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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Thank you, Bari, for this exceptionally interesting interview. I’m grateful that you saw fit to introduce Paul Kingsnorth to your audience. I find him probably the most interesting public intellectual around today. You don’t have to agree with him on everything to appreciate that he’s grappling with deep questions in a refreshingly positive way. I always find him thought-provoking and strangely uplifting to listen to. And he’s a great speaker, as well as writer.
Brilliant podcast. Both of you are legends. Will FP investigate climate Change hysteria for the crony corruption that it is? Windmills, solar panels, and electric cars are unreliable, expensive and barely make a dent in carbon emissions which don’t make a difference on global temperatures.