The Invention of Magic
When we think of the past, and the attitudes of the people who lived then, we think of superstition and fantastical beliefs. Before our modern age of reason and enlightenment, people believed in crazy things like monsters, curses, and magic.
Nobody believes in crazy things anymore.
In truth, historical magic is really quite boring. Sure, you could try to poison people with words carved into stone, or throw bones to tell the future to learn some secret. But no one ever really tried to shoot fireballs from their hands or raise the dead. Historical magic falls into two basic categories. Action at a distance, and knowledge at a distance. To move things without touching them, and to know things without seeing or hearing them. According to this simple definition, most of us use magic every day. II. Have you ever been bored in school or at work and tried to use the force?
Actually, that’s all I do at work.
How many hours have been wasted with people trying to push away a paperclip or fold a piece of paper with nothing but their mind? I swear I made a pencil move once, but nobody was around to see it. A person from the past might attempt this indefinitely, or get fed up and start moving objects around with sticks and string. Neither of these approaches count as magic. A modern person, with the same amount of energy, and some money, has many more options. Stick a radio transmitter and some sort of propulsion to an object, and you can move it without touching it. As long as you have the remote. But I doubt even a medieval person would be that impressed by an R.C. pencil. Fortunately, modern folks can perform much more dramatic actions at even further distances. NASA’s MAVEN probe recently achieved orbit around Mars. 225 million kilometers away people are controlling the probe from Earth. Beyond that is Cassini, orbiting Saturn while controlled from Earth. And beyond that is New Horizons, and the Voyager probes beyond that.
And beyond that, people are fighting Borg in the Delta quadrant.
We are able to perform action at distances even farther than historical people could imagine. And we can lower our blinds, change the TV channel, or open doors with the push of a button. III. What good is being able to do things from far away if you can’t tell what is happening? For most of history, information was an extremely rare commodity. The next village down may as well have been another country. And other countries might as well have been made up.
China? That’s over near Narnia, right?
People would eagerly await any news they could get. It was common for people to send payments for shipment that would never arrive, or swear fealty to a lord who was dead. If a King, for example, went off to fight in the crusades and died on the way, his peasants wouldn’t hear of his demise for several years. And there is the famous story of Andrew Jackson, who defeated the British at New Orleans during the war of 1812, Two weeks after the war had ended. Modern systems of mail delivery did a lot to remedy the problems, but getting a letter or a package in the mail doesn’t count as magic. No matter how reliable that mail system is.
Hey…you wanna see a magic trick?
Receiving news instantaneously from across the world is more amazing. If a person from antiquity knew that today we can immediately let the entire world know when we like something, they would be astonished. In the past people lived under the rule of a leader who, as far as they knew, may or may not actually be alive. Today we hear from world leaders dozens of times a day. For better or worse. Sure, you could explain to the time-traveller about radio waves. And they would probably understand what you were talking about. But understanding an amazing thing doesn’t make it less amazing. In fact, there are people who use computers every day, but couldn’t explain a thing about them. And they are not amazed at all.
Eh, its pretty cool. I guess.
IV. We live in an amazing time. We have the capacity for both action and knowledge at extreme distances. Just like all the old occultists would have wanted. Technology has the ability to turn anyone into a modern wizard, more powerful than Nostradamus and Merlin combined. But just because technology can make anyone a wizard doesn’t mean there aren’t still muggles around. That’s what Tech Support is for.
Seven years of wizard school, for this.
‘ The modern age of reason and enlightenment’ where 23,000 starve to death each day and war never stops.
You need to re-phrase what you mean is:
We live in an age of rapid technical advancement but inspite of our intelligence the world is in a hell of a mess.
I agree with you. The world is certainly a mess. But that is not what I meant. I meant that in the West, people’s attitudes towards certain phenomena have developed.
But since you mentioned it…
People are starving. It has always been the case, and I think everyone agrees that is horrible. If you went back in time to 10,000 B.C., or 1200 C.E., you would find that a certain percentage of the population was starving. For the sake of argument, lets say10%, or 10 starving people for every 100.
Now, this percentage has dropped. In 2014, only 5 people are starving for every 100. But because there are A LOT more people, then more individuals are starving now then in the past. But as a whole, we are doing better.
So who do you take care of. The individuals, or the world as a whole? If we focus on making every single human being on the planet perfectly comfortable, we can say goodbye to complex ecosystems and stuff because the energy of the whole planet will have to be directed toward growing rice and making twinkles.
The only other way to end starvation is to lower the world population. This would require a lot of death anyway, and I’m pretty sure I am morally obligated to stand against that approach. So that situation sucks. Its the worst it’s even been. Or is it the best it’s ever been? Who really knows?
The same goes for war. There has been war since the first disagreement between humans. War is horrible, but today we don’t have as many populations that are dedicated to it. Sure, some places are a bit more rough than others, but as a whole the number of people who have died in violent conflict has gone down in the last century, even if war seems more common.
We could try to get rid of war, but that would also require us to be rid of trade, art, culture, love, progress, ambition. Basically anything that brings people together or inspires them can also be the root of conflict. Is it worth getting rid of one horrible thing if we also have to get rid of a bunch of other things that are pretty cool?
I’m not saying the world is perfect, or that we don’t still have work to do. But it is work in progress. We all tend to focus on things that bother us more than the things that are probably ok.
Cheer up, dude. Are you starving? Are you fighting a war? If so, then my condolences. If not, then try not to worry about it.
And thanks for the comment!
Thanks for such a detailed repy. I think we largely agree but you are more optimistic than me
You remind me of Steven Pinker who believes he can detect improvements in human behaviour.
It struck me forcibly reading your reply that we could claim the world has to be the way it is to produce the art, science, and all the wonders of man. You know the sort of stuff no creation without suffering.
If you embraced that view you would be off the moral hook and glide along in a sweet mood of acceptance.
It reminds me of the religious ruse of blaming the Devil while we keep our hands whiter than the snow.
I’m lucky to have been born into a rich country so there is no wolf at the door.
Courious that the fate of us intelligent apes should depend on chance perhaps it says something about how wd use our inteligence.
I’m 73 in my declining years and I have had a reasonably fulfiling life.
I have four long grown up children and three grandchildren.