The meaning of the leaf is the leaf, as I once heard Roger Scruton say. Perhaps it was an original coinage from the Sage of Sundey Hill Farm, but it has the slight feel of a Zen koan: a seemingly inscrutable saying that can nonetheless help the listener achieve enlightenment. Scruton meant it as a reminder of the importance of focusing on the particular object or experience that you’re faced with at any given moment.
I had this aphorism in the back of my mind all through Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder, an argument for a more spiritually aware mode of living, and against the successful but ultimately incomplete materialism that dominates the modern world. “Enchantment” is the key word Dreher uses here. By this, he means preparing your mind to see beyond the everyday things presented to our eyes and ears, and to sense what Christians would regard as the underlying reality of existence: the grace and goodness of God, and the unity of creation.
Dreher is a devout and observant Orthodox Christian. This naturally gives him a certain appreciation of why modern life can feel so disenchanted. In his telling, the dovetailing of the everyday and the transcendent, so common in the high medieval imagination, was dealt successive blows. The first came from nominalism: the philosophical position which denied the existence of an underlying metaphysical unity behind the physical world. Then came the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution of the last few centuries.
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.
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SubscribeA brilliantly expressed article. Religious faith or none (i haven’t) the ability to simply connect with the world, to really see and appreciate away from the noise, bustle and screens, is an essential element of our humanity. Lose that ability, and we lose some of our humanity too; a vital part.
In doing so, we become less tolerant and more judgmental. Gooch makes a telling observation that without deep attention, thought and patience, poetry, science and art can’t happen. These things are the cumulative manifestations of civilisation: the ‘proof’ that we’ve lived, that our existence matters, and what we’ve acquired and understood. The transmission of such things is in danger of being lost. For my part, i paint.
The distractive ephemerality nurtures only the kind of shallowness of social media: visual and aural soundbites posing as something important. All, to fill the void.
Gooch is also right to emphasise how this impacts our political spheres – the constant reaction to news cycles replacing cogent and duly considered action.
How do we turn this around? I was heartened, over the last two Sunday evenings on BBC4, to watch the finals of Young Musician of the Year and the Leeds International Piano Competition. Clearly, there’s still some young people able to escape the social media trap and engage in very complex forms of cultural transmission. Not everyone (of course) can be so accomplished, but – as with this article, which reflects upon the thoughts of other writers with these concerns – there seems to be something in the human spirit that demands we engage with the world in a profound way. Is it therefore possible, that the greater distraction brought about by the internet might lead, as we begin to reflect on its use, to a greater understanding of ourselves? I believe it’s possible. There we go: an expression of faith, by a secular non-materialist.
I completely agree with sentiments like yours here. It is so easy to get caught in the mindset that everyone has lost their minds, the kids are clueless, the country is doomed. But oftentimes we are looking at the past trajectory, and assuming that trajectory will continue. But in reality, we are always learning about ourselves individually, and as part of a society. That sometimes means things have to get worse before they can get better. I think we are already starting to see a strong pushback against phones and social media. This won’t happen overnight, and there will always be people who succumb to its temptations. But the upside of “forgetting” about the natural world, so to speak, is that we get to rediscover it, and as you mentioned, possibly gain some profound insights. I may not subscribe to a particular religious faith, but rather my faith lies in people.
Every day I walk for at least one hour. Occasionally I see other walkers, almost always with dogs. Very rarely I see other solo walkers and a few of those are young. The young people almost always walk with their phone held in front, staring at it, as if trying to shut out what is around them, as if everything around them is totally boring and horrible.
Recently we, my wife and daughter and I, went on a city break. They had a ‘bucket list’ of places to visit and started off every morning with their phones pointed forward, following the instructions on some app. I left them to it and just walked randomly looking around at whatever was there. Every day in the evening there was the same argument. They had seen buildings A, B and C together with selfies in front of said buildings. What had I seen? The people in the city going to lunch, the dirty street corners, the people sleeping rough…
What really amazes me today is that everyone is afraid of rain. ‘Surely you’re not going out in the rain!!’ I have a cheap cagoule and trousers (made in China) and, sometimes, I get wet. I have to leave my wet clothes in the shed. Walking in the rain is amazing. The whole world seems to change. “Well, what have you seen to justify getting wet?” I saw the same things that I see in the dry but it was raining and it was different. Meanwhile, those who were not walking in the rain were on Instagram (Facebook is so passé) looking at photographs of somebody’s new cat.
‘Skin is waterproof’ as the NCOs liked to remind us, and there is great beauty in the rain.
How wonderful. I walk alone and my phone stays in my pocket. I really appreciate God’s creation and the changes with the seasons. Now we have leaves all over the ground and everywhere bathed in a soft light. I am physically a bit limited and can’t currently do more than about 6 miles, but that encompasses parks and a canal as well as streets. Lots to see.
A few years ago I started doing photography again. I have a few problems (life and the Army leave scars on all) but they are all of far less importance than previously. I can take a camera and, when doing macro, cover no more than a couple of hundred yards in a day but I have covered them with insane attention. Sometimes just stand and let your primitive eye see movement and then follow where e’er it leads. Apart from the ‘green therapy’ aspect of being out and reconnecting with/touching nature, the infinite, or spritual I have learned a great deal about the tiny things we don’t see. Gorse weevils and the tiny little flowers growing in the moss on top of walls, and more. I am calmer and more “in touch” with something, but at the same time more emotional and open. People have reacted differently towards me and that is so very nice. Something I have never had happen before, and I am 68. I’ll stop there before I burst into tears (the story of my later life). Well, at least skin is waterproof.
What a wonderful testimony, Mark. Bravo! Thank you very much for sharing your experience.
I’ve had the same realization in the last few years, that I enjoy macro photography a lot. Or “close-ups,” overall. I often enjoy the photographic results, but to even be able to sense something worth capturing I have to slow down and look very carefully to see small complexities among the infinite whole of them. So the process becomes most important — and as you say, one becomes calmer and more “in touch” doing it.
You say a lot of very important things about peoples’ self obsession, their focus on quick stimulation, the decline of reading, and peoples’ lack of focus on the world around them. The sense of wonder is being lost. Rachel Carson wrote a little book that talks about how important this sense is for children if they are going to pay attention to the natural world; the same can be said for their need to pay attention to people around them. A couple of points though; first, the sense of wonder doesn’t require religious faith. Some people get there through religion, but many people find other paths. Science is one of them. If you look at science correctly, it is based on curiosity, and often wonder. Scientists are often stereotyped in very unfair ways. Yes, some aspects of science have led to actions that are anything but ethical, but many honest scientists know this. Also, skepticism can go along with wonder. Carl Sagan warned against belief in what he called the demon haunted world; in fact that is the title of one of his books. Superstition can also lead people away from a sense of wonder about the world.
I like Sagan. I liked watching Cosmos. However, he also spoke confidently, dismissively of religious experience, experience which he did not have. As if it is mere “superstition.” So much for empiricism. Hubris is a core quality of parascience.
Marilynne Robinson, from Absence of Mind:
“If there is one great truth contained in the Gilgamesh epic and every other epic venture of human thought, scientific or philosophical or religious, it is that the human mind itself yields the only evidence we can have of the scale of human reality. We have had a place in the universe since it occurred to the first of our species to ask what our place might be. If the answer is that we are an interesting accidental outcome of the working of physical laws which are themselves accidental, this is as much a statement about ultimate reality as if we were to find that we are indeed a little lower than the angels. To say there is no aspect of being that metaphysics can meaningfully address is a metaphysical statement. To say that metaphysics is a cultural phase or misapprehension that can be put aside is also a metaphysical statement. The notion of accident does nothing to dispel mystery, nothing to diminish scale.
“I consider the common account of the sense of emptiness in the modern world to be a faulty diagnosis. If there is in fact an emptiness peculiar to our age it is not because of ‘the death of God’ in the non-Lutheran sense in which that phrase is usually understood. It is not because an ebbing away of faith before the advance of science has impoverished modern experience. Assuming that there is indeed a modern malaise, one contributing factor might be the exclusion of the felt life of the mind from the accounts of reality proposed by the oddly authoritative and deeply influential parascientific literature that has long associated itself with intellectual progress, and the exclusion of felt life from the varieties of thought and art that reflect the influence of these accounts.
“To some extent even theology has embraced impoverishment, often under the name of secularism, in order to blend more thoroughly into a disheartened cultural landscape. To the great degree that theology has accommodated the parascientific world view, it too has tended to forget the beauty and strangeness of the individual soul, that is, of the world as perceived in the course of a human life, of the mind as it exists in time.
“But the beauty and strangeness persist just the same. And theology persists, even when it has absorbed as truth theories and interpretations that could reasonably be expected to kill it off. This suggests that its real life is elsewhere, in a place not reached by these doubts and assaults. Subjectivity is the ancient haunt of piety and reverence and long, long thoughts. And the literatures that would dispel such things refuse to acknowledge subjectivity, perhaps because inability has evolved into principle and method.”
I think we need to be careful not to overhype this, nor succumb to techno phobia .
The world never was and never will be full of Roger Scrutons. Furthermore mass media has always been prone to being used for propaganda – but surely central management or restriction of its growth and availability only makes that more likely.
I am far from convinced that the internet restricts knowledge or understanding. It certainly increases connectivity but that is not necessarily an evil. Is it?
The internet doesn’t restrict knowledge or understanding, per se. These are restricted by the commercial interests that dominate the internet, which have radically diminished its original promise. Youtube routinely censors, for example, which is why many independent journalists have turned to Rumble, for example. Like the way they have turned from mainstream media to substack.
The author Corey Doctorow is very good at describing the devolution of the internet. I recommend his blog, Pluralistic: https://pluralistic.net/
Here are a couple of relevant quotes:
[From Jan. 30, 2024] “Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin…
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nycso_OQes0]
“Last year, I coined the term ‘enshitt*fication,’ to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).
“So what’s ensh*ttification and why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.
“We’re all living through the ens*ittocene, a great ensh*ttening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of sh*t.
“It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying.
“I think that the ensh*ttification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the ‘great forces of history,’ and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.
“Ensh*ttification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say ‘things are getting worse’ (though of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way. It’s an English word. We don’t have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).
“But in case you want to use ensh*ttification in a more precise, technical way, let’s examine how ensh*ttification works.
“It’s a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
“Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into ‘five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,’ so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.”
******
Oct. 16, 2024:
“Your RSS reader doesn’t (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you’ll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.
“Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was ensh*ttified. You can single-handedly disensh*ttify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.
“It’s still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disensh*ttifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.
“But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.”