Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth | Seekers Book Club

📖: Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth

📅: 22 Feb 2026, Sunday

🕛: 11am - 1230pm

📍: Wardah Books

In this timely book, Paul Kingsnorth puts into words the terrifying ways the current technological-cultural matrix, which he refers to as ‘the Machine’, affects our lives.

The Machine isn't a single device, but a pervasive system, mindset, and cultural force that drives modernity.

With insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of “progress”, has choked Western civilisation, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of AI, he shows the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game, and how our souls are at stake.

It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. The book reminds us what humanity requires: A healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage; and a deep attention to matters of the spirit.

Prophetic and poetic, this book is a spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.

You may purchase the book from Wardah Books.

1. The Machine: Not a mere tech device, but a system and ideology that prioritises progress and money while viewing the world and its people mechanistically.
2. The way our lives are impacted when the Machine replaces the foundational "Four Ps" (Past, People, Place, Prayer) with the "Four Ss" (Science, the Self, Sex, the Screen) as its new core values.
3. The different ways one’s spiritual roots can be the crucial means to resist the damage of the technological age.
4. Other means for skeptical individuals to hope and act towards a more meaningful and intentional present and future.

Paul Kingsnorth is an English author, poet, activist and essayist known for his critiques of modernity, technology, and globalisation. His works often explore themes of nature, spirituality, and a return to older, more meaningful ways of living.

He has written numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as countless essays and articles.

His other books include One No, Many Yeses, a tour around the world’s centres of resistance to globalisation; Kidland, a collection of poems; and Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, another collection of essays that follow his developing thoughts on ecology and the environment.

Kingsnorth lives with his family on a farm located in the West of Ireland, where he homeschools his children, grows his food, and lives a rural, off-grid lifestyle.

The Seekers Book Club by Maktaba Books aims to bring people together to read various books through an Islamic, Singaporean, and/or Southeast Asian lens. Whether the text is secular or set in an unfamiliar culture, there is always something within a book that can resonate with our faith and identities.

We are happy to run the book club in collaboration with Wardah Books, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Maktaba Books is a peer-to-peer community library.

Our mission is to illuminate the path of knowledge within our community and to ensure that everyone has access to books and discussions on them.

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