Hope’s Reviews > Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity > Status Update

I wish Paul would make a distinction between analog machines and AI 😂 His anti-automobile screed and his AI-is-antichrist manifesto are nowhere near a 1:1 but he doesn't seem to recognize that the difference is beyond one of scale

Finally get into the real stuff in ch. 20—the spirit of destruction is simply satanic. It makes no sense. There is no logic behind it. It's Moloch. The will to destroy.

Glad we've moved on from the largely undefined but villified "capitalism" and narrowed down the real issue to transhumanist + dominating machine-green anti-ethics. Would be more accurate to say that greed & a desire for immortality/transcendence unworthily grasped lies behind all this, than to say it's "capitalism" and "sustainability". We see the same problems in capitalist, socialist, communist, & Islamist nations

Ch. 18 is great on global immigration and internal colonization; the elites yap about inclusivity which in theory sounds great but in practice manages to exclude almost everyone. Yes 👌🏻

Chapter 18: he once again states that the grid/ machine is "not made by people". Things just don't spring up without people behind them. The forces at work may seem inhuman or inhumane, but that's because they are made by psychopaths, sociopaths, and simply evil people, but they are made by people. Things don't just come into existence from nowhere

On the world becoming unrecognizable if you live long enough — cf. Wendell Berry, all works, but especially Jayber Crow. Kingsnorth is hardly anything like Berry so far except in this observation, though. To be seen in further chapters as Part II is turning out to be much more coherent than Part I. There's hope

Chs. 13-14
On cultural adolescence: see James Jordan, maturity theory in lecture series on Genesis, and lecture "From Bread to Wine"
If man was made to mature and be fruitful it makes sense that the Enemy's plot would be to have us return to adolescence and consumerism

"And stories" — end of ch. 13
Cf. N. D. Wilson and Douglas Wilson on stories (Stories Are Soul Food podcast, My Life for Yours p. 109ish), C. S. Lewis and also G. K. Chesterton in What's Wrong with the World on stories as soul-shaping and culture-changing

Ch 15. on instinctive repulsion to contemptuous use of the phrase "dead white men" as ancestor abuse reminds me of the classic G. K. Chesterton quote, "Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors." (Orthodoxy, Chapter 4, "The Ethics of Elfland")

FINALLY getting to the good part. Almost gave up after Part I but I knew he was going somewhere.

Love the naming of the Adversary Intellectual. At last, a name for this ubiquitous person (me lol)