Modernity Reduces Enchantment

Enchantment—a high-bandwidth way of interacting with reality through all our modalities (emotions, facial expressions, body, self-control) rather than through a narrow interface—is reduced by the modern reductionist relationship to the world; where pre-modern people related to a river as having a god requiring reverence, we now relate to it merely as water to be tested for cleanliness, and future scenarios risk losing the remaining enchantment.