Redtree Times

The Call of Wonder– At West End Gallery

The world will never lack wonders; what it lacks is wonder. We grow blind not because the light is dim, but because we forget to look. The moment a man learns to marvel again, he steps back into the richness of reality.

— G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909)

When I came across the passage above from G.K. Chesterton, the lyrics to a Paul Simon song immediately came to mind. They were from his The Boy in the Bubble off his Graceland album.

These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah

The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry, don’t cry

The song was written in 1986, nearly forty years ago, predating the technology explosion that created so much that has been integrated into our daily lives, so much so that we now take for granted these things and the changes they produced in our world.

What once would have inspired awe and wonder now only brings a shrug.

I sometimes wonder if we have been beaten into submission by an unceasing stream of wonders over the past forty years. Has it made us drop our guard and made us too quick to unconditionally accept every new thing and change. In his song, Simon seems to understand the danger in this. He writes about a loose affiliation of billionaires using technology and information to surveil and control our lives, all while we go about our day to day lives unaware and without suspicion.

It seems to me that once we surrender our sense of wonder, we become susceptible to all manner of peril.

Perhaps a sense of wonder is one of our inborn protective instincts?

I don’t know, of course.

But I do wonder.

And maybe that simple act–this pondering of the who, what, and why of life– is more important for our survival than we might guess. 

Maybe. But then again, what do I know? I am still sometimes struck with awe when I see a jet fly overhead, thinking what a miracle this would have seemed to our not-so-distant ancestors. How would I even begin to explain satellites, cryptocurrency, or AI and all its ramifications to my great-grandparents from the 19th century who were still wonderstruck at the idea of a telephone– or even indoor plumbing?

Just wondering this morning and happy to still have even that small sense of wonder. 

Here’s that song: