The Blackberry Walk

Enchantment: to sing into being. It's quite a romantic word, but one which contains the magic of what the word confers. Singing as an act is but singing syllables at various pitches to a certain rhythm - but there's a magic within the the voice of the singer which reverberates at the base of one's being. This magic which song possesses can't be weighed, can't be gauged with a tape measure, nor measured with sound equipment - you may capture and quantify the noise, but you won't get the music, for the music can't be captured. It can't be quantified; music can only exist as a quality. To the Congo pygmy living in the jungle without human contact, the world remains truly enchanted. Beyond what is apparent to us, like the joys of music, the world is also full of spirits. Tree spirits live in the trees, lake spirits in the lake - every part of the world possesses a kind of magic much like music. This world overflowing with meaningfulness and magic is at first romantic, nostalgic - a deeply spiritually connected place. But there are reasons we've moved past this view: living with such a close connection to spirits is paralysing - you want to go cut down that tree? there's a tree spirit there, I'm afraid you can't. Animistic man can't shape the world, can't change the world, so long as he's bound by a strict set of taboos which are maintained hyper-conservatively. It is through taboo breaking that technology advances; it is through disenchanting the world that we can cut down trees without concern for the spirits or bury deep into the Earth without worry that the ancestors will escape from the hole. It took taboo breakers in the Renaissance, the grave diggers who stole corpses at the dead of night for clandestine dissections, to kick-start modern medicine. But along with the eventual normalisation of examining cadavers, some of the magic, the enchantment, the song, of the body has been lost. The progressers of mankind then look for the next taboos to break, to disenchant another territory of the world in order to conquer the land and manipulate it. How about nature? Through scientific analysis, trees and animals once thought to be 'living' are now merely organic. No longer do they have souls, no longer do they have some sense of intrinsic vitality which should be protected, for now they are just plain old matter, right-patterned atoms. Much like Faust, we've sold the soul of the plants for power over them. And much like Faust, the human soul was next on death's row. No longer do we have an enchanted conception of what is right or what is good. With scientific scalpels, every last sinew of morality's magic has been cut, and the heart removed, leaving a morality which has been reduced to the mundane material level: a morality which is no longer transcendent and is now ours to toy with. But without the divine, enchanted basis of morals, what underpins them? Warring factions begin to wrestle for control over this disenchanted plaything which has plummeted from heaven. Morality is then dissected much like a cadaver, and loses its last shred of credibility. People today will say that "morality is just an efficient way for people to get along", as if it were just a social lubricant whose chemical composition could be altered for desired effects. Desire. Once morality has undergone a deep inspection and has been cut into tiny pieces, there's no moral left which can be considered objective, nothing which could be considered beyond doubt. All that's left is subjectivity: 'I want to'. Once man controls morality, what's governing how he treats morality apart from his own whims and desires? Man becomes driven by instinct, whilst nature laughs in the corner, "did you truly think you could conquer me?" Since the 60s, taboos have been repeatedly broken creating an ever-more meaningless world. It is the taboos of society which which enchant life with meaning, as odd as it may sound, since through the act of making something taboo it becomes enchanted and revered. Take the n-word which today is the most taboo word. Many people, upon hearing it, will become apolplectic, offended and enraged - a seemingly bizarre response to what the scientifically minded would call 'just a word'. But that's to see the word blind to its invisible enchanted meaning, to be blind to the taboo which gives people meaning in their lives. In the nihilistic swamp, many are grasping onto branches, onto roots to lift themselves out and gain meaning in their lives. A new religion, or perhaps a cult, is sprouting before our very eyes based upon a morality of desire with new taboos to replace old ones 'outdated'. As this new religion attempting to re-enchant the world develops, we must consider: is this religion any good? or should we return to solutions of the past? If you want the same ideas written more eloquently, read C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man