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. The New Jerusalem: Zio... MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER Best Price: $29.16 Buy New $13.00 (as of 12:43 UTC - Details)

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. America’s Cultur... Rufo, Christopher F. Best Price: $6.51 Buy New $12.90 (as of 04:44 UTC - Details)

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.

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