A Cosmic Tarantula, Caught by NASA’s Webb
On July 12, 2022, NASA released full-color, crisp images of our ancient and most distant galaxies. Our world was dazzled by the ones that transcend us.
The James Webb Telescope, in its honeycomb-shaped mirror, captured the cosmic chaos of newborn stars and dust clouds emerging from galaxy collisions. I, along with countless others, was mesmerized. This momentous occasion gave me every right to gaze upon these celestial phenomena for as long as I could, more textured and vivid than our past technologies could ever record. In a tweet, I shared: “These newly released images of the cosmos are so hopeful. We need to be enchanted again, any way we can.”
Ah, enchantment. Our associations around it are typically linked to juvenile sentiment, like fairy tales and intensely fabricated Grimm folklore turned into a Disney franchise. Even then, I still wonder what I meant by enchantment in that tweet, and perhaps, more significantly, why now?
I look back at the philosopher Charles Taylor and his writings on the secular age, which I know is an age we’ve already moved on from (at least in the West), but context still helps. And I promise I have a point. So anyway, Taylor introduces what’s called the modern social imaginary. A social imaginary is known to hold societies together. Our shared ideas and our collective imaginations help us survive as meaning-making creatures. Taylor largely teaches the social imaginary of Western modernity, and how it neither relates nor relies on a higher power and creation myths to make sense of our origin stories or sense of purpose. This is because we have science now. Our dependency on otherworldly forces or a divine creator (or a bunch of them) has become decreasingly imperative and therefore optional. In capturing Taylor’s point, Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson (big fan) explains in this book that, “As science advanced and gave us increasingly more naturalistic explanations of the world, people grew disenchanted.”
Now, fast forward to where we are today. Thinkers realized this type of disenchantment does not work for us. We have carried on from the modern social imaginary and towards synthesizing transcendence together with the sciences and logic. Just when we are realizing how this might mean or look like for us, the pandemic happened.
The pandemic did a number on us, and no one is exempt from how it has re/shaped our current, post-modern social imaginaries. From my limited point of view, I see a wide political awakening that took place, and it was driven by the great unveiling of our systemic foundations. In other words, people have become more aware (or willing to be aware) of systemic and structural oppression.
The internet was and is the platform from which we gain such vital information on injustices. A lot of our respective political awakenings started because of it. It’s great. We needed it. And I can see how situating the development of our politics in the context of internet culture can be interesting, especially when it comes to social transformation.
While I trust we are more politicized than ever, I argue that our politics have also become more digitized than ever. Jia Tolentino addressed in her compelling book Trick Mirror how “the internet… cheapens our understanding of solidarity.” One example I could think of is the instant gratification a person feels after re-sharing reports of White violence on their social media account. While there is a need to spread awareness around these assaults, the work of solidarity has been reduced to no more than (1) sharing the report on social media, (2) maybe donating to the cause or the injured individual/group, (3) and having brief conversations or debates about the incident with others, whether on the comment section or not. A satiated amount of digital dopamine — check. In addition, our exposure to media violence is incessant. Nowadays, it’s become a moral obligation not to turn away from or post about the suffering and hate crimes documented.
As a therapist, I believe there should be parameters considered when it comes to media consumption, especially when it involves violence. The cost of not considering or carefully calculating these parameters have left many of us fatigued, (re)traumatized, and/or desensitized. Back to the conversation of (dis)enchantment: Is desensitization just another form of disenchantment? Is this a kind of disenchantment that hinders us from imagining possibilities or strategies to best address and transform systemic inequities? Has our lengthened and increased fixation on trauma numbed us more than it has informed and emboldened us towards collective social change?
All these questions remind me of Jordan Peele’s Nope—a cautionary tale about our lust for the spectacle. The film showed the harm from exploiting violence and drama. To participate in sensationalism will have its consequences, and it starts with numbing us enough to objectify the subjects of the spectacle. In Jason Parham’s review, Peele showed “a certain danger in looking.” Spoiler alert: Not looking was actually the discipline that eventually saved the main characters. Smart, noh?
Okay, going back to my initial question: Why do we need to be enchanted in this particular time? What’s the connection with the cosmos? Not to stretch these ideas more than I already have, but James Baldwin comes to mind when he wrote in No Name in the Street: “There is reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend.”
Whenever we witness anything bigger than us—be it beauty or calamity—it has become dangerously automatic for us to reduce this transcendence into a category by treating it as a commodity. This is a form of disenchantment after losing touch with the multifaceted essence of transcendence, along with its enormity and sacred ability to potentially change us and our world for the greater good. It’s hard to imagine the greater good when we are anesthetized from excessive media exposure and the allures of capitalism. When we are numb, we lose our openness to imagine and hope for more in this life. However, to be enchanted or in awe disarms the numbness and softens our receptivity to imagine and materialize hope. So, indeed indeed: We need to be enchanted again, any way we can.
Wow! This is incredible.