Contrary thoughts to Kirk's view of the machine

When Bradley Birzer points out (American Conservative, Dec. 2013) that Russell Kirk considered attacking “the machine” as one of the most important aspects of his life and writings, that is, the machine---whether governmental, corporate or educational, this can put conservatives, who claim not to approve of ideology, in their own box of saying that anyone who claims to know something other than what the conservatives say we can know is feeding the machine. Also, there is a box created by claiming that humans are freer than they they actually are, which can make any deterministic definition of nature and human nature look like affirming the machine.

Man does have freedom limited to the choices and strictures of human nature and nature, but within these strictures, is not nature and human nature more like a machine than not? If you affirm an idealism, romanticism or spiritualism which claims to soar beyond human nature and beyond nature itself then it can appear as if nature must not be defined as a machine---a too large claim of freedom can take away the “dignity” of a freedom which does not exist. It is through nature, material nature, with its natural laws, that we evolve to Godhood. In this, to adapt what some sage said, nature is a machine for evolving to Godhood.

To Kirk and other conservatives, who have influenced me as much as sociobiology has influenced me, divine intent rules society as well as ruling consciousness, but I think this needs to be revised to the divine intent of the activating Spirit-Will, which activates material and supermaterial nature toward real Godhood, shaped by outside evolution. I understand that Kirk later revised the term “divine intent” to a belief in “a body of natural law,” which seems better.