Suppressing myth converts fear of nature into superstition and nature-domination

Evidence

This diminution of desire and fear was intended to make it possible, with constant presence of mind, to wrest existence from nature, which was either viewed with indifference or seen as an enemy. What was frowned upon was fear: At the turning points of Western civilization, from the transition to Olympian religion up to the Renaissance, Reformation, and bourgeois atheism, whenever new nations and classes more firmly repressed myth, the fear of uncomprehended, threatening nature, the consequence of its very materialization and objectification, were reduced to animistic superstition, and the subjugation of nature was made the absolute purpose of life within and without. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 358

Categorization

• DEFINE: Adorno and Horkheimer’s account of how enlightenment demythologization turns dread of nature into mere ‘animistic superstition.’
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the dialectic-of-enlightenment thesis compressed: the same rationalization that frees the subject re-enslaves it to nature-domination, with the recurring historical sweep (Olympian religion to bourgeois atheism) making it a claim about Western civilization as a whole.
• XREF: connects to: Control deprivation triggers compensatory superstitious and conspiratorial thinking. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 23