Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
The lure, and the hazard, of Kingsnorth’s position [is]...it tends toward the absolute ... With a few edits, the book could pass for an anarchist tract; with a few more, for the work of a Christian ascetic ... Before it can be either, though, there are swaths of nonsense to scythe ... For a digital skeptic...Kingsnorth sounds extremely online ... The deeper provocations of Against the Machine are worth hearing, however gloomy. Kingsnorth is surely right that public life has been overtaken by a narrow fixation on data and measurement ... Yet the question remains: What is to be done? ... Kingsnorth leaves us in much the same place ... This book may not be the one Kingsnorth truly holds in his heart. I suspect that he yearns for an answer big enough to eclipse the Machine and wants us to look past this life to the next.
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If Against the Machine is one of the most insightful works on culture, technology, and the environment published in some time—and I believe it is—it is not so much because Kingsnorth is persuasive, or likely to win acolytes to his cause. It is not even because I think the limits he chooses to draw are necessarily the right ones. It is valuable because he sees with uncommon clarity that not only nature, but human nature, is being redefined by an anti-limit culture, economic system, and technology sector that treat minds, bodies, and environments as ripe for plundering and optimization in the name of progress ... Against the Machine is not groundbreaking, though it is still valuable as a synthesis of these earlier strains of thought, and as an articulation of the kind of 'reactionary radical' tradition Kingsnorth sees himself as belonging to ... What is novel about Against the Machine is Kingsnorth’s account of what is at stake in the 21st century ... Kingsnorth shows compassion for those struggling with their identity and does not scapegoat them for larger problems in society ... More than a warning about the dangers of technology ... A much-needed reminder that it is still possible for humans, at least as individuals, to say, 'Enough.'
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Engrossing but often vexing ... His poetic outlook echoes William Blake’s: the divine is everywhere ... Kingsnorth is a gifted stylist and a syncretic thinker. At their best, his insights are sharp and layered. He is an astute critic of the fashionable nonsense that passes for contemporary politics. Though he indicts both sides of the culture war...he is especially sharp in skewering the follies of wokeness ... Still, some readers might find that this portrait drifts toward caricature ... The book retains the feel of an author thinking aloud. The tone can swing from subtle to overwrought and back again ... When he turns to capitalism and liberal democracy, Kingsnorth’s passion gets the better of him ... For all his eloquence, Kingsnorth rests his boldest claims on little more than vibes ... He blames the Enlightenment for the violence of the French Revolution but gives it no credit for free speech or civil rights ... Kingsnorth has no interest in data, which he considers mere tricks of the Machine. This leaves his treatise fatally incomplete ... His implicit economic program would leave everyone at the mercy of guilds of local craftsmen. He is making an aesthetic pitch for poverty ... In declaring the West dead...Kingsnorth loses perspective ... And he overlooks a central part of human nature ... Whatever one makes of his prescriptions, Kingsnorth asks fundamentally important questions.
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