Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
Kingsnorth, Paul. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. NYC/London: Penguin Random House, 2025.
A New York Times bestseller, as stated in the on-line, publisher['s annotation.
In Against the Machine, [...] Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original — and terrifying — account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With masterful insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game — and how your very soul is at stake.
It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. Writing in the tradition of Wendell Berry, Jacques Ellul and Simone Weil, Kingsnorth reminds us what humanity requires: a healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage [...].[1]
A Mother Jones discussion notes,
[...] Kingsnorth, an erstwhile lefty environmental activist turned [Eastern] Orthodox Christian crusader, makes the case that technology, especially AI, is a semi-sentient being with its own anti-human, anti-Christian agenda. In prose so entertaining that you hardly notice how frantic and conspiratorial it all is, Kingsnorth conjures an ominous vision that implicates “the Machine” — or technology — in all manner of the political right’s favorite bêtes noires. He describes “progressive leftism and the Machine” as a “usefully snug fit” because they are both “suspicious of the past, impatient with borders and boundaries, and hostile to religion.” Both progressive leftism and the Machine, he concludes, “are in pursuit of a global utopia where, in the dreams of both Lenin and Lennon, the world will live as one."[2]
Reviewed from a Christian perspective in Christianity Today, as of Spring 2026 on line here.[3]
RDE, finishing, 18Apr26
