Good stuff! Glad to have happened upon your 'Stack. I very much agree about this search for missing Enchantment.... A few years ago, I wrote something along similar lines about superheroes (I might have to dust it off and publish it here). In that case, what's missing is less Enchantment than Power - but in both cases, as you argue, we have been cut off from our Magic, and from the places from which it springs...
(here's a snippet, if I may)
"Why superheroes? There are many theories. But let me suggest one: they are a simulacrum of what we’re missing. Their heroes are ersatz pagan gods and culture heroes, retrofitted to tell the mythology of capitalism. They are secret agents with superpowers for people who lack all agency, all power. They are methadone for people who have never tasted the real thing. They keep our inchoate cravings at bay, and unidentifiable. Fandom allows people to belong to a cult of the Übermensch, and to live out fantasies of power and beauty, and destruction of their enemies. But it’s all totally empty, and it keeps it all on the screen, and so that’s where we look for it. That’s where we’re hooked to it."
A good piece, offering juxtapositions and a rather sharp criticism, which to my sensibilities is fully warranted.
Corporate capture is, I think, more than a small feature in both your examples. Much appears to be associated with an idea of simply having something delivered. Thus the corporate version of magic must become commodity. It must be deliverable, which translates into a certain objectivity.
Which is about opposite of the genuine magical experience.
There is another feature, in corporate magic, the only failure is when someone doesn't shell out money. Yet in the real world, failure is a very important part of learning that one is dealing with living systems that are intelligent, that do feel, vs a kind of flip the switch and the light goes on as long as one pays the electric bill.
Movies cannot replicate the uncanny sense of being a part of a phenomena of timing, nor theme parks, and writing can it seems only get there by proxy.
It is perhaps the shallow illness of a society, this corporate magic. After all, even substack is a harvester of effort, a user of people as a means to an end. This is the corporate mindset. And it is exactly what we find in corporate magic.
maybe disney etc are the container where such folks are *ready* to meet it, as the formalized rituals in traditional religion sometimes are and have been?
Good stuff! Glad to have happened upon your 'Stack. I very much agree about this search for missing Enchantment.... A few years ago, I wrote something along similar lines about superheroes (I might have to dust it off and publish it here). In that case, what's missing is less Enchantment than Power - but in both cases, as you argue, we have been cut off from our Magic, and from the places from which it springs...
(here's a snippet, if I may)
"Why superheroes? There are many theories. But let me suggest one: they are a simulacrum of what we’re missing. Their heroes are ersatz pagan gods and culture heroes, retrofitted to tell the mythology of capitalism. They are secret agents with superpowers for people who lack all agency, all power. They are methadone for people who have never tasted the real thing. They keep our inchoate cravings at bay, and unidentifiable. Fandom allows people to belong to a cult of the Übermensch, and to live out fantasies of power and beauty, and destruction of their enemies. But it’s all totally empty, and it keeps it all on the screen, and so that’s where we look for it. That’s where we’re hooked to it."
thank you! and definitely am in agreement re: superheroes
Thank you for drawing a thread through this so beautifully!
thank you autumn!
A good piece, offering juxtapositions and a rather sharp criticism, which to my sensibilities is fully warranted.
Corporate capture is, I think, more than a small feature in both your examples. Much appears to be associated with an idea of simply having something delivered. Thus the corporate version of magic must become commodity. It must be deliverable, which translates into a certain objectivity.
Which is about opposite of the genuine magical experience.
There is another feature, in corporate magic, the only failure is when someone doesn't shell out money. Yet in the real world, failure is a very important part of learning that one is dealing with living systems that are intelligent, that do feel, vs a kind of flip the switch and the light goes on as long as one pays the electric bill.
Movies cannot replicate the uncanny sense of being a part of a phenomena of timing, nor theme parks, and writing can it seems only get there by proxy.
It is perhaps the shallow illness of a society, this corporate magic. After all, even substack is a harvester of effort, a user of people as a means to an end. This is the corporate mindset. And it is exactly what we find in corporate magic.
absolutely. there are so many factors at play.
Love the language of a porous body
agreed! i much prefer it to the concept of “the veil”
very good!
maybe disney etc are the container where such folks are *ready* to meet it, as the formalized rituals in traditional religion sometimes are and have been?
fabulous, as always
ty my friend! <3
Very well said 🙏🏻
Christianity is what murdered magic— and corporations, opportunists they are, carried on the slaughter.