You say that the Machine helped solve your family's starvation. But the Machine created your family's starvation.
Hunter gathering life is one of abundance - later scarcity is created by a turn to Machine like living, which later stages in the development of the Machine then "solve" (at the cost of a degraded food supply and the diseases of modernity, cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc, of course - not to mention, the loss in psychological and spiritual vitality).
Likewise your kidney stones and other modern maladies - they don't exist if one lives naturally, where good health is the default state.
Of course, there is "some" disease and some starvation in a natural state as well - and the desire to "solve" this once for all is the very origin of the Machine in the first place. To eternally rescue man from the contingency of life.
Problem is, the solution is worse than the problem, entails many second and third order negative effects that are sweeping and lead to devitalization, and moreover stems from the wrong understanding of life and our place in the cosmos and puts us on the wrong spiritual footing.
Some level of "bad" stuff are a necessity part of our spiritual education - the attempt to banish this side of life entirely is a huge mistake. Even death properly seen is good and necessary.
And therein lies what I see a the problem with your view - you seem to have no larger metaphysical context from which suffering and death are necessary and redeemed, and like most moderns, seem to think these things self evidently justify sweeping transformations in human life in order to eliminate them.
Finally, I'd add that I don't think any critic of the Machine envisions a sudden cessation of dependence on it - obviously today such a sudden rupture would entail vast death and suffering, considering where we as a species have gotten ourselves.
Rather, a gradual and intelligent and human decoupling. No critic of the Machine that I know of would recommend depriving diabetes patients of insulin, for instance - but the return to natural eating and living would produce a new generation withd hugely less incidence of diabetes and other autoimmune disease, and gradually, the need for artificial insulin would disappear.
That, as I see it, is the basic pattern of decoupling from the Machine.
Moreover, awareness of the need to reduce the Machine in our life can lead to immediate measures anyone can take right away, like reduce screen time and spend more time in nature, etc, so has immense value in the interim as well.
Brian, your comment is so ridiculous, false, and misleading that it doesn't deserve a comment. I am tired of you using logical fallacies such as reductio ad absurdum and ad hominem attacks against myself to make your points. I neither stated that people should be coerced, imprisoned, nor did I say that people should suffer and die. In fact, I am only writing these articles and engaging with you here out of an abundance of love and compassion. It is the Machine that causes suffering. The Machine is a death-product, a product of the fall of man, and by allying yourself with the Machine, you ally yourself with death. You, in essence have turned yourself into a robot.
Getting rid of the Machine won't cause Hell on Earth. The Machine right here and now is Hell on Earth. Blake, Lawrence, and many others understood that.
As for how to clean up Chernobyl: a) we have destroyed the world to such an extent we have forced very many catch-22 situations, and b) there are sustainable options for cleaning radioactivity, such as mushrooms.
Sustainability won't help. In fact, it may very likely make things worse. Drawing out the life of the Machine will cause far more suffering than if there were huge catastrophes ten years from now, which led to the collapse of civilization, drastic population loss, etc.
There is no middle ground: you are either with the Machine, and hence against God, or you are a fighter against the Machine with every fiber of your being. You have chosen your side. May God have mercy on your soul.
Brian, you have been banned for your lies and falsifications. Life is too precious to spend time dealing with you. I hate computers, but I publish these articles to heal the world. Your words are hateful and counter-productive, so go spew your lies and hate elsewhere.
Thank you, Benjamin, for your response. You saved me a great deal of time, since you responded in precisely the way I would have.
As you say, I don't suggest that we should decouple from the Machine tomorrow. Individuals should decouple as much as possible, but diabetes patients should take insulin, unless they can correct their health through exercise and diet; cancer patients should try to fight their Machine-given disease (though often the cure is worse than the disease), etc. Individuals should stop owning or using phones, spend less time at screens, eat better, exercise more, replace cars with bikes, learn basic crafts like carving, weaving, knitting, and so on. Eventually, I would hope with enough education and the example of people moving to the anti-Machine communities I envision that more and more individuals would decouple themselves from the Machine. Things will get far worse very soon. People with eyes to see and ears to hear will want to escape. The rest of the people will be vast, amorphous hordes of robots. Now, I would hope that eventually we could banish the Machine from the face of the Earth, but even after that happens, there will need to be some very limited science and technology, which would focus on questions of how to clean up Chernobyl, for instance.
One reason I am coupling religion and metaphysics with my criticism of the Machine is that they help to give us a roadmap out of this mess. We built the Machine out of hubris, greed, and egotism, and have, in our aim to become like gods, become less than worms, elevating the Machine to the state of an Anti-God. The Machine is not just bad, it is diabolical, and the way to fight such evil is with goodness, prayer, and the invocation of the various manifestations of the Divine. But, believers need to go back to their texts. Christians who believe they can pray to Christ and own a smartphone are deluded. "The vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my vision‟s greatest enemy." The true Christ demands that one sacrifice all of these worldly things in the name of the Kingdom of Heaven. And ancient pagans would invent a device out of pure scientific curiosity, but then destroy it, because they felt it would be to spit in the face of the Gods to loose their machines on the face of the Earth.
Brian, seeing as how: a) you unsubscribed, so you clearly already made up your mind without waiting for my response; b) you chronically misinterpret me to the point that I think you may be a troll; c) Benjamin gave a marvelous response; and d) and life is short, I will keep this response short.
Coming at this, as you do, from the Western philosophical tradition leads you to certain errors. I suggest that you read the works of Philip Sherrard, starting with "The Rape of Man and Nature."
I certainly do see some of the roots of the Machine in agriculture. One would be a fool not to see those roots. But, unlike Zerzan, I don't suggest going back, necessarily, to such early ways of life (not that there is anything wrong with them, as they are infinitely superior to our way of life). I would agree with Ludwig Klages and D. H. Lawrence that the ideal society was early pre-historic Mediterranean civilization, such as exemplified by the Etruscans and the Pelasgians.
You speak of people with health problems, but many health problems exist today only because of the Machine. If one factors out infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy has not improved since the ancient Greeks, but quality of life has gone way down. So long as we live within the Machine, the Machine will cause illnesses (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, auto-immune disorders, etc.), and I do suggest, out of compassion (see my article and comments on the medicine chapter) that people seek treatment for those illnesses. But, even within the Machine-world, I a) still feel traditional approaches to medicine are better, and b) agree with Ivan Illich that often modern medicine does more harm than good.
As for the plow, see Lewis Mumford, Frithjof Schuon, or my later essays. There are man-centered technologies, such as ancient agricultural implements, and there are anti-man technologies, such as just about everything we have now. Rather than molding the tool to the man, we mold the man to the tool.
Yes, we should destroy the Machine; yes, that will cause some suffering, but keeping to the course we are on will cause infinitely more suffering.
The first steps on this process are not rejecting medical care but giving up your phone, television, and other superfluous technologies. Get rid of your car and ride a bike or walk. Live without a phone. Stop buying things, and learn to repair what you have. These are small, practical steps one can take.
Finally, you seem really focused on death. Despite your claims of Christian belief, I have to wonder about your personal metaphysics. Certainly, if you believe in your tradition, and still have these irrational fears, then Protestantism has fallen even farther from grace than I could have guessed. For Orthodox Christians and Muslims, death is not something to be feared. People died before the Machine, huge numbers of people suffer and die because of the Machine. Everybody dies; it is the one human reality known from birth. But, certain religions give meaning to that death. Ultimately, for a true believer, this life is nothing compared to the glory of life in Christ or union with God.
Humans who give up the gift of life given to them by the Divine to become living-dead minions of the Machine turns them into machine-robots, and machine-robots are valueless and don't matter.
Yes, traditional living IS vastly superior to modern life. Done. End of story. The Machine causes more suffering and fatalities than traditional living would. And even were that not the case, life in the ancient world was better and had meaning.
I am upset with you because you are dramatically misinterpreting everything I write. Either you are trying to provoke me or are functionally illiterate.
I make it clear over and over throughout my book that I believe the world is largely doomed, and that my best solution is voluntary separatist communities of mountain/forest/desert dwelling hermits. I never advocated for dictatorship, and didn't even publish my articles on politics yet, so, once again, you are misinterpreting me and twisting what I write beyond all recognition.
Farasha, I enjoy reading your chapters very much. Great, great passion.
A few disconnected remarks, off the top of my head. I'm currently writing about E. F. Schumacher, who shared some influences with you. Guénon, Schuon and Coomaraswamy were very important to him. On the technology question, he couldn't go with them completely, but his 'intermediate technology' idea was an attempted compromise between their idealistic position and the pressing need to improve the conditions of traditional communities under siege from modern development. If you're interested, on the metaphysical front, you'll find a good synopsis of Sch's position in the epilogue to his A Guide for the Perplexed.
You write about establishing communities in retreat from the modern world. Gandhi's ashram provided a model of this kind, no? Gandhi, via Coomaraswamy, Joseph Kumarappa and Richard Gregg, was important for Schumacher.
Finally, reading you on modern medicine, I'm reminded of the great Illich, whom you've surely read. Also, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society presents the workings of 'la technique' in great detail, in a way that appears to me to complement Lawrence's account of the 'machine'. Elsewhere in his work, Ellul's response was, like that of several of those mentioned above, a religious/metaphysical one: prayer, fasting, contemplation and great scepticism when it came to embracing, not just technology, but the modern mindset.
I could go on, but that's enough for the moment. Thanks to you, I'm reading Sherrard. Keep up your good work.
Robert, thank you for your comment. I am a big supporter of E. F. Schumacher's vision, but not the vision of many of his followers. Schumacher was insightful enough to realize that whatever tech there was should be small, local, indigenous, and easily understood. One of the first places I refer people who are interested in criticisms of technology are the writings of Schumacher, and Wendell Berry's essays and poems. Unfortunately, many of Schumacher's more recent followers have taken up the cult of sustainability, and well, there is nothing truly sustainable about solar powered laptops for children in African villages. I am all for advances in technology that make them more human-centered. Many ancient tools were refined over hundreds and thousands of years to be more amenable to man. The Amish are a good example: they adopt new technologies slowly, and only after much thought and soul-searching. But now, we mold man to the machine. Phones, computers, etc. are diabolical anti-human contrivances. My perspective, which I will expand on in great detail a few chapters down the line is put forward succinctly by Frithjof Schuon in Language of the Self: "The old looms, for example, even when highly perfected, are a kind of revelation and a symbol which by its intelligibility allows the soul to breathe, whereas a mechanized loom is suffocating for the man who serves it; the genesis of the craft of weaving goes hand in hand with spiritual life—as also appears from its aesthetic quality—whereas a modern machine on the contrary presupposes a mental climate and a labor of research incompatible with sanctity."
There are many influences I have which I refer to often in my book: Lawrence, Berry, R. S. Thomas, Robinson Jeffers, Simone Weil, Heidegger, et al. But there are also influences that have impacted me greatly that I don't refer to much, such as Ellul. Ellul was not just a great thinker, he was a saintly man who lived according to his principles! Everyone should read Ellul, but I have to save space somewhere, and Lawrence is seldom or never mentioned as one of the great critics of technology, so one of my goals is to set the record straight, and another is to put forth what I term an aesthetic critique of modernity and technology, which speaks directly to the heart. William Blake and Lawrence do just that. Additionally, Blake and Lawrence have overarching and compelling metaphysical and religious views that put forth eternal religious truths in a beautiful way in the English language. I challenge anyone to read Lawrence's Triumph of the Machine and not shed a few tears. If that poem doesn't pierce a person to their very soul, then their heart must be hardened.
Aside from the Orthodox traditionalists, such as Sherrard, Coomaraswamy is probably my favorite. His artistic, economic, and political vision is very similar to Lawrence's and both visions can be traced back to the work of Ruskin and William Morris. I definitely support Gandhi's ashram model. Gandhi really got much of his inspiration from Tolstoy, and I am very much a fan of Tolstoy's political and economic program, though without endorsing some of his questionable metaphysical views. I will go into more detail about this later. Lawrence was a big supporter of Gandhi's push for local crafts. He wrote: "all we possess is life—life must flow—making things in the passion of life—weaving, carving, building—this is the flow of life, life flows into the object—& life /flows out again/ to the beholder—so that whoever makes anything with real interest, puts life into it, and makes it a little fountain of life for the next comer. Therefore a ghandi weaver is transmitting life to others—& that is the great charity.
Western restlessness & quick wearying comes from the fact that western machine-made objects are dead, & /give nothing/ out. So western fashions change so rapidly etc"
Illich and Schumacher really go together well, both in terms of their criticisms, as well as their proposed solutions. Convivial tech could have been a way out of our mess, but I, sadly, don't see the world adopting that as a solution, so I advocate for the Rananim model, which is Lawrence's twist on the monastery or ashram.
If we want anything to work, if we want our little communities to succeed, if we want any hope for the myriad creatures of the planet, and for future humans, then we first and foremost must "be the change we want to see in the world." We have to pray, fast, and look inward, so that when we start to face outward we may become beacons of Truth. I can't help but think of the example of Saint Silouan the Athonite, who shed tears for the entire world. I know these first chapters of my text can sometimes be a slog; feel overly negative, but I simply want to clear a path forward. I want to fight evil in the name of Truth. Ultimately, I look forward to us collectively passing beyond simple criticism to the point where we may reflect on the beauty of a flower, and therein witness the majesty and beneficence of God the most holy.
You say that the Machine helped solve your family's starvation. But the Machine created your family's starvation.
Hunter gathering life is one of abundance - later scarcity is created by a turn to Machine like living, which later stages in the development of the Machine then "solve" (at the cost of a degraded food supply and the diseases of modernity, cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc, of course - not to mention, the loss in psychological and spiritual vitality).
Likewise your kidney stones and other modern maladies - they don't exist if one lives naturally, where good health is the default state.
Of course, there is "some" disease and some starvation in a natural state as well - and the desire to "solve" this once for all is the very origin of the Machine in the first place. To eternally rescue man from the contingency of life.
Problem is, the solution is worse than the problem, entails many second and third order negative effects that are sweeping and lead to devitalization, and moreover stems from the wrong understanding of life and our place in the cosmos and puts us on the wrong spiritual footing.
Some level of "bad" stuff are a necessity part of our spiritual education - the attempt to banish this side of life entirely is a huge mistake. Even death properly seen is good and necessary.
And therein lies what I see a the problem with your view - you seem to have no larger metaphysical context from which suffering and death are necessary and redeemed, and like most moderns, seem to think these things self evidently justify sweeping transformations in human life in order to eliminate them.
Finally, I'd add that I don't think any critic of the Machine envisions a sudden cessation of dependence on it - obviously today such a sudden rupture would entail vast death and suffering, considering where we as a species have gotten ourselves.
Rather, a gradual and intelligent and human decoupling. No critic of the Machine that I know of would recommend depriving diabetes patients of insulin, for instance - but the return to natural eating and living would produce a new generation withd hugely less incidence of diabetes and other autoimmune disease, and gradually, the need for artificial insulin would disappear.
That, as I see it, is the basic pattern of decoupling from the Machine.
Moreover, awareness of the need to reduce the Machine in our life can lead to immediate measures anyone can take right away, like reduce screen time and spend more time in nature, etc, so has immense value in the interim as well.
Brian, your comment is so ridiculous, false, and misleading that it doesn't deserve a comment. I am tired of you using logical fallacies such as reductio ad absurdum and ad hominem attacks against myself to make your points. I neither stated that people should be coerced, imprisoned, nor did I say that people should suffer and die. In fact, I am only writing these articles and engaging with you here out of an abundance of love and compassion. It is the Machine that causes suffering. The Machine is a death-product, a product of the fall of man, and by allying yourself with the Machine, you ally yourself with death. You, in essence have turned yourself into a robot.
Getting rid of the Machine won't cause Hell on Earth. The Machine right here and now is Hell on Earth. Blake, Lawrence, and many others understood that.
As for how to clean up Chernobyl: a) we have destroyed the world to such an extent we have forced very many catch-22 situations, and b) there are sustainable options for cleaning radioactivity, such as mushrooms.
Sustainability won't help. In fact, it may very likely make things worse. Drawing out the life of the Machine will cause far more suffering than if there were huge catastrophes ten years from now, which led to the collapse of civilization, drastic population loss, etc.
There is no middle ground: you are either with the Machine, and hence against God, or you are a fighter against the Machine with every fiber of your being. You have chosen your side. May God have mercy on your soul.
I do deny your twisted, insane interpretations of my comments. That is not lying; that is setting the record straight!
"I'm done": Good! Good riddance.
Brian, you have been banned for your lies and falsifications. Life is too precious to spend time dealing with you. I hate computers, but I publish these articles to heal the world. Your words are hateful and counter-productive, so go spew your lies and hate elsewhere.
Thank you, Benjamin, for your response. You saved me a great deal of time, since you responded in precisely the way I would have.
As you say, I don't suggest that we should decouple from the Machine tomorrow. Individuals should decouple as much as possible, but diabetes patients should take insulin, unless they can correct their health through exercise and diet; cancer patients should try to fight their Machine-given disease (though often the cure is worse than the disease), etc. Individuals should stop owning or using phones, spend less time at screens, eat better, exercise more, replace cars with bikes, learn basic crafts like carving, weaving, knitting, and so on. Eventually, I would hope with enough education and the example of people moving to the anti-Machine communities I envision that more and more individuals would decouple themselves from the Machine. Things will get far worse very soon. People with eyes to see and ears to hear will want to escape. The rest of the people will be vast, amorphous hordes of robots. Now, I would hope that eventually we could banish the Machine from the face of the Earth, but even after that happens, there will need to be some very limited science and technology, which would focus on questions of how to clean up Chernobyl, for instance.
One reason I am coupling religion and metaphysics with my criticism of the Machine is that they help to give us a roadmap out of this mess. We built the Machine out of hubris, greed, and egotism, and have, in our aim to become like gods, become less than worms, elevating the Machine to the state of an Anti-God. The Machine is not just bad, it is diabolical, and the way to fight such evil is with goodness, prayer, and the invocation of the various manifestations of the Divine. But, believers need to go back to their texts. Christians who believe they can pray to Christ and own a smartphone are deluded. "The vision of Christ that thou dost see / Is my vision‟s greatest enemy." The true Christ demands that one sacrifice all of these worldly things in the name of the Kingdom of Heaven. And ancient pagans would invent a device out of pure scientific curiosity, but then destroy it, because they felt it would be to spit in the face of the Gods to loose their machines on the face of the Earth.
Brian, seeing as how: a) you unsubscribed, so you clearly already made up your mind without waiting for my response; b) you chronically misinterpret me to the point that I think you may be a troll; c) Benjamin gave a marvelous response; and d) and life is short, I will keep this response short.
Coming at this, as you do, from the Western philosophical tradition leads you to certain errors. I suggest that you read the works of Philip Sherrard, starting with "The Rape of Man and Nature."
I certainly do see some of the roots of the Machine in agriculture. One would be a fool not to see those roots. But, unlike Zerzan, I don't suggest going back, necessarily, to such early ways of life (not that there is anything wrong with them, as they are infinitely superior to our way of life). I would agree with Ludwig Klages and D. H. Lawrence that the ideal society was early pre-historic Mediterranean civilization, such as exemplified by the Etruscans and the Pelasgians.
You speak of people with health problems, but many health problems exist today only because of the Machine. If one factors out infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy has not improved since the ancient Greeks, but quality of life has gone way down. So long as we live within the Machine, the Machine will cause illnesses (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, auto-immune disorders, etc.), and I do suggest, out of compassion (see my article and comments on the medicine chapter) that people seek treatment for those illnesses. But, even within the Machine-world, I a) still feel traditional approaches to medicine are better, and b) agree with Ivan Illich that often modern medicine does more harm than good.
As for the plow, see Lewis Mumford, Frithjof Schuon, or my later essays. There are man-centered technologies, such as ancient agricultural implements, and there are anti-man technologies, such as just about everything we have now. Rather than molding the tool to the man, we mold the man to the tool.
Yes, we should destroy the Machine; yes, that will cause some suffering, but keeping to the course we are on will cause infinitely more suffering.
The first steps on this process are not rejecting medical care but giving up your phone, television, and other superfluous technologies. Get rid of your car and ride a bike or walk. Live without a phone. Stop buying things, and learn to repair what you have. These are small, practical steps one can take.
Finally, you seem really focused on death. Despite your claims of Christian belief, I have to wonder about your personal metaphysics. Certainly, if you believe in your tradition, and still have these irrational fears, then Protestantism has fallen even farther from grace than I could have guessed. For Orthodox Christians and Muslims, death is not something to be feared. People died before the Machine, huge numbers of people suffer and die because of the Machine. Everybody dies; it is the one human reality known from birth. But, certain religions give meaning to that death. Ultimately, for a true believer, this life is nothing compared to the glory of life in Christ or union with God.
Humans who give up the gift of life given to them by the Divine to become living-dead minions of the Machine turns them into machine-robots, and machine-robots are valueless and don't matter.
Yes, traditional living IS vastly superior to modern life. Done. End of story. The Machine causes more suffering and fatalities than traditional living would. And even were that not the case, life in the ancient world was better and had meaning.
I am upset with you because you are dramatically misinterpreting everything I write. Either you are trying to provoke me or are functionally illiterate.
I make it clear over and over throughout my book that I believe the world is largely doomed, and that my best solution is voluntary separatist communities of mountain/forest/desert dwelling hermits. I never advocated for dictatorship, and didn't even publish my articles on politics yet, so, once again, you are misinterpreting me and twisting what I write beyond all recognition.
Farasha, I enjoy reading your chapters very much. Great, great passion.
A few disconnected remarks, off the top of my head. I'm currently writing about E. F. Schumacher, who shared some influences with you. Guénon, Schuon and Coomaraswamy were very important to him. On the technology question, he couldn't go with them completely, but his 'intermediate technology' idea was an attempted compromise between their idealistic position and the pressing need to improve the conditions of traditional communities under siege from modern development. If you're interested, on the metaphysical front, you'll find a good synopsis of Sch's position in the epilogue to his A Guide for the Perplexed.
You write about establishing communities in retreat from the modern world. Gandhi's ashram provided a model of this kind, no? Gandhi, via Coomaraswamy, Joseph Kumarappa and Richard Gregg, was important for Schumacher.
Finally, reading you on modern medicine, I'm reminded of the great Illich, whom you've surely read. Also, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society presents the workings of 'la technique' in great detail, in a way that appears to me to complement Lawrence's account of the 'machine'. Elsewhere in his work, Ellul's response was, like that of several of those mentioned above, a religious/metaphysical one: prayer, fasting, contemplation and great scepticism when it came to embracing, not just technology, but the modern mindset.
I could go on, but that's enough for the moment. Thanks to you, I'm reading Sherrard. Keep up your good work.
Robert, thank you for your comment. I am a big supporter of E. F. Schumacher's vision, but not the vision of many of his followers. Schumacher was insightful enough to realize that whatever tech there was should be small, local, indigenous, and easily understood. One of the first places I refer people who are interested in criticisms of technology are the writings of Schumacher, and Wendell Berry's essays and poems. Unfortunately, many of Schumacher's more recent followers have taken up the cult of sustainability, and well, there is nothing truly sustainable about solar powered laptops for children in African villages. I am all for advances in technology that make them more human-centered. Many ancient tools were refined over hundreds and thousands of years to be more amenable to man. The Amish are a good example: they adopt new technologies slowly, and only after much thought and soul-searching. But now, we mold man to the machine. Phones, computers, etc. are diabolical anti-human contrivances. My perspective, which I will expand on in great detail a few chapters down the line is put forward succinctly by Frithjof Schuon in Language of the Self: "The old looms, for example, even when highly perfected, are a kind of revelation and a symbol which by its intelligibility allows the soul to breathe, whereas a mechanized loom is suffocating for the man who serves it; the genesis of the craft of weaving goes hand in hand with spiritual life—as also appears from its aesthetic quality—whereas a modern machine on the contrary presupposes a mental climate and a labor of research incompatible with sanctity."
There are many influences I have which I refer to often in my book: Lawrence, Berry, R. S. Thomas, Robinson Jeffers, Simone Weil, Heidegger, et al. But there are also influences that have impacted me greatly that I don't refer to much, such as Ellul. Ellul was not just a great thinker, he was a saintly man who lived according to his principles! Everyone should read Ellul, but I have to save space somewhere, and Lawrence is seldom or never mentioned as one of the great critics of technology, so one of my goals is to set the record straight, and another is to put forth what I term an aesthetic critique of modernity and technology, which speaks directly to the heart. William Blake and Lawrence do just that. Additionally, Blake and Lawrence have overarching and compelling metaphysical and religious views that put forth eternal religious truths in a beautiful way in the English language. I challenge anyone to read Lawrence's Triumph of the Machine and not shed a few tears. If that poem doesn't pierce a person to their very soul, then their heart must be hardened.
Aside from the Orthodox traditionalists, such as Sherrard, Coomaraswamy is probably my favorite. His artistic, economic, and political vision is very similar to Lawrence's and both visions can be traced back to the work of Ruskin and William Morris. I definitely support Gandhi's ashram model. Gandhi really got much of his inspiration from Tolstoy, and I am very much a fan of Tolstoy's political and economic program, though without endorsing some of his questionable metaphysical views. I will go into more detail about this later. Lawrence was a big supporter of Gandhi's push for local crafts. He wrote: "all we possess is life—life must flow—making things in the passion of life—weaving, carving, building—this is the flow of life, life flows into the object—& life /flows out again/ to the beholder—so that whoever makes anything with real interest, puts life into it, and makes it a little fountain of life for the next comer. Therefore a ghandi weaver is transmitting life to others—& that is the great charity.
Western restlessness & quick wearying comes from the fact that western machine-made objects are dead, & /give nothing/ out. So western fashions change so rapidly etc"
Illich and Schumacher really go together well, both in terms of their criticisms, as well as their proposed solutions. Convivial tech could have been a way out of our mess, but I, sadly, don't see the world adopting that as a solution, so I advocate for the Rananim model, which is Lawrence's twist on the monastery or ashram.
If we want anything to work, if we want our little communities to succeed, if we want any hope for the myriad creatures of the planet, and for future humans, then we first and foremost must "be the change we want to see in the world." We have to pray, fast, and look inward, so that when we start to face outward we may become beacons of Truth. I can't help but think of the example of Saint Silouan the Athonite, who shed tears for the entire world. I know these first chapters of my text can sometimes be a slog; feel overly negative, but I simply want to clear a path forward. I want to fight evil in the name of Truth. Ultimately, I look forward to us collectively passing beyond simple criticism to the point where we may reflect on the beauty of a flower, and therein witness the majesty and beneficence of God the most holy.