In modern secular societies, faith in mysticism is growing, educated people are interested in the irrational. What is happening to us? Answers from sociologist Frédéric Lenoir.
Interview with Frédéric Lenoir, religious scholar, sociologist, author of the study “Buddhism in France” and co-author of “The Book of Wisdom”.
Psychologies: What do people mean when they talk about irrational?
Frederik Lenuar: What they don’t understand! This word still has a connotation of disdain. This is the legacy of the XNUMXth century, when everything that reason and science could not explain was considered non-existent, false or illusory. However, this approach is completely illusory.
First of all, due to the fact that many phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, hypnosis, which today seem irrational, may receive a logical explanation tomorrow. Secondly and chiefly, because man and the world are rational and irrational at the same time. Sexuality, desire, love, creativity in most cases cannot be deciphered. What is it, however, real experiences or illusory sensations?
Descartes was not ashamed to admit that his method, which laid the philosophical foundation of modern science, appeared to him in a dream. Many philosophers and anthropologists over the past 30 years have been trying to rehabilitate the imagination and myths as part of our being, although their efforts are not always welcome.
Would you dare to say that in modern Europe there is a flourishing of the irrational?
F. L .: It definitely is. And in this sense, we are no longer an exception, since most societies have always found a way to give free rein to the irrational side of man. In fact, this side was reflected in Europe for centuries in two institutions: in positivist science, which rejected it, and in the church, which used it for its own purposes.
Nevertheless, in recent years we are present at the revision of the scientific approach – science is becoming more modest in its ambitions, recognizing the existence of chance. At the same time, the authority of religion ceases to be indisputable, which frees our craving for the irrational, which has long been suppressed. This is a kind of return to balance.
Why do you contrast religion and the irrational? Isn’t faith irrational in nature?
F. L .: It is irrational, but only to the extent that it is based not on dogma, but on subjective experience or revelation. However, as the sociologist Max Weber has amply shown, the notion of a creator God giving orders and giving meaning to the world is in itself a powerful rationalization that is opposed to the magical vision of a world that is full of mystery and magic.
That is why modern science appeared in the West within the Christian faith and only then opposed itself to it. Today, most people do not share the entire system of religious ideas about the world. We are witnessing the collapse of traditional religion against the backdrop of the flourishing of fuzzy beliefs: in the devil, the transmigration of souls, the return from the other world, in angels … We again give the world magical features.
What is the manifestation of such magical thinking?
F. L .: We feel ourselves the object of the action of forces that are mysterious and significant at the same time, which can be controlled for our own good. A religious person who has money problems, finding a banknote on the street, will think: “This is a gift from God, the Lord thinks of me and loves me.”
A rational person would say that this is an accident. The magical thinker will offer his explanation: “Listen, today is March 3rd, 3 o’clock, and 3 is my favorite number,” or: “My wife’s name is the same as this street is called,” or: “It’s good that I went to sorcerer.” Such people see signs everywhere, are very pragmatic and do not rely on logic.
What is the difference between magic and spirituality?
F. L .: Craving for divination, divination on tarot cards, the use of amulets and mysterious potions can lead us to alienation from ourselves, and ultimately to the rejection of freedom and work on ourselves. The spiritual principle comes from the confidence that we are free, and encourages us to make efforts to understand the world and to change ourselves. So if magicism takes too much power over us, magical thinking and spirituality become antagonists.