On the Fairy-Faith

Part 3, From "No" to "Maybe?"

So, let's say you want to believe in fairies. More, you take Hart's argument from the last post to heart and have concluded that you have a moral duty to believe in fairies. Or, you at least think that being open to believing in fairies is saner, more rational, and more wholesome than an arid, boring, and soul-sucking disenchantment. How, then, is such a leap into the purportedly fantastical to be accomplished?

How do you make yourself believe in fairies?

Well, to go back to the first post and Evans-Wentz's anthropological study in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, what you'll find in that book is a lot of testimonials, much of it second hand. People share stories with Evans-Wentz about fairy encounters they heard from their parents, grandparents, or neighbors. But some of the testimony is first hand, people recounting their own experiences with fairies. Evans-Wentz builds up his case for fairies by the volume of stories he collects, a volume he takes to be decisive evidence for the fairy-faith.

This, then, is one way to approach the prospect of re-enchantment, the sharing of stories recounting first hand experience. In the current conversation about Christian re-enchantment, this is the strategy deployed by Rod Dreher in his book Living in Wonder. Dreher tells spooky stories, for instance, about demonic possession and UFO encounters. These stories are shared to convince skeptical readers, much like Evans-Wentz's strategy in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries.

Trouble is, a lot of people don't find evidence like this all that persuasive. Stories like those in Living in Wonder and The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries tend mostly to confirm the beliefs of the already converted. If you already believe in demon possession or alien encounters, you'll find Dreher's stories a thrilling and worldview-affirming read. But if you're skeptical about such things, I doubt Living in Wonder will do much for you.

To be sure, stories and testimonials can be persuasive, but if reading the The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries or Living in Wonder doesn't do the trick, what's your other option for re-enchantment? The approach I take in Hunting Magic Eels, and even in Reviving Old Scratch, is to focus upon cognitive and attentional biases. I assume a skeptical reader and conclude that sharing a lot of supernatural narratives isn't going to be helpful. In fact, hitting a skeptical reader with a lot of woo-woo might cause them to throw the book in the trash. My approach, to borrow from William James, is to make enchantment feel "hot" and "alive" with possibility. As James observed:

Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed.

In contrast to a "live" hypothesis, any hypothesis that strikes us as totally implausible James describes as "completely dead." I wrote Hunting Magic Eels and Reviving Old Scratch for readers who found enchantment to be a "dead" hypothesis. Maybe not stone cold dead, dead-as-a-doornail dead, but pretty dead. I wrote those books for Christians who were drifting into skepticism, people who had once believed but were now struggling to believe. People who were like me in the early years of this blog, the formerly enchanted but now disenchanted Christians. And knowing a bit about people who were like me, I knew that telling them stories about ghosts, aliens, miracles, or demons wasn't going to be very helpful. Sharing spooky stories wouldn't do much to make enchantment feel any more alive with possibility. Frankly, it would have been counterproductive.

Basically, my strategy for re-enchantment took its cue from stages of change theory. If people are in the contemplation stage of enchantment, open to enchantment as a possibility, then, sure, I think telling stories can be of help. But if people are in the pre-contemplation stage I don't think stories do much good. If someone is in the pre-contemplation stage of enchantment your first job isn't belief itself but wanting to believe, being open to belief. Making belief more alive than dead. Moving from pre-contemplation to contemplation. From a firm "No" to a "Maybe?"

That's the first step toward re-enchantment. From "No" to "Maybe?"