To Be a Christian Is to Sanctify the Machine

Against the Machine is a philosophy of history, one that sees us in an age of decay. But must we abandon it all? Should we not sanctify it instead?

Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine has generated both admiration and frustration, often in equal measure. Some read it as a manifesto against modern technology; others as a hopeless lament for a world already lost. But the book is best understood neither as a how-to guide nor as a call to retreat simpliciter, but as a philosophy of history.

Kingsnorth is not asking how we might fix the Machine, or even whether we should change it. He seeks instead to understand the kind of age we inhabit in the flow of the historical process itself.

In other words, Against the Machine is a philosophy of history. Seeing it this way changes how the book should be read, softens many of its criticisms, and complicates how supporters may use it.

This is because Kingsnorth is not offering a technical analysis or a set of evidence-based prescriptions; he is working within a romantic and historicist account of history.

Within that frame, he finds us at the end of a cycle, in an age of decay. From that diagnosis follows a revolutionary and romantic response: unplug from the Machine. There is no solution to the problem. It just is. We cannot sanctify the machine; it has unfolded and enframed us all. It spells the end of humanity. It is the end of an age, one that will pass and lead to a rebirth in the next recurrence.

Kingsnorth’s Philosophy of History

Where Kingsnorth’s view of history becomes most clear is in Chapter 3, “The Faustian Fire,” in which Kingsnorth draws heavily upon Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. Although Kingsnorth describes the work as “a comparative history of civilizations,” it is also one of the great works of the philosophy of history. As Kingsnorth explains: “its author claims to have discovered a pattern of birth, growth and decline which can be applied to all major human cultures, from that of Ancient Egypt to that of the modern West” (23). It is not a positivist or encyclopedic work; Spengler’s book can be likened to poetry, claims Kingsnorth. And it is obvious that Kingsnorth approves of some of the categories that Spengler uses for history, albeit not in all the particulars.

Importantly, Alasdair MacIntyre too plays a role in Kingsnorth’s mapping out of history. As MacIntyre demonstrated in After Virtue, the West has a collective amnesia when it comes to moral language like virtue and vice. We might use the language of virtue, but we have forgotten its substructure. Yet this use of MacIntyre mostly furthers his thesis that “Western civilization is already dead” (12). There is nothing to fight for. There is no culture war. It is all mere emptiness until something comes to fill it (12). Kingsnorth speaks of culture war as “the equivalent of two bald men fighting over a comb” (12). Well, he does have a way with words. But the point remains: Western culture has died.

We are, to use Spengler’s wording, in the Faustian age, the age of the machine (28). This age is marked by Christ’s unthroning and our uprootedness. Having moved through the Apollonian and Magian cultures, we are now in the unfolding of history at the end of this point in time: our Faustian age of the machine. This “decay,” as Kingsnorth calls it, alluding to the historicism common in Nietzsche’s day, which located us in an age of decadence, began to set in during the Reformation and came to atrophy civilization by the 1800s (26).

That Kingsnorth follows the line of Romantic (and idealistic) historicists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seems clear at this point. He even cites Arnold Toynbee, one of the modern principles of the philosophy of history alongside Spengler and Giambattista Vico, as those who saw history unfold in cycles or ages (28–29).

Further, he finds wisdom in the cyclical philosophy of René Guénon (164). This helps to explain why the West is broken. It has denied higher truth due to the “Reign of Quantity” (Guénon’s phrase). The West has deviated, even though traditions have a certain universal character, which means we all unfold toward truth. Not the West, however. It is off cycle. It is in decay.

This is nothing new. Whether in Stoic thought or ancient Vedic thought, humans have theorized that time moves toward decay. We started in a golden age, then a heroic age, then a silver age, and so on. Yet these are reborn after a time of conflagration or the like. This is the kind of thing that Kingsnorth posits.

Hence, he cites Toynbee positively, who sees a similar recurrence that ends in death, and then: “Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old things again, but of something new” (29). We live in death; there is no culture war to win. Only rebirth matters. The West is not worth saving.

And that philosophy of history undergirds Kingsnorth’s work. We do not resist the machine, we do not sanctify the machine, and we certainly do not talk about a good use of the machine. We are in the Faustian age, of decay and decadence. There is no war to win. We died. We live in the ashes. So the only real response is to unplug.

Critics of Against the Machine

Some reviewers have missed this aspect of Kingsnorth’s work. In missing it, they have accused him of cynicism or of mere Luddite nostalgia. But these critiques look for something Kingsnorth does not offer. They read the book as an analytic and prescriptive argument, when it belongs instead to the genre of philosophy of history.

Kingsnorth is a historicist and idealist, and he employs a romantic method rather than a calculative one (contra Comte and his heirs). As a result, his critics may ask for falsifiable analysis, for proposals that can be tested or measured; when they do so and find him wanting, they dismiss his conclusions as impractical or anti-technological. Yet this misunderstands both his method and his aim.

For example, in Joel Miller’s critical review, he points out that Kingsnorth “bungles the story” of the West. Miller then mounts counter assertions and points out flaws in particular aspects of Kingsnorth’s thesis. However, Kingsnorth is making a meticulous argument about cause and effect as such. Rather, he aims to show that modern capitalism is a qualitative break from the past, that we have truly entered into an age of decay. The historical trajectory, while important, does not falsify or prove Kingsnorth’s thesis; rather, it only adds context.

This is because Kingsnorth sees us on the final rung of a civilizational cycle, with the Machine at last revealing itself in its most profound form. This revelation brings about the end of a certain vision of humanity and calls for its rebirth. He is not giving tips. He is describing an apocalypse that follows from his philosophy of history.

In another review of Against the Machine, Andrew Perlot criticizes Kingsnorth for his lack of analytical and descriptive argument:

“Kingsnorth has a head for analogies and turns of phrase. He’s a great writer who identifies what’s not working in our world, and has done it since his days as a world-trotting environmental reporter. But when breaking down root causes and solutions, his go-to move is to reach for a vibe.”

Overall, I agree with Perlot that specifying root cause and solutions would be ideal, but whether or not that is possible is the question. Throughout, Perlot is looking for evidence, for specificity, and he finds vagueness. But again, I am not sure one should expect that from the kind of book that Kingsnorth has written.

While philosophy of history may digress into the science of historical causation, it mostly aims to describe axiomatic or vectorial laws (so Maritain). It aims to place historical data within the process of history, but it does not primarily aim to make an argument of historical causation.

This helps explain why Kingsnorth offers no resolution, no path of sanctification for the Machine. Within his particular philosophy of history, such a resolution is not possible. The cycle has already turned. We have decayed. New birth is all.

He advocates for a romantic, historiscist, and cyclical history. I should note: like Zoroastrian cycles, it is evident that Kingsnorth sees a final end. There is no hint of eternal recurrence. But we have moved into the Faustian age, characterized by the Machine.

But even so, that does not excuse real criticisms of lack of clarity in argument. For example, Brad East has criticized Against the Machine for lacking a real argument, being a sort of stitch of various substack posts. Or in his own words, it is “ a hodgepodge of internet writing stitched together between two covers.”

I suspect that East here overstates the case. Even so, as I read the whole work, I did find myself grasping for a full argument. Kingsnorth has mastered the office of assertion, but I too wanted to be carried along the flow of an argument to the end. I did not always feel that the author led me as well as he could have.

Proponents of Against the Machine

If critics sometimes have misaligned expectations, then I believe the same holds true for his advocates. Many advocate a rejection of technology as a sort of retreat-and-rebuild mindset. Yet I am not sure Kingsnorth thinks anything of the like. He sees not the rebirth of the old ways, but the rebirth of new ways.

Here is where Kingsnorth’s Christianity overcomes the possible cynicism of his argument thus far. Since Christ has been dethroned, it stands to reason that we can place him back on the spiritual throne of our culture. But here, right in front of us, there is nothing to redeem, nothing to sanctify about the Machine.

In a lengthy passage, Kingsnorth explains:

“When I look at this history, and then I look at the culture war, I see cause and effect. I see a war being fought over the spoils and the ruins of Progress by people who live in those ruins and are mourning the loss of something they don’t even quite understand. That sense of mourning is common to both ‘left’ and ‘right’. Whether they are mourning the end of the arc of history or the end of a country they miss without maybe even having known it, the sense of loss is profound, even if unspoken. For many people, everything is broken. This is why, though I will never condemn those ‘dead white men’, neither can I stand up and ‘defend the West’ in some uncomplicated fashion. The West is my home—but the West has also eaten my home. Should I stand up to save it from itself? How would that happen? What would I be fighting for?

No: when we talk about fighting for ‘the culture’, or fighting against it, I think we miss the mark” (263).

Why do we miss the mark? Because culture is a spiritual byproduct (164), and we have steadily denied spirit for materialism. We have submitted to the Reign of Quantity. We live in an artificial world, one cut off from truth.

And this leads to the central metaphor of the book: the machine.

What Is the Machine?

Kingsnorth chose the machine metaphor to explain the constructed nature of the West, of our world. It is new, not old. And in this sense, it is a dead thing. He writes:

“But why a machine? Why choose this particular image to try and pin down this thing that is enveloping us? Because a machine is an emotionless, inorganic system; something which is pitiless and determined, and which has some task to fulfil. Above all, a machine is something unnatural: something constructed. Specifically, it is constructed of separate parts, all of which, when taken together, perform the wider function for which the machine is designed. If today, then, we live under the reign of the Machine, what is this machine made of? What are its parts, and how do they operate?” (115)

Since the machine replaces all that is old with what is new and materialistic, constructed, we have lost what it means to be human, our essence. One can read C. S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man, or Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Age, or the work of Canadian philosopher George Grant to understand just what this means. Kingsnorth does not put the pieces together, but points out that it is. It is all the things that modern capitalism is; it is technological; it is constructed.

Minimally, the machine has changed us into masters of technique, of nature. We become like the technique slowly, because the power of the machine to enframe all of life cannot be stopped; progress must march forward. There is no other way, even if there is no real justification for this progress.

This machine culture is downstream of spirituality, since all culture is spiritual: “there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force you take your instruction from” (11). The machine is on the throne today. Materialist demons run rampant (12). “Western civilization is already dead” (12). It envelops us (xv), language that is perhaps allusive to Heidegger’s enframing (Gestell).

My Review

My point in writing is to demonstrate that Kingsnorth’s thesis cannot easily be dismissed as quantitatively insufficient (it is, but that is not a primary critique because of the genre); nor can he be used to create a sub-culture to retake the culture. He is a prophet of death and of rebirth.

With this reflection aside, I did find Kingsnorth’s argument to be wanting. While he pulled together many threads, I never found the tapestry. I nodded along at many parts, frowned at others, and sometimes even smiled.

He knows how to write and delight. And yet I find his overarching thesis implausible. Yes, the machine enframes us. The metaphor works. Yes, we must find ways to resist. We must become cooked ascetics, those who limit their participation in the machine. Better, one expects, is if we become raw ascetics and completely reject the machine (304–7).

But such a view of culture has no place for common grace; it has only an uncomfortable place for the created good of technique and technology. Are we really in a Faustian age? Are we not living in two cities: the city of God and the city of Man, defined by two loves?

When Augustine rejected cyclicalism in The City of God, he rightly saw its flaws. That said, it is not as if there are no types or repetitions in the fabric of reality. And we might be in the age of grace today. But I am not sure the story Kingsnorth tells (through various authors) about our entrance into an age of decay works.

It did not work either in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Too often decadence stories justify extreme conclusions. And I think Kingsnorth’s might just be one of those. I mostly agree with his criticisms of the deleterious effects of modern technique. I too read Ellul, Postman, Grant, and so on. I appreciated and still appreciate the work in many ways.

But I also wonder at Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:4–5: “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.”

And has not God shaped and formed human life? Has not God given the city of Enoch music, metallurgy, ranching, poetry, and city works (Gen 4:17–26)? These techniques and tools that built the pyramids, which Kingsnorth associates with the Machine, do not evince in and of themselves something unredeemable.

Christians have seen in tools, technique, and technology an ambivalent structure: good and evil mix. Jacques Maritain calls it a law of ambivalence in his Philosophy of History, and I suppose I find that law hard to gainsay.

The authority God gives to magistrates is real, yet can be abused. Likewise, the mandate God gives humanity for agriculture, horticulture, and all other cultures remains a gift, albeit one often misused.

But Christians have known that food and cloth dedicated to the altar can be sanctified, dedicated toward a good use: “nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving.” Even the Machine’s all-enframing (Gestell) and all-pervasive scope in our lives does not mean it cannot also be “sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.” It is not clear to me that an entire culture, an entire way of being in the world, can be something as black-and-white as murder.

But Kingsnorth wants us to reject the Machine carte blanche. Still, if God can call Cyrus the Great his messiah (Isa 45:1), using the great empire of Persia to restore Israel to her land, then I believe that God can sanctify, that is, dedicate many ambivalent things toward holy use.

And so I am not sure the machine, technique-driven as it is, really amounts to a complete death of all things. Instead, to be Christian is to sanctify the machine by God’s word and by prayer. Only then can we receive it with thanksgiving.