Why We’re Hyper Advanced But Still Like the Ancients
Here are 4 real headlines from major news outlets from recent years:
1. “What if the Government Believes In U.F.O’s More Than You Do” (New York Times, July 24, 2025)
2. “Inside the Growing World of Witchcraft in America” (CNN, November 21, 2025)
3. “Microdosing and Tripping on Mushrooms is on the Rise in the U.S.” (NPR, June 28, 2024)
4. How KPop Demon Hunters Became the Most Watched Movie in Netflix History (Vanity Fair, September 24, 2025)
Did you notice the timestamps? These aren’t descriptions of ancient times. They’re very recent publications.
I grew up in a Western environment that told me how advanced we were as a society. We were lightyears ahead scientifically, philosophically, and medically. But our present cultural imagination is gravitating towards the interests of an ancient world entrenched in a supernatural worldview.
I thought we were the most advanced civilization in human history. So why are we having conversations about supernatural beings, occult practices, and mystical experiences?
Our Deep Longing for a Greater Story
For most of human history, life was understood through a supernatural lens. Social theorists have dubbed this understanding of reality as enchantment. In this mental model, life was viewed as physical and spiritual. The transcendent and immanent were tightly interwoven and bled through together.
In such a world, the “expressive individual” and radical individualism was unsafe. But what you gained was something far more stabilizing: a coherent, reality-corresponding story that you and your entire community lived by. Sure, you were afraid of the ghosts “out there” but you were able to make sense of life and found yourself situated in a larger unfolding story.
This enchanted vision of reality came to a screeching halt when the Western world transitioned to what sociologist Max Weber coined as disenchantment. Shortly after the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th century, human reason replaced divine revelation as the ultimate source of authority. Life was now aimed to be understood rationally. We now lived in a world where everything could be analyzed, dissected, and systematized, believing “the best reasoning” (secularism) should win the day.
At first, this felt like a blessing. We were fortified from the “religious superstitions” of our past. We could now provide rational, scientific answers to that which previous generations had spiritualized. But in the process, we lost something we didn’t realize we needed so desperately: A story to live by. We lost a coherent, reality-correspondent story that gave us meaning and purpose.
We gained stats, but we lost an overarching story to live by. We could explain planetary orbit, but we weren’t sure what human purpose should revolve around. We could give measurements but didn’t know how to explain morality.
The Longing for Re-Enchantment
This is why, as odd as those 4 headlines may seem, I’m not surprised by our our current culture’s renewed fascination with ancient ideas. We’re not regressing as a culture, we’re longing for re-enchantment.
Even the greatest scientist would feel more alive at the thought of extraterrestrial beings who wielded advanced technology. Even the person who hates organized religion would want to experience a form of greater power even if it was through the occult. Even the disciplined athlete wants to experience a substance that transcends the physical. Kids and teenagers want to know that our wrestle for meaning and identity matter.
We all long for more. We want to know that our lives are part of a larger story unfolding around us. We long to be caught up in something we can’t fully explain. And so while we continue to advance technologically and scientifically, the absence of a meaningful story to live by will keep pulling us backwards to ancient things.
