this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Honestly, I've seen multiple takes on what "magic" is; with some people describing it in more traditional terms (spells, hexes, potions, etc), and others basically saying, "it's any time action A seems to lead to outcome B, but the mechanism is unknown". The latter I'm fine with and actually encourage, because tbh, the physical world is fucking weird.
There's so much we don't know about physics that putting some cool rocks and a stick in a letter and mailing it to a friend might legitimately bring them good fortune, either because you've improved their mood (most likely), leading their brain to being more positive and efficient, or maybe something you did in the process happened to kickstart a row of dominos that happened to bring them good fortune. It doesn't really matter that you don't know the exact step that caused it, just that one of the steps seemed to do it and that's fine.
I suppose you could take a scientific approach to it though and study what exactly you did and how it seemed to effect the outcome of your magic. Who knows, might stumble across a new scientific law in the process.
On a side note regarding horoscopes, I don't believe in them except that I sometimes wonder if they're the result of patterns, which then became self-fullfilling prophecies. Astrologer notices that X happens more often when A is high in the sky and B is near the horizon, and predicts the occurrence of X. X occurs and people believe the astrologer. Next time A is high in the sky and B is near the horizon, the astrologer once again predicts X, and the people, as part of their belief, unintentionally cause X to happen again. Same thing with Chinese birth years. I wonder if it's the result of people noticing patterns in society and then laymen misattributing it to magic.
Yep - magic can mean a lot of things depending on context. You usually hear about spells and such when it's an exercise in intent projection - trying to send some signal into the universe or whatever to align with your personal goals. The other definition you mention is more about unexplained phenomena. There's definitely others, too.
I probably should have asked this first - when you say getting more into witchy stuff, what does that look like? Say you decide to start tomorrow - what does tomorrow look like for you?
That's a really good question, and I'm not really sure. Part of it is the wide variety of interpretations on what it is which makes it hard to decide where I'd go with it. I think part of it would be just finding neat objects, whether they're rocks, sticks, gems, whatever, and attributing some kind of secret power to them. Tbh I think as someone else pointed out, it'd really be more of a roleplay thing than actual belief.
Part of what's eating me up right now is the realization that under known physical laws, free will doesn't exist. You don't make choices, you don't make decisions, these were all things the universe already knew would occur because at the end of the day, you're a big chemical reaction. All those bigots, all those dictators, they never stood a chance. They never became good people because the conditions necessary for them to change never existed; it was merely an illusion.
I kinda want to believe in free will again, but I'm not sure how to convince myself that free will is possible. I've even explored the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but I realized that even then, free will is an illusion. If every possible reality occurs, then does free will actually exist? Probably not.