MYSTERY AND UTILITARIANISM

 

‘In 1917 the sociologist and philosopher Max Weber named ‘disenchantment’ (Entzauberung) as the distinctive injury of modernity.  He defined disenchantment as ‘the knowledge or belief … that there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that we can, in principle, master all things by calculation.   For Weber, disenchantment was a function of the rise of rationalism, which demanded the extirpation of dissenting knowledge-kinds in favour of a single master-principle.  It found its expressions not just in human behaviour and policy – including the general impulse to control nature – but also in emotional response.  Weber noted that the widespread reduction of ‘wonder’ (for him the hallmark of enchantment, and in which state we are comfortable with not-knowing) and the corresponding expansion of ‘will’ (for him the hallmark of disenchantment, and in which state we are avid for authority).  In modernity, mastery usurped mystery.
         Our language for nature is now such that the things around us do not talk back to us in ways that they might.  As we have enhanced our power to determine nature, so we have rendered it less able to converse with us.  We find it hard to imagine nature outside a use -value framework.  We have become experts in analysing what nature can do for us, but lack a language to evoke what it can do to us.  The former is important; the latter is vital.’  (Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks, Penguin, 2015, p.24) 

Looking at creation and acknowledging our relationship with all matter (Mother Earth) is aided by that sense of wonder and mystery expressed by psalmist and contemplative.  Wonder at the mystery surrounding us is necessary if we are to avoid believing we are masters rather than sisters and brothers. That sense of wonder (at the mystery of God in all things) prevents utilitarianism, literalism, and profitability from being our gods. The Mystic needs to be embraced for the sake of our humanity: it's easy to fall into the trap of knowing the price of everything but the value of so little.