Against the Machine - Paul Kingsnorth *****

By Brian Clegg

In a world where social media feeds people more of the same, reinforcing our existing views, it’s refreshing to read a book that sets out a viewpoint apparently diametrically opposed to my own, especially as the reality is that I find strong feelings in common with Paul Kingsnorth.

I certainly should feel opposition. Kingsnorth sees our culture as doomed, in part thanks to science and technology, or, as he puts it, the Machine (in the general, rather than physical, sense). And while I feel more optimistic about our ability to see beyond the self-centred aspect that technology has forced on us, I can certainly see the danger that Kingsnorth is highlighting as a real thing.

In chapter after well argued chapter, Kingsnorth shows how the move away from our roots, religion and culture, driven in part by the enlightenment, has had damaging results. These amount to fragmentation, a focus on the self rather than community, and a globalist approach that fascinatingly is just as appealing (if not more so) to the liberal left than to the capitalist right. He rightly eviscerates the way our intellectual elite has done away with everything that once mattered in its hatred of anything non-material. We have moved away, he says, from the essential four P’s: people, place, prayer and the past.

Given the book’s title, it’s hard not to add the word ‘rage’ to the front. In one sense I don’t feel any need to rage against Kingsnorth’s Machine, because I appreciate what the it has done for humanity, whether it’s health care, or transport, or IT. But neither would I rage against Against the Machine – it’s a heartfelt book and where I stand alongside the author is raging against the dying of the light, if we can separate that term from Dylan Thomas, it appears to be the unwanted consequence of the Machine’s ascendence. I don’t have a problem with technology, it has made our lives better. But I do have a problem with putting it in front of acknowledging our humanity and its roots. We need spirituality and nature and myth too. Hopefully books like this can encourage us to find ways to have both.

If I was to be a little petty I would point out that Kingsnorth himself, who stresses his attachment to being British and our culture and religious tradition has in fact moved to Ireland and become an Orthodox Christian – anything but his personal roots, especially given his doubts about supranational groupings like the EU. But I genuinely don’t want to be petty, because something he does so well here is make the reader think about what makes life good… and what doesn’t.

This review started with social media bubbles – I wish more of us could break out of literary bubbles. We read books that support our viewpoints. If more people who read science books could read books like this and more people who read books like this (or ‘literary fiction’) could read science books, the world would be a better place.

You can buy Against the Machine from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or, if you are a Kingsnorth fan you will almost certainly prefer Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.