The inimitable G. K. Chesterton once said, "There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
Chesterton was lingering in the back of my mind as I was writing this post. And I kept thinking that there was almost certainly an apropos line or two from him that would work really well with this piece. Behold, this is it!
Yes and yet also the world frequently startles us to attention when we’re not trying: the color of the fading sunlight on the fence, the silvery shimmer of leaves in a breeze, a sudden moment of quiet… the world is enchanted and it wants to connect with us, even if we are lost, uprooted creatures — its arms are wide
This is so well said. Writers I love (and some I don't) use the concept "disenchantment" to do work that I appreciate, but I have never really bought the concept or felt that it works in theistic framework at all. It is in our power to hurt and to destroy creation, but it's never in our power to disenchant it.
I was gratified to see this email pop up in my inbox. It feels like it's been a while!
A couple of thoughts on this essay.
Whereas Mr. Sacasas turns to Max Weber and his notion of "demagification" (sic), I first thought of European Romanticism. When I think of Romanticism, I think of artists and thinkers who agreed that the Industrial Revolution had, among other things, bled the world of its magic and mystery and had in turn turned our collective gaze on rationality and capitalism. Clearly, this idea of disenchantment has been present in "Western" thinking for at least a coupe of hundred years.
Mr. Sacasas' "Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention" strikes me as an entirely logical approach to recognizing that our natural world, just as it is, is worthy of our enchantment. That is, were we only to take the time to pay attention to it in such a way that we can recognize in it that which is enchanting. This makes sense! There's no need to engage in the debates that arise from the creation of the dichotomies of the Romantics, and perhaps Max Weber, too, because these folks predicate their understanding of an "enchanted world" on cultural narratives and not on a simple yet often overlooked appreciation of the natural world. The Romantics in particular were interested in "magic, mystery, animate spirits, or other non-human forces", and while I myself am interested in those things, we don't need the narratives under which these topics are subsumed to simply pay the right kind of attention to the beautiful owl in the illustration in this article, for example. In other words, as much as I love words, and as much as we need them, words (or too many of them) can obfuscate the natural world and cause us to believe that somehow our natural world "isn't enough" to be merited "enchanting". Don't get me wrong: I love the Romantics, particularly the poetry of Keats and Coleridge. But sometimes we have to put the quill or pen down and just look at the world around us, and we will find ourselves overwhelmed by just how much is enchanting in our natural world.
Now, it's one thing to recognize this intellectually, but it's another thing to actively practice this kind of attentive looking when we're doing our thing in the real world. That is, when I'm not fumbling with my phone or when my mind isn't distracted by things past and future. As with all of Mr. Sacasas' writing, we are implicitly encouraged to slow down, and in slowing down, we can pay the right kind of attention to our world so that we are able to fully enjoy it as is.
The urge to articulate is as human as any other human urge, eh? The articulating of those whose articulations we favor concerning the marvelous, exemplars listed above, generally winds up with the advice to stop articulating and attend instead. Well. What else can one do as the gap between our articulating and what we are articulating about grows ever more embarrassing? Sometimes good advice is like that.
Wonderful post. The enchanted nature of attention -- when an aspect of the world becomes an object of contemplation -- has its origins, I believe, in what infant researchers call "joint-attention" -- that amazing moment when at around 9 months of age an infant shifts their attention to an object the mother is looking at. During moments of joint attention, the child alternates attention between the mother's face and the object until the object lights up in a certain way and the rest of the world is quarantined. Infant's are delighted when this happens. Suddenly the object becomes not just usable, but meaningful.
My goodness I value your writing. I've heard you deploy attention as a key barometer before - most recently on an interview a week or so ago - and I must say it really strikes me on an emotional level. But I never considered it as a mode of self-cultivation; rather, as a means to express care, which I believe was the context in the interview. Incidentally, as you demurred on Hegel in said interview, I have to jest that there does seem to be something rather Hegelian afoot in this insight. In any case, thank you for this.
Great essay. I make the same point in bar room philosophy discussions over drinks with my friends all the time. It goes something like this...
Never, no not ever, ever, has there been a metaphysical thing that existed or interacted with reality. Never, no not ever, has there been a single miracle or even a strange happening. There are no ghosts, no spirits, no ghouls or boogie men. There is nothing in the closet, or in heaven or hell. There are no witches and wizards. There are no holy men. There are no angels or demons. No devils and no gods. There are no powers and no cosmic good and evil battle in the sense of sentient forces at work. There is nothing magical in the sense of the metaphysical to be spoken of. No prayers have ever been answered by anything other than happenstance. This holds true for all faith traditions across all geographies and all time ... they're just stories we tell each other.
The universe is entirely, perfectly and purely sterile, in reference to metaphysical things.
But this has no bearing on our ability to engage with reality with intense focus, attention, engagement and even wonder. The world is enchanted and enchanting. There are good questions to ask and worthwhile ways to spend a life in service of those, to the ends of satisfying our curiosity and sharing love and compassion for our fellow conscious travelers, on this fleeting moment we have together.
(I could ramble on, but I'm sure you get the gist. Always a fun conversation. Let's order another beer!)
What if consciousness is primary? I hesitate a bit because compassion is a good lens to view the world. But there are others. Iain McGilchrist coming from neuroscience and clinical psychology makes a heavily evidenced case for the potential for different personalities to dominate different views of the world and the type of attention given to them ... It seems perhaps a different way of 'personifying' the world we recognise? He makes the obvious case that we must make a highly selected view of reality; a reality which is most certainly not 'material' in the way 19thC physics saw a deterministic world.
By coincidence I read yesterdy a new substack writer fom New Zealand writing her personal column, this time paying attention to the enchanted forest. It has to be largely from memory because an aspect of the modern mind took away the living reality that embraced the imaginations of her children when they were small. The council has now cleared the dead poisoned trees and she purposes to celebrate the memory of the trees and to attend to the enchantment of the living and the dead beide the stumps.
First time poster and new subscriber here and late to the game, but...
"To risk the appearance of foolishness by being prepared to believe that world might yet be enchanted."
I would argue that this is the starting point, the gate keeper that turns so many away. Such a small thing to see "the risk of the appearance of foolishness" in print, but such a giant, fortified castle gate in real life for so many of my students. Many would not admit to be truly enchanted by anything for fear of not appearing cynical enough to remain a part of their generational in-groups, which converse in sarcastic memes and understandable distrust of existing power structures.
A few understand the importance of enchantment but try to hide the outward manifestations of it as best they can (I can certainly relate to this from my younger days), striking a devil's bargain with the world and themselves. A much smaller few are truly enchanted by certain things and not afraid to show it. These are usually the elite students in terms of talent, but often also in terms of privilege in one way or another, which is one of the most charged and abused terms of our era which means so many different things to different people and has become one of the worst epithets a person can hurl at another. I use it here only to indicate that they feel free to admit to enchantment openly as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
But however one gets there, the willingness to appear foolish is a prerequisite for the possibility of anything good to happen, in my opinion. It means laying down your armor and weapons before entering the arena, which may turn out to be foolish... or very wise, depending on the arena.
The inimitable G. K. Chesterton once said, "There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
Chesterton was lingering in the back of my mind as I was writing this post. And I kept thinking that there was almost certainly an apropos line or two from him that would work really well with this piece. Behold, this is it!
Yes and yet also the world frequently startles us to attention when we’re not trying: the color of the fading sunlight on the fence, the silvery shimmer of leaves in a breeze, a sudden moment of quiet… the world is enchanted and it wants to connect with us, even if we are lost, uprooted creatures — its arms are wide
This is so well said. Writers I love (and some I don't) use the concept "disenchantment" to do work that I appreciate, but I have never really bought the concept or felt that it works in theistic framework at all. It is in our power to hurt and to destroy creation, but it's never in our power to disenchant it.
I was gratified to see this email pop up in my inbox. It feels like it's been a while!
A couple of thoughts on this essay.
Whereas Mr. Sacasas turns to Max Weber and his notion of "demagification" (sic), I first thought of European Romanticism. When I think of Romanticism, I think of artists and thinkers who agreed that the Industrial Revolution had, among other things, bled the world of its magic and mystery and had in turn turned our collective gaze on rationality and capitalism. Clearly, this idea of disenchantment has been present in "Western" thinking for at least a coupe of hundred years.
Mr. Sacasas' "Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention" strikes me as an entirely logical approach to recognizing that our natural world, just as it is, is worthy of our enchantment. That is, were we only to take the time to pay attention to it in such a way that we can recognize in it that which is enchanting. This makes sense! There's no need to engage in the debates that arise from the creation of the dichotomies of the Romantics, and perhaps Max Weber, too, because these folks predicate their understanding of an "enchanted world" on cultural narratives and not on a simple yet often overlooked appreciation of the natural world. The Romantics in particular were interested in "magic, mystery, animate spirits, or other non-human forces", and while I myself am interested in those things, we don't need the narratives under which these topics are subsumed to simply pay the right kind of attention to the beautiful owl in the illustration in this article, for example. In other words, as much as I love words, and as much as we need them, words (or too many of them) can obfuscate the natural world and cause us to believe that somehow our natural world "isn't enough" to be merited "enchanting". Don't get me wrong: I love the Romantics, particularly the poetry of Keats and Coleridge. But sometimes we have to put the quill or pen down and just look at the world around us, and we will find ourselves overwhelmed by just how much is enchanting in our natural world.
Now, it's one thing to recognize this intellectually, but it's another thing to actively practice this kind of attentive looking when we're doing our thing in the real world. That is, when I'm not fumbling with my phone or when my mind isn't distracted by things past and future. As with all of Mr. Sacasas' writing, we are implicitly encouraged to slow down, and in slowing down, we can pay the right kind of attention to our world so that we are able to fully enjoy it as is.
The urge to articulate is as human as any other human urge, eh? The articulating of those whose articulations we favor concerning the marvelous, exemplars listed above, generally winds up with the advice to stop articulating and attend instead. Well. What else can one do as the gap between our articulating and what we are articulating about grows ever more embarrassing? Sometimes good advice is like that.
Wonderful post. The enchanted nature of attention -- when an aspect of the world becomes an object of contemplation -- has its origins, I believe, in what infant researchers call "joint-attention" -- that amazing moment when at around 9 months of age an infant shifts their attention to an object the mother is looking at. During moments of joint attention, the child alternates attention between the mother's face and the object until the object lights up in a certain way and the rest of the world is quarantined. Infant's are delighted when this happens. Suddenly the object becomes not just usable, but meaningful.
My goodness I value your writing. I've heard you deploy attention as a key barometer before - most recently on an interview a week or so ago - and I must say it really strikes me on an emotional level. But I never considered it as a mode of self-cultivation; rather, as a means to express care, which I believe was the context in the interview. Incidentally, as you demurred on Hegel in said interview, I have to jest that there does seem to be something rather Hegelian afoot in this insight. In any case, thank you for this.
Great essay. I make the same point in bar room philosophy discussions over drinks with my friends all the time. It goes something like this...
Never, no not ever, ever, has there been a metaphysical thing that existed or interacted with reality. Never, no not ever, has there been a single miracle or even a strange happening. There are no ghosts, no spirits, no ghouls or boogie men. There is nothing in the closet, or in heaven or hell. There are no witches and wizards. There are no holy men. There are no angels or demons. No devils and no gods. There are no powers and no cosmic good and evil battle in the sense of sentient forces at work. There is nothing magical in the sense of the metaphysical to be spoken of. No prayers have ever been answered by anything other than happenstance. This holds true for all faith traditions across all geographies and all time ... they're just stories we tell each other.
The universe is entirely, perfectly and purely sterile, in reference to metaphysical things.
But this has no bearing on our ability to engage with reality with intense focus, attention, engagement and even wonder. The world is enchanted and enchanting. There are good questions to ask and worthwhile ways to spend a life in service of those, to the ends of satisfying our curiosity and sharing love and compassion for our fellow conscious travelers, on this fleeting moment we have together.
(I could ramble on, but I'm sure you get the gist. Always a fun conversation. Let's order another beer!)
What if consciousness is primary? I hesitate a bit because compassion is a good lens to view the world. But there are others. Iain McGilchrist coming from neuroscience and clinical psychology makes a heavily evidenced case for the potential for different personalities to dominate different views of the world and the type of attention given to them ... It seems perhaps a different way of 'personifying' the world we recognise? He makes the obvious case that we must make a highly selected view of reality; a reality which is most certainly not 'material' in the way 19thC physics saw a deterministic world.
By coincidence I read yesterdy a new substack writer fom New Zealand writing her personal column, this time paying attention to the enchanted forest. It has to be largely from memory because an aspect of the modern mind took away the living reality that embraced the imaginations of her children when they were small. The council has now cleared the dead poisoned trees and she purposes to celebrate the memory of the trees and to attend to the enchantment of the living and the dead beide the stumps.
Jo Sundberg https://josundberg.substack.com/p/trees
Contact is participation and participation is relational. Imagination is needed and can be trained and cultivated. Let's go Mets.
First time poster and new subscriber here and late to the game, but...
"To risk the appearance of foolishness by being prepared to believe that world might yet be enchanted."
I would argue that this is the starting point, the gate keeper that turns so many away. Such a small thing to see "the risk of the appearance of foolishness" in print, but such a giant, fortified castle gate in real life for so many of my students. Many would not admit to be truly enchanted by anything for fear of not appearing cynical enough to remain a part of their generational in-groups, which converse in sarcastic memes and understandable distrust of existing power structures.
A few understand the importance of enchantment but try to hide the outward manifestations of it as best they can (I can certainly relate to this from my younger days), striking a devil's bargain with the world and themselves. A much smaller few are truly enchanted by certain things and not afraid to show it. These are usually the elite students in terms of talent, but often also in terms of privilege in one way or another, which is one of the most charged and abused terms of our era which means so many different things to different people and has become one of the worst epithets a person can hurl at another. I use it here only to indicate that they feel free to admit to enchantment openly as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
But however one gets there, the willingness to appear foolish is a prerequisite for the possibility of anything good to happen, in my opinion. It means laying down your armor and weapons before entering the arena, which may turn out to be foolish... or very wise, depending on the arena.
I love this.