A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
After recently re-publishing an essay by English author and philosopher of nature, Paul Kingsnorth, we had the good fortune to engage him in a brief conversation. If you are curious to read more, do take the time to read his recent autobiographical reflections, The Cross and the Machine (First Things, June 2021 ).
GRENIER: The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce thought that technological civilization (i.e. what we have right now) is originally caused not by 'modern science' per se, or even by 'technology.' He thinks both of these can improve our lives; that they do improve our lives. Instead, he sees the problem as one of a kind of heresy -- the belief that we can create heaven on earth if we pursue technological change without any restraints, if we subject all of matter to our will. I wonder whether Del Noce is not overly optimistic. I mean, even just cars and highways can destroy a civilization. What is your sense of how to tell which technologies are destructive, and which not? More importantly, how would you define technological civilization, what it is?
KINGSNORTH: I recently wrote an essay on Lewis Mumford engaging with his classic book The Myth of the Machine. Mumford sees technology as part of a wider structure of power - something he calls 'the megamachine'. Humans are also cogs in this machine - used for consumption and labour - and it has existed at least since the construction of the pyramids. The issue in this context is not so much 'technology' as what kind of technology, and what or who it serves. We often hear this slightly glib notion that 'technology is neutral' - that a machine can be used for good or ill - but this is not true. Technology has its own telos. A gun can only be used to kill. An Amazon Alexa is designed to both sell things and collect data. The networks of power and technology that surround us determine our values. Critics of technology from Ivan Illich to Jacques Ellul have seen this very clearly over the decades. Del Noce is probably right though to say that the wider issue is one of ‘heresy.’ The question to me is what god we serve. If that god is our own will, our machines will reflect that.
GRENIER: What is your sense about the compatibility between Eastern Orthodoxy and the worldviews and spirituality of native peoples ? How has your experience of native peoples influenced your relationship with (Eastern) Christianity?
From what I know, Russian Orthodox monks in Alaska in the 19th century did not have such an uprooting impact on the native peoples of Alaska. Orthodox priests have written that they found that their native beliefs there were in many respects already theologically quite sound. The monks translated the scriptures into their native languages and treated them, in general, with dignity. This is in contrast to Protestant Christianity's interactions with the Indians in the lower 48. The Protestants were, in a great many cases, genuinely well meaning, and wanted the best for the Indians. But the ways of the Indians were simply deemed wholly unacceptable and the encounter was also mainly a disaster for the Indians (of course, this relates to their encounter with Americans as such, of which Protestant missionaries were only one component, and not the main one). This, in turn, raises the point that there is no such thing as an 'indigenous culture' throughout North America. The many hundreds of native tribes were incredibly different the one from the other, and it may be that, in many ways, the Alaskan cultures just happened to be closer to Orthodoxy (and Christianity) than those of many of the peoples in the lower 48 states. In the lower 48, it appears to me that the culture of, for example, the Nez Perce tribe in the North West was very inspiring, and also close to Christianity, as distinct from some others. The question arises: are all native cultures worth preserving, or, say, of holding in equal honor? What about tribes that practice cannibalism or human sacrifice? (I will grant you that, given aspects of modern forms of capitalism, the distinctions from such things are growing fuzzier, but all the same.)
In regards to the displacement of the bushmen in Africa, or of tribes in Papua New Guinea -- what do you think is the driver? Is it the usual national quest for 'modernization' ? Maybe the government has loans from the World Bank that is pressuring them to sell off land and resources?
KINGSNORTH: I don’t know a great deal about this, and it’s a big question. It is certainly worth saying that there is not really any such thing as 'the worldview of native peoples’. Firstly, what do we mean by 'native'? I am native to northern Europe, for example. Secondly, as you say, if we are talking about pre-modern, or non-Western, indigenous peoples, their worldviews are obviously hugely diverse. Many of them have much to teach us, but others harbour some pretty terrible things. A culture is not inherently good - or bad - because it’s native to a place.
What I know of St Herman of Alaska is inspiring - as you say, Orthodox missionaries there seem to have spread the faith through example, not by coercion or pressure. I have an uncomfortable relationship with Christian missionary work, because I have seen some of the damage it has done. very often, spreading the teachings of Christ has been little more than cover for spreading the culture of middle class Americans, or Europeans. I have seen tribal people in West Papua wearing suits and ties on a Sunday so they can go off to their America style church, because the missionaries told them this was what ‘Christian’s do. This would be news to Christ!
My inspiration really is the early church, which of course spread throughout the middle east, and Africa, and later into Europe, and did so without coercion. People seem to have become Christian because they found the Christians they encountered to be setting good examples of how to live, and how to read others, which convinced people of the truth of the teachings. I think that has to be the only way to spread the word - live it. Of course, living the teachings of Christ is much harder than talking about them, which is why we all prefer the talking!
In terms of displacement, my experience is that the impetus is sometimes cultural but more often economic - States or landowners or colonists want farmland, mineral rights, forests - the usual. Culture or even religion is often a veneer on top of that.
GRENIER: At one point in your essay, you link the quest for perfection, which you connect with modernity, with the impulse toward homogeneity and control. That statement made me pause. In Weil's The Need for Roots, she writes that "only the desire for perfection has the virtue of being able to destroy in the soul some part of the evil which defiles it. Hence Christ's commandment: 'Be ye therefore perfect ... '" Perhaps our world is suffering not from a quest for too much perfection, but from a confusion about what perfection is?
KINGSNORTH: That seems like a good way of putting it. Maybe the difference is between the work to perfect ourselves - which you’re right that Christ taught us - and the desire to perfect society. Certainly in my experience those who want to perfect society have rarely done the work to perfect themselves. I include myself wholly in this. At its worst, this leads to tyranny. This world is never going to be perfect, and humans cannot create external perfection in any case. But we can work on ourselves.