I have to second Dr Massey, this is of course an excellently written article. And it only confirms what I've been feeling about certain parts of the green movement. This article also explores the connection between environmentalism and religion:
Alysia—Thank you so much for bringing this article to my attention. A few weeks ago I came upon an ecological treatise in the form of a bullet list that you and I (and Dan?) had written in Kremlin-Bicêtre, back in 2016. I remember sitting around the dining room table and thinking like, of course! We have all the answers, we just need to gather the collective will to implement them. I can't express how happy I was to read this comment from you and have these memories come rushing back to me. I am indeed doing very well, and hope the same for you, looking forward to the next time we meet <3 <3 <3
This was very interesting! Have you read anything by Paul Kingsnorth? He is an English environmentalist who founded a think tank called Dark Mountain project and has views about technology and modern civilization that would fit within the paradigm you describe here. He wrote a manifesto called "Uncivilization" and also a historical fiction novel called "The Wake" about Hereward the Wake, the guy who was the inspiration for Robin Hood. I know he is into the Unabomber (although he disagrees with him in certain respects), but now I wonder if he has also been reading Ellul...
I had never heard of Paul Kingsnorth, but I did find this LARB article that answers the question of whether he's been reading Ellul (spoiler alert: he has):
I just ordered a copy of The Wake—excited to read his take on Robin Hood although I have to admit only having read a short description I totally disagree with his take on the Norman Invasion
This sentence: "We no longer have to perform the same volume of intellectual labor to challenge our inborn assumption that things are bad now and they were better before, and we can take the More Recent Past to task for separating us from and driving an ever-widening wedge between us and the Edenic Past." Dr. Politano, this is why I eagerly await the next post. You wield words with such dexterity.
>Christian Anarchism, on the other hand, is rooted in the material-world-denying asceticism of the second-century Gnostics, and before them even, in the book of Revelation in the Bible.
Ellul is certainly not a Gnostic.
>By his own admission, Ellul's preference is for the medieval traditions, born of both religious and popular belief, that anchor social rules.
How? Ellul criticizes the Catholic Church and feudalism.
>Ellul deliberately supplants historians like Mumford, shifting the paradigm with sexy anarcho-primitivist theories, which have the added allure of being Christian and thus theological and thus irrefutable.
Ellul is not an anarcho-primitvist either! Nor does he "supplant" Mumford, he quotes him in every one of his books on technique, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but always as a respected technologian.
>No, there were no silicon chips or automobiles in the Middle Ages, nor were there any of the electronic devices that might register as technology to the modern mind. But it's chauvinistic to assume that "technology" can only refer to the things that we recognize as technology, a concept that is by definition a moving target.
Elull's main idea is about technique, not about material technologies! And he DOES recognize that technology has always existed, even in the medieval era.
>In my view, Ellul's Christian Anarchism errs when it commits the casual slippage between "God" and "nature."
>Ellul and Kaczynski converge on the misinformed notion that nature is good and technology is evil, and that some pre-industrial, pre-modern Eldorado holds the key to resolving man's deep-seated grievances with his situation in history.
This really shows that you haven't read Ellul's work in any depth. Ellul does not think that nature and God are one and the same, he does not think that nature is "good" and technology is "evil", and he does not think that pre-industrial society was strictly better than modern society!
I have to second Dr Massey, this is of course an excellently written article. And it only confirms what I've been feeling about certain parts of the green movement. This article also explores the connection between environmentalism and religion:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/cui-bono/202008/environmentalism-religion?fbclid=IwAR1893OOP4akmznvRLW7ihyu-3w6jXWahNMjBT-pYPSfmmjis3HxcKQW74g
I hope you're doing well Cristina!
Alysia—Thank you so much for bringing this article to my attention. A few weeks ago I came upon an ecological treatise in the form of a bullet list that you and I (and Dan?) had written in Kremlin-Bicêtre, back in 2016. I remember sitting around the dining room table and thinking like, of course! We have all the answers, we just need to gather the collective will to implement them. I can't express how happy I was to read this comment from you and have these memories come rushing back to me. I am indeed doing very well, and hope the same for you, looking forward to the next time we meet <3 <3 <3
This was very interesting! Have you read anything by Paul Kingsnorth? He is an English environmentalist who founded a think tank called Dark Mountain project and has views about technology and modern civilization that would fit within the paradigm you describe here. He wrote a manifesto called "Uncivilization" and also a historical fiction novel called "The Wake" about Hereward the Wake, the guy who was the inspiration for Robin Hood. I know he is into the Unabomber (although he disagrees with him in certain respects), but now I wonder if he has also been reading Ellul...
I had never heard of Paul Kingsnorth, but I did find this LARB article that answers the question of whether he's been reading Ellul (spoiler alert: he has):
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/waiting-for-the-end-of-the-world/
I just ordered a copy of The Wake—excited to read his take on Robin Hood although I have to admit only having read a short description I totally disagree with his take on the Norman Invasion
That Ted Kascynski sketch would make a sick tattoo
This sentence: "We no longer have to perform the same volume of intellectual labor to challenge our inborn assumption that things are bad now and they were better before, and we can take the More Recent Past to task for separating us from and driving an ever-widening wedge between us and the Edenic Past." Dr. Politano, this is why I eagerly await the next post. You wield words with such dexterity.
Thank you Dr. Massey!!!
>Christian Anarchism, on the other hand, is rooted in the material-world-denying asceticism of the second-century Gnostics, and before them even, in the book of Revelation in the Bible.
Ellul is certainly not a Gnostic.
>By his own admission, Ellul's preference is for the medieval traditions, born of both religious and popular belief, that anchor social rules.
How? Ellul criticizes the Catholic Church and feudalism.
>Ellul deliberately supplants historians like Mumford, shifting the paradigm with sexy anarcho-primitivist theories, which have the added allure of being Christian and thus theological and thus irrefutable.
Ellul is not an anarcho-primitvist either! Nor does he "supplant" Mumford, he quotes him in every one of his books on technique, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but always as a respected technologian.
>No, there were no silicon chips or automobiles in the Middle Ages, nor were there any of the electronic devices that might register as technology to the modern mind. But it's chauvinistic to assume that "technology" can only refer to the things that we recognize as technology, a concept that is by definition a moving target.
Elull's main idea is about technique, not about material technologies! And he DOES recognize that technology has always existed, even in the medieval era.
>In my view, Ellul's Christian Anarchism errs when it commits the casual slippage between "God" and "nature."
>Ellul and Kaczynski converge on the misinformed notion that nature is good and technology is evil, and that some pre-industrial, pre-modern Eldorado holds the key to resolving man's deep-seated grievances with his situation in history.
This really shows that you haven't read Ellul's work in any depth. Ellul does not think that nature and God are one and the same, he does not think that nature is "good" and technology is "evil", and he does not think that pre-industrial society was strictly better than modern society!