Enchanted reality
Recently I saw someone online comment that they felt reality is overrated. It stayed with me as a comment, partly because that’s just such a tragic way for a person to feel, and partly because I suspect it represents a much bigger issue. If most of your life revolves around work, travelling to work, preparing for work, recovering from work and maybe watching some television, reality can’t have much to offer. If you’re not working and are instead dealing with grinding financial pressures, it’s even worse.
We’re facing a climate crisis, and a human-driven disaster on a scale that it’s hard to think about. As a species we aren’t doing very well at resisting this to protect ourselves from looming calamity. But then, what are most of us fighting for? What is there about modern life for many people that suggests it could be worth saving?
Even at my most depressed, I’ve managed to stay a bit in love with the world. I have access to trees and green spaces, there’s birdsong outside my windows and a stream a matter of yards away. The wild world isn’t an abstract notion for me, it’s the world I live in, which is of itself a huge privilege. Urban spaces can be much more soul destroying. If all you’ve got is a few straggly bushes and a sad square of worn grass, it’s not going to be so easy to imagine the natural world as something to care for.
We’ve alienated the majority of humans from nature and the life of the planet. We’ve turned the wonder of existence into a depressing grind where the promised rewards are planet-harming things we can’t afford and won’t get time to enjoy. Is it any wonder that we aren’t collectively squaring up to the climate crisis in a meaningful way?
In some ways, this feels like a mobius band of issues, where tackling the climate crisis would call upon us to deal with our toxic consumerism and change our cultures. Without changing our toxic cultures, how can we find the means to respond to the disaster we’re creating? And round it goes, each feeding the misery of the other. How can we change systems that breed despair and apathy?
Small joys have never seemed more important. Small wonders, acts of kindness and moments of beauty that make life and reality seem precious, are key. We need re-enchantment, so that we can encounter our living planet with care and delight. Somehow, we need to lift the people who think reality is overrated and find the means to inspire them and bring them hope.
