re-enchantment

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
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    • Aside from the particular word it doesn't seem very new; the same spirit animated the hippies fifty years ago and many others. I remember first seeing the Whole Earth Catalog and becoming excited that here was an approach to technology that wasn't dull and corporate and rationalist, but in some way alive and magical.
    • Norman O Brown, a major intellectual influence on the counterculture, wrote Life Against Death.
    • Fortunately, the world is no more disenchanted than it used to be, machines are no more polished, reasoning is no tighter, and exchanges are no better organized. How can we speak of a "modern world" when its efficacy depends upon idols: money, law, reason, nature, machines, organization, or linguistic structures? We have al­ ready used the word "magic". Since the origins of the power of the "modern world" are misunderstood and efficacy is attributed to things that neither move nor speak, we may speak of magic once again.