The idea of enchantment/disenchantment/re-enchantment with the world keeps popping up as salient lately. I suspect there’s a memeplex there that’s a natural successor to premium mediocre and domestic cozy. Feeling kinda lazy about working it out.
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Premium mediocre: fading enchantment of second age of middle earth
Domestic cozy: disenchantment and retreat
STUB-CONCEPT GOES HERE??: re-enchantment (rate-limited by rate of entry into post-Covid)
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STUB CONCEPT is something at the intersection of:
- a new calculus of abundance vs scarcity
- a new sociality that is neither mass nor niche
- changed relationships with technology, media, polit8cs
- a robust new false consciousness
- aestheticized climate consciousness
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I’m kinda tired of chasing down such scent-trails myself. Maybe I should issues Ribbonfarm grand challenge for it. May the best memeplex win etc.
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Working with memetics: nobody gets what you’re talking about while you’re following a trail, but shortly after a memetic handle/grip is exposed everyone will act like it was always obvious. So you have a very short launch window to do something to profit from it.
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In this case I just want the answer. Happy to forgo the fun of figuring it out.
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Someone forge a new One Ring
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Let the re-enchantment Olympics begin
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Useful data
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Poll: What’s your enchantment state in relation to the world?
Show this poll
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Yeah, it’s fatal if it persists too long. People confuse grumpy or cynical enchantment for disenchantment. True disenchantment kills within a few years. twitter.com/typhoonjim/sta
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Linkum
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Replying to @vgr
FWIW, "The Reenchanted Self" section in this: thenewatlantis.com/publications/t
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More linkum
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Replying to @vgr
i think @kalladomcdowell has it: as we deal more and more with the multidimensional spaces of machine learning, we need the access the multidimensional thought styles of magic and animism.
i wrote some thoughts on this today actually also robotface.substack.com/p/the-big-sleep
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Interesting that for most people this free associated with literal magic, pagan spiritualities, animism etc. For me it connects mainly to observation/measurement instruments and tools, ways of seeing etc. Enchantment is a radically empiricist mode for me.
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McLuhan approach: enchantment is unconscious media extensions. Disenchantment is autoamputation. Re-enchantment is new media extensions. New sensory leaks.
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Sensory leakage fits here somewhere
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A hidden peril of being stuck indoors too much is lack of sensory leakage. Unexpected sights, smells, tastes, noises, textures. "Home" is sensory closure. All sensations are familiar. Stumbling across novel sensations at home is really rare.
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I suspect me trying to build a rover is an unacknowledged re-enchantment project.
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Seems like this is a whole thing I’ve stumbled into. Entire subcultures that use ‘reenchsntment’ as a term of art. twitter.com/buttontapper/s
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Damn. Wtf. How big is this memeplex? It’s mostly off to one side of what I’m gnawing on but close enough to cast a big gravity field.
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Okay that last link is the mother lode. Deep history of the idea.
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Having slept on this it strikes me that much of my own disenchantment stems from all these people trying to pursue their anti-modern re-enchantment programs 🤣
Like someone remarked that Q was a re-enchantment project. That example kinda sums up the problem with the idea.
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Thesis: Re-enchantment Olympics as an emerging replacement for Oppression Olympics (which was started by black lesbian crypto-marxist identitarians in 1989 and won by cis-white male crypto fascist identitarians in 2020, much to the amusement of thise with any sense of irony left)
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Events:
early education
post-theism
grand narrative
new domesticity
media production
techno-animism
climate relations
environmental stewardship
alien relations
nature relations
economic visioning
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Nations competing in most events
conspiracyville
neoreactionistan
wokeistan
rickmortyia
hypernormalia
neoliberal deathstarism
China
COP21
Elon Musk nation
Waldenpondia
VeryOnlinistan
StatueHeadTwitter
AnimeAvistan
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He noticed a Cambrian explosion of re-enchantment underway.
And he just sat there making a spreadsheet out of it.
Like a psychopath.
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I don’t know whether this is much of an improvement on oppression Olympics, but I’m rooting for some linear combination of Rick and Morty and Elon musk to sweep all the golds and silvers
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Good thing most people don’t pay much attention to the levels of being at which I’m a thoroughly awful person
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Hmm there’s now enough here to write up. Usually this is the stage where I’ve convinced myself a solution exists and lose interest for a year before writing a long post about it when I’m in a random heavy-lift mood looking for something to do.
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A rude caricature is forming in my head: “everything is about re-enchantment except re-enchantment itself, which is about Nazi aesthetics”
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Making spreadsheets is the highest level of passive aggression
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The last time anyone successfully achieved re-enchantment was probably P. G. Wodehouse.
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