Unmasking the Machine
An interview with Paul Kingsowrth
I've listened to the interview twice, and I'm still digesting. There are a lot of layers since this interview touches on political theory as well as the ordering of society. What Mark and Josh said is certainly valid.
One critique of what Josh said is that the term "Christian mindset" is loaded down with an enormous amount of presupposition. I say yes and amen to using technology from within a Christian mindset; but I think the overarching point Paul is making in the interview is that our conception of what the Christian mindset ought to be is fundamentally flawed. And in that area, I think he's spot on.
Even though the discussion was book-ended by a focus on AI and technology, the middle twenty minutes or so were focused more broadly on the way we do government and economics in the modern western world. His attack on capitalism may have been the most offensive claim he made, and it's easy to brush over that and go straight to the current conversation surrounding AI, but it's a significant point worth considering.
The discussion surrounding capitalism is unfortunately a ship that has sailed after so many decades, but there are Christian thinkers more and more criticizing the inherantly profit-seeking mechanisms that drive the way we think and act today. There doesn't seem to be a practical way to get rid of the stock market and return to something that truly looks like a free market, but the point that Paul made several times throughout the interview is essentially that we need to start by understanding the problems and recognizing them for what they are, before seeking to remedy them. Unfortunately, describing capitalism in its modern form as fundamentally destructive and eveil will get you screamed at pretty quickly, since unlimited capitalsim has become synonymous with conservetism, and many people today (whether they consciously recognize it) think of market forces as a moral good, rather than just a reality.
I think one of the most helpful points that Paul made about 2/3 of the way through was his emphasis on localism; this is something that is growing within American christianity, as people recognize that without massive divine intervention, a nation the size of ours cannot ever be returned to a truly Christian state, and so they are turning back to localism which is something that has been lost since the industrial revolution. Localism is something that many thinkers who would fall into the camp of "Christian nationalism" embrace wholeheartedly. If you listen to what is at the heart of what guys like Doug Wilson promote both online and in their own churches, you'll come to see that while Doug would like us to be a Christian theonomistic nation with laws that reflect God's created order and his old testament laws, they care far more about building cohesive communities of believers who share in one another's lives (to varying extents) and replace certain aspects of "the machine" with something ancient and personal.
All this then leads to the point that Josh made about how we cannot simply unplug. Yes and amen to that as well; Christians who buy 40 acres in the woods, build a bunker and cancel their cell phone plan are ultimately only helping themselves, they aren't even serving their progeny. The solution that so many Christians are starting to embrace is some kind of blended living where you do disconnect in certain ways from the machine. Some examples of this include:
- Homeschooling your children
- Growing/hunting/harvesting some or all of your own food
- Reducing your dependance on technology (huge sliding scale of what this is comprised of)
- Choosing to live local to a community of believers
- Allowing your wife to be in the home, not in the workplace
- Stockpiling emergency food, medical supplies and firearms
- Learning survival skills and passing those down to your children
- Making rather than buying (when practical)
- Transacting in barter rather than cash or credit
These are just some that came to mind, but there are many more. The idea is not to isolate from the culture but to build something lasting, with the conviction that the nation we live in may not be what it is fifty years from now.
This is the conclusion he reached, and the conclusion that I have been reaching in many ways as I've listened to political and Christian commentary over the past couple of years: Christians who seek to do more than simply raise their kids, live their life and have a comfortable retirement would do well to understand how God calls us to view the culture around us, and to reframe our thinking not in terms of what is modern and reductionistic, but rather in terms of the timeless and ancient truths of His word, and the tried and true traditions of family and local community. As powerful as the machine we are a part of may seem, it is not even a hundred years old in many ways, and has already failed in myriad ways that we can see play out endlessly around us.
I pray that the Lord continues to open our eyes to things that are not obvious to us, and that he allows us to build something lasting for His kingdom in our children and their inheretance, as well as among our fellow saints.