Classicism v. Romanticism

I must admit that I had difficulty answering this question. I wanted, at first, to be able to call myself a romantic thinker. It seems like a prestigious thing, to be able to look at the world with a mystical, artistic and altogether spiritual perspective. To be able to observe an object and to visualize a completely higher concept, to literally romanticize it, is certainly a skill whose possession I envy.

Try as I might, however, I have become disillusioned, and I believe that you will find that most of my peers share this jaded perspective. Certainly, as children, we were all romantics. Airplanes were the chariots of gods and rainbows were harbingers of the world's magic. We applied this mysticism to everything, too, and not merely the extraordinary. The world worked in ways that were, at once, unimaginable, inconceivable and absolutely, functionally coordinated.

As almost-adults, however, we educated masses have become disillusioned. We have learned the sciences of the Bernoulli Principle and electromagnetic wave refraction, and no longer are we cowed by airplanes or impressed by rainbows. By fully understanding a phenomenon, we remove from it that sense of mysticism and mystery. We lose the wonder that allows us to place a volcano or an automobile in the same mental space as fiction and folklore. Real life no longer captivates us when we can break it down into theories and laws.

Pirsig tells us that "both [Classicism and Romanticism] are valid ways of looking at the world while being irreconcilable with each other," and I agree. Both of these approaches are certainly valid, for it is possible to live as both a romantic and a classicist. However, it is also impossible to view something in both a Classical and a Romantic light. Once the laws governing an object have been classically divined, it is nigh impossible to return it to its romanticized state.