The Machine and (Human) Nature is a private event in Story, Wyoming organized by The Wagon Box and Doomer Optimism. The second annual event was featured in The Free Press: The People Who Rage Against the Machine.

It’s Labor Day weekend, and I’m in Wyoming for the second annual “The Machine and (Human) Nature” retreat. Fifty of us have schlepped to the town of Story, population 983, a six-hour drive from the Denver airport, to stay in the buses and RVs and walled tents that dot the 20 acres of land around The Wagon Box. Amid the pines and aspens, wreathed by a freezing-cold, trout-rich creek, we are here to discuss modernity’s effect “on families, the environment, autonomy, and class politics…

‘Whoever hasn’t thrown themselves into some kind of sad nihilism is trying to build something heaven-like,’ as McNiel put it, addressing the retreat at the outset. ‘And that’s what we’re here for.’