Living Through Helene

I went to bed on Thursday night the 29th of September shrugging off the approaching hurricane Helene. I live in the mountains of North Carolina, and I know hurricanes generally peter out by the time they get to the hills. My neighbor and I did think the night before that maybe one of us should go get some extra gas, just in case. We didn’t.  

I was not the only one who wildly miscalculated the storm. To situate the story a bit, we are in Polk County, which is where the Lake Lure dam was now famously near failure. That’s up the hill from me, more into the mountains; and, as you have likely seen, up from there the devastation is still something being revealed daily. Where I am, in the lower land, the trouble was mostly with an amazing number of trees and power lines down. We got power back about a week after the storm, which seems like a marvel.  

Naturally, when all normalcy breaks down, one reflects on things. The most normal thing that was gone was our connection to “the world” via the internet and cell phones, since the towers were down or very spotty; and, for some time, even smartphones could not get through to the internet. At one point, we got a text that 911 was no longer working. Saying it “went dark” is an understatement. Such things we take for granted, like the background programs running on this computer as I type. But they aren’t neutral, and they are doing something to us all the time simply because they are there all the time.  

Some people shrug off the weirdos who think that the broadening world of global-techno-whatever is a benign act of progress, but I think they are wrong. And the disaster of Helene was revelatory. Paul Kingsnorth has done a good job, I think, of showing how our so-called order today is the very “spirit of a machine,” which he puts thus:

The ultimate project of modernity, I have come to believe, is to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods. What I call the Machine is the nexus of power, wealth, ideology and technology that has emerged to make this happen.

In the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist seems to be a sort of machine, a power that isolates us away from God, man, and nature all while making us think we are served well by it—we know from Scripture that it gains considerable strength by controlling economic activity and draining man of relational contact. Last week, nature refused to be replaced and showed her power. There is great suffering happening right now and more to come, but something is unquestionably revealed when the lights go off—or, put differently, when the real lights come on.  

The spirit of the machine keeps us away from one another. It was amazing how quickly people started being together when it went dark. Before you knew it, we had neighbors over and relied not on the phantoms of things via streaming but were forced to live only from real things—we were playing music (on instruments), cooking meals together (on fire), and communicating (on a porch). Real things ruled the day. The recently tumultuous sky turned to a stunning sunset. My most proximate neighbor is someone I almost never see thanks to video games, but I couldn’t keep him away once the power was off.  

That the spirit of the machine keeps us apart is an unmistakable reality. Of course, it does this by solving the problem of connection with “media,” and its artificiality is its lifeblood. Our revelry on the porch wasn’t without knowledge of suffering around us (however, you readers probably knew more than we did, since we had very little cell service and no other media); and when the time came, everyone was ready to serve and help. People often note that disaster brings out a spirit of service in many people, but we’re wrong to picture this merely as practical and necessary functions executed in the light of clear need. In such times, people also enjoy their time with other people, they become better at learning to know and be known by one another. Throttles of chainsaws open up, yes, but hearts open up too.

Being able to help one another practically is a welcome change of pace. In the Gospel, Our Lord challenges us to love our neighbor. At that time, the question seemed to be, “Who’s my neighbor? Jew or Gentile?” Today when we hear “love your neighbor,” the question is “How?” Whether it’s welfare or direct deposit paychecks, our resources and services flow in and out of the wires and signals around us, and we’re left with little moments of waving or, at best, chitchatting over the fence. 

A defining characteristic of today’s suburbanized economy is that our practical lives are not intertwined with our neighbors—we likely don’t even know the occupation of the people around us, only that it must be somewhat similar if we can afford to live on the same side of town together. Therefore, the only thing harder today than knowing your neighbor is trying to know what he might need, which is why our neighborly care rarely looks like the New Testament’s call to provide tangible things beyond pleasantries like food and clothing. But, when a tree is blocking the driveway of an old lady, or an inexperienced off-roader is stuck in a ditch, love becomes so much easier.   A defining characteristic of today’s suburbanized economy is that our practical lives are not intertwined with our neighbors.Tweet This

Walker Percy famously said that we are way more jazzed up when our neighbor suffers than when he prospers, which is why we can remember juicy gossip more than the names of our friends’ newborns. But Percy also notes that we tend to rise to life when things are going badly. As disasters are wont to inspire, the heroes swarm wherever there is need. 

This seems particularly good for men, who can apply actual strength and—I would argue—a dispensability that makes them perfect for the sort of sacrificial priestliness that healthy societies ask of their men. In other words, neighbors start taking care of each other when it becomes obvious that that’s what is needed. The machine takes care of you because it is profitable to do so. Your neighbor takes care of you because it’s right and rewarding. People really do want to be together, help each other, and be the hero. That we need a disaster to live that way is a revealing indictment on our society. 

The machine doesn’t care for you in the same way—it can’t. The large corporate grocery store, for example, let food go to waste instead of distributing it because then they could collect the insurance from product loss. Did you also know it’s illegal to give such goods away to feed to pigs? It must go to a landfill to rot. They couldn’t even use money because their “system was down,” which means that they could not make an exchange of goods with legal tender because the computer—and likely someone up the chain—said they couldn’t. My local feed store and a small local grocery store, by contrast, were taking both money and IOU’s, which I am quite sure will be honored. I’m thinking now the move away from cash is something I should care about more.  

We’ve been robustly homesteading for about twelve years, and the security of having real things was as evident as ever. In my little neighborhood, there was meat, eggs, dairy, and vegetables because it’s a rare place of agrarian interest. Heck, a local homestead brought us 160 strawberry plants to plant while everything was down. People just across the street were happy to learn that the cows they see every day actually do have milk in them and we know how to get it out. I recognize that this is somewhat extraordinary, since being rural does not necessarily mean people are growing food. 

But the reverse is also true—being suburban doesn’t have to mean non-productive. I’m no longer laughing at my more intense prepper friends, since they were indeed more prepared than others. But I am also convinced that the same prudence that has provision beyond the habit of weekly grocery dependence would make investment in the real things of productivity, or at least locate where such things are. 

If this disaster were larger and the machine were cut off for longer, we certainly would start to feel the void of seeds and know-how, and things would get uglier. Ramping up our productive property seems more imperative now, not merely for disaster preparedness but because it’s a good way to live. Or, as the old saying goes, the real wealth is always in the heard not the bank. (To that end, don’t forget to join us at the Liturgy of the Land conference to get a little more know-how.)

Localism is the alternative to the machine and, I think, the necessary life of the Christian who must love his neighbor if he claims to love his God. “Localism,” for me, is simply no longer a matter of adjusted consumerism and bumper stickers—do you feel more “local” when you buy from the “local farm” section at the grocery store? Despite charges of impractical romanticism, it is actually truly romantic (i.e., loving) and unyieldingly practical —which is likely the real reason we avoid it. 

G.K. Chesterton called our care for one another, the kind that creates and sustains actual community life, by the name “sympathy.” Wendell Berry calls it “affection.” These words are meant to say that you can only love what you know, and you love them not merely by sympathetic affection but tangible care. It’s just that we tend to care for what we have sympathetic affection for, and we can only have a lasting care for things we are close to, which is why the news cycle will give up on the sensation of the suffering long before the suffering will end.  

Put differently, where your treasure is, so too is your heart. The spirit of the machine is heartless in this sense. It can’t love you because it can’t know you. I’m sure they will work tirelessly to restore us to normalcy and trade, which I firmly believe they must do for the internal logic of profitability, which trumps all. I’m sure I will be told to be more grateful for the machine because it will be what gets trade and services back up and going.  

But we might also remember that tyrants do their best work when they supply for needs, not when they take them away. That Amazon can get me a new spatula that was made in China delivered tomorrow is certainly an amazing feat, but it is nothing like an amazing grace. Simply put, the machine does not take care of you from care for you. Only those with true affection for you can do that—neighbors. 

As I sat with a friend and we reflected on the hard lessons of love, care, and how our technological severing actually connected us together during the storm, I couldn’t help but wonder if we have the courage to continue in what we know to be true and good for us, or if we will simply plug back in and carry on in the daze of disconnect that modern life requires.