UnHerd with Freddie Sayers Paul Kingsnorth: How to Resist the Machine
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Jun 11, 2023 Writer Paul Kingsnorth discusses resisting the soulless nature of human life, the loss of meaningful things like forests, the impact of COVID on politics and worldviews, becoming a 'cooked barbarian' to challenge the machine's control, the relationship between capitalism, religion, and the state, exploring Wicca and old gods, and the mystical connection between Ireland's sacred sites and its people.
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Machine Erases What Matters
- Paul Kingsnorth sees the machine as a technocratic culture that measures only what is profitable and erases unmeasurable human meanings.
- He locates his resistance in storytelling and preserving small human experiences like forests and local communities that metrics and profit ignore.
Twyford Down Road Protest Arrest
- Kingsnorth recounts joining 1990s road protests at Twyford Down to stop a motorway cutting an ancient hill fort and woodland.
- He was arrested, felt radical at 20, and learned environmentalism was about protecting precious places, not convenience-driven progress.
Sustainability Can Sustain The Machine
- Kingsnorth argues mainstream environmentalism has been absorbed by the machine into technocratic sustainability measured by carbon metrics.
- He warns solar fields and vast wind farms can 'sustain the machine' without restoring human-nature relationship.