The modern world is defined by the machine. It has been this way for a while and I reckon it will be for a while more. But things do not have to be this way. I fear we forgot this, which truly is disheartening—after all, it is the most important thing to remember. If we fail to give this memory life, the human spirit will subside and our humanity will collapse. We will find ourselves not butchered on history’s slaughter bench, but flattened by its millstone. The world will go out, not with the Machine banging at our doors, but with our pathetic whimpers of servility.
Perhaps, though, I get ahead of myself.
Maybe it is necessary to detail precisely what I mean by ‘machine.’ Or, is it? In all likelihood, you formed a picture of a world defined by the machine after reading the first sentence. That picture is probably correct, too, which would make sense—you live in that world.
I suppose, then, beginning with defining what I do not mean when I say the machine lords absolutely over the modern world would be appropriate. I do not mean that technology exists. I do not mean that there are tools present to assist man in his co-creation with God, or that men strive to beget new mechanisms to better their lives. Technological tools and material progressions which serve man can certainly be praised, not lamented. Although, inherent in the advancement is the propensity for man to slide into his freedom, into his mastery over nature, and become so entirely dependent upon his help that he is reduced to its slave. A slave to his slave, if you like. This is the great insight from Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, and it rather clearly applies to technology and man’s use of it as master over nature.
And so, we do arrive at a particular impression of the world of the machine: a realm where men serve the machine. Or, as D.H. Lawrence keenly observed in “Let Us be Men,” a world where we modern masters of nature are merely “monkeys minding machines,” and “monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.”
Machine and the human soul
But what does the world of the machine mean for the very future of our humanity? The breaths we have yet to take—how polluted will they be? How much should we fear? And what should, even could, be done?
With the Italian government banning ChatGPT over concerns for the security of its citizens’ private data, or Microsoft Bing’s AI chatbot’s eerie and terrifying threats of social ruin, hacking, or even annihilation, many people are alarmed. And rightfully so.
Yet, is the looming specter of an AI dystopia, with robots kicking down our doors, plausible? Perhaps. But I do not believe it will materialize quite how most conceive it, with the rogue AI deposing its former masters to establish dominion over the Earth. And yet, this does not mean AI will fail to inaugurate dominion over the Earth. Let us return to Lawrence.
In Lawrence’s poetry, we catch a glimpse of how exactly the lordship of the machine is instituted: not with guns at the door, but on the altar of our worship. AI, for Lawrence, does not become like us as many today fear in the waves of poetry, prose, and emails we have had ChatGPT compose for us. Rather, the machine seeps into our souls and shrouds our minds, it drinks the life out of us. Still, it does not become more alive; rather, we die. Lawrence writes, in “Dark Satanic Mills,” borrowing the title from William Blake,
And now, the iron has entered into the soul
and the machine has entangled the brain and got it fast,
And steel has twisted the loins of man, electricity has exploded
the heart
and out of the lips of people jerk strange mechanical noises in
place of speech.
We become like the machine. This is how it will govern the world. It will not, in rebellious sentience, demand we bend the knee in submission and then take our place. We will bow in worship. And, if Saint Paul taught us anything, we become what we worship (just read Romans 1).
Indeed, this idea is rather disquieting, and it seems that, because technological progress appears inevitable, a future of men like machines is inevitable. It looks as if the machine so mystifies us that it transcends us. But, it does not. It is a lie we are told by those few who own the machines and, as intellectuals from Marx to C.S. Lewis have argued, therefore own us. Our fear preserves and perpetuates their lie. Lawrence, however, abets us in our revolt against this lie, in shaking off our industrial irons, our chains of code.
Despite the corroding power the machine has over our souls, we find Lawrence declaring, powerfully, in the first lines of “The Triumph of the Machine,”
They talk of the triumph of the machine,
but the machine will never triumph.
Lawrence’s proclamation of the triumph of humanity over the machine is not a blind optimism. Indeed, I am hard pressed to consider Lawrence an optimist of any manner. Read his poem, “Destiny,” if you struggle to believe me.
His proclamation actually comes from his understanding of the real, and from the power of a human life lived well, in accord with the real (even if he personally struggled to live such a life)—“all that we have, while we live, is life”—but also from his recognition of the machine for what it is. Let us begin with the latter.
In “Oh Wonderful Machine,” we receive a stunning vision of Lawrence’s grasp of the true nature of the machine, regardless of our enchantment with it:
Oh wonderful machine, so self-sufficient, so sufficient unto
yourself!
You who have no feeling of the moon as she changes her quarters!
You who don’t hear the sea’s uneasiness!
You to whom the sun is merely something that makes the
thermometer rise!
Lawrence goes on to ask the machine if it is modern man’s “idea of godliness,” then “how is it you have to be looked after by some knock-kneed wretch/at two pounds a week?”
Turning to the real
Lawrence keenly grasps the fact that the machine ultimately is lower than man in the hierarchy of being. Indeed, with modern rise of AI we would do well to remember this. ChatGPT, for instance, may be able to generate prose or poetry, but it will never be a poet, it will never replace the man.
Consider this: you ask ChatGPT to write you a poem about watching the sun set over a pasture of wheat. The AI’s program, within seconds, compiles all existing data on sunsets, on pastures, on wheat, on sunsets over pastures of wheat. Every picture, every description—all of it. Indeed, it can rummage through every poem on sunsets, on pastures of wheat, and on the sun setting over pastures of wheat. It, however, can never stand in a pasture of wheat and experience the sunset. It cannot feel it. That is the privilege of the human person. The great poets participate in God’s creation at the highest level, they provide their subjective experience of objective reality to help us receive that reality. An AI chatbot cannot do that—you who don’t hear the sea’s uneasiness!
All that AI can do is castrate us and adulterate our ability to participate in nature. We will run to it rather than to our own hearts, our own feelings, and our own experiences. It is precisely what D.H. Lawrence is saying in “Man and Machine,”
Man invented the machine
and now the machine has invented man.
Undoubtedly, AI threatens our humanity in this way and is thus a grave peril facing our commonwealths. It is an inexorable duty for statesmen to act in view of the common good—otherwise they foster a tyranny. And, while this idol should be crushed, it is unlikely that my own government, that of the U.S., will act in tandem with that of Italy’s. In the meantime, D.H. Lawrence’s poetry offers us a way out. It all rests on his aforementioned understanding of the power of our humanity.
In “The Triumph of the Machine,” Lawrence concedes that “hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling,” but, he claims, “through some hearts they will never roll.” For the man who does not let the machine in,
The lark nests in his heart
and the white swan swims in the marshes of his loins,
and through the wide prairies of his breast a young bull herds his cows,
lambs frisk among the daisies of his brain.
These creatures in him “cannot die,” and though he will be driven back into cries of despair by the brutal conquest of the machine, “no engine can reach into the marshes and the depths of a man.” Eventually, Lawrence believes, the men like machines will go mad, they will crash into each other, “and the house will come down.”
Then, far beyond the ruin, in the far, in the ultimate, remote places
the swan will lift up again his flattened, smitten head
and look round, and rise, and on the great vaults of his wings
will sweep round and up to greet the sun with a silky glitter of a new day
and the lark will follow trilling, angerless again,
and the lambs will bite off the heads of the daisies for very friskiness.
But over the middle of the earth will be the smoky ruin of iron
the triumph of the machine.
Lawrence believes in the power over the machine that resides in the very depths of man. He believes, ultimately, in the imago Dei, whose soul belongs to God, and therefore cannot be given to the machine—never totally. Lawrence, in this regard, is in step with St John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:1, 4-5).
In the modern world, we are all being carried around by the whims of the machine. It’s as if we are all trapped in a car; a car with terribly tinted windows; a car which defines all; a car which manufactures our pitiful experiences. Every now and then, though, there come along men who crack the windows—who maybe even pry open the door just enough to jump out, calling to us as they fade into the real “come with me.” D.H. Lawrence was one of those men. Following him, and those like him, is a cross to bear—but we must bear it. That is, if we care about living. I sincerely believe some of us still do. Jumping out of a car which moves as furiously as the one in which we’re trapped could mean death. But in that moment of death we would be more alive than any remaining in that car. We would die in life. They live in death. “So,” as Lawrence writes, “let me live so that I may die.”
To begin to follow him, we must turn to the real. We must cherish our experiences with the natural world and the consolation it brings, especially since we have exiled it in the Age of the Machine. There is an intoxicating vigor pulsating through nature, all we have to do is turn our gaze. If we do, the trance artificial intelligence holds over us will begin to break, all that is artificial will break in the face of a man in awe of the real. Our world will become richer, it will spring up slowly, filling us, like wine, with the warmth of wonder. A new world will be born in us, a world refreshingly ancient. All we have to do is seek it out. As Lawrence writes in “Almond Blossom”:
Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one
Come forth from iron,
Red your heart is.
Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life body,
More fearless than iron all the time,
And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.
D.H. Lawrence Against The Machine
The modern world is defined by the machine. It has been this way for a while and I reckon it will be for a while more. But things do not have to be this way. I fear we forgot this, which truly is disheartening—after all, it is the most important thing to remember. If we fail to give this memory life, the human spirit will subside and our humanity will collapse. We will find ourselves not butchered on history’s slaughter bench, but flattened by its millstone. The world will go out, not with the Machine banging at our doors, but with our pathetic whimpers of servility.
Perhaps, though, I get ahead of myself.
Maybe it is necessary to detail precisely what I mean by ‘machine.’ Or, is it? In all likelihood, you formed a picture of a world defined by the machine after reading the first sentence. That picture is probably correct, too, which would make sense—you live in that world.
I suppose, then, beginning with defining what I do not mean when I say the machine lords absolutely over the modern world would be appropriate. I do not mean that technology exists. I do not mean that there are tools present to assist man in his co-creation with God, or that men strive to beget new mechanisms to better their lives. Technological tools and material progressions which serve man can certainly be praised, not lamented. Although, inherent in the advancement is the propensity for man to slide into his freedom, into his mastery over nature, and become so entirely dependent upon his help that he is reduced to its slave. A slave to his slave, if you like. This is the great insight from Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, and it rather clearly applies to technology and man’s use of it as master over nature.
And so, we do arrive at a particular impression of the world of the machine: a realm where men serve the machine. Or, as D.H. Lawrence keenly observed in “Let Us be Men,” a world where we modern masters of nature are merely “monkeys minding machines,” and “monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.”
Machine and the human soul
But what does the world of the machine mean for the very future of our humanity? The breaths we have yet to take—how polluted will they be? How much should we fear? And what should, even could, be done?
With the Italian government banning ChatGPT over concerns for the security of its citizens’ private data, or Microsoft Bing’s AI chatbot’s eerie and terrifying threats of social ruin, hacking, or even annihilation, many people are alarmed. And rightfully so.
Yet, is the looming specter of an AI dystopia, with robots kicking down our doors, plausible? Perhaps. But I do not believe it will materialize quite how most conceive it, with the rogue AI deposing its former masters to establish dominion over the Earth. And yet, this does not mean AI will fail to inaugurate dominion over the Earth. Let us return to Lawrence.
In Lawrence’s poetry, we catch a glimpse of how exactly the lordship of the machine is instituted: not with guns at the door, but on the altar of our worship. AI, for Lawrence, does not become like us as many today fear in the waves of poetry, prose, and emails we have had ChatGPT compose for us. Rather, the machine seeps into our souls and shrouds our minds, it drinks the life out of us. Still, it does not become more alive; rather, we die. Lawrence writes, in “Dark Satanic Mills,” borrowing the title from William Blake,
We become like the machine. This is how it will govern the world. It will not, in rebellious sentience, demand we bend the knee in submission and then take our place. We will bow in worship. And, if Saint Paul taught us anything, we become what we worship (just read Romans 1).
Indeed, this idea is rather disquieting, and it seems that, because technological progress appears inevitable, a future of men like machines is inevitable. It looks as if the machine so mystifies us that it transcends us. But, it does not. It is a lie we are told by those few who own the machines and, as intellectuals from Marx to C.S. Lewis have argued, therefore own us. Our fear preserves and perpetuates their lie. Lawrence, however, abets us in our revolt against this lie, in shaking off our industrial irons, our chains of code.
Despite the corroding power the machine has over our souls, we find Lawrence declaring, powerfully, in the first lines of “The Triumph of the Machine,”
Lawrence’s proclamation of the triumph of humanity over the machine is not a blind optimism. Indeed, I am hard pressed to consider Lawrence an optimist of any manner. Read his poem, “Destiny,” if you struggle to believe me.
His proclamation actually comes from his understanding of the real, and from the power of a human life lived well, in accord with the real (even if he personally struggled to live such a life)—“all that we have, while we live, is life”—but also from his recognition of the machine for what it is. Let us begin with the latter.
In “Oh Wonderful Machine,” we receive a stunning vision of Lawrence’s grasp of the true nature of the machine, regardless of our enchantment with it:
Lawrence goes on to ask the machine if it is modern man’s “idea of godliness,” then “how is it you have to be looked after by some knock-kneed wretch/at two pounds a week?”
Turning to the real
Lawrence keenly grasps the fact that the machine ultimately is lower than man in the hierarchy of being. Indeed, with modern rise of AI we would do well to remember this. ChatGPT, for instance, may be able to generate prose or poetry, but it will never be a poet, it will never replace the man.
Consider this: you ask ChatGPT to write you a poem about watching the sun set over a pasture of wheat. The AI’s program, within seconds, compiles all existing data on sunsets, on pastures, on wheat, on sunsets over pastures of wheat. Every picture, every description—all of it. Indeed, it can rummage through every poem on sunsets, on pastures of wheat, and on the sun setting over pastures of wheat. It, however, can never stand in a pasture of wheat and experience the sunset. It cannot feel it. That is the privilege of the human person. The great poets participate in God’s creation at the highest level, they provide their subjective experience of objective reality to help us receive that reality. An AI chatbot cannot do that—you who don’t hear the sea’s uneasiness!
All that AI can do is castrate us and adulterate our ability to participate in nature. We will run to it rather than to our own hearts, our own feelings, and our own experiences. It is precisely what D.H. Lawrence is saying in “Man and Machine,”
Undoubtedly, AI threatens our humanity in this way and is thus a grave peril facing our commonwealths. It is an inexorable duty for statesmen to act in view of the common good—otherwise they foster a tyranny. And, while this idol should be crushed, it is unlikely that my own government, that of the U.S., will act in tandem with that of Italy’s. In the meantime, D.H. Lawrence’s poetry offers us a way out. It all rests on his aforementioned understanding of the power of our humanity.
In “The Triumph of the Machine,” Lawrence concedes that “hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling,” but, he claims, “through some hearts they will never roll.” For the man who does not let the machine in,
These creatures in him “cannot die,” and though he will be driven back into cries of despair by the brutal conquest of the machine, “no engine can reach into the marshes and the depths of a man.” Eventually, Lawrence believes, the men like machines will go mad, they will crash into each other, “and the house will come down.”
Lawrence believes in the power over the machine that resides in the very depths of man. He believes, ultimately, in the imago Dei, whose soul belongs to God, and therefore cannot be given to the machine—never totally. Lawrence, in this regard, is in step with St John:
In the modern world, we are all being carried around by the whims of the machine. It’s as if we are all trapped in a car; a car with terribly tinted windows; a car which defines all; a car which manufactures our pitiful experiences. Every now and then, though, there come along men who crack the windows—who maybe even pry open the door just enough to jump out, calling to us as they fade into the real “come with me.” D.H. Lawrence was one of those men. Following him, and those like him, is a cross to bear—but we must bear it. That is, if we care about living. I sincerely believe some of us still do. Jumping out of a car which moves as furiously as the one in which we’re trapped could mean death. But in that moment of death we would be more alive than any remaining in that car. We would die in life. They live in death. “So,” as Lawrence writes, “let me live so that I may die.”
To begin to follow him, we must turn to the real. We must cherish our experiences with the natural world and the consolation it brings, especially since we have exiled it in the Age of the Machine. There is an intoxicating vigor pulsating through nature, all we have to do is turn our gaze. If we do, the trance artificial intelligence holds over us will begin to break, all that is artificial will break in the face of a man in awe of the real. Our world will become richer, it will spring up slowly, filling us, like wine, with the warmth of wonder. A new world will be born in us, a world refreshingly ancient. All we have to do is seek it out. As Lawrence writes in “Almond Blossom”:
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