“We have a culture war because we no longer have a culture: the West is fragmenting, and cannot be put together again.”

“From viewing the world as an organism, we came to see it instead as a mechanism, and our appetite to remake it in our image, aided by the twin gods of Science and Reason, began in earnest.”

“The ultimate project of modernity, I have come believe, is to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods. What I call the Machine is the nexus of power, wealth, ideology and technology that has emerged to make this happen. We are increasingly unable to escape our total absorption by this thing, and we are reaching the point where its control over nature, both wild and human, is becoming unstoppable. It is developing its own theology, as it takes us at warp speed into a new way of being human. Its modus operandi is the abolition of all borders, boundaries, categories, essences and truths: the uprooting of all previous ways of living in the name of pure individualism and perfect subjectivity. We are not made by the world now; we make it. And we can make anything we want. Or so we want to believe.”

What's Wrong With Society? Part 6B. The Machine. Kingsnorth describes the machine as follows: “The ultimate project of modernity, I have come believe, is to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods. What I call the Machine is the nexus of power, wealth, ideology and technology that has emerged to make this happen.“ At the heart of the machine, is the answer to the question, what does it mean to be human? Kingsnorth again… “[the machine's]modus operandi is the abolition of all borders, boundaries, categories, essences and truths: the uprooting of all previous ways of living in the name of pure individualism and perfect subjectivity. We are not made by the world now; we make it. And we can make anything we want. Or so we want to believe.” There are things we can do to live in the machine but not be a part of the machine (in the world, but not of the world).