The Cassandra of 'The Machine'

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-cassandra-of-the-machine

by Hooke • 4 months ago

22 16 4 months ago

thenewatlantis.com

cyclopeanutopia3• 4 months ago

It's 2026, all gods should be dead by now.

Avicebron• 4 months ago

The machine sounds more like a Hobbesian Leviathan than a god for what it's worth

nathan_compton6• 4 months ago

Yes, I believe the OP is responding to the books suggestion that returning to religion is part of the solution.

krapp• 4 months ago

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you can't kill an idea, because it was never alive.

Humans are just primates hardwired for selection bias and paredolia. We rationalize but we aren't rational beings, we're primarily driven by emotion and ego. We're smart enough to recognize death but also smart enough for mortal fear.

And that's even before we get to the vast political and cultural power of religion which even in this "atheistic" age still manufactures consent or justifies the policies of most governments around the world.

Unfortunately, gods will never die because they will never not be useful and people will never stop anthropomorphizing their environment.

cyclopeanutopia3• 4 months ago

Yeah, it's a figure of speech expressing my disappointment.

xg15• 4 months ago

The city is an omen of its presence: “Once a society becomes primarily urban, it is locked into a process of metastasising growth which will, in the end, lead to the destruction of other ways of being.” “The Machine is the liberal anticulture made manifest.”
And what is to be done? The answer to the Machine, for Kingsnorth, lies not in the Right or the Left, not in capitalism or communism, not in some ideological system or set of conceptual abstractions. [...] The closest we may get in the book to a description of how to secure a more humane future is the term “reactionary radicalism,” which Kingsnorth borrows from sociologist Craig Calhoun. It is a way of life that thrives on tradition, in a local place, in prayer, among a people. “The moral economy rarely makes rational sense. But it makes human sense, which is what matters.”

The book seems to follow the almost traditional dichotomy between "perverted", growth-at-all-costs urban techno-libertarianism (with some stings at liberalism for some reason) and "pure" rural Christian traditionalism.

Interesting that the figureheads of both those movements come from the right today.

As a liberal leftist, none of those two systems look particularly appealing to me. Are there no other options that the author could imagine?

nathan_compton6• 4 months ago

Its libido. The alternatives are not fun and they won't make anyone rich. They present no drama and, I think, drama is the primary thing little minds want from their ideology.

And yet I can sympathize - the world seems sometimes almost absurdly inhumane at the moment, the people in charge seem both incompetent and to have a death grip on power and not out of any particular skill or strength, but because we cannot articulate any real alternative. The fantasy that we can fix this problem by embracing tradition or some other dumb shit is appealing because it doesn't force us to grapple with the real problems of the world.

In the broadest strokes I tend to agree that we will need to return to the human, but I think that doesn't have to look like Christianity or any other made up bullshit. I can be humanism, but we must be willing to do things which might lower GDP to get there. We have to be willing to restrain ourselves and others for the benefit of harmony. Tough sell for Americans.

nathan_compton6• 4 months ago

I don't care that its 2026 and people are tired of atheists. I still think religion isn't the answer. I refuse to believe that pretending things, no matter how good they make us feel, is the right thing for human beings to do. I'll be ground up by the machine before I bow down again to an imaginary god.

I've never met an adult convert who gave off any other vibe than "I am afraid of grappling with the world as it is, so I am turning to a comforting fantasy." They can and do often dress it up in various fancy phrases. They decry the awfulness of modernity and claim religion is the solution. But it is rhetoric. People don't become religious as adults because they are dumb or lack eloquence. They convert out of fear of the world.

cyclopeanutopia3• 4 months ago

This, though it's bigger than religion.

There were always people creating illusionary worlds to control other people who gladly believed their lies, there still are.

We live in a chaotic and illegible world, but humans crave legibility so much that they will rather believe the fantasies that take their freedoms (wealth, agency) than deal with the chaos themselves.

Religion is one such a narrative, but governments or corporations have their own, just as harmful. Or - as many people seem to think - actually beneficial, because "people cannot handle the truth". Which I don't subscribe to.

zoogeny3• 4 months ago

I don't think the entirety of the phenomenon can be explained by fear, and in complex issues such as this a single variable analysis is suspect.

I would encourage you to think of forces other than fear that might be driving observed behavior. It is only in this way that you have any hope of creating an alternative attractive force that satisfies the needs that are currently being served by religion.

nathan_compton6• 4 months ago

Open to suggestions.

rexpop• 4 months ago

Kingsnorth advocates for an existence that "thrives on tradition, in a local place... among a people"?

Nice little "blood-and-soil" mythos he's got going there in his "reactionary radicalism."

The Cassandra of 'The Machine'

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