Guy Davenport, from The Geography of the Imagination: 40 Essays (2024:98), in the essay “Prehistoric Eyes”
Excerpt
Man, it would seem, does not evolve; he accumulates. His fund of advantages over nature and over the savage within is rich indeed, but nothing of the old Adam has been lost; our savagery has perhaps increased in meanness and fury; it stands out ever more terribly against a modern background.
--- Paul Kingsnorth, in AI Demonic: A Spiritual Exploration of AI, From the Nov/Dec, 2023 issue of Touchstone
Excerpt
For the last two years, I have found myself writing a lot about God; more than I had intended. I have claimed several times that there is a throne at the heart of every culture, and that someone is always going to sit on it. Humans are fundamentally religious animals. We are drawn towards transcendence whether we like it or not. But here in the West, we have dethroned our old god, and now we can barely look at him.
So, who sits on our throne now?