🏮 e2 // The Window of Disenchantment

e2 // The Window of Disenchantment

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In episode two we explore the gifts that disenchantment brings.

This episode came about on a whim (and, lol, it shows 😅) when I found myself offering the following almost-platitudinous adage to friends expressing frustration that they just feel a bit “stuck” in life. That they don’t have the motivation they once had, and that their work has lost its charm. #relate

To them, I wouldst say:

Momentum inhibits reinvention.

I would then gently suggest that, perhaps, they are entering into a chapter of life whereby the quiet discontent they had been harbouring was finally making itself known. And that if we listen to this disquiet—if we treat this window of disenchantment as an invitation—we may find ourselves moving closer to what we might call meaningful progress / alignment / fulfilment / development / deepening / calling / etcetera.

What we resist, persists (as the saying goes). And life, your body, your relations, “The Universe” (etc) will keep dishing you up versions of this lesson—at increasing intensities—until you take heed. And listen.

Podcast episode summary (by shoggoth)

In this episode, foxwizard explores the themes of disenchantment and reinvention, emphasising the importance of recognising moments of disillusionment as opportunities for personal growth. He discusses the role of momentum in inhibiting change, the significance of disenchantment as a spell that breaks illusions, and the oscillation between disenchantment and re-enchantment. The conversation also touches on the differences between Father Tongue and Mother Tongue, highlighting the importance of language in fostering connection and understanding in a polarised world. Ultimately, the episode encourages listeners to embrace their feelings of disenchantment as invitations to seek alignment and authenticity in their lives.

Keywords: disenchantment, reinvention, momentum, personal growth, self-awareness, authenticity, leadership, metacrisis, language, connection

Okay but real talk: I’m still finding my groove with this podcasting thing. I’m not particularly proud of this episode (in fact: it fills me with chagrin; I could have made this so much better for you; I don’t like it)—but I don’t want to fall into the spiral of endless perfecting. So: indulge me as I find my way anyway! And thank you for your patience.

Chapters

00:00 Preamble
02:06 Episode Overview
03:41 Productivity ≠ Progress
05:29 Momentum Inhibits Reinvention
11:43 Windows of Disenchantment
21:35 Breaking Spells
40:29 Ritualised Quiescence
51:10 Re-Enchantment
54:30 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue
57:48 Always in Oscillation

Remember: you can watch this episode on YouTube.

Wouldst thou like a transcript?

Here you are! (55kb plain text file)

References

I’m all over the shop in this episode. But here are some of the things I mentioned.

• I reference Martin Shaw’s work—particularly passages from Courting The Wild Twin—a lot. I share key passages below.
• Jevon’s Paradox – the counterintuitive phenomenon where increases in resource efficiency lead to higher overall consumption of that resource. For example, improvements in energy efficiency often reduce costs, making energy use more affordable and accessible, which can drive up demand and negate some of the intended conservation benefits. In essence, greater efficiency can inadvertently spur more extensive use. What we want is the opposite of this.
• From Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, I mention the example of the tourist and the flâneur. “Rational flâneur (or just flâneur): Someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision opportunistically at every step to revise his schedule (or his destination) so he can imbibe things based on new information obtained.”
• I find myself referring to Layman Pascal’s Gurdjieff for a Time Between Worlds again.
• I briefly mention The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, a 1976 book by Bruno Bettelheim.
• I make passing reference to “The Nihilistic Gap” that David Chapman explicates in A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse.
• I do a sneaky shoutout to The Labyrinths of Reason post and video I made 18 months ago. This one is good.
• I mention The Courage to be Disliked and Adlerian psychology.
• I mention Sand Talk by Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta.
• I clumsily recite the lyrics from Pet and Disillusioned by A Perfect Circle.
• I reference Jem Bendell’s book Breaking Together.
• I hat tip to The Dark Mountain Manifesto.
• I share the “contextual momentum” model I conjured for my first book, The Game Changer (published over a decade ago).

• I fondly recall the depresso post I made at the start of October last year: Are We Beyond Hope? (And, increasingly, I see that coming to terms with our metacrisis and the associated grief is a vital maturity threshold we must cross—lest we continue to perpetuate the very conditions that incentivise our own collective destruction)
• I reference Josh Schrei’s podcast—this time, his episode Trickster Jumps Sides: Disruption and the Anatomy of Culture—and his phenomenal online course: The Mythic Body.
• I make reference to Cal Newport’s “shut down” ritual (from Deep Work).
• I relish in the Merlin Bird ID app! Kim shared this with me and it has transformed the way we walk, and the quality of the attention we bring to our locale. (Kim has also been reading What The Robin Knows—How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World and I am astonished by how much I am learning even just via the tidbits and snippets shared).
• I quote from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World. If you have any affinity or respect for the role Trickster plays, this book is a must.
• I reference Ursula K Le Guin’s Bryn Mawr Commencement Address (1986) where she explicates upon Father Tongue and Mother Tongue.

A small piece on Hermes: spellbinder and unbinder

Hermes is neither simply an enchanter or a disenchanter, but both at once:

“Hermes of the Dark is the weaver of dreams, the charmer who spins a compelling tale, the orator who speaks your mother tongue with fluid conviction.. . . Hermes of the Light translates dreams into analytic language; he rubs the charm from old stories until they seem hopelessly made up and mechanical. He walks you inland until you stop dreaming in your mother tongue.”

I read the full quote directly in the podcast; this is a summary plucked from here.

An excerpt from Disillusioned by A Perfect Circle

[...]

We have been overrun
By our animal desire
Addicts of the immediate
Keep us obedient and unaware
Feeding this mutation
This Pavlovian despair

We've become
Disillusioned
So we run
Towards anything glimmering

Time to put the silicon obsession down
Take a look around
Find a way in the silence
Lie supine away with your back to the ground
Dis- and re-connect to the resonance now
You were never an island

Unique
Voice among the many
In this choir
Tuning
Into each other
Lift all higher

[...]

A passage from Marin Shaw’s Courting the Wild Twin

“This, now, is mostly an era of spell-making. Of tacit enchantment, of stultified imaginations and loins inflamed by so much factory-fodder lust, our relationships malfunction in their millions. We are on the island of the Lotus Eaters, curled up in the warm sleepy breeze of a Russian fairy tale as the robber steals away the Firebird. How do we wake up?

I will give you a little plot-spoiler right here. Sounds so very deceptively simple. The secret is relatedness.”

Reflecting on the last episode

Since episode e1 // Pretend To Be Who You Really Are, I seem to be noticing reference to ‘shapeshifting’ all about the place. Just recently, after listening to this episode of The Great Simplification where Nate Hagens interviews Bill Plotkin (which, btw, has exquisite nominative determinism there: plotkin!), I have become aware of The Animas Valley Institute and their wondrous glossary of terms. Shapeshifting and mythopoetic identity is a theme, here.

I also appreciate the framing of selfhood as an ecological expression. And part of this implies that we each find our ecological niche—the role we play as a functioning element of a greater living whole. And as we look towards this chapter of exponential change and collapse, many of us will need to be sensing into the roles we play in this changing ecology.

Fluidity and situational acuity remain vital sensibilities. As too will your ongoing developmental unfurling—even if it involves dissolution. These were themes I was already writing into my next book for you; but now they have new depth.

Speaking of book writing, fellow metamodern-ish collapse-aware infinite player Sarah Wilson is serialising the writing of her next book (on collapse). And she is doing such a good job of it. Inspired.

This is happening over on substack, a platform I have long since ghosted. I’ll discuss my reasons for leaving substack someday soon, but in the meantime it has left me wondering: what might it be like to write a book in serial form? Could I even? I’m not sure my mind works in a straight line, but it could be fun to share the journey with a smaller cohort. Let’s see.

Parting wishes

Befriend your feelings of disenchantment. They may hold the key to liberating you from the illusions that keep you shackled to a path/role/mode/self-concept that no longer serves you. Disenchantment may well be a window to your own developmental unfurling, and the re-enchantment that lies beyond.

fw