The War on Reality, Mary Harrington & Paul Kingsnorth

"This is like The Matrix written from the point of view in which Agent Smith is the good guy, isn't it?" — Paul Kingsnorth

Mary Harrington and Paul Kingsnorth are two of the most intriguing thinkers we’ve featured on Rebel Wisdom. Despite substantial overlap between Paul's concept of "the machine" and Mary's idea of "luxury Gnosticism", they have never been in dialogue with each other.

This was a fascinating and wide ranging conversation where Paul and Mary pushed back against the modernist fervor for transcending the limits of the natural world — they want to remind you that meatspace is not going away, and that it can be quite lovely!

[brendonlake]

I'm eerily reminded of the book 'that hideous strength' by C.S. Lewis, the current state of things has been foreseen by great minds for decades maybe even longer.

[angela]

Mary at 24:37 “there are a lot of people that see what is happening and are endlessly frustrated and don’t know how to mobilize”. (Or similar) This is so true for me. It feels like there is no place to express and brainstorm ideas. It seems almost hopeless to be able to turn the “machine” back. Each day I am finding more hope in conversations like these. And as I search, I am finding more and more of these conversations with truly thoughtful minds. Knowing that we are not alone and there are brilliant minds that are discussing the real issues and thinking of possible solutions is soul inspiring.

[TheBiancap]

Paul, ‘we are going to learn it the hard way, because we don’t want to learn it by paying attention’ :) so true

[joedavis]

I love these two guests. They are plainspoken and insightful and knowledgeable, and they have a heart.... thank you Rebel wisdom, for giving us good stuff.... I'm 81 years old, and still working like crazy on it.

[brittasyogaqi]

I really like Mary Harrington. She's spot on about the beauty of motherhood. It sounds super boring to the Machine but it's the most meaningful thing I've ever experienced.

[johnmadany]

Great discussion! Looking forward to talking about what we should do.
I was an environmentalist, then a cowboy on a ranch where the cattle gave birth on their own. The cattle were a sub species adapted to a desert environment. Went to medical school and struggled along with the practice of medicine. Then learned how to teach my patients to accept their place in nature. Now my practice is very meaningful. Watching the direction of medicine is incredibly distressing. Happiness comes from accepting our place in nature not fighting nature.
PS owning chickens teaches us a lot.

[gingrai]

@Rebel Wisdom, this was a lovely conversation… C.S. Lewis work called “The Abolition of Man” is an absolute must read and it adds much to this discussion.

[steveb]

Pleasantly surprised to see this show up on my feed. Watched many conversations with Mary and Paul over the last few years and it was a great idea to get them to talk with each other, thanks for making this happen

[geogoring]

Very thought provoking. It seems to me that what we are witnessing is an attempt to materialise the spiritual. In the spirit there is no gender, race or nationality. We take on these aspects when we incarnate into the physical world. We must be born in a body in a place in time. Our brave new world promises us that we can recreate our spiritual nature in a material way and so be a blank screen on which we can project whatever we want to be and everyone else is compelled to affirm this. This orthodoxy teaches that in order for us to be one, as Mary says, everything is liquefied so we have no 'disagreeable' differences. This is a fake substitute for the only place where we truly are one which is in the spirit. But this, we are told does not exist and even if it did, we can create a technological version of it which is so much better because it can be controlled by humans.

The alternative to this is we acknowledge and even celebrate the limitations of the physical - our gender, cultures, nationalities etc and our place in the natural world. At the same time we find our oneness in the spirit and this we can only do through our relationship with God who is connected to and in everything both physically and spiritually. He teaches us how to live in peace and harmony with all creation because He created everything and therefore understands how it all works. We don't have to keep reinventing the wheel but learn from God and put into practise what He teaches. This is where we find there is meaning in everything. As I think Paul has said, we can't do without God. Anyone who thinks they can is under an illusion.

This illusion is the machine. Christ called it 'the world'. It is created using spiritual principles and so can seem attractive. But it is a trap. In Christian theology, lucifer was the most powerful angel, thrown out of Heaven for disobedience. He fell to Earth and being conversant with all the spiritual laws that govern the universe set up his own kingdom using these principles but bypassing God who rules in the spirit. Lucifer (or satan) is the spirit or energy at the beating heart of the machine. This conspiracy is a rebellion against the rulership of God who in fact governs Earth as well as Heaven and everywhere else but He allows the machine to operate so that we humans can choose between it and His system (the Kingdom of God in Christian parlance). The choice is for each one of us to make and there is no middle way in this respect.

We are having these conversations now because we are in a time of uncovering (apocalypse in Greek). All hidden things are being exposed and we are seeing them in plain sight.

Peace.

[localnonlocal]

I'm very energized by this dialogue. Have listened to it start-to-finish twice now, and there is something being teased out in my brain as I listen. Can't quite put my finger on it yet, because so many valid points resonate with me, so many truths are spoken (or as I like to think about it, glances in a Truthful direction are shared), and the multi-levels of analysis in this conversation have really stirred up my brain juices.

Well done, and please accept my Gratitude for this kind of content!

[Chris-wmzt]

This is my favorite Rebel Wisdom conversation! Well done.

[the_artisan]

I think this was one of the best conversations on this channel. The sense that they had both identified the things that bring about human flourishing - relations, family bonds, rootedness in place, and also described so eloquently the enemies of these things- The Machine, or Automated Luxury Gnosticism with its atomising and abstracting tendencies meant that there was a great coherence to the dialogue.

[JenCurtistraining]

This is it! This touches on so many things that are going on right now. I was called the f word by a friend this weekend for suggesting that there are limits to what we can do and be, I gave the examples of flying, or being a fish. He said that my insistence on limited people was "extremely worrying".

[vonriesling]

Excellent discussion, I’m looking forward to part II

[Miss_Elaine_]

Remember that the keeping of animals, the brokenness of their survival, and the intense yearning to have life, real living things, in your domestic world, is a major subtheme in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". As a teen I didn't understand or even recognize this theme when I first read it, but later, when I took up chicken breeding and showing as a way to get through the loss of a child, it smacked me right in the face. The desperation that would lead someone to taking out a mortgage to buy an animal seemed totally plausible to me. There is something very dehumanizing about living in a world without domesticated animals. Philip K Dick was a genius, and no filmmaker ever fully explored the themes in his work.

[kbeetles]

Strange coincidence for me is finding this conversation today, when I just started to read "The Mind Of the Spirit - Paul's approach to transformed thinking" by Craig S Keener yesterday. Just one quote from this book's first paragraph- "People's unfit way of thinking is the consequence of their rejection of God's truth." Something tells me this fits in here very

[palmyra]

This conversation rendered me to a “wow”. A thousand praises for Mary and Paul and David.

I’ve been following this thread with this channel and the other folks who comment on this thing or phenomenon that has been since 2015/16.

The phenomena of a Dawn of a new awareness of what we have done, what we are doing to ourselves, and these dynamics that influence and mould our thoughts and perceptions and the cultural forces that act as channels for the various players and complexes, and their various implications and consequences.

Rebel wisdom has been circling this leviathan for a while now, but Mary and Paul have just identified it and landed two spears directly in its side. This has been the most concise, non-bullshit, no fluff, direct acknowledgment of the actual thing itself and they provided a verbal anthology of the ways it manifest itself and how we can identify it as observers.

This convo needs to be a kindle to spark a flame, this needs to be dug deeper into, this conversation needs to be rewatched and re analyzed and chewed on for a bit, and there must be more people taking seriously the ideas presented here.

I will be one. Thank you!

[michaelstanwick]

As the sage Clint Eastwood said "a man's/woman's got to know his/her limitations".

[nelsonang]

thank you for this wonderful dialogue... it seems increasingly apparent that the biggest rebellion against reality is that we are not God, but we want to be... we want to be able to say I am Who I am...

[TheMrCougarful]

Amazing conversation. I was riveted from the start. So much truth-telling. A perfect confluence of ideas of manifest importance for our times. Kudos to all involved.