Post #4024001

2026-07-23 01:38 UTC

Are you unhappy? Is your social life sagging? Are you having trouble at work or in your marriage? Then buy product X and it'll fix it all. The secret to happiness is magic detergents, miraculous machines, high-speed communications and transport which are sold AS IF they are instantaneous, thus infusing U.S. culture with terminal impatience. Nobody wants to wait for anything. Any process or undertaking which takes any signficant time is rated a failure--or worse, the delay is taken as evidence of skulduggery. Instantaneity has come to be seen as equivalent to quality, to correctness, to progress and hope for the future. I'd like to stress at this point: the Western perception on #magic is imbalanced, concentrated on power and utility because it was shaped by some of the worst human beings which "Western Civilization" has brought to the surface. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 01:43

There's reasons for that. The demands made upon magic have been shaped by the harshness and cruelty and avarice that's typical of European and colonial civilization. If people feel they need magic it's usually because they're desperate, at the end of their rope, and face damnation and ruin at the hands of conventional authorities, most especially authoritarian Christians who claim that their rulebook about salvation and morality has the only answers anyone needs. Hence those who have sought magic have often been inclined to abuse it, or to make a mockery of it because such mockeries are very salable. I propose that the only way to repair this situation calls for two things, one obvious, one perhaps less obvious: authoritarian Christianity must be crushed, and magic as a concept needs to be legitimized. (cont'd)

Open ##4024110