Fellow hardline materialists, how do you "enchant" the world?

I really don't. I just sweep the existential dread under the carpet while it becomes bigger as I get older.

You don't think the structures of the observable universe, both large and small, are infinitely enchanting by themselves? Personally, I am captivated by the beauty of the universe (and yes, its unfathomable vastness), and find it utterly delightful that such small collections of matter as ourselves are able to self-assemble, and to then have an agency that nothing else we've observed demonstrates.

I find the above much more magical than any attempt to anthropomorphise the laws of physics which are, let's face it, not cruel: simply indifferent to whether some transiently-conscious structure of its particles is created or destroyed.

I think the thing you are looking for is not philosophy. I think you are looking for beauty.

Beauty is entirely subjective, so there is no one right answer. It's entirely subjective, so it's not something that anyone can give you.

It seems like you're looking for a romantic "imaginary dimension" beyond what you can see. Based on that I would recommend starting your search with the works and workings of your fellow human beings. Try investing some time into your community. Or try to immerse yourself in the arts. Or find a community based in the arts!

I pretend. Those rock outcroppings that very vaguely could be humanoid in shape? Mountain trolls. Mossy boulder in the forest? Entrance to the faerie realm. I also have a habit of building small stick dwellings or entrances to little hidey holes when I’m out on hikes. It’s a fun bit of make believe that might also make the world a little more interesting for other people.

Maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but I also read a lot of fantasy.

If you specifically want to exclude any conversation from people with viewpoints different than yours, would it perhaps make sense to ask this in a more specific venue? I'd also note that materialist can mean sufficiently many things that it's a potentially less than useful term at times; for example, I came into this curious to see what "enchanting" the world meant in terms of class relations. With that said, it's an interesting question.

Your view of constructing what one might describe as knowingly-fanciful narratives makes sense, but I think it raises a question of how much that encompasses, and whether at some point it becomes something not 'hardline'. It is, in some sense, reminiscent of Cat's Cradle's Bokononian "live by the foma [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy".

Yet I would speculate that the same view would include a number of religious people who, whether they admit it to themselves or not, take their religious beliefs as sufficiently metaphorical that they are effectively living by what they know are harmless untruths. Coming instead from atheism, I would now vaguely consider myself to be a Christian who does not believe in the reality of any supernatural aspect of it or the importance of the reality of any non-supernatural aspect, but still finds value in some significant portions of the narrative and in living as though I do believe some of it (I realize that many people would not consider me to be Christian). Is there a fundamental difference between that and what you do? You are viewing the world through an essentially religious, even theist, and distinctly non-materialist lens, while acknowledging that that lens is artificial. And I am not denying a fundamental materialism, or that the lens I view the world through is artificial. I am just taking from an established religious practice.

This could be contrasted perhaps with Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity, which constructed ceremonial practice around believed but fundamentally non-supernatural views.

I shift my thinking, what I consider "zooming in/out". Whatever I am thinking about, I selectively add or remove context. That baby bunny with it's mom is precious and warm and their snuggling for a little bit of time is all that exists. All context removed, it's actually super important, and special to those bunnies, and will never be experienced again. And for a short time I can let myself feel that it's a mysterious world I don't have access to, just a glimpse here and there. Yesterday I saw a dead baby scrub jay near my compost, and I spent a few minutes looking at it and wondered if it was that scrub jay mom's first baby. And if she had the capacity to look forward to milestones, and felt grief and loss at having to wait another year to try again. Or if that would make her a worse mom, more harsh, for future babies because now she knows that sometimes they just die. From this zoomed in perspective, the fact that organisms have these unique moments in their life feels pretty magical. "Does it matter?" is hard to answer because obviously no, it doesn't matter if you are zoomed out. But if you zoom way in, it matters so much! I try to hang out in the zoom in zone. Like.. One day our sun will explode and all these atoms will be something else, like what??? I can not dwell on that. It does not serve me to zoomed out that far.

I also play a lot of dungeons and dragons thsese days.

Studies have shown that practicing gratitude regularly is good for mental health. I like to thank The Universe when things go well. When it doesn't? Well The Universe works in mysterious ways...

I'm a hardline materialist, meaning I don't think any metaphysical phenomenon exists, there is no afterlife, and that it's extremely unlikely a "God" exists.

If you don't mind me asking, have you always been? I might be overgeneralizing, but I noticed the line of thinking I see in your post is typical for people who grew up in an environment where it is "normal" to be a believer, and you have to "switch" to a non-default mode and then rebuild your model of reality and maybe even justify to yourself why your model differs from those who did not switch.

I am an atheist (I am using that term to signify I have no metaphysical beliefs, but I did not want to use the word "materialist" because I do not want people to think I do not care about immaterial stuff, like relationships), but I grew up in a country where the majority of people are atheists. I never understood why would a material world not be enchanting. For me, this is the default mode - the world is material and enchanting. It's like... you might believe that love is an evolutionary mechanism to make the survival of the offspring more likely, and yet be totally enchanted when you meet "the one".

If I understand correctly what you are asking about, you are referring to those feelings of awe, being profoundly touched by something, beauty... am I close? If yes, then I see zero reasons why any of this should be somehow incompatible with materialism. And I think it is simply because I grew up in an environment where those things are not associated with metaphysical explanations like religion.

Religions are self-referential interpretation frameworks. They explain things that exist on their own by themselves. It is not just the enchantment - there are other things like that, for example, justice/morality. I never believed in god and yet, I feel some things are just and other things are not - it seems obvious to me that those things are not rooted in religion (even monkeys clearly have some sense of what is just). But religions appropriated them and explain things that exist independently by themselves (as in "You are moral because your religion taught you that"). Because of that, religious people sometimes assume that non-religious people have no sense of morality, which is kind of annoying - a lot more annoying than assuming enchantment comes from religion.

I answered this in a slightly different context not long ago in this comment.

Short answer: Making meaning and connection.

I'd also add nature. The complex, nuanced relationships between everything alive and the surrounding evironment that arise from millions of years of co-evolution make this planet home in much more than a literal sense. We're made for and of this place.

We've only scratched the surface of what that looks like and already it's clear that there's more depth and connection in that story than you'll find in any metaphysical belief system.

In that way I don't see the underlying laws of the universe as cold. Our genomes have been informed by those laws for a longer span of time than we can really comprehend. They are more intimate and familiar than any lover.

You may have read that, by some estimates, bacterial cells in and on our bodies outnumber our own cells. The more we learn, the more the line between inside and outside blurs into nonexistence.

Which is to say that lack of metaphysical meaning does nothing to take away from the profoundly connected nature of being a living thing, even if we aren't consciously aware of it.

I’ve shared this before, but here’s an essay I reread sometimes. The most zoomed-out view isn’t the best view.

No cosmic meaning (David Chapman)

I like thinking about the fact that beings exist - bits of the universe that can somehow observe themselves, whether that's me, the cat next to me, or an ant in my kitchen. How wild is that?

I tap into the placebo effect, which does have benefit even if you know that it's a placebo. I collect crystals and burn incense and make spell jars and I know that if those things have any impact than it's 100% psychological, but it feels good and it's not hurting anyone.

Our ability to exist when we do is pretty darn magical. The probability of every single event aligning to this moment is basically an impossibility.

I guess my point is our existence is magical enough. The base purposelessness of it is a side effect that our intelligence generally negates by trying to understand what we need to do to exist better, such as forming societies, developing them, etc. Nihilism never bothered me because to me purposelessness is the default state of existence, at least beyond the four Fs (feeding, fighting, fleeing and mating).

I think looking at the likelihood of a given outcome and the fact that something beat the odds is enough, and we won on a ton of gambles across billions of years.

This is real big picture stuff, but if you're thinking about the nature of existence you're already thinking on this scale, or at least on the road to it. In a sense I feel truly "enlightened" when I stop to think about the means by which we came to exist, and am filled with an existential glee when confronted with the notion that we never had a reason to exist, we are simply here and must do what we can with it. This "enlightenment" is separate from any metaphysical/philosophical systems I engage with, qnd more a strong sense of joy knowing my place as an insignificant speck in an uncaring universe, and that I exist despite living in a universe that is demonstrably averse to this outcome.

I guess I just don't think about it too much or too deeply.

We exist, and it's only as a result of billions of years of circumstance that we do. If I look at an event and ascribe it any more cosmic importance than any other event I would be grasping at straws to try and discover something that just isn't there.

There is no shame, to me, in saying "I don't know". There is no shame in saying "I might never know". I have fully accepted the fact that there are some things about life and the universe that we probably won't figure out anytime soon, certainly not during my lifetime. There's nothing terrifying or off-putting or existential about it for me, it's just... Life.

With this in mind, it's not very hard for me to appreciate the little and simple things in life. Eating something nice, going for a walk in nature, etc. It really is enough. I will die one day, and there's probably nothing afterwards, but the world will still exist as will the people who I have affected, and they're the ones who really matter in the end. If I can live my life being kind to other people, maybe make them laugh sometimes, that's all the magic I really need.

I’m also a life scientist and a materialist. As others mentioned, I find “enchantment” through beauty. I adore fractals, whether in the nature of a garden displayed in branches or the nature of a computer algorithm displayed on a screen—I actually equate the two as the same. Physical constants are the distillations of beauty in different forms: phi, pi, c and all the other Greek letters.

If I had to commit to a religion, it would be one of the polytheisms. I think it’s analogous to physical constants at a less abstract level, and also applicable to social and psychological phenomena. I would still take a materialist view here: not taking the Gods literally but rather as distillations of the beauty in the world.

Is not the wonder of how the world is enchantment enough? How matter forms and what not? The beauty of the Milky Way Galaxy?

Have you read Anathem?