C.S. Lewis in the Age of Bleakness
Awe, Wonder and the Power of Enchantment
By Josh Appel
In the age of modernity, we find ourselves confronting a familiar affliction: bleakness. Our lives are marked by disillusionment. We doom-scroll, our eyes glazed over, while once useful dopamine receptors quietly shoot their last remaining endorphins. The YouTube rabbit hole is not so much an experience in enjoyment as much as it is a reflex of our current era. We watch videos of others cosplaying luxurious livelihoods all while sitting in a darkened room hoping for something more. And then what few icons we may look to as heroes the world often tells us are evil. To put it simply: in the era of algorithms and digital experiences we have become bored and uninspired.
The modern age has long been diagnosed as disenchanted. Max Weber famously spoke of the “disenchantment of the world” by which rationalization and secularization erode the magical and sacred dimensions of life. Jürgen Habermas extended this analysis, noting how modernity marginalizes religion from public reason, confining it to the private sphere thus stripping us of a shared moral tradition and language. Ernest Gellner added that industrial society, by its very logic, tends to suppress myth and tradition in favor of utilitarian norms. All three observed a flattening of experience — a world explained but no longer felt. However, C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and a religious apologist, noted that disenchantment also led to modern cynicism.