Gadfly Academy | Herman Middleton
@gadflyacademy.bsky.social
How do we get out of this mess? Download “The How Did We Get Here? Reading List” and join us down the rabbit hole...and out of the matrix: https://sleek.bio/gadflyacademy
“The city provides opportunities for wealth that the village never could, but it treats its poor and marginalized with a contempt that the village would regard with incomprehension.
As so often, this is a question of scale..."
As so often, this is a question of scale..."
January 16, 2026 at 3:51 PM
“The city provides opportunities for wealth that the village never could, but it treats its poor and marginalized with a contempt that the village would regard with incomprehension.
As so often, this is a question of scale..."
As so often, this is a question of scale..."
“One of the great myths of the city is that we go there to individuate—to ‘find ourselves’. It might be more accurate to say that the city removes our agency, deskills us, and toys with us at its leisure..."
January 14, 2026 at 3:53 PM
“One of the great myths of the city is that we go there to individuate—to ‘find ourselves’. It might be more accurate to say that the city removes our agency, deskills us, and toys with us at its leisure..."
“Once a structure of this size and complexity has been created, it must be maintained. In the case of a modern city, this means that the surrounding lands, and then the lands further afield, must be colonised to supply it and its inhabitants, their whims and desires and needs...."
January 13, 2026 at 3:13 PM
“Once a structure of this size and complexity has been created, it must be maintained. In the case of a modern city, this means that the surrounding lands, and then the lands further afield, must be colonised to supply it and its inhabitants, their whims and desires and needs...."
“A city is, at its heart, just such a ‘relentless collective assault’ on the way that humans have lived for 99 percent of their history; and, maybe more importantly, a collective assault on other forms of life..."
January 12, 2026 at 2:55 PM
“A city is, at its heart, just such a ‘relentless collective assault’ on the way that humans have lived for 99 percent of their history; and, maybe more importantly, a collective assault on other forms of life..."
“A Machine civilization is an urban civilization, and its worldview and direction is that of the urban dwellers who build, justify and benefit from it.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 82
* Join our #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 82
* Join our #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
January 10, 2026 at 3:45 PM
“A Machine civilization is an urban civilization, and its worldview and direction is that of the urban dwellers who build, justify and benefit from it.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 82
* Join our #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 82
* Join our #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
“In 1900, around 12 percent of the world's people lived in towns and cities. By 2050, nearly 70 percent will. That's not simply a matter of where people live: it's the whole mindset of humanity changing from one which dwells in a place in which we are not the centre of attention,..."
January 9, 2026 at 3:23 PM
“In 1900, around 12 percent of the world's people lived in towns and cities. By 2050, nearly 70 percent will. That's not simply a matter of where people live: it's the whole mindset of humanity changing from one which dwells in a place in which we are not the centre of attention,..."
“Somehow, though, the work must be to still the mind instead. To let go of the natural attachment to our cunning, serpentine will. We know where the path leads if we don’t; we see daily the path that magic and science will take us down...."
January 8, 2026 at 4:32 PM
“Somehow, though, the work must be to still the mind instead. To let go of the natural attachment to our cunning, serpentine will. We know where the path leads if we don’t; we see daily the path that magic and science will take us down...."
“That renunciation has to be a long mental and spiritual effort: the sloughing off of a way of seeing; the refusal of the story we all grew up with and a return to an older one that lies, like the kingdom of God, both within and all around us..."
January 8, 2026 at 3:47 PM
“That renunciation has to be a long mental and spiritual effort: the sloughing off of a way of seeing; the refusal of the story we all grew up with and a return to an older one that lies, like the kingdom of God, both within and all around us..."
“What is the way out of this dehumanization? Sherrard is uncompromising. ‘To think and act without the constraint of any knowledge and values other than those of the modern scientific mentality’, he writes, ‘is to commit oneself to a tyranny of an unprecedented maleficence.’..."
January 6, 2026 at 5:18 PM
“What is the way out of this dehumanization? Sherrard is uncompromising. ‘To think and act without the constraint of any knowledge and values other than those of the modern scientific mentality’, he writes, ‘is to commit oneself to a tyranny of an unprecedented maleficence.’..."
“‘It is difficult for us to admit that far from being an advance, the whole modern scientific project may be a ghastly failure’, he [Philip Sherrard] concedes. ‘Yet there is no reason why it should not be. One has to judge things by their fruits..."
January 5, 2026 at 3:50 PM
“‘It is difficult for us to admit that far from being an advance, the whole modern scientific project may be a ghastly failure’, he [Philip Sherrard] concedes. ‘Yet there is no reason why it should not be. One has to judge things by their fruits..."
“Philip Sherrard again pinned it down when he wrote that ‘modern science presupposes a radical reshaping of our whole mental outlook. It involves a new approach to being, a new approach to nature, in short, a new philosophy’..."
January 5, 2026 at 3:18 PM
“Philip Sherrard again pinned it down when he wrote that ‘modern science presupposes a radical reshaping of our whole mental outlook. It involves a new approach to being, a new approach to nature, in short, a new philosophy’..."
“In the early modern period, today's distinction between ‘science’ (real, good, objective) and ‘magic’ (fantastical, bad, superstitious) did not really exist. Both were branches of the same effort: to understand the mysterious forces of the universe, and ultimately to control them.”
~Paul Kingsnorth
~Paul Kingsnorth
January 3, 2026 at 2:26 PM
“In the early modern period, today's distinction between ‘science’ (real, good, objective) and ‘magic’ (fantastical, bad, superstitious) did not really exist. Both were branches of the same effort: to understand the mysterious forces of the universe, and ultimately to control them.”
~Paul Kingsnorth
~Paul Kingsnorth
“There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 73
Join our #bookstudy on YouTube
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 73
Join our #bookstudy on YouTube
January 2, 2026 at 2:06 PM
“There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 73
Join our #bookstudy on YouTube
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 73
Join our #bookstudy on YouTube
“Before Duns Scotus, says [Brad S.] Gregory, Western Christians, like their Eastern counterparts, had regarded the God they worshiped as something entirely other: something so untraceable and mysterious that its essence could not be named or grasped..."
January 1, 2026 at 10:04 PM
“Before Duns Scotus, says [Brad S.] Gregory, Western Christians, like their Eastern counterparts, had regarded the God they worshiped as something entirely other: something so untraceable and mysterious that its essence could not be named or grasped..."
“Augustine and Aquinas, says Sherrard, enabled the philosophical separation of humanity from the rest of nature, and the rest of nature from the divine. God became transcendent, not immanent, and permission was thus given for humanity to analyze and dissect nature and itself."
~ #PaulKingsnorth
~ #PaulKingsnorth
December 31, 2025 at 2:32 PM
“Augustine and Aquinas, says Sherrard, enabled the philosophical separation of humanity from the rest of nature, and the rest of nature from the divine. God became transcendent, not immanent, and permission was thus given for humanity to analyze and dissect nature and itself."
~ #PaulKingsnorth
~ #PaulKingsnorth
“Science, right from the beginning of the modern enterprise, was allotted the role that the Church had previously claimed for itself: the primary guide to truth, and enlightener of humanity. More than a method, it was a faith.“
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
December 30, 2025 at 7:13 PM
“Science, right from the beginning of the modern enterprise, was allotted the role that the Church had previously claimed for itself: the primary guide to truth, and enlightener of humanity. More than a method, it was a faith.“
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
“An ideology built on remaking nature for human needs will inevitably include human nature in that project. Humanity can no more survive the mechanistic or scientific revolutions intact than can the forests or the oceans.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
* #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy-YT
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
* #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy-YT
December 23, 2025 at 6:01 PM
“An ideology built on remaking nature for human needs will inevitably include human nature in that project. Humanity can no more survive the mechanistic or scientific revolutions intact than can the forests or the oceans.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
* #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy-YT
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 70
* #BookStudy @GadflyAcademy-YT
“[I]f a machine is the metaphor you use to represent other living beings, then a machine is what you will make of the world.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 69
*Join our #BookClub @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 69
*Join our #BookClub @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
December 22, 2025 at 7:49 PM
“[I]f a machine is the metaphor you use to represent other living beings, then a machine is what you will make of the world.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 69
*Join our #BookClub @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 69
*Join our #BookClub @GadflyAcademy on YouTube!
“Our daily experience of life is of being embedded; but the mechanistic revolution told us that the world was governed by set laws which could be ‘objectively’ known, as if observed, somehow, from outside..."
December 18, 2025 at 2:50 PM
“Our daily experience of life is of being embedded; but the mechanistic revolution told us that the world was governed by set laws which could be ‘objectively’ known, as if observed, somehow, from outside..."
“Liberal modernity, in short, is doomed.
If this is true, then another conclusion also suggests itself: that older ways of seeing and speaking—mythology, folk cultures and the mystical underpinnings of religious faith—might have been on to something..."
If this is true, then another conclusion also suggests itself: that older ways of seeing and speaking—mythology, folk cultures and the mystical underpinnings of religious faith—might have been on to something..."
December 17, 2025 at 2:08 PM
“Liberal modernity, in short, is doomed.
If this is true, then another conclusion also suggests itself: that older ways of seeing and speaking—mythology, folk cultures and the mystical underpinnings of religious faith—might have been on to something..."
If this is true, then another conclusion also suggests itself: that older ways of seeing and speaking—mythology, folk cultures and the mystical underpinnings of religious faith—might have been on to something..."
“Reason, it turned out, was not a superior alternative to intuition, emotion or instinct, but a manifestation of it. There could be no mind without the body, no unprejudiced concepts or unpolluted models of reality..."
December 16, 2025 at 2:46 PM
“Reason, it turned out, was not a superior alternative to intuition, emotion or instinct, but a manifestation of it. There could be no mind without the body, no unprejudiced concepts or unpolluted models of reality..."
"The Real Crisis Isn't Political"
December 12, 2025 at 8:38 PM
"The Real Crisis Isn't Political"
“The eighteenth century's two revolutions—the revolution of Reason and the revolution of Technology—were supposed to walk us towards a universal paradise. Instead, we live in a time of mass extinction and cultural disintegration.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 62
*Join our #bookstudy!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 62
*Join our #bookstudy!
December 11, 2025 at 2:45 PM
“The eighteenth century's two revolutions—the revolution of Reason and the revolution of Technology—were supposed to walk us towards a universal paradise. Instead, we live in a time of mass extinction and cultural disintegration.”
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 62
*Join our #bookstudy!
~ #PaulKingsnorth, #AgainstTheMachine, p. 62
*Join our #bookstudy!
“Reason is appealing, because it implies that humans can use their faculties to order the universe, and that the universe will respond in kind..."
December 10, 2025 at 3:30 PM
“Reason is appealing, because it implies that humans can use their faculties to order the universe, and that the universe will respond in kind..."
“Industrialism's physical clearances—the enclosures of land and the destruction of artisanship in the peasantry—were mirrored by the French tsunami in which monarchy, aristocracy, church and customs of all kinds..."
December 8, 2025 at 4:19 PM
“Industrialism's physical clearances—the enclosures of land and the destruction of artisanship in the peasantry—were mirrored by the French tsunami in which monarchy, aristocracy, church and customs of all kinds..."