The Story of Someone Who Changed His Mind

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Mar 28, 2024

Paul Kingsnorth, a writer and former leading environmentalist, shares his transformative journey from radical activism to a simpler, faith-driven lifestyle in rural Ireland. He critiques the modern Green Movement's shift toward commercial interests, emphasizing the spiritual loss embedded in technological progress. Kingsnorth discusses the challenge of navigating contemporary life, advocating for a return to community and nature. He explores the implications of secular ideologies on identity, while seeking hope and meaning in a rapidly changing world.

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ANECDOTE

Kingsnorth's Early Connection with Nature

Paul Kingsnorth grew up in suburban London, but his father, a hill walker, instilled in him a deep connection with nature.
This early influence shaped Kingsnorth's environmentalist path, leading him to activism and road protests.

INSIGHT

The Industrial Economy as a Colonial Machine

Kingsnorth's environmentalism stemmed from connecting the destruction of nature with consumerism, capitalism, and industrialism.
He viewed the modern industrial economy as a colonial machine, converting nature's bounty into products.

INSIGHT

Disillusionment with the Green Movement

Kingsnorth became disillusioned with the mainstream environmental movement for its focus on carbon emissions and commercial interests.
He felt the movement had strayed from its original emphasis on simplicity, slowness, and closeness to nature.

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If the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam to fundamentally change the nature of work, the current industrial revolution—the disruption of automation, information, the internet, and now AI—is transforming everything about the way we work, connect, and interact with the natural world.

These changes have largely been regarded as a net good. After all, poverty across the world has fallen precipitously in the last 100 years. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. Literacy is four times higher. Hunger, malnutrition, war—all down. All good things.

But today’s guest, writer Paul Kingsnorth, thinks that the way in which this progress has been achieved is detrimental not only to the environment but to our own mental and physical well-being—and that underneath the extreme wealth built by human society is a massive sense of human and spiritual loss.

Paul is someone who has gone through a profound transformation over the past decade, and in a very public way. He was once considered one of the West’s most radical and prominent environmentalists—even chaining himself to a bridge in protest of road construction and leading The Ecologist, a left-wing environmental magazine. But he became disillusioned with an environmental movement that he says became obsessed with cutting carbon emissions by any means, and getting captured by commercial interests in the process.

Paul and his family eventually left urban England to live off the land in rural Ireland, where they currently grow their own food and the children are homeschooled.

One more thing of note this Easter week: Paul converted from a practicing Buddhist and Wiccan to an Orthodox Christian—which is about as traditional as it gets.

As you’ll hear in this conversation, Paul explains why he intentionally “regressed.” In short: in our modern, hyper-connected, tech-obsessed world—what he calls “the age of the machine”—Paul and his family are trying to live wildly. We talk about what that looks like for him, and for any of us trying to be free; we talk about how the left has strayed from its original principles; why the West has abandoned God; and how to fight every day to live. . . simply.

And for more of Paul’s work, check out some of our favorite essays: “The Cross and the Machine,” “The View from the Cave,” and “The Vaccine Moment, Part One” and “The Vaccine Moment, Part Two.”

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