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Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives

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As I read "Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art and Individual Lives" by Nicols Fox, I was aware of an interesting paradox. In its essence, "Against the Machine" charts the rise of the machine from the Industrial Revolution to the present and explores the resistance of workers (the original Luddites), writers, artists, and thinkers to this development. While attempting to be fair minded (and, for the most part, succeeding), Ms. Fox asks whether we have lost more than we have gained. For years, I have wondered the same thing, and I found myself in complete sympathy with Ms. Fox. Yet without machines, and their father-technology-"Against the Machine" would not exist. From its subject matter to its actual physical state-that is, of being a book-"Against the Machine" is totally dependent on machines.

What's a neo-Luddite to do? One option is to buy an island off the coast of Maine, build a small cabin, and live as simply as possible with no electricity, telephone, or central heating. In the first chapter of "Against the Machine," Ms. Fox writes of Nan and Arthur Kellam, who did that very thing. As Nan put it, "[they wanted] to leave behind the battle for non-essentials and the burden of abundance to build in the beauty of this million-masted island a simple home and an uncluttered life." And this they did for forty years. The story ends sadly. Arthur dies, and Nan becomes ill and has to leave their beloved island. Yet, isn't that how all stories inevitably end? No one lasts forever. In the meantime, Nan and Arthur Kellam lived lightly and simply and deliberately.

What modern-day commuter, racing between work, home, errands, and children, hasn't longed for at least some measure of the Kellams' peaceful lives? But, alas, there aren't enough islands for everyone, and most of us must resign ourselves to lives that fall short of such romantic tranquility. However, that doesn't mean we have to concede defeat and use machines mindlessly. And more importantly, we can consider the questions that Ms. Fox asks, "what, after all, is technology? Is it a simple screw? Is it the wheel? Is it a printing press? Is it nuclear fission? ...To think seriously about technology, it will be necessary to examine the nature of mechanical innovation..."

Ms. Fox does this with a vengeance. After the idyllic first chapter with the Kellams, Ms. Fox plunges us into the heart of manufacturing England in the 1800s and chronicles the struggles between the factory owners and the workers. Almost from the start, the story is ugly, with the owners obsessed with profits and quotas while the workers desperately try to maintain standards and not become obsolete. Downsized was not a term that was used back then, but with each mechanical innovation, the workers felt it keenly, even if they didn't know the word.

Ned Ludd, or King Ludd, a figure who was perhaps a blend of myth and reality, became the symbol around which the workers rallied, and in the end, gave them their Luddite name. Secretive, subversive, and akin to Robin Hood, Ned Ludd, in spirit if not in body, ran with the workers when in frustration, they began to smash the machines that were replacing them and producing inferior goods. The workers' protests were not against the machines themselves but rather on the machines' negative effects on their work and on their livelihoods.

According to Ms. Fox, as a result of rampant industrialization, the workers faced poverty, hunger, dislocation, and, if they were lucky enough to keep their jobs, hellish hours. There was no safety net to help the displaced workers, no rent subsidies or food stamps or fuel assistance. When we think of the horrors of Victorian England, we must remember the system that produced these horrors-namely capitalism run amok. The mill owners did not care about the workers; all they cared about was making a profit. The government did not care about the workers, either.

Eventually, the rebellion was quelled, and the workers settled into a new, grinding routine that didn't improve until the rise of the unions. But others continued the struggle. In a clear, concise, and lively style, Ms. Fox moves from the Luddites to the Romantic poets, from the Victorian novelists to the Pre-Raphaelites, from the transcendentalists to the environmentalists, from novelists to those who went back to the land. Ms. Fox's knowledge and range is incredible, and her vivid writing turns what could have been a long and potentially dull list that consists mainly of-let's face it-white men, into a series of fascinating profiles.

Best of all, "Against the Machine" makes the reader think deeply about machines and their place in society. Like all good books, it is a starting point that encourages further reflection. As I thought about the way machines have been used since the industrial revolution, I began to realize how things have shifted. Once, land was used as a source of power and domination, but the machine age changed that, and now technology is used in that way. It's the same old story, except the stakes are higher; we have the ability to destroy the whole planet.

Does it have to be this way? I'd like to think that it doesn't. I'd like to think that we could use machines to make life more comfortable but that we would also have enough sense not to be dominated by them and by those who are in power. I'd like to think we have the ability to say, "Enough! We don't always need more." So far we haven't, but the day may come when our very survival depends on it.

Until then, we need writers such as Nicols Fox to remind us that where we've been is intimately connected with where we are now. And that we have a choice.

Always harbored some suspicion about the "march of technology?"
The author of Against the Machine, The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives, wants to share with you the reason why.
Bass Harbor, Maine author Nicols Fox, who shocked the nation and the world with revelations on bacterial contamination in processed food in her expose, "Spoiled," begins with the social forces that prompted Ned Ludd and his followers to take up arms and traces humanity's love-hate relationship with technology across the next two centuries. Along the way she discovers a deep and broad suspicion about mechanization, industrialization and globalization that permeates art, literature, and politics. As she points out there are many among us who worry, as writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau said, we are becoming "tools of our tools."
While for some people the premise of this book might make an interesting outline for a lengthy magazine piece, such as those in the Economist for which Ms. Fox frequently writes, she has taken it to the next level and beyond. She has conducted exhaustive research and a broad range of reading to weave together an impressive text that carries the thread of Luddism from those first violent clashes in the early 1800s, through the writings and works of famous artists such as William Blake, Rachael Carson, Edward Abbey, E.B. White, Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Brower, Edouard Manet, Charlie Chaplin, William Morris and John Muir.
Along the way Ms. Fox brilliantly manages to tap into the repressed fears harbored by many modern people who feel disconnected while daily using technology, which we seldom understand and tends to isolate us and remove us further and further from the earth, the weather, each other, and, in the end, our own humanity.
And, Ms. Fox, who, in an ironic twist, operates a Luddite bookstore on the Internet, shows us that the push to preserve the natural world is also another manifestation of Luddite philosophy. "Preserving American's wild land against the utilitarian view and its conjoined twin, economic reality, is the same battle the Luddites fought," Ms. Fox writes.
She also helps dispel some common stereotypes that those that eschew modernity, such as the Unabomber, tend to live reclusively or hate society. "Some anarchists are Luddites but the original Luddites were not anarchists," she writes. "They eventually were forced into a violent expression of their frustration but it was not their intention to bring down the system."
Throughout "Against the Machine," Ms. Fox illustrates her points with vignettes from Maine where, she points out, Luddism is alive and well.
She devotes her first chapter to Art and Nan Kellam's cabin on Placentia Island off Tremont, gives considerable space to Scott and Helen Nearing and also peoples her book with other familiar names and faces including Robert and Diane Phipps of Bar Harbor and Bill Coperthwait, "the yurt guy."
As technology continues to clog our lives, from the incessant television advertisements to the newspaper circulars that tout a seemingly endless array of small electronic devices we don't need and can never hope to learn how to fully operate, it is certain that the ranks of those who consider themselves a least some degree of a Luddite will continue to grow. In connecting the dots and showing us the larger picture of how unease with technology has permeated our society, and bringing the topic to the surface where it can be fully aired, Ms. Fox has done us all a great service. You know when you find yourself saying to yourself "you know, she's right," when you are reading "Against the Machine," she's on to something.
For those who want to divest themselves of the trappings of the machine the first step can be quite simple really. It's as easy as picking up a copy of "Against the Machine," turning off the TV or radio, and enjoying a good read.

Nicols Fox has pinpointed so many key items as to why modern life can be so frustrating for so many of us, and why it is so difficult for us to understand the reasons why.

One main reason is that the history of the 'machine control' goes back way before our own lifetimes, and so we are often unaware of what life might be like without that degree of machine control we all currently live with. The roots go back to the start of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, where over-rationalised 'reason' and 'calculation' started to assume an increasing degree of respectability over moral values. The moral premise that just because you are powerful or 'able' to do something, you should not necessarily actually do it, effectively went out of the window. Children were sent down coal mines and were made to work in factories for 16 hours a day, and so on. It took Acts of Parliament to eventually outlaw such extreme examples of control, but the overwhelming force to treat people simply as calculated units of production continued. We see the machine operating in everyday life today, where so-called "restaurants" (some fast-food joints) are more similar to factories, and where the staff have their hand movements calculated down to the 1/10th of a second and their words exchanged with customers often have to come from a script. Human input is no longer required by so many workers, simply the mechanistic following of prescribed steps to the nth degree, a wholly dehumanising process.

This dehumanisation of people can lead to frustration, anger, or even violence, with people really not understanding why. It also leads to a society where people as consumers have become totally dependent or "addicted" to factory-made items which their parents used to produce themselves. Home cooking is a great example, where on Thanksgiving Day in the US Emergency 'Hot Lines' are set up on TV channels for people who still feel the need to cook a turkey and celebrate their tradition, but who have absolutely no idea how to do it any more. Calls come from people who have put a totally frozen 14lb turkey, still in its shrink wrap in the oven at 500 degF, and are wondering if that was the right thing to do. The reason being is that modern TV dinners and junk food have taken away people's need to practice the basic human skill and have the dignity of cooking their own meals. So many have become dependent on "ordering-in" a pizza every night, or microwaving pre-packaged food, never even knowing how a vegetable grows or where chickens come from. In short people have become addicted and dependent on technologies which take their money, in a similar way as with drugs, just less extreme, with little or no knowledge or vison of how to become 'undependent' and have the freedom to choose whether to buy the factory-made product, or not.

I think this book 'Against the Machine' by Nicols Fox is a fantastic contribution to a vision of human freedom where people can make better choices in their lives, and not have to be so dependent on 'The Machine' in life's many facets.

Other books I would recommend along similar, but not exactly the same lines are:

1. "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James Scott ISBN: 0300078153

2. "The Old Way of Seeing (And How to Get It Back)" by Jonathan Hale ISBN: 039574010X . This book has been out of print and is quite expensive, so it's worth looking at second hand booksellers too.

This book will transform your notion of what technology has done to us as humans. I have read it several times, it is like a bible to me. I highly recommend it!

It begins with a complete history of mans resistance to machines, but goes well beyond that. Nicols Fox peppers the entire book with keen insight and her deep thoughts of what we as a race have become; transformed by the mistaken belief that technology and machines have empirically made our lives better and we as humans happier. Yes, they have their place, but we have become enslaved to a dogma that is killing us at an unprecedented rate, while making the rest of us sicker and much less happy.

This book should be a textbook in every school in the world!

I cannot thank Ms. Fox enough for writing this book, it has truly been a blessing in my life!

Thank You So Much!

"Luddite" has been a sneering dismissal for some time now, automatically consigning its patently naive, fuzzy-minded, woefully idealistic target to irrelevance. Which is a convenient way of avoiding the complex discussion of technology's shadow, and the social, cultural, psychological, and even spiritual fallout of that shadow.

One of the first things to remember about the Luddites is that they weren't simply ignorant protesters bent on destroying all machines, although that's what the word has come to mean. Specifically, they were skilled craft workers who were not only losing their means of making a living to machines, but also losing the meaning of their lives to those machines as well. It wasn't just loss of money, but loss of purpose. I won't deny the many benefits that have come from technology -- after all, I'm using it to write this review, which anyone around the world can read -- but it's important that we remember the human costs of any new technology. Too often they don't become apparent until the technology is so embedded in our everyday lives that we can't do without it.

In this wide-ranging volume, Nicols Fox examines that dilemma, and the ways in which it's been articulated & explored in Western culture. Her approach is firmly based in the humanities, and delves into the corrosive social & psychological byproducts of a culture built upon machines -- and more crucial, a culture whose primary metaphor has become that of the machine. Some of the dehumanizing effects of this worldview are blatant; others are more subtle & far-reaching. Fox offers examples of people who have grappled with these effects & sought to find alternatives to them. In so doing, she invites her readers to consider those alternatives themselves.

Clearly technology is here to stay ... until the power starts to run out, and endless growth becomes unsustainable. It's quite possible that will happen within the lifetime of many reading this review. At that point, a background in the Luddite tradition will suddenly seem a lot more helpful & relevant. But even before that scenario unfolds, it seems sensible to examine just how much we depend on shiny, trendy gadgets that we really don't need. And we might ask ourselves, just how much of our own souls do we lose in turning over so much of our lives to those gadgets so happily & eagerly?

As a place to start asking those questions, this book is highly recommended!

It can be intimidating to venture into anti-machine literature. If you've been postponing the plunge, this is the book for you. Fox is not trying to scare you. She walks along with you through the odd turns history makes at times. Apparently people never wanted to work in factories. They did not want machines to dominate. They did not even want clocks. Fox's book is a well-researched, readable introduction to an important topic. You won't be sorry.

Near the end of her book, the author writes: "Some anarchists are Luddites, but the original Luddites were not anarchists. They eventually were forced into violent expression of their frustration, but it was not their intention to bring down a system. Rather, it was to protect a system that existed and was working -- if not perfectly, then very much better than what was being introduced to replace it." (333-34)

Concerning each person discussed in this book (I do not mention names), the question then needs to be asked: Is this person hoping to protect a system that is under threat by recent changes or to recover a system recently lost, or is he hoping to bring down a system and replace it with something else entirely, either a system new and unprecedented or perhaps one long ago lost; and what role does technology play in this? Additionally, to what does the term 'technology' refer? Do they all agree on the referent of the term? The author's unsystematic approach leaves some of these questions unanswered, and in most cases unasked.

Entrances to an anti-technology viewpoint are many. The book introduces some of them. Here are a few. (I've compressed them as much as seemed fair, and offer no lines of reasoning, either fallacious or logical, to support them. The book's presentation is not as abstract or explicit.)

Deep within the notion of morality is the undertone that asceticism is the purest form of morality, and that self-sacrifice, self-denial, and abstinence are always morally pure and so always better choices than self-interest, egocentrism, or self-indulgence. In essence, you are never of the first importance. Because this undertone is always present and quietly implicit in the notion of morality, it can become, for some people, loudly explicit when the issue of getting along with less is raised. "Modern conveniences" (including, but necessarily not limited to, devices and machines designed by mechanical or electrical engineers based upon principles discovered by science) start to look to some people like temptations to immorality, or at least to a less moral life. The primitive life seems to them the morally authentic life. This is one entrance into an anti-technology viewpoint. It is also, by expansion, an entrance into an anti-science viewpoint, which shows up in this book quite often.

Another issue is the need for money, and the need to work to get that money. The more you want to buy, the more money you need and the more money you need the more you need to work and think about work, and thus the more your life becomes about the work you do to get the money you need to buy the things you want. This used to be called the "rat race". Wanting less, living with less, cutting down your expenses and economic obligations, might free up your life a little so you can live less for your job and more for yourself and for those with whom you live. This is another entrance into an anti-technology viewpoint. It is also, by expansion, an entrance into an anti-capitalism viewpoint, which shows up in this book quite often.

Another issue is nature and the encroachment of the urban (technological) environment upon it. Industrialism ravaged nature. As cities expand, nature is shunted into state sanctioned preserves and city parks; wildlife clusters where it can. If the technological system ("the machine") didn't exist this wouldn't have happened. This is another entrance into an anti-technology viewpoint.

Mixing that along with the implicit moral asceticism which contends that you are not of the first importance, you might imagine yourself less important than nature; and in this way nature becomes situated within your moral system, and imposes obligations upon you: just as the comfort of others is of more importance than your own comfort, the "needs" of nature have higher value than yours. This is an entrance into an anti-human viewpoint, which does not show up at such an extreme in this book but is certainly consonant with the other ways of expanding on an anti-technology viewpoint.

A variation of this expansion, not quite anti-human, but containing qualities of moral ascetiscism, is an anti-civilization viewpoint, which does not show up in this book, but is consonant with the other ways of expanding on an anti-technology viewpoint.

Another variation, not quite anti-human, would be the viewpoint that all that is animate is to be treated as of more ultimate value than yourself, although not of more intrinsic value than the whole of humanity. From this viewpoint, under non-life threatening conditions, you as an individual are to defer to all other life, human or otherwise, animal or otherwise, and only under the duress of danger and absolute need is it morally pure to act in self-interest. Some semblance of this viewpoint shows up in this book.

Another issue is human physical and psychological health. This is conceptually separable from the health of wildlife, other life in nature, or the structural cohesion of inanimate nature. Technology can be viewed as injurious to human physical and psychological health. This is another entrance into an anti-technology viewpoint. It shows up in this book quite often.

Another issue is beauty. Some people view many or all of the material effects of technology as ugly or at least less beautiful than non-technolgical variants, and thus not only repellent in one degree or another but as diminishing the overall aesthetic enjoyment in life. This is another entrance into an anti-technolgy viewpoint. It shows up in this book quite often.

Typically, these means (there are others not mentioned here) of entering into an anti-technology viewpoint are intermixed and diluted or modified to suit the temperament of the person taking the stand. Anarchism occurs at the extremes.

The book works as an entrance into the topic. It is by no means comprehensive or philosophically astute, and is not an apologia one way or the other.

The premise of this book is so obvious a high school student could have written it. That said, a high school student might have done a better job of exploring utopian and dystopian literature over the last 200 years. "The Hidden Luddite Tradition"? There's nothing hidden about Fox's examples. Emerson and Thoreau were secretly Luddites? Pray tell. French Impressionists liked nature more than the machine? Fascinating! The Romantics were secretly Luddites?!?! Welcome home, Sherlock Holmes! Blah, blah, blah. Fox adds nothing to the debate on the role of technology resistance with this book. The writing is pedantic, trite, and predictable (if your into Dan Brown). Many of the sources she sites are books out-of-print, for over 100 years! Just try challenging that opinion!
(I realize I'm using lots of exclamation marks, but this book really let me down. I was expecting a cogent articulation of anti-technological groups and movements, but instead got "Luddites in the Arts for Dummies".)

p.s. !

According to the book, the Kellams lived a frugal life on their island, subsisting mostly on "peanuts and sardines." And they "wanted no machinery that would require fuel beyond the kerosene and gas lamps." Well, you don't have to go to a pristine wilderness to live like that. They could just as well have been living in a tenement in New York city, buying their canned sardines and bags of peanuts at the local market and using a bare bulb for light. It is easy to survive in the wilderness if you stockpile enough sardines and kerosene. What would have been a challenge is IF they had attempted to survive on what they could forage, fish, hunt, or grow with the tools they could make (like the Native Americans did). Simplicity is an easy thing if the canning factory is operating, the peanut farmers and merchants are toiling their trades, and one has enough of a pension to purchase those necessities.