We’re Running Out of Magic and the Outlook is Bleak

Society is becoming less religious every day. Personally, I think that’s a good thing; religion has been used as an excuse to stifle innovation and discourage progress for centuries. That’s not to say religion is entirely bad; under the watchful eye of vengeful, omniscient and omnipotent deities, humankind has been motivated to do fantastic things, like build pyramids and (mostly) avoid killing each other. Put simply, there are times that faith can help us to achieve what seems impossible and to persevere even when we can’t see the point.

As we turn our backs more and more of the shared myths of religion, society seems to be at a loss. Like religion, science in its current form does not provide all the answers; similarly, those who put their faith in science tend to cling to the parts that they think they know, even when sometimes there is plenty of evidence to suggest that something isn’t quite right (for example, the fact that we don’t yet have a Unified Theory of Everything, or that we can’t conclusively explain what consciousness — or even existence — is). But humans are emphatic creatures, and so we steam on ahead, convinced in our approach, refusing to pay attention to the things we might be leaving behind — like with Brexit, for example.

And so, as we — particularly in the west — emerge even further from the shelter created by the myth of religion, we find ourselves blessed with freedom, from the shackles of religious dogmas that have kept us in the dark in so many ways for so long. we can lie, cheat, fornicate, stuff our bellies and line our pockets without fear of eternal damnation. Yippee.

But at the same time as gaining the confidence to live freer lives, unafraid of innovation, humanity risks losing some of the value that certain aspects of religious cultures and traditions can add. The increasing prevalance of depression and other mental health issues in modern environments seem to prove that humans are already aware of this on some level, which is why we scour the globe looking for ways to reclaim the things that we still subconsciously know to be important.

Take, for example, meditation, repackaged as ‘mindfulness’ so as to make it compatible with a more materialistic society. Or even yoga — how many people do you know that claim to love yoga ‘apart from the spiritual bits?’ We reject the parts of the practice that doesn’t fit with the material paradigm in which certain scientific dogmas have locked us.

More recently, ‘breath work’ has been working its way into western society, having taken on new life after being coopted from various prescientific traditions from around the world and repackaged as a yuppie wellness activity. It is therefore more than a little ironic that science is finally starting to understand some of the ways in which the intangible aspects of some spiritual practices have a direct and recordable impact on the physical body as well as mental health.

Let’s go back to the topic of meditation. I don’t know many people in the west who could honestly say they’d be up for adopting the Buddhist lifestyle; after all, it is hardly compatible with western capitalist culture. But repackage meditation as ‘mindfulness’ and charge a subscription fee for breath work, and suddenly everything changes. Mainstream society is now aware of how meditation and breath work affect metabolism, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing and even the amount of grey matter you have in the brain (this is a good thing).

What most people won’t also know is that it is possible to control body temperature through meditation, as proven by Tibetan monks in freezing conditions for a Harvard study, way back in 1985. How many other feats currently presumed supernatural and therefore impossible are actually achievable in the real world? As humanity turns its back on our formerly shared myths, it only stands to reason that we will inevitably lose some of the good, as well as some of what has been holding us back. Perhaps we shouldn’t be in such a hurry…

This story was originally published on Medium.