What’s with the name?
Komorebi (木漏れ日, pronounced /koh-mo-reh-bee/) is a Japanese word that has no direct translation in English. It refers to the interaction of sunlight through the leaves of a tree. Light comes raining down into the world but hardly anyone notices, in part, because we don’t possess the vocabulary to describe it. It seems fitting for the current moment.
Telos
The Komorebi Effect attempts to unpack the moral and spiritual malaise gripping modern society. It’s sort of a primer on today’s competing cosmologies. The space is structured to assist the reader in understanding our role in the present and its origin in the past, and to imagine what the future might be. There is an attempt here to recover lost terminology needed to speak intelligibly about basic questions of value and meaning. Such questions are practically insoluble in this immanent-minded world we find ourselves in today. Know-how has largely replaced wisdom. Anything that doesn’t have a technical solution isn’t seen as a real problem. The more we focus solely on the physical plane the less we notice the heavens beginning to close above. Belief in anything beyond the material world becomes unbelievable. We neglect the moral and spiritual dimensions at our peril. We must reintegrate knowledge and belief if we have any hope of closing the ever widening gap between our technical mastery and our capacity for moral reasoning. And we must develop a palate for what is good. The world desperately needs salt and light. The Komorebi Effect is meant to provide a seasoning of light.
Who is Leo Wyhl?
Leo Wyhl is a ‘small-o’ orthodox Christian. Leo is a self-proclaimed “third-rate secondhand dealer of ideas” who holds advanced degrees in engineering. He is alarmed by the enormous gap between our technical proficiency and our capacity for moral reasoning. Despite living in an “advanced” society he sees illness across practically every domain.1e.g.,preventable chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are rampant; people are increasingly depressed and self-absorbed, not to mention poorly educated, undisciplined, and lacking wisdom; lives are devoid of meaning, purpose, and belonging. Leo is convinced that technology cannot begin to address these problems we’ve created because they are largely moral and spiritual in nature. He became disillusioned by the decontextualized mechanistic world devoid of meaning. He believes some form of re-enchantment is our only hope of reversing today’s fragmentation and isolation. You can contact him through the form below or message him on Twitter at @LeoWyhl.
Contact
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Credits: Header photo “There Is A Crack In Everything 9/13/13” by dianecordell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0