Magic: Who thinks they can do it, and why otherwise intelligent people buy it.

[Epimetheus]

Actually, if I said rational behavior was the only way to go about everyday life, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite. When people do irrational things that I think are funny, or do it in a certain way, I'm okay with it. Emperor Norton (although i don't know what he was really like), Wonko the Sane types of people. I'll think about it more and maybe post when I can phrase my ideas better.
[edit: It probably has something to do with the fact that I consider having fun such an important thing in life, more important than being rationally or scientifically correct.]

On another note, who I am friends with has never been decided by their beliefs. When I argue with people I know, at the end of the day I still care about them, they're my friends and that's most important to me. Kind of what ECH was saying.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A reminder that language and expression is already one step removed from your true identity (your mind) and that adding stupid names and rituals to get an effect is adding another redundant layer.

When I want to feel something I narrate it "and so I felt a melancholy" or "and so my mind entered a state of intense focus and concentration".
If you need to call that magic or attach redundant ritualistic fluff to that, I pity you.

This is the post that set me off, BTW.

I love how it manages to simultaneously be smugly superior, AND mock every non-lily-white-academia culture's spiritual practices from the dawn of humanity.

Hey, so one of my ancestral cultures induces a mentally altered state through chanting, burning sage, wearing costume, dance, and storytelling? Faust PITIES us!

It's so nice to know.

FUCK YOU, FAUST. EAT A BONE AND DIE.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So I have been thinking about this and I think it may simply come down to the question of models for me.

When I want to play with the "magic" models and props, I do. When I want to play with "NLP" stuff, I do. When I want to think "rationally" about the world, minus any props or silly words or superstitions, I do. I don't think that any of them are objectively true, or that one will give me 100% the best way to see things. They're all different ways to look at the world and the Universe. Between the metaphors we intentionally use and the metaphors that are so deeply ingrained that we often confuse them for real... I don't have an issue with metaphors about Holy Guardian Angels or Eris or whatever...

If we truly exist in a Universe of Absurdity, if the 'meaning' to life is so occluded that it either doesn't exist, or can't be determined accurately (or is whatever we make up for ourselves)... then I have no problem playing with Magic or anything else if it seems interesting. The experiences which have helped shape the life I currently have include some of the experiences I've had playing with Magic. Fakery, Psychology, Occult or Lies... what matters to me are the experiences and results.

I don't use Magic to find Truth...

[Epimetheus]

When I want to feel something I narrate it "and so I felt a melancholy" or "and so my mind entered a state of intense focus and concentration".
If you need to call that magic or attach redundant ritualistic fluff to that, I pity you.

  Faust realizes that magic and ritual are just about feeling melacholy or concentration, and these superstitious people are just adding a bunch of useless fluff in their ignorance!

Joking btw.

[NotPublished]

Its one of the hardest things to discuss, since people just take the term by the sides and try to fuck it deep but they ignore the rest of the body ... ok shit analogy.

There was a BEAUTIFULLY written concept in the PD, and which I will now refer to -

GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE

"We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use differnt grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate tit to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID."
....
"The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos apepars ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered."

I am beggining to believe that Omar and Mal-2 were once Chaotees themselves, but thats a can of worms I refuse to touch.

Again,

You have your Will/Intent, and you get your Results. Anything leading up to your Results is your Process and anything USED in the process are your tools.

Say for example, the practioner will want to find and meet new people, but they are generally nervous people because they lack self-confidence. So they do a spell to boost their own self-confidence.

They may begin by focusing on a single object clearing their mind, then they will light a red candle because symbolicly it means new things/love to them, then they will chant the words that symbolicly have meaning to them - To some; they will feel empowered and strong enough to believe in themselves that they can do it, where as others will continiously question themselves and feel stupid about it and may possibly sink further into the lack of self-confidence. The difference here - one person truly believes in it, the other is full of doubt. It doesn't work for everyone, they have to find their own ideas. Heck, some might snap out of their lack of confidence entirely because their sick of it, whatever works - Works. Sometimes the set out intent will fail, but could  be because the process wasn't well-thought through (Or maybe it was something really retarded set out to be done)

It MAY seem whacky, and silly to do - but for the person who sets out to meet new people and successfully does it, will thank their own spell/ritual for the success. I will probably regret using that example aswell.

But it doesn't even have to involve candles or chanting or things like that. The way I accept it is, as long as you have the Intent/Will to manifest your Results, and you go about the steps in doing it; that is smart thinking. Whether you want to call it Magic or not - Kudous to you. Would you prefer to call it Mind Hack instead?

Here is an example from my own life -

I was nervous about meeting a particular person, so on the inside I gave myself a bit of a slap and I made an imaginary mask with the idea to hide my nervousness. And I ended up being my charming self, whether it was because the imaginary Mask that gave me this edge or it was a pre-learned 'habbit' has little to no meaning to me, because what I set out to do worked. I just didn't question myself, I set out to do something and I did it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The trouble I have with all of this is that it isn't real. 

When it's all said and done, it doesn't change anything...it's just another way to lie to yourself.  And there's enough ways to do that already.

[NotPublished]

'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.'

The way I take that belief is best accepted as a use as a tool.

(Ok this analogy may be a bit out there but here I go - I dont even know why I'm writing it  )
I will use my screwdriver to screw in screws, I will user hammers to hammer in nails. But if I use a screw driver to hammer in a nail I might bend the nail.

I don't see it as a lie. I am not lieing to anyone, but I am bringing out a side of myself that would of been held back by another part of me.

Of course I could just cut the nonsense and go full in, in the past I know I wouldn't of been able to do that - but now days it doesn't effect me that much anymore of what people think of me.

IMO, that could possible be one of the biggest forces that hold people back - what others think of them. So they turn to all of these systems in order to get around it, possibly without tackling the root of the problem.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.'

Everything?

[NotPublished]

  It is my fault for bringing out random quotes.

I have always taken that quote to deal with self-constructed truths. Nothing physically (thankfully)

[Shai Hulud]

'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.'

Everything?

That's why I, for one, am more interested in objective morals than objective truth.

[Kai]

There is absolutely no reason not to have confidence in the scientific method, aka hypothesis testing.

Ok, perhaps this is where we diverge, but I need some further clarification from you.  What sort of confidence are you talking about?  100% certainty?  High degree of probability?  Where do you get these ideas from?

I have complete confidence in the scientific method to test any hypothesis which is able to be falsified. And I mean any and every. There is not one falsifiable hypothesis that I would not be confident in using the scientific method to test.

If people misuse a tool out of misunderstanding that is not a fault of the tool. It's pretty damn stupid to blame a knife for a stab wound.

It's also pretty damn hard to stab somebody without a knife.  Just sayin.

Do guns kill people, or do people kill people? Is this yet another argument of proximate versus ultimate? If you know what I mean, I'm talking about the ultimate and not the proximate level.

Likewise, it's pretty damn stupid to blame the scientific method for people's misunderstanding of such things as hypothesis, falsifiability, experiment, correlation and causation.

I don't recall that I did this.  I do blame people's inherent stupidity for the misunderstanding of the scientific method though.  I suppose it's inevitable.

You obviously misunderstand it and blame it. That was implicit in the statement of yours I bolded.

Not that the human element can ever be removed from the method and render it completely objective (Cf. Karl Popper), but it can be accounted for. Hypotheses can be tested and retested.

Popper and all that sort of positivism notwithstanding, we can never surmount Cartesian doubt.  For all we know, an evil deceiver might be stringing us along the whole way, or maybe just stringing us along sometimes.  Science is based on the hypothesis that the universe isn't messing with us, that there are consistent rules that we can ascertain.  I like this and hope it's True, but man, I just don't know.

This is why we use PARSIMONY. Science is also based on testing of physical evidence, and unless you can provide physical evidence to test, whatever "evidence" you have is scientifically meaningless. But I digress, you're being needlessly hypothetical with no evidence.

Scientific understanding has gotten us pretty far, btw. Where did magical thinking get us? Oh right, the European Dark Ages. Just think if the Library of Alexandria had survived and the Catholic church had not taken over Europe, where would we be today.

How very Eurocentric of you.  Magical thinking also brought us thousands of years of Asian civilization, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Averroes and the Islamic golden age that took place concurrent with the European dark ages and without which we wouldn't even have science.  Not to mention that superstition had nothing to do with the burning of the library at Alexandria, that was just a regular old war.  Also, without the Catholic Church we would have lost much of the corpus of classical texts.  Superstition is, in fact, good for something, even under your definition of good.

Believe it or not, I don't live in Asia. My culture and civilization falls within the western tradition. The librarians at Alexandria were great scientists, and unfortunately that knowlege was pushed into a dank corner for nearly 1000 years while people entertained magical ideas like the world being flat. Maybe you're from some Asian culture but I'm pretty sure you aren't, so quit pretending you are, and like you actually know what you are talking about.

Exciting, that. Reality is cool enough, special enough, amazing enough without layering on extra bullshit.

My point remains that whatever you think Reality is, is your own particular illusion about it.  It's not about what is cool or exciting, but what is useful to you, whatever you happen to find convincing.  This says more about you than about Truth.

I want you to think really hard and believe you can fly, and see if you are willing to jump out a 12th story window.

If you want to get caught in this stupid existentialism, I have a barstool waiting for you.

Note, I don't really care what you do in your spare time to fulfill your spiritual practice. I do care you have the wrong idea about science, however, and thats why I felt the need to address your statement. It sounds similar to something Depak Chopra would say, and that's not a compliment.

I'm not really familiar with Chopra, but don't worry, I wasn't expecting any compliments.  I don't know where you get off telling me I have the wrong idea about science, because that's patently incorrect.  I couldn't have a better understanding, because I always keep its limitations at the forefront of my mind.  It's folly to do otherwise.  

Except you don't understand, thus you throw around bullshit comments about the scientific method.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.'

Everything?

That's why I, for one, am more interested in objective morals than objective truth.

Pfffft.  That's just as bad.  Ayn Rand mushy-headed bullshit. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The trouble I have with all of this is that it isn't real. 

When it's all said and done, it doesn't change anything...it's just another way to lie to yourself.  And there's enough ways to do that already.

People can lie to themselves, no matter what models and symbols they use. People can also see models as models and symbols as symbols.... then there's no lie at all.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

For all their faults, the Wiccans have one thing right: "Do what ye will, an it harm none".

I would go one step further and say that the only thing that makes living worthwhile is improving the lives of other beings.

'Cause I'm a damn hippie.

[NotPublished]

I'm almost afraid to ask. Whats an objective Moral?