The Sophianic Jihad

In The Butlerian Jihad, part of the Dune series extended by Frank Herbert’s son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson, a future civilization calls for the destruction of all computers, thinking machines, and humanoid robots. This sensibility is succinctly articulated in the dictum “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” John Michael Greer draws on this idea in his book Our Retro Future: Looking to the Past to Reinvent the Future, and, as I’ve written, I think his instincts are sharp and his arguments worthy of deep consideration. With the technocrats now in smug assurance of their absolute victory, now is the time to start thinking about our subservience to, especially, information technology and to the technocrats and their lackeys in government who think they control it—and by controlling it controlling us.

In fact, we have arrived at a nexus predicted long since. As Canadian philosopher George Grant, for example, wrote in the 1960s, “When one contemplates the conquest of nature by technology one must remember that that conquest had to include our own bodies.” [1] Facing the prospect of mandated and enforced medical procedures and the attendant “digital passports” now being developed and implemented, I’d say the technological conquest of the human person is set at full speed ahead.

I’m not surprised by any of this, and neither should anyone else be. I’ve been warning about it for years, for one thing. In my first published academic paper, 2005’s “Meditations on Blade Runner”(available as a pdf on the “Articles” page of my website), I speculated about the then half-illusory prospect of transhumanism, a project now fully applauded by The World Economic Forum and its subsidiaries and perhaps even by the Vatican. As one can tell from the parties with vested interests in this tranhumanist project (though cloaked under the disguises of “health” and “environmentalism”), this, as all conquests, is ultimately about power. As Grant writes,

“In North American science the motive of wonder becomes ever more subsidiary to the motive of power, and that those scientists still dominated by wonder have a more difficult time resisting the forces of power which press in upon them from without their community…. It is the growing victory of power over wonder which is the basis of the proposition that the modern sciences can best be understood as a unity around the idea of mastery.” [2]

I’ve written in most of my books about the regretful standard ethos of science since Francis Bacon and Descartes as an enterprise invested in exploitation and domination, not all that different from the psychological mindset of the rapist; and I’ve lamented the loss of an integral view of science represented in the hermetic scientists of the early modern period and Goethe’s delicate empiricism. How different would the world look had the brain power and investment of subsequent centuries been invested in a more human and integral science, a science not blind to the realm of the spirit? But it is not only the hard sciences that are complicit in the play of dominance and submission in human societies: the social sciences are just as implicated. Again Grant:

“It has become increasingly clear that the technological society requires not only the control of non-human nature, but actually the control of human nature. This is the chief cause of the development of the modern ‘value-free’ social sciences.” [3]

Certainly, the superabundance of psychological engineers of consent in government, media outlets, social media, and the pharmaceutical industry (to name only the most obvious) bears witness to the prostitution of almost an entire field of inquiry. I’d even go so far as to say (almost purely from personal observation) that it certainly seems that those most anxious about the “pandemic” also suffer from a variety of psychological co-morbidities. That’s how it works. Exploit the enemy’s weakness, humanity being the enemy in this case. How different the social sciences are now than they were in the age of Freud, Jung, Adler, Frankl and their contemporaries. So much of the human has been lost at the expense of the technocratic.

For my own part, what I propose is a kind of Sophianic Jihad, one where the human is elevated above the cold and calculating values of the technocratic. Indeed, I believe the technocrats fear this more than anything: a world where they are ignored and the illusion of their power evaporates like the digital froth it is. In the 1940s, Russian philosopher and prophet Nikolai Berdyaev speculated that “the day of modern history is over and that we are entering upon a period of darkness.” [4] I don’t think his timing was off. What we are living in is not the inauguration of the Age of Darkness, but its crisis point. Our civilization has lost all moorings to the Real—whether in terms of gender, or marriage, or of the Creation itself, no less than of human nature.

The technocrats and the technocratic, under the aegis of their unknown god, Ahriman, swallow up our natural and supernatural lives with their glittering distractions and alluring falsehoods promising immortality and a freedom that is anything but free.

What I am not advocating is a retreat into a kind of medieval paradise dreamt of by arm-chair distributists and cosplaying pseudo-Inklings. As Berdyaev writes, “A return the pre-industrial period of history is absolutely impossible. Medievalists like Carlyle and Ruskin [and I would add William Morris] turned to the past instead of looking forward, in spite of all the truth their criticisms contain: We are only able to go forward and we must.” [5] Greer himself only looks back so far as the Victorian age.

But, believe it or not, I am a futurist. I hold that the future—a human future—is a sophianic future. It is also the spiritual future, as it restores humanity to its rightful place in harmony with both the natural and supernatural realms. Anything else will fail. And we may have to experience a few failures before we figure this out. I may not be here to see it. Nevertheless, the time for the Sophianic Jihad has arrived.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Divine Feminine.

1. George Grant, Technology and Empire (House of Anansi Press, 1969), 27.

2. Ibid., 116.

3. Ibid., 118.

4. Nikolai Bedyaev, Towards a New Epoch (London, 1949), 39.

5. Ibid., 45.

Paul Kingsnorth and John Michael Greer Are My Homeboys

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern

I can take a hint.

A few weeks ago, I went through a spate of queries as to whether I had read anything by Paul Kingsnorth or John Michael Greer. These inquiries were from readers of my books and my blog as well as from good friends—and when I received three such prompts from three people completely unknown to one another within the space of a couple of hours, I figured it was time to give these two writers a hearing, Like I said, I can take a hint.

I had never heard of Kingsnorth, the novelist and environmental writer, though it seems as if I should have. Good heavens, he’s everywhere these days! I had heard of Greer, but only knew about his neopagan writings (which I’d never read), and learned that not only was he Archdruid of North America at one time (a job I did not know available) but also that he is a very perceptive social critic, the kind of guy not afraid to ask the most obvious questions. My friend Mike Sauter, a regular contributor to Jesus the Imagination, has been recommending Greer’s blog to me for a good long while, and I really liked this blogpost on Johnny Appleseed,. And, for Pete’s sake!, his blog is entitled Ecosophia. How have I not been following this guy?

Anyway, prodded by my better angels, I purchased a couple of their books, Kingsnorth’s Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays and Greer’s The Retro Future: Looking to the Past to Reinvent the Future, both published in 2017. My own book Transfiguration, which treats many of the same issues as their books—transhumanism, the coming collapse of the technocratic paradigm, our relationship to the Creation and divinity, and how to live a fully human life—was published in 2018. So, obviously, I was overjoyed to find two kindred spirits out there in the world.

The gist of Kingsnorth’s book (and approach to life) is that talking about environmentalism and the thing we call “activism” are essentially fruitless at this moment. Better, he argues, is to actually live it, which is why he and his family bought two and a half acres in the west of Ireland (Kingsnorth is British) and started walking the walk instead of talking the talk so much (his own admission). As anyone familiar with my work will know, this is precisely what my wife and I have been doing on our biodynamic farm. Theoretical environmentalism is one thing; living it is another.

Greer’s book, on the other hand, is a cogent interpretation of modernity and its discontents. In particular, he repeatedly points out that those of us who think electric cars and wind farms will solve anything and allow us to still hold to our transportation-heavy and technologically-reliant lifestyles in the future are living in a fool’s paradise. That’s why his book examines the retro future: he thinks what we need to do is start developing the skills that will be necessary in a post-industrial age (I also touch on this in Transfiguration). He lists “seven sustainable technologies” that would serve humanity in good stead as we move into such a time: 1) organic intensive gardening; 2) solar thermal technologies (not the same as solar panels); 3) sustainable wood heating; 4) sustainable health care; 5) letterpress printing and its related technologies; 6) low-tech shortwave radio; 7) computer-free mathematics. Some may bristle at these, astonished that Greer would suggest that the future will not be one of multiplying digital playgrounds and unbounded transportation freedom. Greer might say they’ll just have to learn the hard way.

As I did in Transfiguration, in these two books these writers anticipated where our civilization was heading and how to answer that. They’re pretty smart guys, but the World Archons are also pretty smart and could also see where things were heading—so they’ve been trying to game the outcome to their advantage. But that can only last so long. I don’t think either of them saw what the Archons were planning. But here we are.

Kingsnorth was recently received into the Orthodox Church and, unfortunately, he’s been paraded around by a number of Orthodox bloggers and such much in the way the captured Cleopatra was through Rome (Catholic media is horrible at this kind of convert trophy hunting as well). Nevertheless, an incipient Sophiology certainly seems to inhabit his work (which may be what drew him to Orthodoxy). The Archdruid Greer also seems to embody an inherent Sophiology. For souls attuned to both the natural spiritual worlds—and who do more than that conceptualize, a sophiological sensibility is simply unavoidable.

Ride on, brothers.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Divine Feminine.