Tara Isabella Burton: In an increasingly alienated, secular era, many people of faith—or, indeed, anyone who is drawn to the dictates of moral realism, are ever hungrier for the real, for rootedness and home and, as one Internet idiom would have it, touching grass. But the Evolist vision of anti-modern return, which transforms realism into knowledge reserved for initiates—indeed, initiates of certain racial backgrounds—serves as a reminder of the philosophical perils of valorizing uncritically the natural, or of what is, to us another Internet term, “based.” The desire for an enchanted world, when misdirected, can lead politically, into violence and apocalypse. There are spirits too dangerous to summon.
brian mason
@beejaymay