Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth

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Sep 22, 2025

In this engaging conversation, Paul Kingsnorth, a novelist and former environmental activist, discusses his spiritual journey from activism to Orthodox Christianity. He critiques our mechanized worldview and the rise of AI as a false God that may lead us to cultural decline. Kingsnorth reflects on the apocalyptic nature of our times, highlighting how traditional pillars of culture have been replaced. He offers practical responses for rebuilding local culture and setting tech boundaries to help reclaim our humanity.

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ANECDOTE

Personal Spiritual Journey

Paul Kingsnorth describes a lifelong search for meaning that moved him from environmental direct action to Zen Buddhism to Orthodox Christianity.
He says his conversion surprised him and reframed his past activism as part of a spiritual quest.

INSIGHT

AI As The Machine's Fulcrum

Kingsnorth identifies AI and the push for superintelligence as the current birth-pangs of the Machine.
He warns many builders describe this as a spiritual project and may not understand what they are ushering in.

INSIGHT

The Machine As A Way Of Seeing

The Machine is a cultural way of seeing: reducing the world to parts we can manipulate rather than wholes we live within.
Technologies are manifestations of that mindset, not its sole cause.

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In Episode 440 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Paul Kingsnorth, a novelist, essayist, and former environmental activist who first came on many people’s radars during the Covid-19 pandemic with the publication of his viral three-part series “The Vaccine Moment.” His current work explores the intersection of technology, culture, and the divine. In his latest book, Against the Machine, Kingsnorth examines how our increasingly mechanized way of seeing and relating to the world—and to ourselves—has contributed to the death of Western culture, and what it would take to reclaim our humanity and save our souls.

Paul Kingsnorth and Kofinas spend the first hour of the episode tracing his journey from direct-action environmentalism through Buddhism and paganism to his eventual baptism into Orthodox Christianity and how that quest informs his critique of The Machine. They discuss AI as a false God and conduit through which humanity may be ushering in the anti-Christ and how Kingsnorth’s Machine framework relates to Jacques Ellul’s concept of technique and Iain McGilchrist model of the divided brain. They also explore why this historical moment feels “apocalyptic”—as if something is being unveiled—or perhaps more accurately as if something is being born through the wires and towers of the web and through the electric pulses and touchscreens of our connected devices.

The second hour turns to a conversation about how we should each respond in this consequential time, how we draw practical lines around technology, how to rebuild our communities, how to guard ourselves against charlatans and false prophets, and why love and nostalgia can guide us home.

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Episode Recorded on 09/16/2025