Year Zero And The Permanent Things

Reflections on ARC, and a Harvard summer school on philosophy of technology

I usually try and publish a newsletter every Friday. Last week, though, I spent the first half of last week at the ARC 2025 conference in London, and the following week prostrate with flu. So this is a little belated, and my brain is still sluggish. But in a way that’s been helpful, as it’s taken me a week to sort out any kind of coherent impression from an event that felt strobe-like: a series of blindingly intense moments, amid a sea of sensory overload.

Beside the flu thing, that was partly down to my intense nerves at the prospect of speaking in front of 4,000 (!!!) people, partly to general overwhelm at the vast Excel conference venue, and partly to my general puzzlement at the composition of ARC as such. I survived the speaking bit, which produced the following discussion with Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau on identity in the digital age:

As for Excel, I wasn’t the only person to remark on the disjunction between the conference centre’s paradigmatic expression of the nomos of the airport, and the humanising story the conference itself sought to bring to contemporary political and social questions. Perhaps all we can really say to this is, a little tritely, we are where we are and the options for accommodating that many people for a conference are both limited and, more or less by definition, ordered to that nomos.

As for how to characterise that total set of people of whom ARC 2025 comprised a representative cross-section, it’s a bit early to tell. But if I were to try an summarise the tacit question that had prompted this gathering to come together in one place, I’d suggest something like the following:

We don’t want to abandon the achievements of modernity, but we are uncomfortably aware that many have been won at the cost of destroying our shared sociocultural commons. This trajectory is now delivering diminishing returns. We believe we stand a better chance of securing and advancing modernity’s positives if we instead secure and build on on those aspects of that commons that are truly indispensable. So we’re gathering to explore what should be on that list.

To put it another way: some solvent force appears to have washed away our ability to describe in familiar terms what we’re about, or our ability to place our trust in anything at all - and now we find ourselves urgently in need of foundations. I would characterise that force, at its most fundamental, as that of technology, and ARC as part of a growing, and now worldwide, collective effort to respond not by discarding technology (an absurd proposal for any of us, but especially for the great many technologists present) but rather by returning, forcefully, to the question of “what we’re about”.

Another way of putting this might be what Heritage Foundation head Kevin Roberts, quoting Russell T Kirk, calls“the permanent things”. Roberts lists family, faith, community, work, nation. Adding to this, per my panel in the video, beneath these permanent things lies a still deeper question: what humans ourselves are. Especially in the context of accelerating advances in AI and biotech, this seems more uncertain, and more urgent, than ever.

Pace Paul Kingsnorth, and pace my own frequently expressed scepticism toward the notion of never-ending progress, I think grappling with these issues is not necessarily a Christian matter, though you can save yourself reinventing a number of wheels by inviting theologically-minded Christians. Either way, it’s a worthwhile reason to gather. Yes, exploring human nature amid the nomos of the airport is a bit paradoxical. But it’s a good metaphor for where we are in a general sense. We find ourselves now repeatedly confronted with the question of where, or in what, our human nature consists, even as our economic and technological situation offers us glimpses of multiple possible futures that we intuit are antithetical to that nature - just in ways we can no longer articulate, because we discarded the grounds for doing so. This is a thorny and pervasive problem. If enough thoughtful, high-achieving people are now converging on these questions to fill a 4,000-seat auditorium, this is a good thing.

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Does The Machine Have A Tradition?

ARC is arguably just one of the larger and more high-profile new initiatives now grappling with how we stay human after technological Year Zero. I was cheered by the huge numbers of young people at the conference, both as delegates and the ubiquitous, friendly and helpful volunteer floor hosts: my sense is that the young are at the forefront of the hunger to respond to the current moment, by reaching beyond nihilism in search of the permanent things, as well they might be. And over the last few years, I’ve hoped to contribute in a modest way to such responses, as part of the teaching faculty for a week-long summer seminar on the philosophy of technology.

We’re running it again this summer, from 1-7 June, in Cambridge, MA. Titled The Machine Has No Tradition: A Seminar on Technology, Revolution, and Apocalypse, the course is a week-long enquiry into the twin questions concerning technology, and concerning staying human in a technological society. It’s hosted by the Abigail Adams Institute at Harvard University, and is open to current undergraduate and graduate students, and young professionals working in relevant fields.

The reading is intense; the discussions still more so. We’ll speedrun transhumanism, singularities, eschatology, and some of the greatest thinkers on technology to date, from Marx, Strauss, and Heidegger, to Illich, McLuhan, Schmitt, and more. The course is led by the political scientists Jon Askonas, coauthor of the recent Future for the Family technology manifesto, and Nathan Pinkoski, the sharpest contemporary observer I know of actually existing post-liberalism, plus yours truly.

Accommodation and some meals are provided; we ask for a student contribution of $850, to help cover overheads (the vast bulk of the cost is covered by generous donors). But if that’s a struggle for you, scholarships are available. Applications are open until 14 March. If you’re interested please apply, or send on to someone who might be.

That’s all from my still flu-addled brain for now! Till next time, M