It occurs to me just now, while reading something completely unrelated to the thought, that we lose wonder because we feel we have a grasp on things.
In the idyllic days of yore, when science was a black art and the world worked by magic, there was power and fear and wonder in the things we didn’t understand. From our modern standpoint, we can see how priests and witches controlled people because they seemed to have the keys to the world – they controlled the magic forces and thus they controlled people
Now magic is the fodder of kids books and illusionists, and the world is safely in the hand of the laws of physics, of forces like gravity and genetics and molecular biology. And the world can be a pretty damn boring place to live, if we just delude ourselves into thinking we’ve got it figured out – or at least more figured out than those foolish people in the dark ages who believed in magic.
But, even if we do have it figured out, that doesn’t necessitate a lack of wonder and marvelling at the forces that guide the world. We do understand gravity, but that means that stuff that is up, falls down! That’s kind of cool!
Even more cool, more magical if you will, is that the act of procreation and the system of DNA and genetics means that I am very literally made up of the stuff that makes up my mother and father – in visible and definable ways. I find it even more fascinating that genes allow information to be carried but hidden for generations – a scientific but seemingly wondrous way in which we are linked to our forefathers.
If you don’t marvel at this stuff, you obviously don’t like mystery.
Have you ever read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie? In it, the main character, Saleem, spends a bit of time with magicians, contortionists, conjurers, snake-charmers, and other people living in a ghetto on the fringe of society. He explains that the magicians have a firmer grip and understanding of reality than anyone else, so they’re able to *bend* reality and amaze people.
Very nice insight.