emperor loves the nightingale so, but hasn’t considered how inextricably her beauty and appeal are tied to her wildness--that is, her freedom and the inherent vicissitudes of her life. So when he receives a wind-up nightingale, he embraces it as a better version of the real, because it is, of course, predictable and controllable. Everyone knows how this story ends. We humans are so consistently, willfully ignorant.
There was a recent conversation on Jordan Peterson’s podcast in which he spoke to an expert in artificial intelligence. It was the opinion of this expert that very soon, many people’s closest confidants and friends will be AI. He seemed to think this was a positive development, saying for example “Imagine a friend who was always available, and always interested in what you have to say.” It’s the sort of thing that sounds great until you experience it.
There's that recent discussion between Paul and Mary Harrington where Harrington talked about the metaverse. She noted Facebook had taken to actually advertising VR tech as a sop to lonely, alienated people (now almost everyone) who has seen even what small circle of friends and family they once had fall away until all that remains is a severe case of Shit Life Syndrome and a growing stack of bills.
One thing I think about is how The Great Reset and metaverse dovetail perfectly in that the world's super-rich intend to hoard the last physical resources while the rest of us are being positioned to settle for the virtual kind. You'll "own nothing and be happy" right?
Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison will have actual Hawaii, where they enjoy actual social gatherings, and you'll be in lockdown with a virtual hallucination of an island of your own and some AI "friends" to chat with. Whats the difference really? Look, it's either that or they keep loosing increasingly lethal lab-cooked viruses till you're good and dead.
Eat ze bugs, put on ze goggles, don't annoy your betters. That sound about right?
I had a co-worker years ago who sold a side-project of his to Google. He was contractually bound not to reveal how much they paid him for it. All he could do when asked was to gesture with his hands wide apart to indicate, "A WHOLE LOT". I recall him sitting at his desk, staring somewhat sadly into the middle-distance, and asking him what was up. He sort of half-smiled and said, "I'm ruined."
He quit the next day. I think he was about 28 years old and didn't need to do anything else with his life but sit on the proverbial beach with an umbrella drink.
Many a person has been ruined by too much money too soon. We Abbey-dwellers need to continue with enough paid subscriptions to keep Paul writing, but never so many he can close up shop and take off for that beach.
To be honest Steven, even if I were to suddenly inherit millions from a previously unknown relative, it would be impossible for me to sit on a beach doing nothing for more than about two hours. I'm not the sort of person who can sit still easily. Luckily there is little chance of this problem arising.
Almost certainly the case, but it's a test almost all of us believe we'd pass but actually would not. Large amounts of money, like other forms of power, reveal character flaws and invite corruption. Reminds me of that Dorothy Parker witticism, "if you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people He gave it to."
I remember visiting the Bellevue Avenue Historic District in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Gilded Age robber barons built those incredible (obscene, in fact) "cottages" to summer in. One thing I found startling is some had little biographies scattered about various rooms of the children raised by these families (the Vanderbilts, Astors etc) and these children seemingly invariably went mad, committed suicide, overdosed, died in some horrific accident, or otherwise met a grisly fate. It was like flipping through pages of a Chas Addams book.
It's interesting what a magnet for the demonic power is.
I certainly agree with that. Money is a poison. There is a reason that every spiritual tradition of any seriousness expressly warns against the corrupting nature of wealth. It is manifest all over the landscape now.
Thinking thru this on my own recently. Is money really a poison, it's only a tool, so is it wealth that is a poison? Are we fighting over the tool, the means of projecting power, or are we fighting over the power itself? (or both, or neither?) Nevertheless, it certainly corrupts.
Wondering if the Machine is amoral, or is it like others depict it to be--Moloch or Baal or some other demi, semi, or god like demonic power? Is it explained as the continuation of the legacy of Cain, he being the father of technology and self-reliance?
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 1 Timothy 6:10
There are powerful psychological motivations behind the love of money which can take subtle forms. As in... the fear of not having "enough" that becomes an overwhelming force in some people's lives. People can turn to the love of money through greed, get caught up in the whirlwind of power and influence that it confers, but also through fear. In the parabole of the young rich man who moves Jesus to question his future, it is probably fear that comes in the way.
I can understand this fear. It is hard to get past it... for some people, whereas others seem to have no problem with it.
> We Abbey-dwellers need to continue with enough paid subscriptions to keep Paul writing, but never so many he can close up shop and take off for that beach.
One of the worst things that can happen to a young man is to win his first bet on a horse. Your young friend is in a similar position. But at least his response showed some wisdom. At that age, I'm afraid I would have opted for sitting on the beach, drinking rum bamboozles.
I also think we need to look at our broken relationship with money. Can it be simply a symbol of abundance? Is it not us humans with the corrupting nature? And why do we have so much around having money?
I don’t think that we have to ever worry about Paul’s financial abundance because he strikes me as someone who is so abundantly rich in other ways like imagination, spirituality, curiosity, integrity and a desire to do good!
I think his flourishing will only mean a flourishing for his family, his community and us all.
I'm Monique from Australia and have spent most of last two years alone in a cabin while the world went mad. I have a tendency to fast forward around corners so 'saw' much of what played out in my mind around late March, 2020. Before this I had just spent the entire winter on the Isle of Iona and before that Romania, Slovenia and a third 'once a decade' wander around Auschwitz with Viktor Frankl in my ears asking myself once again, 'How on earth did this happen? And how did the Germans not know what was happening here?' I wouldn't dare compare the path of the unvaccinated to that of the Jewish people (ever) but I have gleaned a lot from Mattias Desmet's recent work and feel now I have a better understanding of the system and human beings post Covid.
I was going to celebrate my ability to withstand the onslaught that came second half of 2021 by coming to Ireland to see you and Martin, Paul (at the Priory) but it still feels a little weird out there in the big, wide world. A little understandable agoraphobia, perhaps. In all honesty navigating this year has been perhaps obviously surreal and I am so sorry I haven't been able to give you something back for your wonderful words, Paul. I will one day as being able to read what you are seeing and feeling when most of your friends and family are seeing something or nothing else has truly been a God send, as has pulling out my childhood bible myself. I wish I could show you the highlighted chapters in Revelations - truly. Why on earth would an 8 year old be so interested in all that mumbo jumbo?! Interesting feeling yourself speaking to you and current events 40 years later, across time. Just another layer to add to the oddness of feeling as though you're floating through time and space before being reconfigured, kind of like in the Wonka machine. I guess paradigm shifts aren't meant to be smooth sailing.
Regarding Elon Musk, (which I've just realised wasn't a prompt in your introductory email but I'll leave my thoughts here anyway), I admit to becoming a little addicted to it all suddenly. I listened to his live chat on Twitter with a few others (and 100k listeners). There's a change of the guard feeling about it all which is no surprise, and once again, taking out the middle man and the ever generous overlords. The mainstream media - just another institution destined to fall? I believe him when he speaks about the 'preciousness' of free speech and how rare it is to experience this. I also loved what he said about the arcs of civilisations and how ignorant we can be when on an 'up swing'. He certainly has an impressive mind and unless I'm utterly naive, this Twitter move certainly feels to be coming from a good intention. It also takes courage. How The Establishment is going after him now - and Matt Taibbi since part one of 'The Twitter Files' dropped. It's all just so revealing. The powers that be don't seem too concerned about giving their hand away, it seems, yet I guess there aren't many looking as closely as some of us.
Having said ALL that, I mustn't forget that ultimately it's just a billionaire's race to building the infrastructure for transhumanism and streamline all of it into one global system. Musk's 'If you can't beat it, join it' attitude is his modus operandi/long game, and so impressive and well intentioned as the man might be, no thanks. I have been writing about all that concerns most of us for years and the inevitable split when it comes to Late Stage Capitalism. It's only Instagram rants but my hashtag is always the same - go the hobbits. In Tolkenesque times what other conclusion is there? I guess that's always been my answer to the whole thing. I can't help but be wedded to the beauty and wonder of the natural world so I think ultimately, it's going to be a game of staying in our hearts and being present with all that is.
Thank you for the opportunity. So happy to be in good company and be able to say thank you. Thank you again Paul, and thank you also to Rhys Wildermuth. Love you Rhys, if you are reading this. Your writing has also held my heart in tac t and I am greatly indebted to you both. Good health to all reading this. Monique x
Here in Australia we’re approaching Christmas upside down as usual which is quite pleasant being summer and all.
However it is otherwise rather insane to be celebrating a winter solstice festival at the height of summer with fake snow, reindeer and Santa dressed in heavy clothes. Not to mention the whole commercial nonsense. It is another example I suppose of the great inversion which you write so wonderfully about Paul.
My usual response is to take myself off to a Vipassana retreat (in the tradition of S.N. Goenka) for the duration of the silliness. Sitting still in silence and paying attention to the universe unfolding within the framework of ones own mind/ body phenomenon is, I think, one way to counter the craziness of the modern world.
Thanks for all the great essays this year. Really helped us through the covid hysteria which was intense here.
I have also sat a number of Vipassana retreats Andrew and found them massively insightful. They led me into other forms of Buddhist practice, all of which flow into my spiritual path; within and through which I perceive meanings which I suspect lie beyond the machinations / reach of 'the machine'. Transcendent insights common to many religious experiences I would suggest.
Interestingly Noah Yuval Harrari who is often cited as the 'high priest' of transhumanism by certain online factions is also a Vipassana meditator and teacher. Make of that what you will! I would be interested to see what Paul has to say on the religion/s of the future.
I don’t know much about Yuval Harrari but from what I do now he seems very misunderstood and demonized by people who have never heard him speak just watched snippets of his talks.
Fellow Aussie here in Queensland. 100% yes to your description.Nothing speaks to me less about the birth of Christ than engaging in a family piss up in 35+ degrees amidst plastic Santa decor from Big W. I will be working extra hours at the rehab to avoid the above scenario. 🎉😂
I liked Paul’s comment in the recent Benburb day with Martin Shaw that perhaps we needed more mystics or cave dwelling saints. Being energy efficient- which we are all being asked to do these days can begin with our efficiency of breath, food, words and thoughts. Fasting on all levels , though against the ethos of the corporate growth machine, has a lot to recommend it !!
What is the meaning of the machine age, not negatively but as part of the coming of the kingdom, theosis of creation, striving of humankind?
I ponder three options which might supply vision:
1. William Blake. We live in Golgonooza, "continually building & continually decaying desolate", but which is also the place we find the "golden string" that leads to "heaven's gate".
2. Owen Barfield. Mechanistic alienation fosters an intensification of individuality, as it seems there's nowhere else to turn, though that suffering interiority because of its suffering will awaken to a renewed participation in divine life not possible before.
3. Dante. This life and the modern way of life (he was the first to use "modern") is a "race to death", which is at once frightening and the path to the fullness of life, consciously one with "the love that moves the sun and the other stars", because both light and dark are embraced.
I mentioned this in an email to Paul yesterday, but I wholehearted recommend the books (along with talks/interviews) of Iain McGilchrist, whose main focus is on the way that a certain mode of thinking, dominated by the left brain hemisphere, has shaped ‘the Western world’, and therefore that humanity has got seriously out of balance and way off track. The books are incredibly well researched, fascinating, profound and enlightening.
I’m reading the new McGilchrist book(s) right now and I have to say it’s one of the best and most interesting things I’ve ever read. His scope of knowledge and ability to apply it is phenomenal. Even the appendices are good, and that’s so rare.
Have you read Philip Sherrard? I just finished "Human Image, World Image" and his critique of the materialist cosmology seems to resonate with the little bit of McGilchrist I've encountered. I have to admit, I balked at the price of "The Matter With Things", but I think I need to dive in to that one!
Hi Galen, I've not read Philip Sherrard, but will definitely look him up. Thanks for the tip.
On his website Iain McGilchrist has provided a series of videos of conversations with Alex Gomez-Marin about each chapter of The Matter With Things - I think there are 18 episodes in all. Might help warm up for that dive!
I'd like to hear more on this. I have a feeling when in prayer that "all is well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". This feeling makes me wonder how the machine age will fit in to that larger truth. I don't have an answer.
One initial thought is that Julian of Norwich, who made that comment, lived in the 14th century which is sometimes said to be have been the worst English century to live in, given plagues, violence, turbulence etc...
Mark, you raise a question that I have about Barfield's (and Steiner's) work. Is there a tendency for both of them to relativize or necessitate evil in order for the historical process to work its way thorough pre-assumed stages? Is there an implicit Hegelian willingness to absorb suffering in the name of spiritual evolution? This seems to contrast with the classical Christian notion of evil as privatio boni, a mere lack, a disease that is overcome, not absorbed, in redemption. But I am willing to grant that I may be missing something in Barfield or Steiner. I have read only a few of Steiner's books, and I have read almost all of Barfield's.
I can't speak for Steiner but think Barfield is no Hegelian. He doesn't think the historical process is steadily manifesting Geist. Rather, the notion of history is itself a perception from a certain period of consciousness (in the medieval period "history" meant ordered narrative rather than chronology of events). Barfield felt, I think, that there is a “transforming agent in nature" which produces numerous forms of cosmogenesis held together by Christ, the Logos, who is also known in/as the depth of our being.
As to privatio boni, I imagine Barfield would have put it in more Steinerian terms, that evil is part of the unfolding of good, but the unfolding is for good, not for good and evil in a dualistic mix. So perhaps not privatio boni but servitio boni.
Just back from my local market "populaire" where I listened to the sellers give vent to their frustration about how the market is dying in my "town" right next to a megapolis in France, through lack of people present and buying. Elsewhere around the megapolis, the market is doing just fine. In my small "town", the city hall has been taken over by an inexperienced group running under an ecological banner that won hands down... during Covid.
If the popular markets die here, it will put yet another nail in my already waiting coffin. They are a place where I can shoot the breeze, play with words, get a little olé olé from time to time, wink. Speak my mind. Still. The popular markets are not the bio market which tends to attract ideologically commanded people who buy and eat... words, more words. To me they are everything but free.
...
I may already have made this comment, but I will make it again. There was a time when I made the distinction between "paying" and "paid" (I still do.) For me, still, there is a difference between a "paid" subscriber and a "paying" subscriber. My doctor husband is regularly asked by his new patients "are you reimbused ?" and he answers "no, I am paid because you pay me, and YOU are reimbursed."
Perhaps someone would care to explain the, um, logic of talking about a "paid" subscriber for a paying one ? I am all ears. ("Paid" is a passive form, and "paying" is an active one.)
Now, off to a family funeral several hours away by car. The rear guard has its obligations that I will gladly and cheerfully fulfill with a sense of purpose, and, I hope, a certain... grace. I hope...
I like that. That is one of the reasons why the signs all over France at the entry of the villages, towns and cities that proclaim "metropole apaisée" (no need for translation, I think) are as many incitations to the contrary.
I have been immensely enjoying your writing Paul, and I will probably become a paid subscriber in the New Year.
I went to a conference recently of some Anglican ministers as a sort of interloper (being a baptist myself!). But what drew me to the conference was one of my friends was speaking on transhumanism - a subject I believe will be one of the major challenges for Christians in the future as it gets to the heart of the question - what does it mean to be a human made in the image of God - and what right do we as creatures have to meddle with the creators "very good" design?
Following on from this I heartily agree with your point here in your last piece"
"The ultimate project of modernity, I believe now, is to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods."
Taking this a bit further using Christian theology, I would say we are remaking ourselves and the world around us in the "Image" of (fallen) man, and this has immense relevance with transhumanism and its integration with AI. If mankind is fallen and pre-disposed to sin (original sin) (as I believe), then this means this fallenness will influence that which we make in our image - it will be made in the image of sin. With the AI algorithms, we can then say sin and vice will be written in the code, and therefore AI will be predisposed to exacerbate sin/vice (greed, selfishness, violence, hatred etc). Thus the machine not only erodes the "good life" as Berry would say, but furthers the reach of vice and sin into the world and even exacerbates it. And perhaps it does so at a rate that mankind has been shielded from so far due to our limitedness.
A pretty bleak future indeed, and for me, this shows the strength of what we are up against. Thus I am very grateful for your writing showing up the Machine for what it is.
Hello, I have read some of your essays (but not all) and just wanted to recommend three thinkers that I believe you've missed, all of which could be insightful to your "machine" project.
First is Deleuze, although more specifically Deleuze and his co-writer Guattari. D&G talk about "machines" quite a lot, and although they are using the term in a specific way, I think you would find it insightful. It can be a bit hard to understand, but once you do, it's worth it.
Second is Charles Taylor, specifically his work "A Secular Age." Taylor traces the history of Christianity over the last two centuries and shows how "secularity" is really an offshoot of Christianity itself.
Third is Lewis Mumford. I am not as familiar with his work, but I do know that he considered the "machinic" to have begun far before the Industrial Revolution, with its roots in the ordered lifestyle of medieval monks.
Thanks for these. I have the Taylor on my shelf and I hope next year to sit down with it. Mumford I wrote about in one of my previous essays (see my last post here.) Deleuze I know nothing about, so thanks for the pointer.
What do you propose?
I'm still not clear what you think people should do. You have criticisms of others' ideas, which of course is fine: but what alternative course, then, should they be taking, in your view?
Cheapness, overconsumption, and dishonest marketing represent our collective sloth both mentally and physically. This is accelerating rapidly with digitization. I say sloth because for many it is laziness and inactivity with consumption through welfare. This welfare is both for poor and rich alike. An investment that yields lazy wealth is no better than guaranteed income schemes of the lazy poor. Yet, we also have those who slave away with too much work to attain the golden life of affluence. Here we have slaves to a way of life never satisfied. What we have essentially is a modern life that is dehumanizing in the pursuit of comforts. Tech and the machine are driving this. The quest for knowledge without wisdom is allowing this. When has society ever said no to more of any of this?
I am trapped in this too. I am pushing 60 and needing comforts and occasional medical support much more than when I was young and tough. I will say mentally I am tougher now having had near death experiences and failures I swum out of. Still, I live trapped in carbon energy and path dependencies and aware of this entrapment. I am a green prepper so I am attempting to fortify a homestead that can weather a collapse. Collapse here is relative and time variable. I can tell you now despite 10 dedicated years to prepping I will not last very long in a cascading total collapse. A more drawn out and less dramatic one I will do much better.
Yet, I can only do relatively better with a local and regional community that is prepped. I am an old farmer and I see few young people who care at all about farming. Farming here is permaculture and simplistic. There are few places anywhere that have invested wisely in surviving the end of affluence and technology. Even the humble subsistence farmer with low needs and animal power is subject to the mass exodus of the nearby mega cities that dot the developing world or the fallout from failing industrialization that will spread the globe with contaminants. The risks of failure of support systems on all levels has never been greater and this is our collective making because of our worship of affluence and the comfort of the machine.
I say all this with a word of compassion because few of us would will this illness on ourselves if we had a full spectrum of understanding. Let’s forgive ourselves for what we have done. Yet forgiveness does not warrant continued codependent enabling of this system. If you are awakened to what we are doing to ourselves then change. For those who can’t change at least be honest and support those who can change. The primary avenue of change is locally and individually. The top is lost in self-organized destruction. Use this world of tech and consumerism to leave it. Buy rite and choose great technologies to leverage and boost old ways. The old ways of rural biomass collection are the only way forward and that will not save many because of mass urbanization and lack of permaculture skills. It will save some though. You may be one of them. Leave the cities and go rural. Embrace nature but realize you are carbon trapped and subject to path dependencies of an Anthropocene ecosystem no different in impact as a vast ice sheet at your doorstep.
realgreenadaptation.blog
I enjoyed reading you, Walter Egon. I admire the state of your English, for a non native speaker. I couldn't and didn't understand everything that you wrote, because I don't have a good enough technical understanding, but I can admire your capacity to express yourself in the words that... don't lie. They just refuse to be disciplined, and they refuse to let us control where they will go, whom they will touch. In my opinion, you write well.
My daughter studied to become a string instrument maker, but she is now trying to earn her living with a sewing machine. The word "chatoyancy"... it could be used for fabric as you well know, I think, for talking about the different glints that a fabric casts off when it meets the light at different angles. Lots of similarities between wood and fabric, if I understand well.
Thank you for your kind words, Debra.
They make it less scary letting other people see what I've written.
Perhaps some words have chatoyancy, too :-)
A while ago I noticed how many people there already are in the world who are against the culture of limitless consumption. At least they say they are. I don't think I know anybody who is into limitless consumption right now.
In France, almost every ad you see makes the point of saying that the promoter is selling at the cheapest price, and that you, as a consumer, obviously want to buy your "product" at the cheapest price, because if you don't buy at the cheapest price you have been had. Or if you don't want to buy at the cheapest price, you are mentally ill, for example, or even... stupid.
But hasn't the rush to sell and buy everything possible at the cheapest price been taking us down more than even buying ? Hasn't it fueled the destitution of work as an activity that gives dignity to man, maybe even factory work in a good environment ?
Haven't we been busy creating a cheap world, and making ourselves cheap to boot ?
Adverts are crazy manipulative. Avoiding cheaply made stuff is the smart thing to do, together with buying less and less of everything and especially from big shops. I am also in France, by the way. But I am not French.
'... I would currently be sunning myself on a distant beach, probably on an island which I had newly purchased myself...'
Probably good that that didn't happen, because wouldn't that be part of the Machine? 😉😁
Fair point. And obviously I would need to get there on a private jet, kindly funded by my readers.
😁 Maybe staying on a shared island (Ireland) will be somewhat less luxurious, but it will make your essays more worth reading than when they've been written on your private island or in your private plane 😉
Small Islands indeed ... we are scattered across large archipelago, each inhabited.
'Islands' ... I can hear an earlier poetic voice speaking ... but in as much as a few are gathered, embodied, we inhabit many small islands scattered across the archipelago. I found Nate Hagens 'Frankly' encouraging our small islands, calling to us across the sea. He had been surprised by the numbers listening at the other end in Australasia. Nate elsewhere laments somewhat ruefully he needs a personal liturgy of embodiment. Later discussing something called 'metamodernism', both he and his friend Tomas Björkman recognise that intellect and their knowledge hands them no personal trump card. They are looking for a liturgy that does connect.
I am reminded of George Mackay Brown’s old Orkney story. At the key night of the year having all washed, cleaned and swept, before sleep they opened the door and put the lantern out in the streaming Atlantic dark in case the young family were to come again needing shelter.
The technology will fail, but spirit remains and will be communicable.
Doing our best, sir, to keep you humble.
Humble Knowledge, friend, to be truthful.
We are all using machines of one kind or another to comment on the impending nature / impact of 'the Machine'. I just wonder where understanding the problem in-hand via the internet starts to feel meaningless and trying to identify actual things we can do with our lives in way of response might begin? Is it even worth trying to mitigate or dodge the 'great unfolding' of technology? What does one do? Sorry - I appreciate that's more than one ideas thread.
Technology, at its best, is a reflection of the creative core of a human imagination caught up in the incredible patterns of God's creation. Genesis 2:15
Yep. We are caught on the horns of a dilemma. I pretty much feel the same way. The social connection element has become so important in the popular imagination that it's hard to see a way out. I personally don't think we actually need that much connection though. At least not online. But yes, strategies and information. You are dead right. We really need them. In way of an alternative perhaps we could meet on a park bench in London some time and exchange a note about how to switch off our smartphones. Not sure it will have the same reach though! One can but dream.
Those are some of the questions I want to tackle in part three of this series, in the new year. But I'd greatly appreciate ideas from others. It's the big question, and any answers I have will be necessarily partial.
Personally, the writing I have done here has been useful for me in giving a shape to what is unfolding, and trying to understand the nature of it. Without understanding that, you don't know what you're dealing with. But yes - then you have to formulate your response.
I personally see voluntary simplicity and a serious spiritual path of some kind as the most meaningful responses Paul. I guess they always were. But maybe that's not enough to change the World. Looking forward to hearing your post Christmas synthesis of the no doubt many responses. Thanks for creating the space.
I'm with you. I think 'changing the world' is the trap to be avoided.
Very sketchily, given limitations of space (but mainly of intelligence, insight and knowledge on my part, to be frank…) I would argue that those of us who truly feel the time is out of joint and the social/spiritual contract is broken need to go on a full-spectrum diet, a kind of askesis that sees us connecting with the unfolding machine very much at arm’s length in as many areas of our lives as possible. Limit exposure to all forms of trash. Develop an interior life of bulk and substance, develop a prayer life or meditation life, read valuable texts, understand that actually all the seeds for understanding our predicament have already been sown by the great writers and mystics in the great texts. In a different form, what we will go through has all been seen before.
We won’t escape it - but we can genuinely reduce our involvement. (This is far easier if one doesn’t have children). If we don’t do this, then we need to be clear that it’s a choice we are making.
Jules, I agree, and would add to 'an interior life of bulk and substance, and valuable texts', an embodied, daily (or very regular) practice. Un-embodied ideas or beliefs, without real life practice are like trying to make bread with only yeast and salt, but no flour.
Totally agree - fuller and fuller embodiment, including embodying and knowing the earth around where one lives, somatically intimate and grounded with oneself, attuned to others and the Earth, feet on the ground. Martin Shaw is great on this, and Reggie Ray offers some good ways in (there’s me quoting books again!) It’s the bloodless abstractions that both build the Machine, facilitate it, and keep it rolling. Thanks for adding this key factor.
Caroline, while we’re on the topic, I’m curious what forms of embodiment you have in mind? Christians have traditionally been very wary of yoga, tai chi, qigong and other forms of somatic practice.
Why is this, do you know? Why the suspicion of yoga? What forms of embodiment and active bodywork are ok for Christians? (Beyond muscular hikes over hill and dale, ending in some country pub for manly pints of beer…:)
And sing and dance and dream … “ And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies. ”
This is the key. In one of the first of Paul's pieces I read, he quotes Eric Voegelin: "No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crises of a society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid the folly and live his life in order."
Living our lives in order, keeping our hearts and eyes open and aligning our spirit and our work with the logos as best we can, seems to me the only effective route to a broader, more generalized peace in the world. Top-down, politically imposed solutions will not answer--I've lived long enough to learn at least that. Here's Confucius (they say), on the same subject:
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
One more favorite related quote, and one particularly relevant in the context of the internet and its natural drift toward coarseness and outrage, from poet/editor/critic Micah Mattix: "Fill your mind with things worth loving rather than things you love to hate."
I read the Confucius quote with the sense that every single element outlined in it is being systematically targeted and debauched by the modern world. It could almost be the (tragic, sorrowful) epigraph for Paul’s entire series.
A full-spectrum diet is a big ask. But on "prayer life..."
I'm a sober fellow, because I'm the sort that ought to be. One of my mentors in a particular fellowship used to share with anyone having a problem-- and he'd repeat it over and over-- "Do you have a prayer life?"
And here's the interesting thing about that: You don't necessarily have to believe in God to have a prayer life. I'm not sure that I do. But for eighteen years, on this advice, I've prayed at least daily. To ... something. Someone. And here I am, still a sober fellow.
It's trite, but maybe it's one of those things that's trite because it's true; as some people say, "You may not believe in God, but God believes in you."
Jesus Christ is reported to have had a prayer life.
Speaking with people (prayer is speaking with God) is the basis of relationships.
I share your belief on prayer life, Awbnid. I don't know what I am praying to when I pray, but it is something I want to do ; something that changes me, and helps me hang on. It is something that I have committed to do in a prayer group which is a community.
What I like about praying is its dimension of praise, of being grateful for what we have ? are ? Being grateful for having enough keeps the motor of the consumer culture at idle speed, and not revving. Maybe.
My long dead father could have given you that advice on prayer. He practiced it, as did my mother, and they tried to bring me to practice it too, at the time, without success, but life can be long, and I am listening to them now.
I think we can change the world around us, influence friends & family. But as things happen further and further away from us, they become less and less controllable by us. And therefore can distract us from what needs to be done in our local community.
Also technology is okay, unless we think it’s going to save us. It won’t. It will just enslave us. That’s the problem today, we trust the Machine too much.
This is where my thinking on what to practically do now goes also. I suspect that this is “preaching to the choir” in this forum but more specifically:
Family. Just don’t assume your family is automatic - you have to work at it, dedicate yourself to it.
Friends. Everyone should work to cultivate a set of friends that will challenge you. My answer as a Christian is my Bible study and prayer groups
Pick something in your community to contribute to. I am paying attention to my local school board, for instance, though obviously this is a suggestion for the US. The Machine has worked hard to corrupt them and with them our children. One of the hopeful things I see now is all the challenges that are going on across the US against the “Woke” agenda in the local school boards. There is a lot of power in these boards, yet they are local enough that a person can make a difference. This is my choice but there are others - the point is to take a step and start getting involved.
As I write this it seems almost obvious but I look around my acquaintances I don’t see all that many people doing them or something else rational to encourage a healthy community for themselves.
Finally, have faith that you can change our world as Brother Alexander states. Obviously Jesus started with family and twelve friends. More recent examples are Bezos, Jobs and Zuckerberg. At one point they were everyday schmucks like us but somehow we now have Amazon, Apple and Facebook (sorry, Meta) all in our lifetime. Yes, have faith that you can make a difference,
Is that last paragraph supposed to be ironic? Amazon, Apple, and Meta may as well be three of the four horses of the Machine apocalypse. Also worth considering: the primary reason all were "successful" is each reinforced in a significant way the entire omnicidal control imperative and transhuman drive towards the humanity and nature-annihilating techno-abyss. In other words: they were helped along massively by all the other forces in this culture seeking the complete destruction of life.
Also, I suspect the entire crisis we face revolves around the fetishization of doing over being. The world today would be immeasurably better if Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, and their ilk had remained in their dorm rooms smoking weed instead of starting these infernal tech companies now wrapping themselves like vampire squid around the face of humanity.
Steve Jobs is responsible for the death of every 18-year old girl who ever threw herself from the roof of a Foxconn factory slave-camp in despair at the prospect of trying to produce even one more iPhone. And that's just the tip of the horrors that man brought to the world.
Film professor Ray Carney once wrote a note of advice to film artists: "The solution most movies urge is a continuation of the sickness they depict. They give characters problems to solve and then show them going about solving them. Their narratives are an extension of the business ethos that causes most of the problems in our culture in the first place. These movies never question the belief that we are what we do, what we control, what we own. We live in a capitalist culture addicted to the virtues of doing. But life is less about doing anything, than being something. If your film hinges on a figure's doing or accomplishing something, you are part of the sickness. You are making feature-length commercials for IBM."
The only influence we can make is to live by example. That's been my experience anyway; people don't change unless they want to change, and many people are still too comfortable. It doesn't matter that they are sleep walking into tyranny, they don't see it and don't want to. They are still too reliant on all of the systems that contain us. The best we can do is love them the best we can and walk our own path.
Absolutely. The world will change when people change. I used to work for a charity that had a recruitment poster that had the tag, "How would you like to change the world,
one heart at a time,
starting with your own!"
Power is a hell of a temptation, because at the same time, power is what Gets Things Done.
Galadriel's speech to Frodo is most instructive here, as it perhaps summarizes the entirety of LotR.
Hello, Feral. It's nice to see you again. I don't think Paul would mind my informing you of something you may not know: with The American Conservative's having decided to do as much damage to itself as possible by requiring commenters to buy a subscription, Rod Dreher's ex - commenters have a diaspora on Discord. I was on it for awhile, until I decided that keeping my views to myself is much more satisfying. That's a rather feline sensibility at work, isn't it? Anyway, if you hadn't known of the Dreher exiles on Discord, you do now.
Thanks. Quite feline, I agree.
Funny how TAC insists on shooting themselves in the foot.
Absolutely.
Hi Paul. Appreciate your thoughtful writing.
As to changing the world, I agree that we should not allow grandiosity to steer our efforts, but I do think we ought to hope and work towards change even if those are mainly local.
We can all change parts the world. All of us are a part of the world. I think John Berger once said 'you can change a bit of the actual world by taking out a spade of earth.' In that sense, we can't avoid changing things around us. But changing the whole world? We can't even understand it.
We are all consciously changing the world every moment and every moment is an opportunity to create a future. So, I think be conscious of that in every choice one makes. Also, don’t get bogged down by the mass hysteria and anxiety promoted everywhere, and most especially online and in the media. Because those tend to just be possible futures not givens. Hold onto your center and follow your heart and intuition.
This thread of the discussion reminded me of a quote I just read a few days ago from “The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" by Iain McGilchrist:
“Within my experience of the world, very much can be changed by my response to whatever-it-is – in a sense everything can be changed. Though that may seem to be ‘just for me’, how big or small is that? We cannot weigh consciousness against the universe. It is like trying to say precisely how much you love someone, if you really love them. It is not fixable in space or quantitative, but qualitative and experienced in the living flow of time. And if things turn out to be interconnected, not atomistic – and they are – each consciousness has its impact on the universe that cannot be quantified.”
This book is a challenging read (especially as I’ve not read “The Master and his Emissary.” But I’m enjoying the challenge as I think it will pertain to the journey we are making here with you, Paul.
Hello Matt, 'Voluntary simplicity and a serious spiritual path' are for me not just the most meaningful responses but are also surprisingly effective at gently transforming for the better our immediate surroundings: family, friendships, neighbourhood, locale, even country. I no longer underestimate the beneficial effects of the non-doing (wei wu wei) that comes from personally divesting from whatever aspects of the machine we can at first free ourselves from.
As long as the goal is not pristine purity, (which is not possible in an entangled world), then every cupful of energy we get back from the infernal construction should be celebrated. Think of ourselves as people gaining back freedom of movement and thought via physiotherapy and wise counsel, after a long period of confinement in the engine room of a dark ship, on a course to nowhere good. I raise a glass of beech leaf noyau to everyone here who escapes and swims ashore to the un-named island. Perhaps I will see you under the gnarled oak tree and together, convivially, we can 'roam in the vast homelands of nothing whatsoever'.
'Acquire a peaceful soul, and thousands around you will be saved' - St Seraphim of Sarov.
I think the actual quote is "acquire the Holy Spirit, and thousands..." One can argue that peace is simply the fruit of acquiring the Holy Spirit but it is bigger than that.
Absolutely. I would add that each of our worldviews are our own projections on to the world. We can become victims of those worldviews, in other words we can become victims of our own projections, and (speaking from my own painful experience!) can find ourselves fully in the thrall of victimhood before we quite realise what we're doing. Once we attend to the simple and the local we can find the world becoming more rosy.
See you under the tree.
Quite right. Though it is impossible as human beings to navigate the world without a "worldview". They are our maps. It's how we make sense of our environment. But it's how attached our egos are to those worldviews which is critical.
Mmmm, Caro, I would love the recipe for that beech leaf noyau!
Happily, although the tough first line is 'wait until spring'... Here's a good version https://www.wildfooduk.com/wild-food-recipes/beech-leaf-noyau/
I leave it until September to strain and sweeten, and drink it from Lammas until Yule, (but it is usually gone by Samhain). Good Yule!
Yay! thank you! I wonder if it would work with birch leaves? I'm a great one for becoming one with what grows on the land which nourishes me most... Beech leaves would require me to wander abroad... although not far!!
Voluntary simplicity, a serious spiritual path, and surrounding oneself as much as possible with children. I don’t mean wired children, but children living without personal devices and a small amount of (if any) mediated images. My husband and I have seven living children, and none have a personal device or any access to a screen without our permission or supervision. Their average is about two hours weekly, usually a group movie watching, and that’s it. Most of the kids (all except the 2yo) attend a screen free Classical Christian (Lutheran) school, which is a huge blessing. The older I get the more I realize how my life has been shaped by children, and how I need to be like a child in my faith--trusting, simple, unapologetic, expectant. And teaching them as well as serving them provides me a daily dose of humility and wonder that few things could do.
Looking forward to this third part.
It might not be part of the story/series you want to tell, but it would interesting to hear about/hear from (if they're lurking in this salon somewhere) people with experience of communities who've tried to escape or tame "the Machine".
Amish folk, Mennonites, some Orthodox Jewish groups, maybe even "Ringing Cedars' Anastasians," if you've heard of them. (The latter have become a pet interest of mine: A strange, back-to-nature eco-pagan movement, born from the rusting carcass of the Soviet Union. A Russian businessman wrote their key texts, inspired by a nature deity embodied by a beautiful woman, Anastasia, he says he encountered on one of his trade missions to Siberia. Strange days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_Cedars%27_Anastasianism)
Do these folk have anything to teach us, even if only as cautionary tales?
You're not alone! I've read the first book of the Anastasia series. It was recommended to me by a fellow tango dancer. The part that sticks out to me the most right now is when she's talking about how to plant seeds. I like having a direct relationship with the land I'm living on. That's my local, practical change-making: improving the soil here and the native plant population to support my non-human neighbors.
I wonder if this same concept applies, at least as a starting place...
"And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”- Mark 9:29
“...and fasting”. :)
I really appreciated how Johnathon Pageau spoke recently about the two times the word “artifice” is used in the Bible. If my memory serves me he said it’s in the lineage of Cain. But it’s also in the making of the tabernacle. These two different possibilities.…
Paul, when I read your articles in Part 1 and 2, it felt like you could put into words what I had been feeling in my bones. As you are thinking about part 3, I am wondering if you will give any space to the particular challenges and poignancy of being a parent in these times. I have a 9, 7, and 3 year old, and I find myself struggling with how to protect them from the worst effects of the Machine age while also recognizing that they will have to find a way to navigate survival within it.
It seems to me like there is a diffference between 'using some machines' and being 'in the machine'.
Fair point about 'the machine', but yes I meant it as you point out - to simply use machines for our benefit. But, of course, the fear is that all these things will be linked, in something like a central bank digital currency let's say, which then only differs from an coercive social credit system in the uses to which it is put.
Which is why I disagree with your understanding of the dvine. If God can be found in a lawnmower simply because it embodies mathematical and scientific principles then is God not in a nuclear missile, a military drone, or a biological weapon? I would say not, that all our technological advances are associated with the garments of skin after donned after expulsion from Eden is not accidental.. neither is their association with the lineage of Cain. These are all the implements of fallen man. So maybe machines are not evil in themselves but have to do with a loss of God rather than anything else. I do not think machines need to be redeemed as they they are not fallen beings.
Actually I said a CBDC is a social credit system in waiting, so to speak, it's just hasn't been put to the use of social regulation, yet, and is simply claiming to be centralized digital money - but the potential, as with any centralized system, is already there, it's built in... all that is missing is the will to use it in a coercive manner. Here is a video that will help you understand that better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kazsyWAeiUk
As for the divine... I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian if anything, so your ecclectic collection of statements on the nature of Creation are basically heretical and don't work in my view. All creation is God's handiwork, and created by Him, not from Himself insofar as we are told. Regardless, we are completely responsible for what we choose for ourselves, and to what uses we choose to put things to. Our matter is not 'dead', it is living creation... but God didn't create drones or nuclear bombs; even biological weapons are an unnatural refinement of the created world - our own private creations are not so hallowed simply because we use God's handiwork - it is not materialism, it is simply an understanding our place in the order of things.
My non-materialist view is not that God is immanent in matter, but that we ourselves are made of things much more important than the matter we are composed of; that there is a hierarchy of the elements that compose us of which some are different than the sensible matter... one reason, among others, might be because we are made in the image of God... what that means precisely is unclear to me however.
But... how can all these things that you mention NOT be linked ? What is behind them is... our language(s) which are being simplified, and our numbers which are... UNIVERSAL to the planet right now.
One of the things that I have observed in "all these things" is the way that they coarsen the..."product" of our work, what we are capable of doing with our hands, and if they coarsen what we can do with our hands they coarsen... our minds and our feelings, and our capacity to build a sensitive society. In my opinion.
I really don't understand what you are saying, what are the things that are 'linked'?
I agree about language being simplified, that is definitely politically expediency at work, an attempt to render language incapable of expressing complex thoughts.
I think numbers are universal because they are powerful abstractions for the relative amounts/sizes of things, and our universe definitely involves variability in this regard. So numbers are truly universal as far as we can tell, not just limited to planet earth. Or at least so built in to being human that we cannot conceive of a universe without numbers.
Again I am not sure what are the 'all these things' you are referring to, so I am not sure what to say...
But I definitely agree that modern society is divorcing many people from what humans did with their hands for tens of thousands of years. You call it coarsening of minds and feelings. I would say Humanity is being cheapened... made flat..... made into creatures only capable of living in a world of ideology, images and abstractions by this process. It is forcing a living in the head at a loss of connection with the heart and thus the natural world and other people.
An interesting thought is what are those two forces working together going to accomplish? Simplifying language so it is incapable of expressing complex ideas while at the same time forcing humanity to live virtual lives in a world of images and abstractions. Sounds to me like a world of passive consumers.
Forgive me for not understanding precisely what you were referring to... perhaps you' wouldn't mind clarifying?
I
On coarsening :
I buy much of my clothing on the market from a man who I have bought from for around 20 years. Over that period, I have seen quite an evolution in the textile industry, and making clothes. I have seen ready to wear clothes be simplified to a point where they are not cut to enhance women's shape, or give any kind of shape to a garment. Last month the man was selling some garments that had no finished hems around the sleeves or the waist. I told him that that the work he had done looked unfinished and sloppy, (because HE made it and is proud that he was making it...), and he told me that current fashion was going down that road. I told him that that might be current fashion, but to me it looked like shoddy workmanship. Last week on the market I passed his stand and his new garments now have hems in them. And I complimented him and said they looked much nicer.
That is what I mean about coarsening. I hope that the example illustrates it better, but I have others. Lots of industrially made stuff looks much cheaper than industrially made stuff looked when my parents were buying it more than 50 years ago. My mother was even looking for bargains then, but the stuff didn't look cheap... yet. I still have some of it in my living room, and the furniture is beautiful.
...
This morning I continued reading Liszt's book about Chopin, written in French. This book was written... a long time ago. Liszt has a chapter where he writes about Polonaises, and Mazurkas, and the Polish people, and how they dance(d) these dances, and their character. His insight and vocabulary are awesome. (This is a good refuge book, by the way...) Reading this makes me wistful, and as sad as I sometimes get when I remember my father's story about getting treed by a moose around 1940 in Connecticut. His world was already light years away from mine when I was only 15 years old in 1969 in the U.S.
The "things that are being linked"....
Data banks are being linked for example, so that bureaucratic administrations can share information about "clients", individuals.
Two years ago my husband and I received a ticket in the post from the French government because a radar flashed us, a picture was taken of our car and its license plate, and because of previously existing... data, and computer technology, we were located anonymously ? and received the ticket through the post.
It is possible to commit a traffic violation in the E.U. outside of your mother country, and receive a ticket through the post, to be paid for by credit card.
Is that enough for the links to appear ?
I firmly believe now that this remote control technology is a violation of the social contract, a violation that rests on the mistaken assumption that an impersonal machine can be more competent, impartial and intelligent than a flesh and blood person. I think that all of us who are flesh and blood deserve the luxury of being able to justify our behavior in front of a flesh and blood person. Anything else is... cheap and second rate, and we deserve better, no matter how much money we have.
On coarsening our language : I think that it is logical that the grander, bigger, more universal ? our aspirations (to control) are, the more our language will be impoverished, because what is big is designed to appeal to, and encompass, the largest number of people, and that is where the coarsening comes in.
Our political leaders are not so responsible for this as our universal ambitions are.
Konrad Lorenz wrote a book called "The Eight deadly sins of capitalism" and in it he speculated about the nature of democracy. To what extent is universal ? democracy an attempt to create an anthill , or a school of fish out of us ? An attempt that we are all enrolled in, and that the Internet serves quite well.
Once again, on simplifying language : how do you HAVE complex ideas or subtle emotions ? without sophisticated grammar syntax, and a good vocabulary ?
In the course of my lifetime, the French language has been significantly abrased, its subtleties radically reduced. If our language is coarsened how do we not go down the drain with it ?
"'You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?' "- Frodo
"'Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.'"- Gandalf
Very good point. We are moving towards "benevolent" dictatorship... Using and abusing force can arise from at least two motivations : in hate, the desire to humiliate, to crush an adversary, to triumph in physical or spiritual ? battle, to violate, but also, in love, the desire to offer absolute protection ?
I wonder this too. Its been something I have been struggling with since I started to see the walls of the machine close in over the last two years (I'm an unvaccinated Canadian, so things were particularly stressful there). I'm wondering how to decouple myself from the machine while I am still so reliant on it. I am a career artist, and realized recently that all my content is digital; it made me think that I need to start making everything in analog, on pen and paper, in sculpting with clay, if only in silent rebellion against the material of the machine. I think if we can each do our small part to lesson our reliance on all of our technology, then we can make one small step towards our disentanglement.
Maybe The Machine and technology are not one and the same. Though our technology is so entwined with the machine it may be hard to imagine it any other way. But maybe this is just what is needed: a reimagining of what technology could be if we could disentangle it from the machine...
I agree, I think we do need to just learn to use technology without being locked into 'the machine'. But it's getting harder, or rather 'they' are making it harder: look at what permanent changes are being made to global food production in the name of 'nitrogen' and 'carbon' pollution; and the skills lost as a result of farmers being shut down. The problem is that the powers-that-be seem to want to burn our bridges behind us so that we cannot go back and escape their 'machine', their totalitarian system.
Yes, agreed, and I don't think there is a way to engage right now without being caught up in it. I think we'd have to rebuild from the ground up. Every corner of the internet is caught up in their games. But maybe a desire for purity is a problem here too. Maybe embracing the compost heap of it (to use Sophie Strand's metaphor) is the only way forward... (And also of course plenty of unplugging and cultivating parallel communities etc etc.)...
yeah embracing, or using the compost heap to fertilize the parallel cultivations... which is the only reason I'm still 'online'.
Yesterday I played a little with the ChatGPT app (https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/), an AI app that aims to help people have better informed conversations. One question that I asked was Will it rain in Heaven tomorrow?, and when the app said that 'since everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, it probably won't', I said that rain was good, so why wouldn't it rain in Heaven? The dialogue that followed afterwards was a very tedious repetition of the same idea by the app: 'everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, and it probably has other means to nourish the plants than rain', and also an even more tedious repetion of an apology, the app being sorry it had made me believe that it had said rain was not good. It made me uncomfortable, to be frank. It was like talking to a politician.
Artificial Intelligence... I've seen apps like that, too. In my opinion another part of the Machine, trying to pull us out of what we are meant to be... social human beings...
What we really need, from our daily food to the ability to act socially, is provided in Creation itself... but we humans stopped believing in that and started to create our own reality, based on wanting more, wanting 'progress'... and we forgot that God provides in everything...
Thank You for especially that last line which for me requires people to be lead by they're sence of 'being guided' rather than thier intellectual engagement...if that makes any sence..."faith sees best in the dark".
I've been coming back to this idea, that the fall of mankind story was warning us against this. the temptation, with knowledge, to believe we know as well as God/nature/the universe does and thereby separate ourselves from it.
Jennifer thank you, this too has struck me more recently. I share a quick copy and paste for all our reference "He created the first man, Adam, in the garden of Eden–a place of spectacular beauty. In the garden He also put two specific trees–the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). Adam was only commanded not to eat of one of these trees, but he disobeyed that stipulation". To my thinking, the knowledge of Good and Evil ("doing"/ego) creates judgement and shaming and guilt and othering (separating)... and so much more that leads to violence and war etc. The Tree of Life on the other hand could be symbollic of "being"/Love/unifying and presence. Knowledge is perhaps not an issue, but rather knowledge of good and evil that we have been warned against. Knowledge of good and evil creates fear in us. Fear "separates" us from God who is Love.
Oh gosh, yes it's all happening with the Ai suddenly, isn't it? I feel this. The seduction yet soullessness of it all. I'm going to refrain. I always thought that crushing moment when the computer beat that Russian chess player might have been enough to put the brakes on but no we are going full pelt, all the way. Next up! Art and writing. Soon we'll be seeing words like; 'human made' or 'human written'. I wonder if the human heart or soul will develop their own kind of currency over time.....As Elon says, 'Let's find out'.
Yes! The Machine, in all forms, pulls the human soul out of humanity, turning us human beings into believers of technological progress, even making us totally dependent of it. Change starts with ourselves, I believe. I wouldn't know which other way of change there would be, except for deep prayer to God, for the Machine doesn't tame itself...
Not long ago, I read a random quote from someone's blog about AI: something to the effect of "Either you tell the machine/computer/AI what to do, or it tells you what to do." I so wish I could remember where I read it, but it passed beneath the endless waves of ether and was lost. The author of the blog was someone I'd never heard of, but he had an Asian name, I think, or it sounded Asian.
I can't find a source for it but I saw somewhere a quote about an "algorithm line" in jobs to much the same effect - e.g., you either have a low-paying, easily-replaceable job where an algorithm tells you what to do, or a high-paying, "skilled" job telling an algorithm what to do. And the line keeps creeping upwards every day...
AI is already all around us. . . we're just not noticing it.
And the next step in getting us all comfortable with being told what to do will be to treat AI as some sort of disembodied expert. Instead of saying things like: ". . .the WHO guidelines state. . . " or ". . . the CDC recommends. . ." or ". . .Dr. Fauci encourages everyone to. . ." or ". . . we follow the science. . .", we'll start hearing things along the lines of: ". . . the AI (by then, they'll have a serious but approachable name for it) has new guidelines. . ." or "the AI is now recommending. . ." or. . .well, you get the idea. And woe to anyone who attempts to disagree with our God-like AI.
In sports this approach has been used under the moniker of “analytics” and “data.” Managers and coaches use this version of AI to enhance play, win more games and ultimately make more money. I wonder if this is already in play in ways we’re not quite aware of?
Did you see the article in the Guardian yesterday about ChatGPT? Here's a quote:
"In the days since it [ChatGPT] was released, academics have generated responses to exam queries that they say would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate, and programmers have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality."
Sigh.
Sounds like an indictment on the academic profession to me
I almost laughed. I am thoroughly enjoying reading, and the only down side I see is the perpetual rabbit hole in which I find myself. I ordered a book written by the lawyer who wrote the legal challenge to Obamacare. It’s my new fun, along with a rabid involvement with canning, dehydrating, and other food security measures. We cannot assume food chain supplies will be adequate. At age 78, I have some perspective.
It's very easy to see how AI will quickly morph into an adjunct of the arms race between modern nation-states. It already is doing so (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_arms_race) in fact.
You have to wonder what a technology like this—the bleeding-edge pinnacle of the Machine— has to offer in terms of ideas/strategies for dissolving centralized power, economic inequality, ending militarism, dismantling the Machine, restoring the commons, restoring the health of the land-base, combating State propaganda, ending industrialism, enhancing meaning, etc.
Basically, since AI is being designed as yet another weapon, it might be worth seeing if that weapon can be turned around and aimed at the actual problems that gave rise to the perceived need for such a weapon. At a certain point, I'm betting asking AIs for ideas about solving these kinds of problems will draw the interest/ire of the Machine and trigger a censored non-response: "That question violates the Terms of Service for use of this system. Goodbye."
Google doesn't want to tell you how to get rid of Google, even though its AIs at some point may know how to do it. This brings up the increasingly awkward and obvious problem: what happens to this entire system when it no longer needs people as a result of AI and robotic automation? Is Amazon going to become a non-profit? There's a sense the goal of Amazon is to be a fully automated machine with no employees, delivering goods to a populace of unemployed, destitute people.
One of those pesky contradictions at the heart of capitalism moving from the theoretical to the actual...
I find rain heavenly.
Indeed, and it is a sad reflection of the materialist thinking as well. It reminds me of one of the Scientists from That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, where he has it in his head that he wants to tear down all the trees because they are messy; that birds make their nests in them, that the leaves are always dying and falling so that you must rake them afterwards. Instead he would replace all the trees with artificial representations, perfect and pristine, and with artificial birds that you can turn their chirping on and off as you wish. Its almost as if, to the machine, everything being perfect is all the rough edges being worn off, devoid of all messiness, perfect in its representation; but devoid of all life.
This sounds just a variation of the folk tale “The Emperor and the Nightingale” (Andersen’s version is the one I know). The emperor loves the nightingale so, but hasn’t considered how inextricably her beauty and appeal are tied to her wildness--that is, her freedom and the inherent vicissitudes of her life. So when he receives a wind-up nightingale, he embraces it as a better version of the real, because it is, of course, predictable and controllable. Everyone knows how this story ends. We humans are so consistently, willfully ignorant.
Very nicely put. Devoid of all messiness and dirt, and devoid of life.
There was a recent conversation on Jordan Peterson’s podcast in which he spoke to an expert in artificial intelligence. It was the opinion of this expert that very soon, many people’s closest confidants and friends will be AI. He seemed to think this was a positive development, saying for example “Imagine a friend who was always available, and always interested in what you have to say.” It’s the sort of thing that sounds great until you experience it.
There's that recent discussion between Paul and Mary Harrington where Harrington talked about the metaverse. She noted Facebook had taken to actually advertising VR tech as a sop to lonely, alienated people (now almost everyone) who has seen even what small circle of friends and family they once had fall away until all that remains is a severe case of Shit Life Syndrome and a growing stack of bills.
One thing I think about is how The Great Reset and metaverse dovetail perfectly in that the world's super-rich intend to hoard the last physical resources while the rest of us are being positioned to settle for the virtual kind. You'll "own nothing and be happy" right?
Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison will have actual Hawaii, where they enjoy actual social gatherings, and you'll be in lockdown with a virtual hallucination of an island of your own and some AI "friends" to chat with. Whats the difference really? Look, it's either that or they keep loosing increasingly lethal lab-cooked viruses till you're good and dead.
Eat ze bugs, put on ze goggles, don't annoy your betters. That sound about right?
Or an ork.
More on ChatGPT: https://nypost.com/2022/12/06/scary-chatgpt-could-render-google-obsolete-in-two-years/
I had a co-worker years ago who sold a side-project of his to Google. He was contractually bound not to reveal how much they paid him for it. All he could do when asked was to gesture with his hands wide apart to indicate, "A WHOLE LOT". I recall him sitting at his desk, staring somewhat sadly into the middle-distance, and asking him what was up. He sort of half-smiled and said, "I'm ruined."
He quit the next day. I think he was about 28 years old and didn't need to do anything else with his life but sit on the proverbial beach with an umbrella drink.
Many a person has been ruined by too much money too soon. We Abbey-dwellers need to continue with enough paid subscriptions to keep Paul writing, but never so many he can close up shop and take off for that beach.
To be honest Steven, even if I were to suddenly inherit millions from a previously unknown relative, it would be impossible for me to sit on a beach doing nothing for more than about two hours. I'm not the sort of person who can sit still easily. Luckily there is little chance of this problem arising.
Almost certainly the case, but it's a test almost all of us believe we'd pass but actually would not. Large amounts of money, like other forms of power, reveal character flaws and invite corruption. Reminds me of that Dorothy Parker witticism, "if you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people He gave it to."
I remember visiting the Bellevue Avenue Historic District in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Gilded Age robber barons built those incredible (obscene, in fact) "cottages" to summer in. One thing I found startling is some had little biographies scattered about various rooms of the children raised by these families (the Vanderbilts, Astors etc) and these children seemingly invariably went mad, committed suicide, overdosed, died in some horrific accident, or otherwise met a grisly fate. It was like flipping through pages of a Chas Addams book.
It's interesting what a magnet for the demonic power is.
The Breakers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breakers
Bellevue Avenue Historic District:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellevue_Avenue_Historic_District
I certainly agree with that. Money is a poison. There is a reason that every spiritual tradition of any seriousness expressly warns against the corrupting nature of wealth. It is manifest all over the landscape now.
Thinking thru this on my own recently. Is money really a poison, it's only a tool, so is it wealth that is a poison? Are we fighting over the tool, the means of projecting power, or are we fighting over the power itself? (or both, or neither?) Nevertheless, it certainly corrupts.
Wondering if the Machine is amoral, or is it like others depict it to be--Moloch or Baal or some other demi, semi, or god like demonic power? Is it explained as the continuation of the legacy of Cain, he being the father of technology and self-reliance?
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 1 Timothy 6:10
There are powerful psychological motivations behind the love of money which can take subtle forms. As in... the fear of not having "enough" that becomes an overwhelming force in some people's lives. People can turn to the love of money through greed, get caught up in the whirlwind of power and influence that it confers, but also through fear. In the parabole of the young rich man who moves Jesus to question his future, it is probably fear that comes in the way.
I can understand this fear. It is hard to get past it... for some people, whereas others seem to have no problem with it.
haha, I am the same.
whether I am poor or rich or broke (I have been all three). I can’t sit still for more than a few hours.
and I LIKE sitting still..!
Tfg
> We Abbey-dwellers need to continue with enough paid subscriptions to keep Paul writing, but never so many he can close up shop and take off for that beach.
😅😅 Such an unexpected turn, this comment.
One of the worst things that can happen to a young man is to win his first bet on a horse. Your young friend is in a similar position. But at least his response showed some wisdom. At that age, I'm afraid I would have opted for sitting on the beach, drinking rum bamboozles.
I also think we need to look at our broken relationship with money. Can it be simply a symbol of abundance? Is it not us humans with the corrupting nature? And why do we have so much around having money?
I don’t think that we have to ever worry about Paul’s financial abundance because he strikes me as someone who is so abundantly rich in other ways like imagination, spirituality, curiosity, integrity and a desire to do good!
I think his flourishing will only mean a flourishing for his family, his community and us all.
Hello Paul and everyone here.
I'm Monique from Australia and have spent most of last two years alone in a cabin while the world went mad. I have a tendency to fast forward around corners so 'saw' much of what played out in my mind around late March, 2020. Before this I had just spent the entire winter on the Isle of Iona and before that Romania, Slovenia and a third 'once a decade' wander around Auschwitz with Viktor Frankl in my ears asking myself once again, 'How on earth did this happen? And how did the Germans not know what was happening here?' I wouldn't dare compare the path of the unvaccinated to that of the Jewish people (ever) but I have gleaned a lot from Mattias Desmet's recent work and feel now I have a better understanding of the system and human beings post Covid.
I was going to celebrate my ability to withstand the onslaught that came second half of 2021 by coming to Ireland to see you and Martin, Paul (at the Priory) but it still feels a little weird out there in the big, wide world. A little understandable agoraphobia, perhaps. In all honesty navigating this year has been perhaps obviously surreal and I am so sorry I haven't been able to give you something back for your wonderful words, Paul. I will one day as being able to read what you are seeing and feeling when most of your friends and family are seeing something or nothing else has truly been a God send, as has pulling out my childhood bible myself. I wish I could show you the highlighted chapters in Revelations - truly. Why on earth would an 8 year old be so interested in all that mumbo jumbo?! Interesting feeling yourself speaking to you and current events 40 years later, across time. Just another layer to add to the oddness of feeling as though you're floating through time and space before being reconfigured, kind of like in the Wonka machine. I guess paradigm shifts aren't meant to be smooth sailing.
Regarding Elon Musk, (which I've just realised wasn't a prompt in your introductory email but I'll leave my thoughts here anyway), I admit to becoming a little addicted to it all suddenly. I listened to his live chat on Twitter with a few others (and 100k listeners). There's a change of the guard feeling about it all which is no surprise, and once again, taking out the middle man and the ever generous overlords. The mainstream media - just another institution destined to fall? I believe him when he speaks about the 'preciousness' of free speech and how rare it is to experience this. I also loved what he said about the arcs of civilisations and how ignorant we can be when on an 'up swing'. He certainly has an impressive mind and unless I'm utterly naive, this Twitter move certainly feels to be coming from a good intention. It also takes courage. How The Establishment is going after him now - and Matt Taibbi since part one of 'The Twitter Files' dropped. It's all just so revealing. The powers that be don't seem too concerned about giving their hand away, it seems, yet I guess there aren't many looking as closely as some of us.
Having said ALL that, I mustn't forget that ultimately it's just a billionaire's race to building the infrastructure for transhumanism and streamline all of it into one global system. Musk's 'If you can't beat it, join it' attitude is his modus operandi/long game, and so impressive and well intentioned as the man might be, no thanks. I have been writing about all that concerns most of us for years and the inevitable split when it comes to Late Stage Capitalism. It's only Instagram rants but my hashtag is always the same - go the hobbits. In Tolkenesque times what other conclusion is there? I guess that's always been my answer to the whole thing. I can't help but be wedded to the beauty and wonder of the natural world so I think ultimately, it's going to be a game of staying in our hearts and being present with all that is.
Thank you for the opportunity. So happy to be in good company and be able to say thank you. Thank you again Paul, and thank you also to Rhys Wildermuth. Love you Rhys, if you are reading this. Your writing has also held my heart in tac t and I am greatly indebted to you both. Good health to all reading this. Monique x
Here in Australia we’re approaching Christmas upside down as usual which is quite pleasant being summer and all.
However it is otherwise rather insane to be celebrating a winter solstice festival at the height of summer with fake snow, reindeer and Santa dressed in heavy clothes. Not to mention the whole commercial nonsense. It is another example I suppose of the great inversion which you write so wonderfully about Paul.
My usual response is to take myself off to a Vipassana retreat (in the tradition of S.N. Goenka) for the duration of the silliness. Sitting still in silence and paying attention to the universe unfolding within the framework of ones own mind/ body phenomenon is, I think, one way to counter the craziness of the modern world.
Thanks for all the great essays this year. Really helped us through the covid hysteria which was intense here.
Looking forward to reading your upcoming work.
Andrew Gibbs
As a fellow Aussie I second both the intensity comment and the thank you. Happy retreat to you Andrew.
I have also sat a number of Vipassana retreats Andrew and found them massively insightful. They led me into other forms of Buddhist practice, all of which flow into my spiritual path; within and through which I perceive meanings which I suspect lie beyond the machinations / reach of 'the machine'. Transcendent insights common to many religious experiences I would suggest.
Interestingly Noah Yuval Harrari who is often cited as the 'high priest' of transhumanism by certain online factions is also a Vipassana meditator and teacher. Make of that what you will! I would be interested to see what Paul has to say on the religion/s of the future.
I don’t know much about Yuval Harrari but from what I do now he seems very misunderstood and demonized by people who have never heard him speak just watched snippets of his talks.
Yes Tanjawia I agree.
Fellow Aussie here in Queensland. 100% yes to your description.Nothing speaks to me less about the birth of Christ than engaging in a family piss up in 35+ degrees amidst plastic Santa decor from Big W. I will be working extra hours at the rehab to avoid the above scenario. 🎉😂
-Ksenia
Lol !
I liked Paul’s comment in the recent Benburb day with Martin Shaw that perhaps we needed more mystics or cave dwelling saints. Being energy efficient- which we are all being asked to do these days can begin with our efficiency of breath, food, words and thoughts. Fasting on all levels , though against the ethos of the corporate growth machine, has a lot to recommend it !!
What is the meaning of the machine age, not negatively but as part of the coming of the kingdom, theosis of creation, striving of humankind?
I ponder three options which might supply vision:
1. William Blake. We live in Golgonooza, "continually building & continually decaying desolate", but which is also the place we find the "golden string" that leads to "heaven's gate".
2. Owen Barfield. Mechanistic alienation fosters an intensification of individuality, as it seems there's nowhere else to turn, though that suffering interiority because of its suffering will awaken to a renewed participation in divine life not possible before.
3. Dante. This life and the modern way of life (he was the first to use "modern") is a "race to death", which is at once frightening and the path to the fullness of life, consciously one with "the love that moves the sun and the other stars", because both light and dark are embraced.
Others?
I mentioned this in an email to Paul yesterday, but I wholehearted recommend the books (along with talks/interviews) of Iain McGilchrist, whose main focus is on the way that a certain mode of thinking, dominated by the left brain hemisphere, has shaped ‘the Western world’, and therefore that humanity has got seriously out of balance and way off track. The books are incredibly well researched, fascinating, profound and enlightening.
Thank you, Paul, for the chance to converse here.
True that. (All-a it. :-)
I’m reading the new McGilchrist book(s) right now and I have to say it’s one of the best and most interesting things I’ve ever read. His scope of knowledge and ability to apply it is phenomenal. Even the appendices are good, and that’s so rare.
Yes and I think proof that AI is not up to human capacity yet!... although Iain McG does seem to have a superhuman brain!
Have you read Philip Sherrard? I just finished "Human Image, World Image" and his critique of the materialist cosmology seems to resonate with the little bit of McGilchrist I've encountered. I have to admit, I balked at the price of "The Matter With Things", but I think I need to dive in to that one!
Hi Galen, I've not read Philip Sherrard, but will definitely look him up. Thanks for the tip.
On his website Iain McGilchrist has provided a series of videos of conversations with Alex Gomez-Marin about each chapter of The Matter With Things - I think there are 18 episodes in all. Might help warm up for that dive!
I'd like to hear more on this. I have a feeling when in prayer that "all is well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". This feeling makes me wonder how the machine age will fit in to that larger truth. I don't have an answer.
One initial thought is that Julian of Norwich, who made that comment, lived in the 14th century which is sometimes said to be have been the worst English century to live in, given plagues, violence, turbulence etc...
Mark, you raise a question that I have about Barfield's (and Steiner's) work. Is there a tendency for both of them to relativize or necessitate evil in order for the historical process to work its way thorough pre-assumed stages? Is there an implicit Hegelian willingness to absorb suffering in the name of spiritual evolution? This seems to contrast with the classical Christian notion of evil as privatio boni, a mere lack, a disease that is overcome, not absorbed, in redemption. But I am willing to grant that I may be missing something in Barfield or Steiner. I have read only a few of Steiner's books, and I have read almost all of Barfield's.
I can't speak for Steiner but think Barfield is no Hegelian. He doesn't think the historical process is steadily manifesting Geist. Rather, the notion of history is itself a perception from a certain period of consciousness (in the medieval period "history" meant ordered narrative rather than chronology of events). Barfield felt, I think, that there is a “transforming agent in nature" which produces numerous forms of cosmogenesis held together by Christ, the Logos, who is also known in/as the depth of our being.
As to privatio boni, I imagine Barfield would have put it in more Steinerian terms, that evil is part of the unfolding of good, but the unfolding is for good, not for good and evil in a dualistic mix. So perhaps not privatio boni but servitio boni.
Just back from my local market "populaire" where I listened to the sellers give vent to their frustration about how the market is dying in my "town" right next to a megapolis in France, through lack of people present and buying. Elsewhere around the megapolis, the market is doing just fine. In my small "town", the city hall has been taken over by an inexperienced group running under an ecological banner that won hands down... during Covid.
If the popular markets die here, it will put yet another nail in my already waiting coffin. They are a place where I can shoot the breeze, play with words, get a little olé olé from time to time, wink. Speak my mind. Still. The popular markets are not the bio market which tends to attract ideologically commanded people who buy and eat... words, more words. To me they are everything but free.
...
I may already have made this comment, but I will make it again. There was a time when I made the distinction between "paying" and "paid" (I still do.) For me, still, there is a difference between a "paid" subscriber and a "paying" subscriber. My doctor husband is regularly asked by his new patients "are you reimbused ?" and he answers "no, I am paid because you pay me, and YOU are reimbursed."
Perhaps someone would care to explain the, um, logic of talking about a "paid" subscriber for a paying one ? I am all ears. ("Paid" is a passive form, and "paying" is an active one.)
Now, off to a family funeral several hours away by car. The rear guard has its obligations that I will gladly and cheerfully fulfill with a sense of purpose, and, I hope, a certain... grace. I hope...
"It is necessary to conquer evil with Peace, being beyond evil, not its contrary. True Peace has no contrary." Frithjof Shoun
I like that. That is one of the reasons why the signs all over France at the entry of the villages, towns and cities that proclaim "metropole apaisée" (no need for translation, I think) are as many incitations to the contrary.
I have been immensely enjoying your writing Paul, and I will probably become a paid subscriber in the New Year.
I went to a conference recently of some Anglican ministers as a sort of interloper (being a baptist myself!). But what drew me to the conference was one of my friends was speaking on transhumanism - a subject I believe will be one of the major challenges for Christians in the future as it gets to the heart of the question - what does it mean to be a human made in the image of God - and what right do we as creatures have to meddle with the creators "very good" design?
Following on from this I heartily agree with your point here in your last piece"
"The ultimate project of modernity, I believe now, is to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods."
Taking this a bit further using Christian theology, I would say we are remaking ourselves and the world around us in the "Image" of (fallen) man, and this has immense relevance with transhumanism and its integration with AI. If mankind is fallen and pre-disposed to sin (original sin) (as I believe), then this means this fallenness will influence that which we make in our image - it will be made in the image of sin. With the AI algorithms, we can then say sin and vice will be written in the code, and therefore AI will be predisposed to exacerbate sin/vice (greed, selfishness, violence, hatred etc). Thus the machine not only erodes the "good life" as Berry would say, but furthers the reach of vice and sin into the world and even exacerbates it. And perhaps it does so at a rate that mankind has been shielded from so far due to our limitedness.
A pretty bleak future indeed, and for me, this shows the strength of what we are up against. Thus I am very grateful for your writing showing up the Machine for what it is.
Keep writing
"we are remaking ourselves and the world around us in the "Image" of (fallen) man", this is key, very important. Thanks!
Hello, I have read some of your essays (but not all) and just wanted to recommend three thinkers that I believe you've missed, all of which could be insightful to your "machine" project.
First is Deleuze, although more specifically Deleuze and his co-writer Guattari. D&G talk about "machines" quite a lot, and although they are using the term in a specific way, I think you would find it insightful. It can be a bit hard to understand, but once you do, it's worth it.
Second is Charles Taylor, specifically his work "A Secular Age." Taylor traces the history of Christianity over the last two centuries and shows how "secularity" is really an offshoot of Christianity itself.
Third is Lewis Mumford. I am not as familiar with his work, but I do know that he considered the "machinic" to have begun far before the Industrial Revolution, with its roots in the ordered lifestyle of medieval monks.
Cheers!
Thanks for these. I have the Taylor on my shelf and I hope next year to sit down with it. Mumford I wrote about in one of my previous essays (see my last post here.) Deleuze I know nothing about, so thanks for the pointer.
D&G were some of the most interesting thinkers to come out of the French postmoderns, especially the model of the rhizome.
Definitely go back to the archives about Mumford. Paul talks about him pretty extensively!