Rod Dreher writes about it all the time in his Substack. He has just finished an as yet unpublished book about it. He favors psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist's explanation. I think McGilchrist's book is The Master and his Emissary.
I started reading The Master and his Emissary, but got busy and it's a book that demands your full attention. It's still on my shelf, so maybe I'll give it another go. Personally, I have never lost my sense of enchantment and often point out to others tiny things that go unnoticed, magical things, like a fleeting shadow. They light up for a second. Some go on to start noticing, in others the shutters seems to almost instantly come back over their eyes.
What a fascinating comment! I'm a Christian believer, and envy those Christians who can sit for hours in Eucharistic adoration, or devote much of their lives to prayer.
I'm not one of them.
I know that McGilchrist's thesis has to do with the loss of right hemispheric dominance over consciousness. When I was seven, I was almost killed, and have a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. It seems to have affected dominantly right hemispheric function, and because of that, as fascinated as I might be by all of this, it's not within my grasp to try to stimulate that kind of noticing. I've gone through life envying those for whom it comes easily.
"There’s a death of enchantment in our culture..." Yup.
Rod Dreher writes about it all the time in his Substack. He has just finished an as yet unpublished book about it. He favors psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist's explanation. I think McGilchrist's book is The Master and his Emissary.
I will check out that book.
This hit me really hard. The truth and depth of that statement is just devastating.
See my reply to Sherman Alexie just above.
I started reading The Master and his Emissary, but got busy and it's a book that demands your full attention. It's still on my shelf, so maybe I'll give it another go. Personally, I have never lost my sense of enchantment and often point out to others tiny things that go unnoticed, magical things, like a fleeting shadow. They light up for a second. Some go on to start noticing, in others the shutters seems to almost instantly come back over their eyes.
What a fascinating comment! I'm a Christian believer, and envy those Christians who can sit for hours in Eucharistic adoration, or devote much of their lives to prayer.
I'm not one of them.
I know that McGilchrist's thesis has to do with the loss of right hemispheric dominance over consciousness. When I was seven, I was almost killed, and have a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. It seems to have affected dominantly right hemispheric function, and because of that, as fascinated as I might be by all of this, it's not within my grasp to try to stimulate that kind of noticing. I've gone through life envying those for whom it comes easily.