April 8, 2024 - 10:00am
If today’s total solar eclipse suggests anything, it’s that we are well past Peak Disenchantment.
Following a path across Mexico and the USA, the eclipse has caused widespread preparation. Flights and hotels along the path of total eclipse have long since been booked up, while New York Governor Kathy Hochul has issued advisories covering matters such as traffic and even remembering to pack snacks.
Such mundane practicality seems in keeping with what the German philosopher Max Weber called the “disenchantment” of the world. In a 1918 lecture he described the onward march of science as having drained the magic and mystery from the world, leaving us unable either to find comfort in supernatural or theological accounts, or to find mystery and richness in scientific ones.
More recently, the philosopher Charles Taylor developed this theory with an account of premodern selfhood as “porous” — affected by external events and meanings — and modern selfhood as “buffered”. That is, detached and capable of stepping back from incursions of emotion, magic, or overwhelming meaning. But are we really that “buffered” these days? More recently, I’d suggest not.
Consider the succession of Current Things — or as Lionel Shriver put it today, “manias” — that have swept through the Anglosphere, from #MeToo through to Covid and BLM. On each occasion, the Current Thing is powered by a genuine intensity of emotion and an equally genuine lack of precisely this “buffered” capacity to remain detached from the groundswell of feeling. Each mania was thus powerfully contagious, sometimes absurdly so — take, for example, crowds in the UK chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot” during the BLM mania, despite the fact that hardly any British police carry guns.
Similarly, while official reports on the eclipse have focused on practical, material matters, the wider mood surrounding this literally cosmic event is anything but “buffered”. Though no one seems able to agree on what it means, the eclipse appears pregnant with meaning. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called it a warning of God’s displeasure, there are countless articles discussing its astrological significance, and there are signs that it is fusing with other contemporary millenarian talking points to create an overall sense of apocalypticism.
In other words: the official press may be leading with “disenchanted” matters such as traffic, eye protection, and remembering your packed lunch. But the broader mood is more numinous. This is of a piece with a broader trend toward re-moralising the world — a growing preference for stories and meanings over material, practical, or scientific matters — that I suspect makes a contribution to the Anglosphere’s increasingly noticeable inability to deliver large infrastructure projects or manage complex matters such as air traffic control.
Is it possible to combine a collective re-enchantment, and concomitant loss of interest in the material world, with a complex civilisation that relies on minute collective attention to material details? This remains to be seen. But if the trajectory toward re-enchantment continues, I suspect we’ll find the tensions it produces growing starker. Should this happen, the mood of apocalypticism surrounding today’s eclipse may turn out to be an ironically self-fulfilling prophecy.
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SubscribeJust on Author’s ‘Anglosphere’s… inability to deliver large infrastructure’ if she’s v taken with the eclipse she should watch the Netflik documentary on the James Webb telescope. Absolutely stunning, remarkable engineering, technology and delivery. Multi-billion investment and the science is internationally shared. In centuries to come quite poss one of the things that’ll be most remembered about our age.
Thanks for the recommendation!
On this, you’re absolutely correct. It’s also worth noting that the JWT is a collaborative effort (14 countries, i believe). It’s possible that in the west we’ve just become ‘bored’ with huge infrastructure projects that simply increase existing capacity (HS2 being the prime example), while BRICs strive to first catch up and then overtake us in that regard.
The focus is on exploring new territory, as it always was with discovering new lands and building empires; this time, the “final frontier” of course being the cosmos or new, cutting-edge science at which the US and UK still excel.
I remember being in Munich for the 1999 eclipse, and it was impressive. I was in the Olympic park there with thousands of others with our special foil glasses. Although it was cloudy and you couldn’t really get a proper view, watching daylight slowly leech away and then return was a profoundly moving experience.
I hesitate to overload the experience with overwrought layers of unnecessary meaning – but it did make you think how small you were in comparison to these big astronomical movements. And I think that realising that you aren’t the navel of the world is always a good thing.
Well said. I took my family (the children were still primary school age) down to Salcombe in Devon for the 1999 eclipse. The sense of complete and utter awe on their faces as the darkness rolled up the river estuary was more valuable than any possible manufactured experience.
I was in St Gilgen. We arrived at our lakeside hotel at lunchtime, just in time for the eclipse. we were fortunate that it was sunny, though the typical Austrian rain arrived later in the afternoon. It was certainly a magical experience, as the darkness crept towards us, the birds roosted and the navigation lights of the boats on Wolfgangsee suddenly became visible. I’d like to witness another one.
St Gilgen and Wolfgangsee, I know them well from my cycling days! I’ve also done the running race around the lake, that was a pretty special day out.
An alternative argument (YMMV) is that the Enlightenment has had a good run but like all ‘institutions’ it has been undermined and subverted by a different ideology.
Is ‘Enchantment’ the response to the disenchantment of reason? Possibly, although I think a new Romanticism is a more inclusive explanation of current events.
From Wikipedia:
Oh here here! Yes, bring back mystery, romance and the more chivelrous side of our natures please – I’m tired of so being saturated in horror and ‘profanity’ – it darkens the soul.
“[T]he mood of apocalypticism surrounding today’s eclipse may turn out to be an ironically self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Prophecy is no less “prophetic” for being “self-fulfilling.”
In Dune, the protagonist is quite aware of the prophetic type he is fulfilling, and consciously works it. Unfortunately, the movie depicts his mother and the other Bene Gesserit as cynically machinatious, not at all sincere, as they are in the novels.
This is of course an allusion to Christ, who was quite aware of the prophecies he was fulfilling, speaking openly of them.
Why would an enchanted mindset have anything to do with the inability to build airports? Western civilisation thrived for 2000 odd years as a culture built around faith. Our current problem is not having a superstitious mindset, but facing the lack of a central narrative that is substantial enough to be a point around which to build our individual and collective lives.
…I rather thought that was the implicit point of the article.
Perhaps you mean supernatural not superstitious.
I doubt the disenchantment was ever a thing. People have always been easily excited by random events, silly ideas or indeed ideologies until the next “thing”.
Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, but to me the interest in the eclipse seems more a sign to be positive. Apart from the usual suspects (like Greene and her ‘end-of-days’ stuff or the local schoolboards in Ontario closing schools for ‘safety” concerns) I’ve seen more people just genuinely excited to experience this literal once-in-a-lifetime event. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m just projecting, but I’m happy people seem to be taking a step back to marvel at the wonders of life instead of being gripped by the apocalyptic materialism so common to modernity. To me that’s a good sign.
Agree 100%. It will be a shared experience for millions. It will be awesome. You can’t beat that!
As usual, a clever article by Mary Harrington, but I’m not quite convinced the West is moving away from materialism toward mystery and the transcendent. Perhaps the interest in the eclipse is nothing more than people addicted to spectacle (whether in movies, the internet, or at Disney world) eager to see the ultimate spectacle.
In everyday life, where is the evidence of a trend in the West toward more spiritual matters?
…Aren’t you paying attention JB to the world to be, the heaven on earth we deserve, according to Saint Greta?
Re-enchantment? Numinous? Meaning? Seriously? OK, superstition, feeble-minded self-absorbed ‘feelings’, and half-baked beliefs are enjoying their day in the sun – or its eclipse- but no god will protect you from the laws of physics, or fix your appendicitis.
People reacting how they’re told to,as usual. Get excited over this. The Elite now treat us like primitive natives entranced by glass beads so their tool,the media just have to tell the enthusiastic sheep it’s an extraordinary thing(it’s not,it happens every day.somewhere) and it’s like a Pavlov dog.reaction. WHY WAS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION (not the charlatans) (?),TALKING UP fear,this might go down,that might go down,planes might fall out of the sky.
Not unless you feel something stir within you that is far deeper than that.
I’m amazed at how important this event is to so many people. At my age I’m content to watch it on TV and to see the unusual things millions of people are doing because of it, and how emotional they are. I don’t get it but I do get that people are getting something on a very deep level. I think it’s the need to feel a connection with something primordial and powerful that still goes on regardless of how automated and disconnected our everyday lives may have become.
I actually see it another way. The end of an epoch and a rising of another. The return to enchantment to me starts to see a movement back towards a more centered approach – morality. I see nothing but a positive glow here. We are all in for the ride and its going to be bumpy. But I do believe ‘we’ (I would even hesitatingly suggest the silent majority) are heading back from the edges. I say hallelujah and amen to that. Perhaps we are starting to see that we are not the gods we thought we were.