It's time to re-enchant the world Get off TikTok and make some real friends

This is a familiar story, though Dreher’s train of thought does call at some unexpected stops. His discussion of the potentially sinister spiritual significance of UFOs and AI — quoting many reasonable people open to the idea that such phenomena could represent a vector for malevolent immaterial entities — is both fascinating and unnerving. That’s doubly true for those who believe, or half-believe, in a world beyond our everyday experience. 

Non-believers will surely raise an eyebrow here, as perhaps might proudly rationalistic believers. Yet Dreher’s book contains many examples of people who are non-religious but nonetheless suspicious of dogmatic materialism. One good example here is the philosopher Thomas Nagel. At any rate, sceptics shouldn’t let their unease with what Dreher himself calls “woo” blind them to a core problem of modernity: the crisis of attention. The best parts of Living in Wonder deal squarely with this issue, and even doubters can gain much by taking it seriously. 

The challenge posed by visual media to our collective capacity for serious thought has plausibly been building since TV became widespread in the second half of the last century. This arguably intensified with the rise of computer gaming, and became irresistible with the spread of mobile internet access. Who can honestly say that social media and smartphones haven’t affected our ability to concentrate and focus our intellectual energies? Certainly not the scientists, with academics like Jonathan Haidt making a strong case that smartphones are one of the chief culprits in mounting anxiety disorders among children and young people. 

It’s not just the kids. With titles like Deep Work and Stolen Focus, there’s now a cottage industry of self-help books marketed to help people escape the ephemeral diversions of the information age. To put it differently, then, Dreher’s thesis about the need to reinvigorate our spiritual senses is not just compelling — but can also be considered in a wider context of near-permanent mass distraction.  

On platforms like TikTok, “overstimulation” is a common explanation of the problem. A particularly popular form of self-diagnosis for the mothers of young children, I can certainly sympathise with the exhaustion that descends at the end of a day spent dealing with the questions, demands and crises that typify parenthood. All the same, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that these people are making the problem worse: by spending much of their time scrolling and scrolling, keeping their minds constantly racing, never settling on a single topic. No wonder they feel drained by bedtime. 

The Atlantic recently ran a long essay lamenting the decline of longform reading among university students, drawing on the experiences of several educators. While this is admittedly anecdotal, I’ve heard similar concerns from teachers and academics. Even allowing for a degree of “kids these days” middle-aged grumbling, their essential complaint seems entirely plausible. Anyone who doubts this needs only look up from X or Instagram next time they’re on a bus or train with teenagers. You won’t spot many books, and few Kindles either. Not that adults are much better. I’m continually astonished at how parents will simply ignore their children in favour of their phones.  

Living in Wonder tackles all this in a chapter called “Attention And Prayer” — but again, religious sceptics needn’t roll their eyes. Much of what Dreher discusses here isn’t specific to religious thought. Quoting Iain McGilchrist, a distinguished polymath, the author claims that “how you attend” to the world changes what you find there. 

Obviously, the argument here is not that the physical world literally changes according to the psychological disposition of the observer. Rather, the idea is that our ability to notice important things — a flower, a bird, the emotional states and needs of our friends and families — is a learned skill, and one we neglect at our peril. Matthew Crawford, another advocate for abandoning the virtual, and to whom Dreher refers extensively, put it this way in January 2023: “When the axis of closer-to-me and farther-from-me is collapsed, I can be anywhere, and find that I am rarely in any place in particular. To be present with those I share life with is then one option among many, and likely not the most amusing one at any given moment. It’s hard to be grateful for loved ones when they keep interrupting my feed.” 

If, in short, we allow ourselves to be buffeted by sensation and novelty, we lose track of what really matters. Dreher clearly understands this, at one point describing a strict prayer rule demanded by his parish priest. Obliging the writer to spend an hour each day in silent contemplation, the exercise was meant to help him regain lost focus. As someone who is, like Dreher, beset by an ill-disciplined and wide-ranging curiosity enabled by the internet, I feel his pain. 

In my view, there’s a political aspect to the crisis of attention. One striking thing about contemporary politics is how focused it is on the nature of discourse, on moral categorisation, on personal identity. What’s ignored are material conditions and the world as it really exists. The American Marxist writer Freddie de Boer has often written about his frustrations with the highly moralistic state of Left-wing activism. In his telling — and he’s surely right — progressives are much happier carving out new personal identities, or else policing problematic speech, than they are improving the lives of everyday people. 

It’s not just the Left either. A common Right-wing critique of the most recent period of Tory rule has been that ministers had no understanding of political action, instead preferring the safe and cathartic path of punditry. Fair enough: how much easier to lament the “Woke Blob” on X than actually putting in the hard work of defeating your political enemies with quiet, deliberate action unimpeded by the news cycle?

Disenchantment, then, can’t be untangled from the insistent clamour of the media. There are clearly other factors too: most obviously the slow decay of Christianity across the Western world, despite a recent spate of high-profile conversions and a minor trend of books proclaiming the return of faith. Yet above all, it is the almighty screen that undermines the normal human impulse to take an interest in the world around us in all its glory and strangeness. 

Speaking from personal experience, it can be very hard to simply appreciate a beautiful sunrise, or a special moment with the children, accepting the transience that’s inherent to such encounters with transcendence. So often now, there’s that little voice urging us to record the moment, or to present to an audience, despite the ultimately inadequacy of photos or video clips.

Some time ago, my young son asked why we impose strict screen-time limits on him and his sister. I ended up giving him quite the spiel, about how for his generation, the ability to sit quietly with a difficult book, to be alone with your thoughts, to work through a tricky problem without your mind wandering incessantly, will be a form of superpower. Without a deep and intentional awareness of the world around us, there can be no poetry, no science, no great paintings. Even more crucially, the most basic and life-enhancing human connections, from friendship to romance to marriage, can’t be sustained without paying close and careful attention to the other. Sometimes the leaf is really all that matters. 

---

Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

niall_gooch