Pokemon Go and Re-Enchantment

Alissa Wilkinson writes about Pokémon Go for Christianity Today:






"Players find Pokémon hidden in the world they occupy every day.  (A certain Christianity Today editor located one on a copier in our office last week, then promptly posted a photo to Facebook.)  Who doesn't want to chase down presences on their block, or in their school?  Who wouldn't delight in the serendipity of "capturing" a presence that isn't "really" there but might as well be?"






In her exploration of Pokémon Go and also the TV show "Stranger Things" and the movie "Midnight Special", Wilkinson talks about the joy of enchantment:






"What we're after is joy - the serendipity of discovery, the thrill of mystery, the feeling of excitement lurking around the corner.  Modern science brought many great things with it, and many scientists seem to testify that they find wonder and enchantment in their work."






But she says that too much explanation disenchants the world:






"But when this study purports to "explain" why we act as we do, or that (a) set of principles or guidelines proclaims that if we only follow them, we'll be right with ourselves or God - well, doesn't some of the light seem to have gone out of the world?" (Wilkinson, "How Stranger Things Re-Enchants the World", Christianitytoday.com)  






In other words, disenchantment drives us to re-enchant.  This is why there's always a market for Pokémon Go or for any number of TV shows or movies like Blair Witch Project, Conjuring, Stranger Things, or Walking Dead which attempt to explore hidden presences or the supernatural because they re-enchant the world with ghosts, zombies, and demons - and yes, Pikachu - and other such things which modern science disenchanted long ago.




'Disenchantment' is a key term for Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's exploration of our secular age.  James K.A. Smith writes about it here:




"It is a mainstay of secularization theory that modernity "disenchants" the world - evacuates it of spirits and various ghosts in the machine.  Diseases are not demonic, mental illness is no longer possession, the body is no longer ensouled.  Generally disenchantment is taken to simply be a matter of naturalization: the magical "spiritual" world is dissolved and we are left with the machinations of matter.  But Taylor's account of disenchantment has a different accent, suggesting that this is primarily a shift in the location of meaning, moving it from "the world" into "the mind." 


Significance no longer inheres in things; rather, meaning and significance are a property of minds who perceive meaning internally." (Smith, How (Not) to be Secular, 28-29)


Disenchantment is not only a matter of evacuating, or subtracting the "spirits" or "ghosts" of premodern eras.  Taylor's point is that disenchantment is a relocation of meaning from the world to the mind.  To return again to the way Wilkinson puts it, we have to work harder in a disenchanted, secular world to invest "discovery", "mystery", and "excitement" in things of the world.  Restaurants, churches, and homes can also become Pokestops.