Quality Against The Machine

Taking a stand for quality is one of the best defences we have against the Machine

Photo by Alex Gruber on Unsplash

The Machine.¹ It is inevitable, often integral, part of our everyday lives and this is something even techno-sceptics like myself have to accept². We may not approve of this fact, but that doesn’t make it any less true. More sobering is the reality that we are all complicit in the continuance, and perhaps even the spread, of the Machine and the mindset that fuels it. Functioning fully and effectively in the modern techno-world requires that this be so — unless you take the bold, radical step of disentangling yourself from the Machine’s reaches by creating a parallel “modern techno-absent world” like the Amish have done. But then, even they are not as divorced from the Machine as they would like to be — or perhaps realise.

Undoubtedly, there are some aspects and attributes of the Machine that are positive, whose disappearance I would lament. It is, in a sense, wonderful to be globally connected to people I would otherwise never have had the chance to meet; advances in modern medicines have saved countless lives;³ and modern transport systems have made the world more accessible and explorable. In agricultural terms, modern farming technologies have significantly increased global yields and lowered both the costs of production and the price of food, thus helping to raise millions out of dire poverty. Taking a hard and fast stance on the virtues or vices of the Machine isn’t cut and dry, black or white, simple or easy — but a murky and ever-shifting shade of grey.

The ultimate question, therefore, seems not to be “how can the Machine be defeated?”,⁴ but “how can we develop habits of healthy disengagement?”, “How can we become expertly attuned to recognising when the costs of utilising the Machine outweigh the benefits?”, and “How can we reflexively turn it off when the Machine starts to erode what is good?”. The success or failure of our modern age may well be hinged on how adept we all are in answering these questions — and how steadfast we commit to our costly and difficult conclusions.

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To answer these questions wisely and competently we need help. Our collective wisdom and understanding as a society has already been contaminated by the Machine mindset and we are enthralled by its seductive glow. Imagining a different future to the machine-dominated age we live and breathe in is immensely difficult. Our past attempts are littered with the failures of a thousand broken resolutions and declarations.

Thankfully, we are not without deep wells of purer wisdom to draw upon in our pursuit of cultivating wise and critical engagement with the Machine. We can learn from philosophies, ways of life, and traditions formed in ages and places where the Machine mindset had not yet penetrated or had been resolutely resisted. We can proverbially sit at the feet of the sages and “prophets” who lived in the time before the Machine’s dominance, who foresaw the all-consuming winds of change brewing on the horizon, and who could point first hand to the Good that would disappear when the hurricane-force cultural and technological changes hit.

Few parts of our society were hit by these winds as hard as agriculture. And few areas had such vocal and wise defenders. The sage-like Agrarians — those wise men and women of the land, steeped as they were in rich “cultural humus”⁵ — are those who I have found to be the most valuable guides through the murky complexities and violent winds of change that characterise the Machine Age. They were men and women whose intimate acquaintance with the Good and the Better forged in them a natural scepticism towards the Machine. They were ready and prepared to declare to its face “Thus far and no further”. They were men and women who deeply loved their beautiful lands and convivial communities and who wrote and acted passionately in their defence. They left a legacy we all can follow.

Wendell Berry and C.H. Gardiner are two such Agrarians. Though they may hail from very different shores — Mr. Gardiner from my home in England and Mr. Berry from rural Kentucky — both spoke with the same, unified voice and both knew intimately the age when agriculture was characterised by a slower, more humane and beautiful pace: when haystacks adorned the fields, horses and their ploughboys skilfully worked the furrows, and the fields were full of men, women, and abundant life. Crucially, both lived through the time when all this Good was subject to violent winds of change, though by resolutely holding on to their principles with an iron-firm grip (and adapting where necessary), both men weathered the brutal storm with the Good they stewarded not only intact but flourishing.

Their age was characterised by the emergence of one machine in particular; a machine whose influence on the countryside is second to none in its extent, pervasiveness, and power. The tractor. This machine rapidly colonised fields great and small, displacing horse- and manpower with seemingly unstoppable momentum. Farmers across Europe and America were faced with a critical dilemma. Either they adopt the machine for the great increases in yields and “labour saving” it promised and thus accept the far-reaching changes it will cause to the health of the land, quality of production, and rural culture; or stick with the “old ways” of good, slow husbandry, thus safeguarding the health and beauty of the land, but risk being left behind, outcompeted, and potentially bankrupt. It was an unenviable choice. No wonder many farmers felt compelled to embrace the tractor with both hands — and progressively larger and land hungrier tractors and machines after that.

Mr. Berry and Mr. Gardiner chose differently. They could see the benefits the tractor offered, and both to a limited extent adopted it where they perceived it could have real benefit. In the words of Gardiner, where the tractor or machine “avoid[s] drudgery and fatigue and saves valuable time” he had no objections, though he was, of course, referring to small N-series tractors and not the GPS-controlled, AC-fitted mega-machines we have nowadays. His advice, however, did not stop there. A vital caveat followed: “…so long as it does not result in deterioration of manual skill, quality of output and craftsmanship.”⁶ With this caveat applied, the number of scenario’s where increased mechanisation was warranted or justified was drastically reduced. Indeed, Mr. Gardiner went on to lament, “Under mechanisation how frequently is quality sacrificed for quantity!”. And he was right — in many more ways than he knew.

Wendell Berry took an even more radical position than Mr. Gardiner. In his essay Horse Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labour Saving, Mr. Berry recounts the season where he decided to revert back to horse-drawn labour on his farm and his reasons for doing so. Among these reasons were the superior quality and durability of horse drawn tools and their ability to work more sensitively with the land. Surprisingly, though, the chief motivator for Mr. Berry appears to be that using horses forced him to do less work. Less but better:

The coming of the tractor made it possible for a farmer to do more work, but not better. And there comes a point, as we know when more begins to imply worse. The mechanization of farming passed that point long ago — probably, or so I will argue, when it passed from horse power to tractor power.⁷

This was not a step backwards for Mr. Berry. His relatively small holding allowed him to progress forward in the quality of his work by re-adopting the older, slower ways. He was making a conscious decision, taking a stand for the quality of his production and the health of his land. Mr. Berry fundamentally understood that when speed increases past a certain determinable threshold, care necessarily diminishes — and his marginal land was in need of constant care. How much more so do our lands after being battered, bruised, and scared by decades of intensive Machine work.

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The primary article of wisdom that both Mr. Gardiner implicitly, and Mr. Berry explicitly, offer to us then is this: There is an observable point beyond which more or faster work causes a steep deterioration in the quality of our work. This is the point where the inherent limitations of the farmer or worker are exceeded, where he shifts from care to simple or abstract management,⁸ and when he begins to notice tell-tale signs of his land suffering from neglect and/or abuse. Soil quality declines, the birds stop singing, and scars begin to fester upon its surface. As we will see, this “quality-quantity tipping point” is not only relevant to farming. It has applications that extend into every facet of our lives and every endeavour we undertake.

The Good Small Farmer will avoid this tipping point at all costs. His competitive advantage against big farmers is dependent on being able to offer a substantially better quality of production. This relies, of course, upon his land being healthy. A healthy land requires good husbandry — the best tools for which are made from wood and iron powered by slow and steady human hands.⁹ It would be suicidal for him to speed things up and sacrifice quality. It would be suicidal for him to fully embrace the Machine.

Avoiding this tipping point presupposes the ability to observe when one is approaching it. Here again we see the value in the well-matured wisdom of the Agrarians in that they were masters of observing and judging quality and discerning when it was coming under threat. This ability was honed and nurtured by many seasons of working long hours out under the sun, studying intimately the health and condition of one’s crops and livestock, and living in a community where collective wisdom and judgement, matured over centuries, could be applied by peers with brutal honesty to the fruits any individual member harvested from their land. The Agrarian’s eye for quality was second to none: dependable, reliable, and adept at spotting frauds. No deterioration was to be accepted.

From them we have much to learn. Our ability to detect deteriorating quality is in a poor, even decrepit state. Having fallen prey to the Machine’s pseudo-virtues of speed, efficiency, and a lust for quantity, the competencies required for detecting quality and noticing its degradation such as slow, patient, and dedicated observation, are being rapidly eroded. Moreover, not only do we fail to observe degrading quality, but we appear to have fallen in love with ever-increasing quantity. We chase after higher and higher yields and bigger and bigger fields no matter the long-term costs. One glance at our rural lands with their rampant soil erosion, faunal and floral depletion, and lack of any rural culture is proof enough that we have fallen far short from the standards the Agrarians set and defended. We the consumer are also culpable in this trend, accepting, as we do, tasteless fruit and vegetables¹⁰ in the supermarket, demanding cheaper and cheaper food from industrially managed fields, and filling our trolleys with ultra-processed goods.¹¹ Our affections and tastes appear to be biased towards foods that have come from the belly of the Machine rather than those lovingly crafted and nurtured by human hands.

Our deficient perception for quality does not stop with food and agriculture. We buy cheap, mass produced toys for our children which will end up in the landfill, and buy white goods which rarely seem to last more than a year or two. We purchase shoes and clothes that quickly wear out all because they are “on trend” (which seem to change as frequently as the wind) whilst passing by handmade items from the cobbler or tailor because their prices are too steep. Neither do we take time to fix our mass-produced goods when they inevitably break. We instead regard them as utterly disposable and have become so accustomed to cheapness and constant purchasing that, without hesitation, we click again the button “Buy It Now” and replace what has broken with goods of equally poor quality.

This is only going to get worse. The ascendancy and cult-like popularity of businesses that churn out mass-produced goods at an astounding rate such as Temu and Shien is going to be turbo-charged in the AI world we are racing towards. Companies like these will likely utilise AI to produce and design goods at inhumane rates and will deploy algorithms to constantly alter our tastes and fashion trends, ensuring a never-ending stream of consumption. These companies’ entire business models are fixated on quantity rather than quality and our mass-consumeristic society appears to be captured and enthralled by their schemes. The quality-quantity threshold has been obliterated. We couldn’t care less.

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Myriad are the reasons why this all matters. Not only is our infatuation with quantity inherently unsustainable, imposing crippling burdens on our biosphere as natural resources are depleted and pollutants concentrate, but our lives and their fruit become shallow, hollow, and permanently unripe as we chase after more to the detriment of the good. Little of permanence and value is left for future generations to enjoy apart from a monumental pile of waste. Mass-produced goods will never be marvelled at in the museums of the future and tragically, the master craftsmen and women who otherwise would have produced items of outstanding quality and beauty, are being outcompeted into the dust by the culprits behind those very same mass-produced goods.

Our lust for more and more fuels the relentless energy and power of the Machine and erodes the good with quickening pace. Behind us stretch to the horizon degraded fields, deforested forests, clogged up rivers, and landfill sites upon landfill sites full to the brim with the worthless fruits of our pursuit of quantity. All this stands as a sombre testimony to our empty and trivial Machine age.

Vanity of vanities.

If only we had taken a stand for quality; if only we had taken a stand for what is good.

The good news is we still can.

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1. By the Machine I am referring to the totalising impulse/force towards ever increasing efficiency and the tools used to achieve this: mechanisation, virtual technologies, algorithms, AI, even, to an extent, industrialisation. See Ivan Illich, Tools For Conviviality, and Jaques Ellul, The Technological Age for more on this.

2. For example, I am typing this on a laptop and about to send it to your electronic virtual inboxes.

3. Though see Ivan Illich’s beginning to Tools For Conviviality to read that advances in modern medicine is not de facto a good.

4. Though in some areas such as “creative” AI, deepfake technology, mass video surveillance and facial recognition, the cashless economy, and advanced weaponry, total defeat looks to be necessary.

5. Wendell Berry’s evocative term from his essay Quantity Versus Form.

6. C.H. Gardiner, The Vale of Evesham Group. In: Massingham [Ed.] The Small Farmer. Collins.

7. Wendell Berry, Horse Drawn Tools And The Doctrine Of Labour Saving.

8. Thank you to my patron subscriber Eric Kyte for this insight on a recent patron subscriber one-on-one call.

9. Though along with Mr. Gardiner, he may choose to use a small tractor for some tasks.

Also, even the Good Big Farmer will avoid this tipping point by employing scale sensitive machinery and committing to doing some tasks by hand. Hand tools are far too slow for his big fields, but can still be employed in areas where particular care is required.

10. Once you have tried a home grown heritage tomato you will understand entirely that we are sold frauds in the supermarket.

11. I will add that for some impoverished or financially stretched consumers, these goods and foods are all they can afford — I do not pass judgement on them at all. I wish quality was more affordable. If we consumers who could afford quality demanded it more, perhaps the price would come down as the supply of quality foods and goods increases in response.