Enchantment is a Minority Pursuit!
Enchantment is a word I’ve chosen to use in other pieces of writing to mean something very specific. I don’t mean it in the sense of fantasy – as some kind of magic spell that might occur in a fantasy novel, film or game. I mean enchantment as a particular way of looking at and seeing the everyday world around us and as an ability to see the beauty in our everyday world. I also mean it as a particular kind of pleasure – the ability to find pleasure in our lives just as they are right now, without having to seek too far outside of ourselves. Enchantment, in this sense, is to know ourselves and know our pleasures. Fantasy is to escape the world, enchantment is to embrace the world.
But I’m writing this because I recognise that all of the above is problematic. For one thing, perhaps the explanation I’ve given is just difficult for people to follow. (Perhaps you, dear reader, have found it puzzling.) Why not just say beauty or pleasure? The reason I offer is that I’m talking about a particular approach to beauty and pleasure, rather than just beauty and pleasure for their own sake. As such, it’s difficult to give examples of enchantment in the sense that I’m meaning. It is as much about the attitude of the person than the particular thing they are looking at or experiencing. Unfortunately, even very great beauty can pass people by, whilst other folk will find enchantment in the most mundane of circumstances.
Attitude!
Why does this matter anyway, you may be asking. Well, if we are to see big changes in the world, like ending torture, war, famine and solving climate change then unfortunately it is people that need to change. We can only get so far tackling any of the above by way of better government or better laws or new technology. And perhaps rather strangely, the way I think we could best bring about change in other people is not through making people more moral or more compassionate or kind or generous – although all of that would be good – but by recognising our true pleasures.
Why, you may ask, does that make a difference? The reason is that most people – if asked what their lives are about – will answer that they are seeking happiness for themselves and their families. So happiness, pleasure, joy, enchantment – these things cut to the heart of what people are about and what motivates us.
If people wanted different things, if people found pleasure in different ways from the way happiness and pleasure are currently sought, then this is the most direct route to changing people and changing the world.
But I’m sure you see the difficulty with this at once. Enchantment – whilst not exactly saying what pleasures we should seek – is certainly suggesting we should seek pleasure in our immediate surroundings – our houses, gardens and workplaces, everyday meals, local communities, family, friends. Meanwhile pleasure for many is almost the reverse of this – a change from our everyday circumstances, getting away from home and the neighbourhood on a dream vacation, with fancy meals and exciting entertainment. Buying new stuff. Improving our lot in life. It’s easy to see that enchantment, by my definition, could easily look frugal and miserly by comparison!
And – despite suggesting that it’s the quality of engagement with what we do, rather than the thing itself, that’s important – it’s still difficult to get way from the idea that there’s a grading of pleasure going on here, and that some pleasures are thereby suspect, low-brow, cheap or otherwise questionable. Enchantment could then be construed as an elitist and patronising concept!
So what to do?
Different people see the world in different ways, so why would we ever try to grade pleasures? What about just accepting the way people currently are and see where the pursuit of happiness in these terms would lead.
There are more and more people seeking more and better stuff, more thrilling experiences and better lifestyles. So economies need to keep growing in order to keep pace. And hence, more and more of the natural world must be gobbled up to keep up with this growth. Technology, new materials (including from space) and efficiencies might keep up. People who believe this are called Cornucopians. For them there is no problem that cannot be fixed and we will, before long, be living on a terraformed Mars and looking perhaps at solving the runway greenhouse effect on Venus to give us another planet for another few billion people and so on and on. We can restore what we have destroyed in the process of development, and in the long run, humanity will be responsible for seeding life on other planets, so we will have given nature back more than we’ve ever taken out of her.
But what if we just cannot keep pace? What then? Well it looks like the difference between the haves and the have-nots will just accelerate. Eventually there would be high-tech bubbles of life (both here and on other worlds) surrounded by an almost uninhabitable wilderness. It might be that the have-nots eventually just die out and the small remnants of privileged humanity are all that’s left of us. That might not be so terrible were it not for the enormous suffering, both for humans and for nature, that would be endured in the process.
And what would those small bubbles of privilege be like? Would they be filled with people who enjoy mindless entertainment, fast food, cheap thrills and the latest gadgets? Is that going to be the most successful species of future humanity? Well, you can see the elitism creeping in again! But there would need to be at least some very serious minds and high intelligence to manage a human civilisation living in such precarious circumstances. If there were not then likely these remaining bubbles of human life would quickly pop.
Is it an all or nothing choice between the two scenarios I’ve sketched out above? Probably not. Probably a mixture of the two. But I am certain that how we approach and think about pleasure is the key to all of this. And I still hold out a hope for enchantment – perhaps in the very long tem, if we survive, we will see all these things differently.
