For decades, warnings about the dehumanizing effects of technology have been dismissed as Luddite fearmongering. But as artificial intelligence advances and screens dominate daily life, a growing number of thinkers argue that the very fabric of humanity is under threat. Paul Kingsnorth, a novelist, activist, and convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, believes this crisis is not merely environmental or economic, but existential. He has retreated with his family to rural Ireland, seeking a life beyond the reach of what he calls “the machine” – a system that has quietly enveloped nearly every aspect of modern existence.
Kingsnorth’s retreat isn’t about rejecting progress, but about recognizing its limits. He describes a deliberate escape from the “rat race,” a desire to raise his children outside the relentless cycle of consumption and digital dependency. For 12 years, he and his wife have homeschooled, farmed, and attempted a semi-self-sufficient existence, prioritizing nature and tangible skills over screens and manufactured convenience.
This isn’t a romantic ideal, but a practical response to what Kingsnorth sees as an encroaching spiritual and ecological crisis. He argues that the machine isn’t just iPhones or the internet, but a centuries-old system born from the Industrial Revolution, Enlightenment rationalism, and a relentless pursuit of technological dominance. This system, he contends, has fostered a peculiar worldview in which humanity seeks to conquer nature, abolish death, and effectively play God through technology.
The consequences, he argues, are devastating. Climate change, mass extinction, and the erosion of cultural and spiritual values are not mere side effects, but inevitable outcomes of a system driven by unsustainable growth and a denial of natural limits. The green movement, despite its good intentions, has largely embraced technological fixes rather than systemic change, perpetuating the very logic that created the crisis.
Kingsnorth’s conversion to Orthodox Christianity has further sharpened his critique. He suggests that a religious worldview, with its acceptance of divine order and human limitations, offers a necessary counterweight to the hubris of technological utopianism. The fear of ecological collapse, he argues, is less urgent when one believes in a larger, transcendent pattern beyond human control.
This isn’t a call for blind faith or a rejection of progress, but a plea for humility. The machine, Kingsnorth warns, is not just a set of tools, but a way of seeing the world – one that prioritizes efficiency, control, and limitless expansion over sustainability, meaning, and the inherent value of the natural world. The question is not whether technology can save us, but whether we can resist its totalizing logic before it consumes what remains of our humanity.
Ultimately, Kingsnorth’s retreat is a stark warning: the machine is not merely an external force, but a seductive and insidious ideology that requires constant vigilance and a willingness to step outside its relentless orbit. The survival of both humanity and the planet may depend on it
