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

Rating:
Summary: Against the machine connects the dots
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Against the Machine by Nicols Fox
Review: 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.