December 30, 2025
"Meanwhile, out in what is fondly called ‘the real world’ by people who often don’t know very much about reality, you are living in a metastasizing machine which is closing in around you, polluting your skies and your woods and your past and your imagination... Most of the things you like are fading away. The great forests and the stories made in and by them. The strange cultures spanning centuries of time. The little pubs and the curious uninhabited places. The thrumming temples and dark marshlands and crooked villages and folk tales and conviviality and spontaneous song and old houses which might have witches in them. The possibility of dragons. The empty beaches and wild hilltops, the change of getting lost in the rain forever or discovering something that was never on any map. A world without maps, a world without engines."
Picked up 'Against the Machine' by Paul Kingsnorth at the library the other day. This part in the introduction leaped out at me.
Most of the things you like are fading away.